Abstract
Before examining directly the intellectuals’ views on recent and current problems in the areas of politics and society, we shall consider what they had to say about the public relevance of their own activity as thinkers. German writers sought repeatedly to define their proper function in public affairs, primarily by writing about the history and the tasks of certain academic disciplines: philosophy, history, and the “Staatswissenschaften,” or social sciences. Their reflections on these matters were stimulated in part by the revolutionary experience, and to that extent they will become fully intelligible only in conjunction with the ideas discussed in the next chapter. But they also help explain the ways in which men interpreted the revolution, as well as the ways in which they analyzed contemporary political and social problems. A growing preference for historical modes of thought — more particularly for politically partisan ones — and the emergence of proposals for a more comprehensive study of society established the guidelines for discussion of the issues raised by the revolution.
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References
On Haym’s pre-1848 thought, see Hans Rosenberg, Rudolf Haym und die Anfänge des klassischen Liberalismus (Munich and Berlin, 1933). For a general pre-1848 critique of philosophical abstraction, see Karl Biedermann, Die deutsche Philosophie von Kant bis auf unsere Zeit, ihre wissenschaftliche Entwicklung und ihre Stellung zu den politischen und socialen Verhältnissen der Gegenwart (2 vols., Leipzig, 1842–43).
Ibid., 464–470. See Hans Rosenberg, “Zur Geschichte der Hegelauffassung,” in a new edition of Hegel und seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1927), 543 ff., on the generally favorable response to Haym’s work. A similar call for a new “realism” appeared in “Die deutsche Philosophie seit Hegel’s Tode” (anon.), in Gegenwart, VI (1851), 294, 310, 340.
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Ranke, Das Briefwerk, 432. Despite his insistence that the historian’s political sympathies had no place in a scholarly work, Ranke’s work during the period clearly betrayed his own highly favorable sentiments toward monarchical government. See Heinz-Otto Sieburg, Deutschland und Frankreich in der Geschichtsschreibung des 19. Jahrhunderts, 1848–1871 (Wiesbaden, 1958), 253–279.
Two recent works which treat these men over longer periods are Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History (Middletown, 1968), 90–123, and Charles E. McClelland, The German Historians and England: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Views (Cambridge, Eng., 1971), passim.
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Verzeichniss der Vorlesungen, welche auf der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin im Winter-Semester 1850–51 gehalten werden (Berlin, 1850), 8–9; Verzeichniss der Vorlesungen an der königlichen Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität zu München im Sommer-Semester 1850–51 (Munich, 1850), 6–7.
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Heinz Nitzschke, Die Geschichtsphilosophie Lorenz von Steins (Munich and Berlin, 1932), 13–14; Lorenz von Stein, Der Socialismus und Communismus des heutigen Frankreichs (1842; 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1848), I, viii, and “Der Begriff der Gesellschaft,” in Vol. I of Geschichte der socialen Bewegung in Frankreich. Concerning changes in Stein’s views, see Felix Gilbert, “Lorenz von Stein und die Revolution von 1848: Ein Beitrag zur Entstehung der deutschen Gesellschaftswissenschaft,” Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Instituts für Geschichtswissenschaft, L (1936), 369387.
Gustav Fischer, Über die Errichtung staatswissenschaftlicher Seminarien auf den deutschen Universitäten (Jena, 1857), 105–106.
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© 1974 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Lees, A. (1974). The Public Orientations of Scholarship. In: Revolution and Reflection. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2065-7_2
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