This essay will explore ideas from "On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany" written by Heinrich Heine, one of the most famous German poets and cultural figures in general, of the early to mid 19th century. The paper will argue that in his often enigmatic and aphoristic ruminations on the relationship between politics in France and philosophy and religion in Germany, Heine's positions reveal his hope for a place for a Jewish intellectual in modern European society. The circularity and contradictory nature of his arguments show how he employs the Hegelian dialectic to his own purposes, in an effort to critique motifs of the power of religion in European history versus the promise of the secular Enlightenment. At the same time, there exists in the writing a valuation, however skeptical, of the possibility of a world where the spiritual and the secular could embrace to form some kind of ideal harmonious system not in an afterlife but in the world of contemporary reality. Between his ironies, cynicism and clarity he is a truly modern philosopher with regard to his skepticism about the relationship between metaphysical or political ideals and political and religious realities.
[...] For Heine, the probable hope that lies in Hegel resides in the philosopher's ideas providing systems of thought that could lead to actual real social justice for minorities, emerging out of philosophical thinking rather than idealism and the collapse of contradictions between Ideal and Real. This is what he forebodes in his analysis of Schelling, and his commentary on how his popularity is a symptom of all that is currently wrong in Germany, as he stares over the intellectual and actual border from his position of exile in France. [...]
[...] Heine was not really an advocate for any particular position outside of framing himself as a set of contradictions, turning his own life and thought and being into a philosophical quandary and example of dilemma, alienation and disorientation. (Viii; xxv) Heine's voice is ironic, contradictory even. The introduction to his philosophical essay notes that his best biography, Jeffrey Sammons contends is very hard to pin Heine down on virtually anything, since he early on created a persona for himself that he himself continually shifted around.” (viii) Heine wrote in 1922 Nowhere can one be a human being more fully than at a masked ball, where the waxen mask hides our usual mask of flesh (viii) For a dispossessed Jewish intellectual, and creative writer, who had converted to Protestantism, not it seems out of adherence to the faith, yet at the same time, able to propose why Protestantism reasserts the true Jewishness of spirit, which he calls “Judeo-Deistic” (xix) as necessary for the emergence of freedom from Catholicism and dictatorial control, the high- wire dancing act is apparent; his method a series of contradictory aphorisms and reflections embedded in narrative. [...]
[...] This future could be Hegel's history, in that as Malabou and during note his philosophy has been notably linked to totalitarian thinking (as antecedent). (Malabou and During, 2000) The student usurps the power of the professor by revealing the contradictions and problematics using the teacher's own methods. Yet, what is problematic in the text is that Heine, in one sense, confounds his denunciation of Christianity, which occupies him in the first section of the text, with his warning by the third, that without Christianity, Germany is doomed to emerge out its torpor into a chaotic bloody nightmare that will devour itself and anyone else that gets in its way. [...]
[...] While Reeves maintains some critics assert Heine was advocating this Naturphilosoph, this does not add up, given that he associates it with Schelling, who he sees as a hack; a false philosopher like a bad leader, with Hegel's dialectic a corrective to its simplicity and collapsing of categories that need to be kept apart; as Christianity has kept mind from body. As a result, the ironies and contradictions which characterize Heine's examination of all systems is apparent in the way that he raises up and denounces each trend or mode of thinking he examines. This leads one to consider that his writings on philosophy are meant to confuse; that his method leads from hope to despair, back to hope and through that to a deeper despair. It is cautious and [...]
[...] One question that can be asked is whether these contradictions are notably part of Heine's philosophical method itself, revealing an elaborate dialectic, or alternatively, are simply echoes of his own state of being in-between, a minority in exile trying to find truth and coming up, once he logically examines each proposition, with nothing but uncertainty. At the end of the third section the text, Heine makes a bold, prophetic statement using his typical literary form, which is poetic language, irony and an emphatic tone. [...]
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