Cabbage heads and gulps of water: Hegel on the terror

Political Theory

Volumn 26, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 4-32

  Schmidt, James ^a  

^a BOSTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 21944438111     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591798026001002     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. "Das einzige Werk und Tat der allgemeinen Freiheit ist daher der Tod, und zwar ein Tod, der keinen inneren Umfang und Erfüllung hat;... er ist also der kälteste, platteste Tod, ohne mehr Bedeutung als das Durchhauen eines Kohlhaupts oder ein Schluck Wassers." G.W.F. Hegel, Werke in wanzig Bänden, ed. E. Moldenhauer and
2. K. M. Michel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970), 111:436
3. [Irans. A. V. Miller as Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 360] (translation modified).
4. As a Swabian, Hegel would have been familiar with the Kohlhobel, a kitchen implement used to slice cabbage. Its triangular blade bears an uncanny resemblance to the guillotine. I am indebted to my colleague Brittain Smith for a short course on Swabian cooking implements.
5. Jean Hyppolite, "The French Revolution in Hegel's Phenomenology" in Hyppolite's Studies in Marx and Hegel, tons. J. O'Neill (New York: Basic Books, 1969), 36.
6. In an odd exception to the rule, Luc Ferry takes leave of chronological considerations to argue that "the chapter of the Phenomenology devoted to the analysis of the Terror begins with a critique of the Social Contract that is essentially a reformulation of section 258 of the Philosophy of Right and of the whole Philosophy of History," "Hegel" in François Furet and Mona Ozouf, A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, trans. Arthur Goldhammer
7. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 945-6. Ferry does not explain how Hegel was able to "reformulate" what he had not yet written.
8. Johannes Hoffmeister, ed., Briefe von und an Hegel (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1952), 1:12 [Hegel, TheLetters, tons. C. Butler and C. Seiler (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 29].
9. For a biographical sketch of Oelsner, see Werner Greiling's "Oelsner in Paris oder 'Zeugnisse eines Fremden über wichtige Revolutionsbegebenheiten,' " in the Reclam edition of Oelsner's Luzifer (Leipzig: Reclam, 1987), 11-18. Klaus Deinet, Konrad Engelbert Oelsner und die Französische Revolution: Geschichtserfahrung und Geschichtsdeutung eines deutsches Girondisten (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1981), provides a detailed account of the development of Oelsner's political thought. Oelsner also figures prominently in Thomas P. Same's discussion of German reactions to the French Revolution, Black Bread-White Bread: German Intellectuals and the French Revolution (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1988), see esp. 28-30, 185-95,291-4,358-62.
10. For a discussion of Archenholz and his journal, see Saine, Black Bread, 27-8,361-2, and Jacques D'Hondt, Hegel Secret (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 7-43.
11. The extract from Rabaut's Precis, which was published in the journal prior to its French publication, appeared in Minerva, March 1792. Parallels to Hegel's Phenomenology are discussed in D'Hondt, Hegel Secret, 114-53. Rabaut apparently regarded Oelsner as his protege.
12. Archenholz, "Die Jacobiner. Eine historische Skizze," Minerva 3 (August 1792). For a discussion of the article, see Saine, Black Bread, 296-9.
13. Oelsner, Luzifer, 11:61.
14. Letter of August 14, 1792 (Oelsner, Luvfer, 11:77-8). For a discussion of Oelsner's account of the events of August 10, see Deinet, Konrad Engelbert Oelsner und die Französische Revolution, 138-49, and Saine, Black Bread, 358-61. The image of philosophy permeating the atoms of civil society is echoed in Hegel's likening of the spread of enlightenment to the diffusion of perfume. See Werke, 111:402 (Phenomenology of Spirit, 331).
15. Letter of September 30, 1792 (Oelsner, Luvfer, 11:200). As Deinet, Konrad Engelbert Oelsner und die Französische Revolution (158-61) notes in his discussion of this letter, Oelsner followed the critique of Rousseau that had been articulated within Girondist circles by Siéyès and Condorcet
16. For a discussion of his interpretation, see Deinet, Konrad Engelbert Oelsner und die Französische Revolution, 161-9.
17. Letters of December 11,1792 (Oelsner, Luvfer, 11:315) and January 22,1793 (Oelsner, Luzifer, 11:373). For a discussion, see Deinet, Konrad Engelbert Oelsner und die Französische Revolution, 191-6.
18. Oelsner's article on Corday was published anonymously in Ludwig Ferdinand Huber's journal Friedens-Präliminarien in 1795. The August 1793 Minerva published letters by Charlotte Corday and the transcript of her hearing, along with a translation of a pamphlet by Adam Lux, a young German who was so entranced by Corday's demeanor during the procession to her execution that he praised her as greater even than Brutus, an action that assured his own arrest and execution. For a discussion of these materials, and the cult of Charlotte Corday among German liberals, see Saine, Black Bread, 369-74.
19. Deinet, Konrad Engelbert Oelsner und die Französische Revolution, 221; Greiling, "Oelsner in Paris," 12.
20. For a discussion of Oelsner's work at the outset of the Thermidor, see Deinet, Konrad Engelbert Oelsner unddie Französische Revolution, 221-4.
21. Thus, D'Hondt (Hegel Secret p. 39) is incorrect in writing that the characterization of the significance of the Carrier trial was "directly taken from Minerva." Like many eighteenth-century journals, Minerva appeared at the end of the month listed on its masthead (for this reason, the December 1794 issue could include a letter from Schiller dated December 10,1794).
22. Revolution after Robespie ire, Irans. Michel Petheram (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 138-42; Donald Sutherland, "The Vendée: Unique or Emblematic?" in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture. Volume 4: The Tenor, ed. Keith Michael Baker (New York: Pergamon, 1994), 99-114, and the brief survey of literature on the Vendée war in François Furet, "Vendée," in Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, trans. Goldhammer, 165-76.
23. Carrier described the action in a report to the Committee of Public Safety; see Sutherland, "The Vendée," 103.
24. Somewhat guarded reports of these drownings may be found in Carrier's letters to the Committee of Public Safety of 20 Frimaire II (December 10,1793) [reprinted in F. A. Aulard, éd., Recueil des Actes du comité de salut public (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1895), 9:315], 21 Frimaire II (December 11, 1793) [reprinted in Recueil des Actes, 9:331], and 2 Nivôse II (December 22,1793) [summary printed in Recueil des Actes, 9:588].
25. Letter to the Committee of Public Safety of 21 Frimaire II (December 11,1793) [reprinted in Recueil des Actes, 9:331].
26. Letter to the Convention of 30 Frimaire II (December 20,1793) [reprinted in Recueil des Actes, 9:550].
27. For a discussion of Julien and his report, see Baczko, Ending the Terror, 140-41; R. R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941), 222-4; and J. M. Thompson, Robespierre (New York: Howard Fertig, 1968), 11:145-6.
28. The report is reprinted in E. B. Courtois, éd.. Rapport fait au nom de la commission chargée de l'examen des papiers trouvés chez Robespierre et ses complices (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, Year III), 359-62. Portions are quoted in Baczko, Ending the Terror, 140-1.
29. Thompson, Robespierre, 147-9,233-5.
30. See Baczko, Ending the Terror, 142-3.
31. For discussions of Carrier's trial see Baczko, Ending the Terror, 164-81, and Donald Sutherland, "Le Procès de Carrier: La terreur blanche et l'échec de l'homme nouveau," in La Révolution Française et les processus de socialisation de l'homme moderne (Paris: Editions Messidor, 1989), 517-24.
32. For a survey of the different lines of interpretation, see Mona Ozouf, "The Terror after the Terror: An Immediate History," in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modem Political Culture, ed. Baker, 3-18.
33. Indeed, Mien's report itself grants that Carrier's actions were not without merit. See Courtois, Rapport fait au nom de la commission, 360-1.
34. For a survey of the vocabulary employed to describe the Vendéens (and an attempt to trace the origins of this vocabulary to the Enlightenment), see Jean de Viguerie, "La Vendée et les Lumières: Les Origines Intellectuelles de l'Extermination," in La Vendée dans l'Histoire: Actes du Colloque (Paris: Perrin, 1994), 36-51. Reynald Sécher, Le Génocide Franco-Français: La Vendée-Vengé (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986) argues that the actions against the Vendée must be treated as an incident of "genocide." His account has been criticized by Charles Tilly, "State and Counterrevolution in France," in The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity, éd. Ferenc Fehér (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 58-63.
35. For a recent retelling, see Simon Schama, Citizens (New York: Knopf, 1989), 405-6, 446-7.
36. See Daniel Arasse, The Guillotine and the Terror (Harmonds worth, NY: Penguin, 1987), 11-25; Dorinda Outram, The Bodyandihe French Revolution: Sex, Class, and Political Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 106-11.
37. See Outram, The Body, 110, 121; Brian Singer, "Violence in the French Revolution: Forms of Ingestion/Forms of Expulsion," in The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity, ed. Feher, 150-73.
38. His letters to the Committee of Public Safety of 20 Frimaire II (December 10, 1793) [Recueil des Actes, 9:315] and 2 Nivôse II (December 22, 1793) [Recueil des Actes, 9:588] marvel at the efficiency of the Loire in carrying out the work of the Republic.
39. Baczko, Ending the Terror, 1-32.
40. Baraly, "Die Jacobiner, als Aristocraten, Föderalisten und Contrerevolutionairs. Endlich sind ihre schrecklichen Geheimnisse enthüllt!" Minerva, December 1794,385-98. The article is a translation of Les Jacobins aristocrates, fédéralistes et contre-révolutionnaires (Paris: Impr. de la Grande Comète, 1794), an eight-page pamphlet written by Jean Bapiste Moise Jollivet under the pseudonym "Baraly" and published after 9 Thermidor.
41. Minena, December 1794,386,388-9,396.
42. Hegel, Jenaer Systementwürfe III, Gesammelte Werke (Hamburg: Meiner, 1976), 8:25860 [trans. Leo Rauch äs Hegel on the Human Spirit (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1983), 155-7]. Fora discussion of this passage, see Smith, Hegel's Critique of Liberalism, 95-7.
43. See my discussion in "A Paideia for the 'Bürger als Bourgeois': The Concept of 'Civil Society' in Hegel's Political Thought," History of Political Thought 2 (3) (1981): 483-5.
44. For a discussion of the development of Hegel's views on civic virtue, see Laurence Dickey, Hegel: Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit, 1770-1807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). It is peculiar that this excellent study, which meticulously explores Hegel's debts to Scottish moral philosophy and to German writings on the problem of Christian piety, pays little attention to Hegel's interest in the French Revolution.
45. Hegel, Werke, 11:580 ["The German Constitution," trans. T. M. Knox, in Hegel's Political Writings, ed. Z. A. Pelczynski (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 241].
46. Hegel, Werke, 11:489-96 [trans. T. M. Knox, Natural Law (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975), 99-104].
47. Hegel, Schriften zur Politik und Rechtsphilosophie, ed. G. Lasson (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1923), 465-76 [trans. H. S. Harris and T. M. Knox äs System of Ethical Life (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979), 147-56].
48. Hegel, Gesammelte Werke, 8:258 [Hegel on the Human Spirit, 155 (translation modified)].
49. Andreas Riem, "On Enlightenment," Irans. Jane Kneller, in What Is Enlightenment?: Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions, ed. James Schmidt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 177.
50. Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk, "On the Influence of Enlightenment on Revolutions," trans. Arthur Hirsh, in ibid., 224. The rather guarded support for the French Revolution among members of the Berlin Enlightenment is discussed in Frederick C. Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 309-17.
51. Johann Adam Bergk, "Does Enlightenment Cause Revolutions?" trans. Thomas E. Wartenberg, in What Is Enlightenment?, ed. Schmidt, 228-9,23 i.
52. Jakob Salat, Auch die Aufklärung hat ihre Gefahren! (Munich, 1801); Salat, Die Philosophie mit Obskuranten und Sophisten in Kampfe. Nachtrag zu Auch die Aufklärung hat ihre Gefahren! (Ulm, 1802); Salat, Auch ein paar Worte über die Frage: Führt die Aufklärung zur Revolution ? (Munich: Lindauer, 1802); Salat, Winke über das Verhältnis der intellektuellen und der verfeinernden Kultur zur Sittlichen (Munich, 1802); Salat, Die Aufklärung in Baient im Kontraste mit der Verfinsterung im ehemaligen hochstift Augsburg (Deutschland, 1803).
53. Hegel, "Ausbruch der Volksfreude über den endlichen Untergang der Philosophie," in Werke, 11:276. The essay (which appeared unsigned in the journal) is credited by Moldenhauer and Michel to "Hegel in collaboration with Schelling."
54. Jacobi had been treated rather roughly in Hegel's 1802 Glauben und Wissen and Salat, in collaboration with Kajetan von Weiller, responded with Der Geist der allemeuesten Philosophie der Herren Schelling, Hegel und Kompagnie: eine Uebersetzung aus der Schulsprache in die Sprache der Welt (l 803-1805) [Reprint: Brussels: Culture et civilization, 1974]. Hegel wrote a response which, however, was never published and was subsequently lost. See Hegel: The Letters, 92,98-9.
55. For Hegel's transcription of the Mendelssohn essay (which dates from May 1787), see Johannes Hoffmeister, Dokumente zu Hegels Entwicklung (Stuttgart: Frommann, 1936), 140-3. Other extracts and notes from thinkers associated with the Berlin Enlightenment can be found in ibid., 144-7. For discussions of the influence of the Berlin Enlightenment on the young Hegel, see H. S. Harris, Hegel's Development: Towards the Sunlight (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 14-30, and the more tendentious study by José Marfa Ripalda, The Divided Nation. The Roots of a Bourgeois Thinker: G.W.E Hegel (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1977).
56. Hegel, Werke, 1:21-33 [translated in Harris, Hegel's Development, 489-99]. For an analysis of the significance of this text, see Harris, Hegel's Development, 119-53.
57. Hegel, Werke, 111:432 [Phenomenology of Spirit, 356-7].
58. See Judith N. Shklar, Freedom and Independence: AStudy of the Political Ideas of Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 175. Hegel's interest in Siéyês may have its roots in his encounter with Oelsner. During the period Oelsner spent in Switzerland, he wrote a defense of Siéyês that was published, in German, in the journal Klio (1796), 1:1-16, 127-66. Oelsner has also been credited as the author of an anonymous French pamphlet Notice sur la vie de Siéyês (Paris: Maradan, Year III), which is said to have been "written in Paris, in Messidor, Year II of the Republican Era (old style, June 1794)."
59. Hegel himself, however, was strangely unappreciative of Rousseau's distinction between these two notions; for a fine discussion of Hegel's staggering obtuseness on this point, see Robert Wokler, "Hegel's Rousseau: The General Will and Civil Society," in Arachne: Texter fron
60. rutitutionenforIde- ochLärdomshistoriavidGötesborgsUniversitet1i&(Göteborg,\993), l-45, esp. 14-22.
61. Hegel, Werke, 111:433 [Phenomenology of Spirit, 357].
62. Hegel, Werke, HI: 437 [Phenomenology of Spirit, 360] (translation modified).
63. Xavier Martin, "La Déclaration des droits de l'homme et la Vendée," in La Vendée dora l'Histoire: Actes du Colloque (Paris: Perrin, 1994), 253-73.
64. Hegel, Werke, 111:438 (Phenomenology of Spirit, 361). For a discussion, see Hyppolite Genesis and Structure, 460-4, and Hyppolite, "The French Revolution in Hegel's Phenomenology," 58-60.
65. Hegel, Werke, 111:438 [Phenomenology of Spirit, 361].
66. Hegel, Werke, XII:527-8 [Hegel, The Philosophy of History, Irans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), 446].
67. For a brief discussion of this point, see Shklar, Freedom and Independence, 173.