11. THE "MODERNIZING" OF THE WEST

POLITICAL-SOCIAL FERMENT The Early to Mid-1800s

The French Revolution had initially challenged Europeans to investigate further this idea of building human progress on the basis of the ability of man (any man / all men, potentially) to reason clearly … if properly brought up to do so.  But when given the chance to put this utopian dream into practice, the French ultimately had failed miserably – very, very miserably. A reaction against such worship of Human Reason naturally set in, not just among the skeptical British Empiricists but among a number of continental scholars, especially the German Romanticists.  This latter reaction developed on the European continent especially when it became obvious that under Napoleon what stood behind French power was not Reason, but some kind of special Spirit that rose naturally out of the soul of an energized people themselves (French peasants becoming national warriors).   This quest for such Spirit (German Geist) would mark much of European philosophy during the 1800s, especially that coming out of Germany, whose philosophers seemed to dominate the field of intellectual inquiry on the European continent that century, the way the French had done so the century before. THE GERMANIC ROMANTICISTS HERDER AND GOETHE Two young Germans, Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe helped found together the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Drive) Movement of the 1770s, celebrating the spirit of struggle as the necessary element in achieving what the Rationalists had felt would be achieved simply through pure reason. Herder Goethe The clergyman Herder studied under Kant at Königsberg, but moved away from Kantian rationalism into a mystical world presided over by God.  As a young pastor he met Goethe, inspiring the latter with his insights into Biblical literature.  He recognized that the Hebrew literature of the Old Testament was more of the nature of poetry and folk narrative than technical science (which was how Rationalistic Western society was coming to think and operate at that point), and that it was necessary to understand the Hebrew writings as such – not as mechanistic science but as deeply inspired narrative or parable – in order to comprehend their great truths. The two men became good friends whose speculations together about human knowledge birthed the Sturm und Drang Movement of the 1770s, elevating human emotions above human intellect.  Eventually their thinking would settle down a bit and evolve towards Classicism, or love of the styles of classical or ancient Greco-Roman antiquity in an attempt to balance human emotion and human intellect. Herder was a strong German nationalist, at a time when Germans were attempting to construct the idea of a German nation (Germany at the time was divided into hundreds of independent states, large and small).  Yet he was cautious about letting the highly emotional tribal spirit of nationalism get too far away from practical reason. Then with the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 Herder would support the Revolution, producing a split between himself and many of his friends, including Goethe.  Finally, his dedication to refuting Kant's theories would place him pretty much in isolation within the German academic community. Goethe was an individual of wide tastes and talents, being a poet, dramatist and scientist all in one.  He was early influenced by Herder, who inspired in him a deep appreciation of German folk culture and consequently a spirit of German nationalism. But Goethe was also a profound individualist, intrigued by the power and depth of personal experience and emotion.  In his first play, Götz von Berlichingen (1773), Goethe explored the depths of individual human sentiments – helping to lay the foundation for the Sturm und Drang Movement, which, among other things, advocated personal freedom in the face of oppressive, medieval attitudes in Germany concerning the role of the individual in society.  This Sturm und Drang Movement would later blossom into German Romanticism. In the 1780s Goethe went to Rome to study classic art, architecture, and literature and for a while came under the more formalistic style of the neo-classicist movement.  But on his return to Germany he found little appreciation for his new views.  He then turned to science for a while.  But his longer-standing romantic inclinations reasserted themselves, and his independent individualist style returned to the fore.  This culminated in his all-time great work, Faust (actually written and rewritten in two parts over a long period of time reaching perhaps from 1772 to 1829), which was an epic tale of the search of the individual for that which is of a lasting or transcending value in the face of freedom's great opportunities – and uncertainties. His Faust would become the best-read work of German literature (roughly equivalent to the place Shakespeare has long enjoyed in English literature), inspiring young Germans for generations to quest for the German ideal, the romantic spirit or soul that made Germany unique among the nations. Herder's and Goethe's ideas would leave their mark on German nationalist thinking by putting into place a powerful intellectual legacy for others to pursue, with the idea of exploring the spirit of man as well as his intellect.  However both of them eventually moved on to the philosophy of Classicism, which idealized the cultural and political achievements of the ancient Greeks and Romans, who became for them models that Europeans should attempt to emulate (as it was also for Americans at the time, who took up the Roman idea of the Republic as the political structure they were trying to set up in 1787). GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL – HISTORICAL PROGRESS THROUGH STRUGGLE Just as Goethe was to become Germany's grand poet of the century in Germany, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel would become Germany's grand philosopher of the century.  Hegel built on the Sturm und Drang idea of the blessings of struggle, seeing in the tension between opposing forces (usually in the form of newer, radical ideas and practices challenging older, established ideas and practices) the possibilities of birthing a new standard, one operating at a higher social level than previously.  This idea eventually became his famous dialectic, the struggle of two opposing things eventually birthing a third, superior thing – a dialectical dynamic supposedly found in all aspects of material as well as biological and social or cultural development on this planet.   But he added to this purely mechanical formula the idea that the process itself was not random, but instead guided by a superior Weltgeist / World Spirit or World Mind (or just simply God) that was directly involved in the entire process as part of a quest for the completion of history, with the full union, in a state of perfect love, of all things together.  Even God (especially in the form of the living Jesus) was part of this process, seeking his own completion in union with man – or man in union with him, when all would be one in a perfect state of love and peace. From this point on, virtually all the 1800s sense of progress (not just in Germany but in much of the whole of Western Civilization) was shaped by the idea not just of philosophers sitting in their salons directing others rationally toward a utopian world, but by the direct involvement of those who would bring history forward, through noble struggle, struggle directed by some great Spirit.  Without such struggle, violent though it might be, progress was impossible. Hegelianism also touched on group pride, as nations or classes came to see themselves as being under the special anointing of the World Spirit to take the lead to direct history into the next era.  This fed powerfully into German nationalism, with its sense of special German historical destiny. But this also fed powerfully into the working-class movement also arising at that time, a movement which came to view the industrial workers of the world as the true moral underpinning of the world to come. For more on Hegel SCHLEIERMACHER AND PROTESTANT LIBERALISM Interestingly, just as it was a German Hegel and soon to be a German Marx that would leave a huge impact on 19th century Western philosophy and political theory, it would be a German, Friedrich Schleiermacher, who would initiate something of a German lead in the 19th century world of Western theology.  Thus he would come to be known as the "Father of Modern Liberal Theology." Basically, he reacted to the supposedly rational world of the Enlightenment – and its clear failure in the French Revolution – as much of the surrounding intellectual world did also at the time (the early 1800s).  But he was also as reactive to the strict Biblical literalism of the Reformed Church he was schooled under.  As a pastor and professor (Halle, then Berlin), he followed the rising Romanticism trend sweeping Europe's intellectual circles at the time, in emphasizing the idea that faith was a feeling derived from a direct spiritual connection to God – rather than a set of strictly traditional or even well-reasoned religious principles.   Then he added, Christianity as faith was and always had been contextual, socially and culturally.  He found the truth in Scripture not in the way the Bible met modern standards of fact-based science, but in the deep faith that led the Gospel writers to put into writing the ways events in Christ's days touched their hearts so profoundly.  In his own extensive study of Scripture, he affirmed that Scripture was never to be taken as "fact," but instead as spiritual testimony – and should always be understood as such.  Go on to the next section:  Social Upheaval in the Early-Mid 1800s   Miles H. Hodges