this time, such as in Schelling’s Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human
Freedom (1809).
- The first history of philosophy to go beyond Greek models based on Diogenes
Laertius and to give some attention to relatively recent philosophy was that of
Brucker (5 vols., 1742–1767) at Leipzig (EP, 1969: 6:227; Santinello, 1981).
Brucker remained traditional in form, listing in parallel the opinions of various
schools rather than attempting to explain why philosophers had developed their
arguments. The first efforts to develop the chronological history of philosophical
ideas coincided with the German university revolution: Tiedemann (6 vols., 1791–
1797) at Marburg, and Tennemann (11 vols., 1789–1819) at Leipzig. Hegel drew
on their pathbreaking work, while illustrating that one needs a philosophy of one’s
own to write the history of philosophy in a philosophical manner. In Hegel, too,
the emphasis shifts to a modern canonical sequence, rather than remaining pre-
ponderantly with the Greeks. Hence Hegel shares with Aristotle, who made a
similar move in the historiography of ancient Greek philosophy, a focus on a
synthesizing system mediating all the extremes, and on dynamic potential as the
prime substance. On Hegel’s intellectual development, see Harris (1972, 1983,
1993). Marx, who parallels Hegel in many ways during the following generation,
also began by specializing in ancient philosophy, writing his dissertation on the
Epicurean materialists.
- Hegel sets out the critique at the beginning of his system, in the Introduction to
the Phenomenology ([1807] 1967: 100–107), and repeats it in his Logic ([1812–
1816] 1929: 2:251–252). Hegel is not unprecedented here; in the 1750s the Pietist
Crusius in polemics against the Wolffians had also rejected mathematics. Hegel
claims, more damningly as an academic modernist, that mathematical method in
science “belongs to a stage of mental culture that has now passed away” (Hegel,
[1807] 1967: 106).
- Fries and Hegel had become Privatdozenten at Jena in 1801, leading to a publica-
tions race in which Fries pulled ahead early. Fries got a chair at Heidelberg in 1805;
this was later to be Hegel’s first chair, when Fries vacated it in 1816 to take the
professorship at the old Jena center. Both competed for the Berlin job after Fichte’s
death in 1814; but now in the period of growing conservatism, Fries’s activities in
the radical student movement got him into trouble with the authorities and made
Hegel more acceptable.
- Schelling too had the pragmatic sense to abandon Naturphilosophie before its first
burst of enthusiasm in the early 1800s wore off, leaving the field for minor disciples
to exploit, himself moving into the more congenial humanistic field of comparative
mythology.
- MacGregor (1992). Here again Hegel followed Fichte’s path, especially in the
latter’s quasi-socialist blueprint, The Closed Industrial State (1804).
- It is instructive to compare Spinoza, whose monist system bears some resemblance
to Idealist metaphysics. But Spinoza denied freedom of the will, while the Idealists
exalted it to a metaphysical extreme. It is not the surrounding political situation
which makes the difference in these views. During Spinoza’s youth, the United
Provinces had won final recognition of its revolutionary struggle for independence
Notes to Pages 657–662^ •^1009
