The Significance of Hegel’s Treatment of Chemical Affinity

Abstract

At the invitation of his friend Schelling, who had been professor of philosophy at the University of Jena since 1798, Hegel moved there from Frankfurt in the January of 1801. On the 27th of August of the same year, he qualified as a private tutor with a Philosophical Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets. During the winter of 1801/02 he lectured on logic and metaphysics, and in 1803/04 on his whole philosophical system. In the summer of 1803 Schelling left for Würzburg, and he was left to work out his views for himself. In the philosophical system he outlined in 1803/04, he incorporated a discussion of the concept of chemical affinity.¹ It is apparent from the text that the young philosopher was already familiar with the ideas concerning chemical affinity put forward by the Swedish chemist Torbern Bergman (1735-1784). He did not adopt them, however, for shortly after 1800 he had become acquainted with a new theory of affinity — formulated by the French chemist Claude Louis Berthollet (1748-1822). He immediately took over Berthollet’s ideas, and from 1803 onwards made various attempts to incorporate the theory they involved into his philosophical system.