Reappraising the Young HegeliansThe Young Hegelians. William J. Brazill

Abstract

The nineteenth-century German thinkers who became known as the Young Hegelian or the Left Hegelian party have not only been slighted as individual thinkers, but have been treated collectively as having little other significance besides that of connecting Hegel and Marx. They have been seen as Hegelians, that is, as totally dominated by their master's idealist presuppositions, and yet as Young, that is, as having the presentiment of a new age without the foresight to envision either Marxist socialism or German nationalist expansionism. From this point of view, they seem to have shared in the mediocrity of the age in Germany between the deaths of Hegel and Schleiermacher and the ministry of Bismarck. William J. Brazill's proposal to study these men primarily as individuals whose interests and goals only momentarily coincided (p. 12) goes far toward enabling a more appreciative historical evaluation.1 His historical introduction, his treatment of the development of the individual thinkers against their historical backgrounds, and his excellent bibliographical essay give a concrete taste of the sense of crisis and movement in which these men shared