Abstract
Four years after the appearance of the Prolegomena zur Historiosophie, Cieszkowski published his second philosophical work. In the fashion of the day, this carried a somewhat elaborate and lengthy title: Gott und Palingenesie: erster kritischer Teil Erstes kritisches Sendschreiben an den Herrn Professor Michelet auf Veranlassung seiner Vorlesungen über die Persönlichkeit Gottes und Unsterblichkeit der Seele.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
I quote from the Polish edition of 1911, op. cit., as GuP.
Michelet’s book was dated Berlin, 1841, and carried as a further subtitle: Vorlesungen… erhalten an der Friedrich-Wilhelm Universität zu Berlin im Sommerhalbjahre 1840.
Michelet-Cieszkowski, letter nr 9, 1st September 1840, in Kühne, Graf August Cieszkowski, pp. 386–387.
Ibid.
Cieszkowski-Michelet, letter nr 11, 20th December 1841, ibid. pp. 389–390.
A perusal of Michelet’s Vorlesungen… reveals no mention of Cieszkowski, although it is of course possible that Michelet had referred to him, without including the reference in the published text. Michelet-Cieszkowski, letter nr 9, 1st September 1840, ibid. p. 387.
Cieszkowski-Michelet, letter nr 11, 20th December 1841, ibid. p. 389, Julius Schaller, customarily classified as a right-wing Hegelian, had written Die Philosophie unserer Zeit; zur Apologie und Erläuterung des Hegeischen Systems, Berlin, 1837, as well as a critique of Strauss, Der historische Christus und die Philosophie.
Cieszkowski-Michelet, ibid.
Ibid. L. von Henning, incidentally, was a close friend of Cieszkowski. Their correspondence has been brought to light in Kühne, ‘Neue Einblicke…’.
See A. Zółtówski’s introduction to Zygmunt Krasinski’s Listy do Augusta Cieszkowskiego.
These notes were left in manuscript form by Cieszkowski himself; they have been published as an appendix to Kühne, Graf August Cieszkowski, Appendix VI and VIII, pp. 440–444 and 446–454, as well as in Walicki’s edition, op. cit.
“This had to occur in some mortal and this mortal was Christ”. He notes that this event was also its opposite: God became man, but out of this particularization a universalization followed, mankind came to participate in God. “Nachgelassene Materialen…”, Kühne, op. cit., p. 442.
Cieszkowski had read G. Lessing, Education of the Human Race, and P. S. Ballanche, Essais de Palingenesie sociale as recorded in his diaries. Hegel mentions the two concepts i.a. in his Philosophy of History, p. 73, metempsychosis appears as characteristic of Oriental religion; p. 107, palingenesis is used as an image: “Morality has not yet passed the struggle of subjective freedom, in its second birth, its palingenesis”.
Kühne, op. cit., pp. 446–454.
For a possible indication of Cieszkowski’s views here, see Michelet, Epiphanie der ewigen Persönlichkeit des Geistes, Berlin, 1852, pp. 99–135, where Michelet presents a debate in dialogue form on this question. Cieszkowski appears under the guise of Teleophanes’ Eastern Friend. The bulk of the debate, however, simply reproduces the arguments of the negative part of Gott und Palingenesie. This debate from Michelet is also published as an
Hegel, History of Philosophy, vol. III, p. 94. Cieszkowski himself referred to the debate as a scholastic one (GuP, pp. 28–29). For the most biting criticism of Hegelian polemics as intellectual charlatanry see the opening to Marx’s own contribution to those polemics, The German Ideology.
By far the best discussion of this question is in Erdmann’s History of Philosophy, vol. III, pp. 70ff.
Ibid., p. 72; Strauss’ Christliche Glaubenslehre appeared in Tübingen, 1841–42.
D. Barth, introduction to Essence of Christianity, p. XV.
Michelet, Vorlesungen…, p. 15.
Erdmann, ibid.
Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, p. 146.
Ibid., p. 149.
Cieszkowski was to make much use of etymology generally and the concept of religare specifically in the Our Father, esp. vol. II. Engels ridiculed this particular connection in his Ludwig Feuerbach…
For a Thomist criticism of Cieszkowski’s theological position vis-à-vis Catholicism, which attacks him both as a pantheist and a sort of crypto-materialist, see Kowalski, op. cit., passim.
See Cieszkowski’s De la Pairie et de l’Aristocratie moderne as well as his notes to the “Ionian Philosophy” in his Diary I, p. 80, where he speaks of Aristotle’s principle that the beginning of all things is neither water nor air, as a miserable principle, a juste-milieu leading nowhere.
Hans Barth, ed., Konservative Denken, Stuttgart, 1958, discusses this particular variant of conservatism, He quotes from Die Konservative Partei in Deutschland, Marburg, 1841, by Victor Aimé Huber which appeared anonymously at the same time as Cieszkowski’s Gott und Palingenesie: “Conservation in its higher and proper sense is precisely the opposite of rigidity and stagnation. It is the development and advance of everything which requires and conditions the highest aims, right and duties…” Quoting Lagarde’s article ‘Konservative?’ in Deutsche Schriften, 1853: “A conservative is someone who knows how to and wishes to maintain the living forces of a nation or a state… our liberalism suffers in lacking a conservative party”. Ernst Benz, in Tranz von Baader’s Gedanken über den Proletair’, op. cit., points to the same conception of Baader: “A true conservative is someone who does not allow the thread of history to be cut… he aims at a true balance of the past with the future through their constant interaction”. In relation to Christianity particularly, he distinguishes those who would make a mummy out of their religion and those who believe, as he does, that Christianity should constantly be bringing something new into play.
For the clearest exposition of the distinction between “traditionalism” and “conservatism”, see Mannheim’s article ‘Conservative Thought’, op. cit., Unless this distinction is maintained one gathers paradoxes at will. Proudhon, for instance, frequently referred to himself as a “true conservative” or “profoundly conservative”. See Henri de Lubac, Proudhon et le christianisme, Paris, 1945.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1979 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Liebich, A. (1979). Gott und Palingenesie. In: Between Ideology and Utopia. Sovietica, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9383-9_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9383-9_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-009-9385-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-9383-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive