Ernst Troeltsch's Critique of Hegel: Normative Thought and History.

• Author: Ricci, Gabriel R.
• Position: Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Hegel

Introduction

Hegel's philosophy is as well known to us through the assessment of his detractors as from sympathetic readings. From Schelling's earliest critique to Karl Popper's diatribe we are afforded a range of criticism that reveals the unsettling tension that has led authors, in some cases, to wholeheartedly denounce Hegel's philosophical approach. (1)

Not all negative critiques have been wholesale refutations of Hegel's system. Most have argued that Hegel's approach to history violates the fundamental premise upon which all history and historiography must turn--individuality. Leopold von Ranke, who disputed both Hegel's view of history and of God, laid the groundwork for subsequent critiques like Ernst Troeltsch's. Accordingly, the footing for Troeltsch's attack on Hegel lies in an understanding of historical methodology to which Ranke devoted most of his theoretical speculation. Although Troeltsch would eventually advocate methods departing from Ranke's call for Unparteilichkeit, or objective reconstruction, he held Ranke in the highest esteem. (2) At times Troeltsch expresses an antagonism toward Hegel that seems paradoxical, but in some instances he cannot resist his debt to Hegel's conception of the dialectical complexity of history. Troeltsch was especially opposed to Hegel's eclipse of the individual in history, but, along with Hegel, Troeltsch was m otivated by the intuition that history provides the necessary material presence from which totality and completion can be actualized, a completion and totality, he emphasized, that history forms from within itself.

An historical reading of Hegel means that we must regard his philosophy in light of Kant's epistemology (3) In reforming Kant's understanding of consciousness and experience, Hegel attempted to restore some sense of classical metaphysics to philosophy in that he historicized the Logos. (4) Above all, Hegel's system redressed the Kantian tenet that consciousness has merely a regulative function. Hegel advanced the idea that reason was constitutive of reality; his understanding of the tenability of the unmediated contact between the subject and object of consciousness was a direct assault on Kant's program. In turn, however, the neo-Kantian movement that swept Germany in the nineteenth and early twentieth century quickly rejected Hegel's system and restored credibility to Kant's philosophical gain, the productivity of the epistemological self. (5) Within this circle of mutual critique Ernst Troeltsch's response to Hegel insightfully acknowledged the tension that drove Schelling and Kierkegaard in their efforts to counter Hegel's insinuation that an "existential system" was not only tenable, but a matter of historical outcome. Troeltsch, who is known in theological circles for his major work on the social teachings of Christianity, delivered a broadside against Hegel in his culminating work on history and historiography, Der Historismus und seine Probleme (1922). But throughout the course of his literary output one can trace the development of his later and more incisive critique. (6)

What drove Troeltsch to make Hegel the focus of his sweeping critique of historical speculation in the nineteenth century is partially answered by his active participation in the "call back to Kant." But fully to appreciate Troeltsch's argument against Hegel requires a view of Troeltsch within the context of the religionsgeschichtliche Schule, where he took his first stand against Hegel. To trace Troeltsch's critique of Hegel from his earliest dispute with the dogmatic and evolutionary apologetics of Christianity, to his final work, Der Historismus und seine Probleme, reveals a literary trail that begins with an affirmation of Hegelian developmental logic and ends with a staunch position on the indissolubility of individuality in historical movement and the interpretation of history.

Like Kierkegaard's appropriation of Hegel's terminology, Troeltsch's critique of Hegel is testimony to the ambiguous stand many of Hegel's critics adopted. In the end, I believe, Troeltsch proved, along with Kierkegaard, that to argue with Hegel is somehow always to agree with him.

Historical Theology

As early as 1898 Troeltsch was actively involved in extricating himself from what he considered the dogmatic tendencies of the religionsgeschichtliche Schule, and Hegel provided an escape route. The tendency of the historically minded theologians to regard the historical person and teaching of Jesus Christ as the sole criterion for the essence of Christianity, according to Troeltsch, effaced the historical nature of Christianity. This conservative tendency--amounting to the acknowledgment of the primacy of the purely historical past--neglected the active, living principle in history. The fascination with the historical Christ was mere antiquarianism for Troeltsch, whose methodological approach to the essence of Christianity was his first effort to reveal the active and creative principle inherent to all things historical.

Although Troeltsch's essay "Was heisst 'Wesen des Christentums'?" (1903) was repeatedly revised to accommodate his changing attitude toward Hegel's philosophy of history, it remains as testimony to Troeltsch's allegiance to the Hegelian principle of the dialectical energy underlying historical movement. This principle of development (Entwicklung) was the guiding theme of Troeltsch's historical thinking in 1900, but it eventually would be subsumed under the more encompassing category of individual totality by the time he completed Der Historismus in 1922. The evidence for this transition already was apparent in "Was heisst 'Wesen des Christentums'?", in which he characterized the concept of "essence" as: (1) an abstraction of the unity of manifestations, (2) a critique and act, and (3) an ideal incorporating a normative principle (to be formed through the assumption of the future). The first aspect is readily understandable, but the latter two categories designate the historical and temporal dynamic which made the concept of "essence" really a concept of development for Troeltsch. Troeltsch's methodological treatment of this theme acknowledges his philosophical prejudice, since the subject of Christianity seems secondary to the understanding of the mechanism of historical criticism. Accordingly, I will refer to the essence of Christianity as "essence" to reflect this bias. Troeltsch's rendering of the "essence" as act emphasizes the developmental premise of historical phenomena, but he was emphatic that historical movement in no wise is to be embraced by unadulterated rationality.

In "Was heisst 'Wesen des Christentums'?" Troeltsch began to articulate the individuating tendencies inherent to historical reason. Troeltsch would defend this subjectivism in this essay, and until he died he maintained his faith in overcoming history with history, i.e., he defended historicism against relativism, and argued, in the way Karl Mannheim did, for the epistemological legitimacy of historicism as relationism. (7)

In arguing against the concept of the "essence" as exclusively based on an original event, e.g., the preaching of Christ, Troeltsch questioned the primacy of the past as the sole subject of history. Hegel's influence had inspired in Troeltsch a certain appreciation for the dynamic power of the "essence." For Troeltsch, the "essence" had to be an entity with "inner living flexibility, and a productive power for new creation and assimilation." (8) The "essence" could be no mere abstraction, "it must be a developing principle" embodying purpose and value and geared toward accommodating new creations. Troeltsch intended no simple, logically necessary law commanding an objective teleology. The historical formula Troeltsch uncovered in defining the "essence" (of Christianity) signified a unity or totality that was not merely the result of a judgment about history (the past), but a critical act that was itself "a piece of history." (9) As such, the "essence" is not an abstraction of manifestations but an assessment of that which is "not yet in terms of the driving ideal." (10) Here Troeltsch was unmistakably taken with Hegel's historical dialectic, but only to a point. Where Troeltsch began to take his leave from Hegel was in his consideration of the future as a facet of historical criticism.

Troeltsch guarded against historical prediction in historiography, for he was aware that the future always turned on the critical stance of the historical spectator. The estimation of the future indeed had its place in the concept of the developing "essence." In dismissing the reconstruction of the past as the task of history, Troeltsch turned his methodological inquiry to understanding the present in its total developmental context: a context that is not framed by the consideration of the simple past, but one that must embrace what still persists of the past in the present and what theoretically can be extended into the future on the basis of the enduring dynamic of historical happening. This "historical disciplining of our thought," (11) he promised, would produce guidelines for the future, and in turn the "essence" could no longer be construed as an abstract concept; it automatically becomes an ideal.

The impulse toward the future, which remained integral to Troeltsch's formulation of history, necessarily complicates its logical nature. This complication stems from the effect of personal presuppositions on the attempt to imagine any further unfolding of the "essence." (12) Objective clarification of the "essence" is confused, but to reconcile the subjective and the objective amounts to a "creative act." (13) Troeltsch's later formulation of the logic of history would reflect this conceptual confusion. He referred to his final expression of the formal logic of history as "the irrational logic of the new and creative." While this logic incorporated individuals into a...