Reinhold Aris - History of Political Thought in Germany 1789-1815

HISTORY OF

POLITICAL THOUGHT IN GERMANY

FROM 1789 TO 1815

REINHOLD ARIS

With a Foreword by G. P. Gooch

Published by Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.,

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon,

Oxon, OX14 4RN

by arrangement with Routledge

First edition 1936

Second impression 1965

Transferred to Digital Printing 2006

ISBN 0-7146-1546-3 (hbk)

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure

the quality of this reprint but points out that some

imperfections in the original may be apparent

FOREWORD

THE Augustan age of German literature is known, at least in its main outlines, to well-educated people all over the world. But how many of us are aware that the same wonderful period witnessed the first and greatest flowering of German political thought? How many people think of Kant except as a philosopher, of Goethe except as a poet and dramatist, of the Romantic Movement except as an episode in the evolution of European literature? In this admirable volume, so learned, thoughtful, and clear, Dr. Aris has explored what to most readers is almost unknown ground. No comprehensive and satisfactory survey of the development of German political ideas exists in any language, and the most celebrated monographs, such as those of Meinecke, remain untranslated. It is the merit of the present work to offer a critical analysis of successive or competing schools of thought in the light of the latest scholarship. He has his preferences, like the rest of us, but he allows every writer to speak for himself. The book gives us more than the title suggests, for he deals with men who for the most part were not professional publicists. It is in essence the story of a great nation awaking from a long sleep, commencing to think for itself, to modernize its institutions, to formulate its ideas of the pattern of society and the duties of the State. Modern German literature begins with Klopstock and Lessing. German political thinking comes even later, for it is the child of the French Revolution.

Political systems and ideas must be studied in their setting, as the actor must be seen in the middle of the stage. Dr. Aris is as much at home in the political and social as in the intellectual history of the time. Beginning with the Aufklrungadventurous and effective enough except in the political fieldwe are introduced in we enter the Romantic world, so strangely different from the rationalism and classicism of the eighteenth century, so richly coloured, so undisciplined and emotional, but occasionally so profound. What Burke, with his doctrine of the organic nature of society, meant to Germany in these years of travail, when familiar landmarks had been swept away by the revolutionary flood, may be read in these illuminating chapters. The Romantic Movement, with its roots in Justus Mser and Herder, its craving for authority and its leaning to Rome, is a subject of inexhaustible interest, for it carries us far beyond the frontiers of literature. Gentz and Grres were born publicists. Novalis, the most original of them all, was a mystic.

If the first two sections are dominated by the French Revolution, is overshadowed by Napoleon. Fichte the Jacobin returns to the footlights as Fichte the Nationalist; the lessons of Jena are taken to heart; Stein, the strongest political figure of Germany after Bismarck and Frederick the Great, and a more attractive human being than either, summons Prussia to the dual task of national independence and internal reform. Though not a political thinker in the technical sense, he was a political influence of the first rank. Standing midway between the outworn feudalism of the pre-Revolution era and the democracy of which only a few of his bolder countrymen dared to dream, Steins Liberal Conservatism met the most urgent needs of the day. Had his lead been followed, the drab sterility of the Metternich era would have been avoided. The restoration era, however, and Hegel, its High Priest, are reserved for the next instalment of the ambitious enterprise, so auspiciously begun in these pages, which the author hopes to carry through to the coming of the World War in 1914.

G. P. GOOCH

PREFACE

I WISH to express my deep gratitude to the Leon Bequest Committee of the University of London whose generosity enabled me to write this book.

I also thank Professor Laski and Dr. G. P. Gooch who have often encouraged me and given me invaluable advice and practical help.

I am further indebted to several friends who by reading the typescript and the proofs have greatly assisted me in giving the book its present form.

R.A.

HAMPSTEAD

June 1936

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PART ONE
Enlightenment and Revolution

PART TWO
The Romantic Movement

PART THREE
The Reconstruction of Prussia

INTRODUCTION

THE most noble aim of the historian is to contribute to the better understanding of his own time. This is the ultimate goal which the great historians had in view when they set out to penetrate into the darkness from whence the present landscape of history emerges. The historian who endeavours to describe the development of political thought must be guided by the same principle. He must try to discover what the people thought about the political issues of the time in order to understand those ideas which are at work at present. This undertaking, however, involves from the start several difficulties. Who were the people whose thought he is going to record? It is obvious that the object of his investigations cannot be the inchoate mass of political thought which we call public opinion. Any such attempt must fail since the sources are either lacking or are too vague and inarticulate. We should like, for instance, to know in what way the peasant in his village, the tradesman in his shop and the nobleman in his mansion talked about the French Revolution, what they thought of the policy of their Governments and how they reacted to political events. Yet clearly this cannot be the subject of our study, even if the sources were more explicit than they actually are. The history of political thought is the history of such thought as actually influenced political events, or was at least expressive of prevailing political tendencies. It need hardly be said that this is not synonymous with the study of political philosophy. It might well be and, indeed, has often been the case that the ideas of political philosophers were doomed to failure or insignificance since they were too far ahead of their times or tried to justify a state of affairs the economic and social presuppositions of which had disappeared. In Germany the number of such thinkers is particularly great, a fact which in itself throws light on its political development.

Thus the historian of political thought in Germany would commit a fatal mistake if he were to confine himself to the mere relation of the philosophic theories of the State, that is to say, of those theories which treated political questions in a systematic and original way. He would commit the same mistake as he who in describing a mountainous landscape would confine himself to the description of the peaks. Instead he will have to analyse the political ideas of many who made no outstanding contribution to the record of political thought but who were nevertheless characteristic exponents of the prevailing political tendencies. He will have to lay particular stress on the close connection between political and general philosophic ideas, a connection which appears to have been particularly intimate in the period with which this study deals. There are few periods in the history of human thought in which there were so many philosophic thinkers of the first rank, though they excelled more in the field of ethics and of the theory of knowledge than in that of political philosophy proper.