much ideological as structural. It coincided with quite different intellectual
activity in various nations because the material means of intellectual organi-
zation were different in these places. We return to our three-level model of
causality: the maneuvering for position within the internal network of German
intellectuals, which explains the variety of positions taken by individual phi-
losophers; the university reform, which accounts for the common content of
the Idealist philosophies; and the surrounding political context, which helps
explain the timing of the philosophical movement. The French Revolution, the
German defeats in the Napoleonic wars, and the resulting phase of political
reform within Germany consummated indigenous pressures for university re-
form, thereby catalyzing the inner networks affecting intellectual creativity.
Each level added something to the emotional energies and the contents of
the ideas put forward by the intellectuals within their network. The French
Revolution, Napoleonic conquests, and the wave of domestic reforms which
followed in Prussia—the suppression of the ecclesiastical principalities among
the German Kleinstaaterei, the abolition of serfdom, the establishment of legal
equality by abolition of the Estates, the elimination of the aristocratic caste
system in the army and state, even plans (discussed but not put into effect in
Germany during 1807–1812) for democratic self-government—all contributed
to the themes of freedom and historical movement among the Idealists.^41 The
way in which these themes were apportioned among the various philosophers
was determined by the network struggle for attention and the slots available
under the law of small numbers. We can see why Fichte and Hegel were a
succession, the latter coming to prominence only after the death of the for-
mer, both sharing the slot which combined university reform with political
liberalism. It is in keeping with the pattern of dominant intellectual move-
ments controlling an abundance of attention slots that Hegel’s heritage would
split, Right Hegelians taking the purely academic route as historical philoso-
phers, while Left Hegelians continued the ideology of religious and political
revolution.
The meshing of outer and inner layers helps explain too why Schopen-
hauer’s pessimism and political conservatism, though mixed with genuinely
Idealist ingredients, lost out in competition with Hegel. Schopenhauer was
seeking a turf to distinguish himself from the Fichteans. Since Hegel had
appropriated the dialectic, Schopenhauer downplayed any dialectic of contra-
dictions and progress toward a higher unity. Although Schopenhauer declared
that he was returning to the Kantian dichotomous universe, he too was
post-Fichtean in claiming access to the thing-in-itself, recognizable within one’s
own self. Fichte had opened the path by identifying the self with will. Schopen-
hauer depicted the will as a blind striving, not freedom but a trap. Schopen-
hauer exposed his teacher’s central concept in a new light, recombining cultural
capital in order to oppose the Fichteans while maintaining his membership in
662 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths