Hegelianism in Nineteenth-Century Ohio

Abstract

Around the middle of the last century, particularly in the decade preceding the Civil War, there was a group of Ohioans whose thought was notably influenced by the views of Georg W. F. Hegel. The group consisted of J. B. Stallo, Peter Kaufmann, Moncure Conway, and August Willich. All were intellectual leaders in their time and active in public affairs. While Kaufmann spent most of his adult years in Canton, the others were residents of Cincinnati during important years of their lives. All except Conway, as might be expected, were of German origin. They were not part of an organized philosophical association like that of the St. Louis after the Civil War. Stallo's thought was well known and highly regarded among the St. Louis Hegelians, but there is no evidence that there was an organized branch of the St. Louis movement in Cincinnati.2 The relationship among the Ohio men, rather, was one of mutual acquaintance, favorable attention to each other's views, and, in some cases, warm personal friendship. Stallo, Kaufmann, Conway, and Willich can be called Hegelians in the particular sense that their leading ideas show the influence of Hegel's philosophy either directly or through the views of others who were themselves distinctively indebted to Hegel. Only Stallo presented an extensive exposition and interpretation of Hegel's major writings,3 but all of the Ohio group subscribed to particular Hegelian ideas and communicated them to their contemporaries in a variety of ways through books, pamphlets, editorials, and public addresses. Their influence was felt more in the realm of public affairs than in institutions of higher education. As a teacher of German and mathematics in St. Xavier's College of Cincinnati in the early 1840's, Stallo had little opportunity to use and study the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, Schelling, and Oken to which he had been attracted in Germany. A few years later Asa Mahan of Oberlin College gave some