Discovering Hegel
KARL MARX
On November 10, 1837, soon after becoming a student at the University of Berlin, Marx wrote a long letter to his father. It shows that at nineteen he had formed two relationships of great importance: a personal one with Jenny von Westphalen of Trier and an intellectual one with the late philosopher Hegel. The love of Jenny led to marriage, the spell of Hegel to Marxism.
Dear Father,
There are moments in one's life which are like frontier posts marking the completion of a period but at the same time clearly indicating a new direction.
* * *
After my arrival in Berlin, I broke off all hitherto existing connections, made visits rarely and unwillingly, and tried to immerse myself in science and art.
In accordance with my state of mind at the time, lyrical poetry was bound to be my first subject, at l east the most pleasant and immediate one. But owing to my attitude and whole previous development it was purely idealistic. My heaven, my art, became a world beyond, as remote as my love. Everything real became hazy and what is hazy has no definite outlines . All the poems of the first three volumes I sent to Jenny are marked by attacks on our times, diffuse and inchoate expressions of feeling, nothing natural, everything built out of moonshine, complete opposition between what is and what ought to be, rhetorical reflections instead of poetic thoughts, but perhaps also a certain warmth of feeling and striving for poetic fire.
* * *
Poetry, however, could be and had to be only an accompaniment; I had to study law and above all felt the urge to wrestle with philosophy.
* * *
From the idealism which, by the way, I had compared and nourished with the idealism of Kant and Fichte, I arrived at the point of seeking the idea in reality itself. If previously the gods had dwelt above the earth, now they became its centre.
I had read fragments of Hegel's philosophy, the grotesque craggy melody of which did not appeal to me. Once more I wanted to dive into the sea, but with the definite intention of establishing that the nature of the mind is just as necessary, concrete and firmly based as the nature of the body . My aim was no longer to practise tricks of swordsmanship, but to bring genuine pearls into the light of day.
I wrote a dialogue of about 24 pages: "Cleanthes, or the Starting Point and Necessary Continuation of Philosophy." Here art and science, which had become completely divorced from each other, were to some extent united, and like a vigorous traveller I set a bout the task itself, a philosophical-dialectical account of divinity, as it manifests itself as the idea-in-itself, as religion, as nature, and as history. My last proposition was the beginning of the Hegelian system.
* * *
For some days my vexation made me quite incapable of thinking; I ran about madly in the garden by the dirty water of the Spree, which "washes souls and dilutes the tea ."l I even joined my landlord in a hunting excursion, rushed off to Berlin and wanted to embrace every street-corner loafer.
* * *
Owning to being upset over Jenny's illness and my vain, fruitless intellectual labours, and as the result of nagging annoyance at having had to make an idol of a view that I hated, I became ill, as I have already written to you, dear Father. When I got better I burnt all the poems and outlines of stories, etc., imagining that I could give them up completely, of which so far at any rate I have not given any proofs to the contrary.
While I was ill I got to know Hegel from beginning to end, together with most of his disciples. Through a n umber of meetings with friends in Stralow I came across a Doctors' Club,2 which includes some university lecturers and my most intimate Berlin friend, Dr. Rutenberg. In controversy h ere, many conflicting views were expressed, and I became ever more firmly bound to the modern world philosophy from which I had thought to escape.* * *
* * *
Your ever loving son,
Karl
Please, dear father, excuse my illegible handwriting and bad style; it is almost 4 o'clock, the candle has burnt itself out, and my eyes are dim; a real unrest has taken possession of me, I shall not be able to calm the turbulent spectres until I am with you who are dear to me.
Please give greetings from me to my sweet, wonderful Jenny. I have read her letter twelve times already, and always discover new delights in it. It is in every respect, including that of style, the most beautiful letter I can imagine being written by a woman.
Footnotes:
1. Heine.
2. The Doctors' Club was founded by representatives of the radical wing of
the Hegelian school in Berlin in 1837. Among its members were lecturer on theology of Berlin University Bruno Bauer, gymnasium history teacher Karl Friedrich Koppen, and geography teacher Adolf Rutenberg. The usual meeting place was the small Hippel café. The Club, of which Marx was also an active member, played an important part in the Young Hegelian movement.