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An Intellectual Anomaly:Hegelian Philosophy in Nineteenth-Century America

byCarolyn Frances Hoffmann

Thesis for the

Degree of Bachelor of Arts in

History

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences University of Illinois

Urbana, Illinois

1992

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The Hegelian Attraction The Speculative "Organon of Hegel11 The Individual's Search for System The "Writer of Books1* in His Youth The St, Louis MissionThe St. Louis Philosophical Society and

the Germans

5791012

15The Issue of Eastern Influence: Harris

vs. Brokmeyer 17An Ohio Hegelian 19Stallo's "Ontological Revelries** 21Thomas Jefferson: Stallo's Anglo-German

Synthesis 23A German Philosophy for America 26Endnotes 33Bibliography 38

An intellectual Anomaly:Hegelians in Nineteenth-Century America

It was early fall in St. Louis in 1865, Denton Snider recalled, when he chanced to meet an acquaintance who invited him to a philosophical discussion on the following Sunday. Snider, always eager to further his own intellectual development, accepted warmly, and a few days later the two men "rode in the horse car to Salisbury street,”1 Snider evidentally never suspecting that this rather innocuous gathering would prove to be his initiation into the all- consuming mysteries of the German philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel. The meeting convened at the home of William Torrey Harris, who capably read from a translation of Hegel's History of Philosophy. But the star of the evening was neither Harris nor Hegel but rather the "primal Titanic demiurge”2 Henry C. Brokmeyer, who sporadically interjected "lightning, which would flash a sudden illumination over the heights and into the depths of that to me new and misty world."3

For Snider, a self-styled "Writer of Books," life was art, and system ubiquitous. A simple social gathering thus acquired dramatic overtones, and the two men who would become the intellectual anchors of the St. Louis Hegelian revival thus exhibited diametrically opposed characteristics which

would later, in keeping with the pattern of Hegel#s triadic dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, become integrated in a greater whole. (As to whether Brokmeyer represented the “positive” thesis and Harris the “negative” antithesis or vice-versa, Snider remained silent.) The “Yankee” Harris, “pale, nervously twitching, thin-cheeked and seemingly thin-blooded....with a sharp face and rather pointed nose,” was for Snider nevertheless “a needle that could prick keenly and deeply into things.” The German Brokmeyer, on the other hand, was a “striking figure,” who sported “an enormous nose...which had the power of flattening and bulging,” but who could nonetheless "re-create Hegel...even poetize the latter's dry, colorless abstractions in a many-tinted display of metaphorical scintillations.”4

For all of Snider's attention to the personalities behind the St. Louis Philosorhieal Movement, the fundamental basis for this western interest in Hegel was Hegel's philosophy itself. At the time of Snider's propitious gathering in 1865, Americans had finally comprehended the damage inflicted by the Civil War, a conflict that not only had devastated much of the nation and exacted a terrible price in human life, but also had threatened the very roots of an American identity. St. Louis, a border community, was acutely aware of the division between North and South. But

St, Louis had also emerged from the Civil War stronger than ever, and seemed positioned to take over the leadership of the American "West,11 as it was then seen. How could St*Louis philosophers overcome the legacy of America's divisive past and still remain optimistic about the future?

The English intellectual tradition of Lockean empiricism and Spencerian materialism, while expressing the real and concrete, had dismissed the ideal and the speculative as too subjective. Conversely, the Transcendentalists, although firm in their belief that man had the ability to rise above his surroundings and comprehend the Truth, were of little help in offering a means of grappling with the experiences of war. Hegel, howeve., seemed to be both relevant to the current environment and able to address the spirit of man.His triadic dialectic allowed opposing forces to combine in a greater unity than that which had existed before. A negative incident was thus not permanent, but rather a step, and even a necessary step, toward a future synthesis. Hegel exemplified progress, even sanctioned it. With a Hegelian philosophy Westerners could put the past behind them, remaining optimistic and confident that they were headed toward an even better future.

But although Hegel held a special attraction for the St. Louis Philosophical Society as Snider's Mantiseptic11 for the

time, German idealism was by no means restricted to St*Louis# Societies dedicated to the study of such Germans as Kant, Hegel, Goethe, and Schiller sprang up like so many weeds across the fertile Western prairie. Hiram K. Jones, for example, although no Hegelian, could rightly be called the most famous citizen of Jacksonville, Illinois, because his neo-Platonic society achieved such notoriety among idealists that for a brief moment that city was spotlighted as "the Athens of the West."5 Sister societies to the St. Louis Movement actually formed in the unlikely locales of Quincy, Illinois and Osceola, Iowa.6 And preceding the Civil War, decades before the formal convening of Snider's St.Louis Philosophical Society, American and German-American intellectuals in Ohio were indefatigable in pursuing the finer points of German metaphysics.7

One such intellectual, Johann Bernhard Stallo, emigrated to Cincinnati in 1839 at age sixteen and later gained prominence in Ohio both as a judge and as an influential representative of the German community. He eventually achieved national recognition, serving as United States minister to Italy. Stallo led a successful public life, but philosophy remained his chief interest.8 In his General Principles of the Philosophy of Nature (1848), Stallo presented the philosophical systems of the Germans Schelling, Oken, and Hegel. While acknowledging that the speculative in

America was "perfectly disavowed (sometimes justly, perhaps), and the very worst passport which a naturalist could carry about him is that of a metaphysician,1,9 he nonetheless hoped that his book would provide Americans with a more accurate understanding of the way the Germans had connected philosophy and nature. If Snider had looked to Hegel alone to formulate a system for the American West, then Stall© saw him as a product of a larger German cultural element. Stalio's nextwork, thep_ri.es .Physics (1881), was animportant study in the philosophy of science. The work was, surprisingly enough, much appreciated by the logical positivist Ernst Mach.10

The tfeggllflJD.Attraction

In retrospect, it seems curious that both Snider and Stallo were so intensely interested in the writings of Hegel, who was universally regarded by their contemporaries as amazingly dense. George Bancroft, for instance, who sat through some lectures given by Hegel in Germany in 1820, referred to them as a "display of unintelligible words" and soon quit attending class.11 The venerable Ralph Waldo Emerson similarly remarked, "I always test an author by the number of single good things which I can catch up from his pages. When I fish in Hegel, I cannot get a bite; in

addition the labor is so hard in reading him, that I get a headache.M12 Snider, who seemed proud that Hegel's Larger Logic had "the reputation of being the hardest book in the world,"13 recalled Emerson's statement with some asperity! "surely the implication was that we were on the wrong track, that it would he better for us to study Emerson than Hegel."** But Hegel's fame as an inscrutable thinker was in fact one of his greatest charms: to Westerners like Snider,flush with a newly-discovered post-Civil War confidence,Hegel presented an intellectual challenge which they felt they were more than able to meet. If an eastern "institution" such as Emerson did not have the energy to devote to Hegel# then so much the better.

Here significantly, however, Hegel's ideas fit the Westerners' evolving self-image. Like all philosophers he addressed the basic dilemma of how to integrate the self into the environment. But Hegel, through his triadic dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, could resolve in a higher unity the lingering postwar inconsistencies that were especially apparent to Westerners.15 Hegel's dialectic challenged Kant's fundamentally negative conclusion that all objective knowledge was phenomenal, and thus it sanctioned western optimism.16 He spiritualized the West by providing an impressive philosophiea! arsenal against a Spencerian- provoked "engul f iiif materialism and invidious agnosticism.1,17

In Hegel, the fixed state existed only as it related to motion, for it was impossible to define "fixed*' without using "absence of motion." Change was natural, indeed unavoidable.18 To the West, a region that considered progress its exclusive domain, Hegel understandably proved a worthy spokesman.18

The Speculative "Organon of Hegel"20

Speculative philosophers like Hegel who supplied this sense of process to a continuous, spiral development did so through fully utilizing the philosophical conception of the word "negative." Hegel stated that the first stage of consciousness consisted of sensuous knowing, or of recognizing objects by themselves. But in the process of noting the uniqueness of the object, the object would necessarily be reduced to its characteristics. A pebble lying in the sand would thus become a certain color, texture, and size— but nothing else. This second stage Hegel referred to as the "negative." In the first issue of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (1867), America's earliest periodical devoted to the study of philosophy, Harris wrote, "For if this stone exists only through its relations to the sun, which is not the stone but something else, then the being of this stone is its own negation."21

7

8

The so-called speculative leap consisted of the third stage, of fashioning the "positive" out of the "negative."If an object existed only in its "negative" relation, then everything would be by definition "negative." But to exist, the "negative" itself would have to be relative, because everything is relative. Harris wrote:

The most wonderful side of this, is the fact that since this relation is that of the negative, it negates itself in its very relation, and hence its identity is a producing of non-identity. Identity and distinction are produced by the self-same process, and thus self- determination is the origin of all identity and distinction likewise.22

Hegel could therefore write in summary that "That which has the form of Being is the self-related." In the higher forms of negation, in universals, the "negative" would act against itself to form a "process." Harris gave the example of a species' survival which was independent of individuals' deaths. "And this negation or particularization continually proceeds from one object to another," he wrote, "and remains conscious under the whole."23 (Speculative philosophers had at long last found in Harris's journal a forum where the double negative was acceptable!) Each part, every individual thing, reflected the greater Whole to a certain degree.

Such conceptions did not come easily to anyone, and Snider humorously related his early attempts at understanding Hegel by the following statement:

9

It flung me right at the start into the most abstract swirl of human thought: Being, Nothing, Becoming.These conceptions would run into one another, then out of one another, then make a ring around together, like a vast Hegelian vortex in which I was dizzily whirled, till I feared me [sicj I would never get out of that spiritual maelstrom....Hamlet stands fixed from start to finish in the dualism of his famous soliloquy: to be ornot to be. That was his question, he declares, but it was only a part of mine.”**

The Search lor^Syst^m

If Snider was in fact parochial and devotion to Hegel symptomatic of more than just St. Louis civic pride, it becomes much more problematic to assess the degree to which this surge of Hegelian interest was related to a renewed western awareness of the German cultural element. Germans, who concentrated in western cities like Snider's St. Louis and Stallo's Cincinnati, naturally sought a proportionate input in the unfolding American culture. As Americans and German-Americans alike considered philosophy the natural realm of the Germans, they nurtured Hegel in western soil.But if the system that could express the western environment was itself transported from Germany, it was nevertheless to be deciphered by Americans, and through this action, it would become the property of the American West. Harris tellingly wrote in the preface to the first issue of the Journal of

10

Speculative Philosophy, "after all it is not 'American thought' so much as American thinkers we want.”25

For both Snider and Stallo, the quest to understand Hegel was fundamentally individualistic. Hegel provided the lexicon whereby subject and object, nature and mind, could be united in an Absolute, and each of these men, following the advice of Harris, set out with a vengeance to construct for himself just such a unity. For Snider, external events became perfect reflections of his internal search for a Hegelian-based system, and the triadic dialectic was everywhere evident. Although Snider appreciated German culture, it would never become crucial to his developing Weltanschauung. Stallo, however, who had been born in Germany, was much less likely than Snider to see external events through Hegelian-tinted lenses. Trained in the complexities of metaphysical terminology, Stallo would doubtless have seen such an action as an oversimplification. For Stallo, the search for an individual system was inextricably bound to his sense of self, and Hegel thus became indivisible from the German spirit.

The "Writer of Books" in His Youth

Born on an Ohio farm in 1841, Denton Snider spent the years following his mother's death in 1847 tossed about from

11

relative to relative, landing finally in a rather strict Quaker school which, as Snider himself related, "began that distaste for going to church which has accompanied me through life."26 Following an intensive study of Latin and Greek at Oberlin College and already exhibiting the intellectual energy which would become so characteristic of the St, Louis Movement, Snider entered his so-called "Romanism phase," learning Spanish, Italian, and French so as to better understand the Latin character. Snider had a penchant for internal organization, and in his autobiography, he presented his entire life as a series of "phases." This "epoch of extreme linguistic ambition" lasted only two years, when Snider, his financial resources all but exhausted, accepted a position in 1864 as a Latin and Greek instructor in St. Louis.27 His developing interest in philosophy soon brought him in contact with the German intellectuals in the city, and Snider moved to a German boarding house, even jesting that he "wound up this part of my Germanization by a German marriage.1,28

During this time, Snider regularly attended Harris's German-translation study groups, and in the fall of 1866 became an assistant in Brokmeyer's law office, not out of any desire to enter the legal profession, but rather so that he could reap the benefits of the "University Brokmeyer."2^ The St. Louis Philosophical Society itself had formed the

preceding January, with Brokmeyer serving as the first president and Harris as secretary. Although members did not envision that the society would be exclusively devoted to Hegel, a principal goal had been to translate his Larger Logic. Membership was open to men of every class, but potential members had to demonstrate their "eligibility to participate in the life of pure thought."30 More specifically, this meant that everyone, even Snider, had to translate some of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature as a rite of passage.31 Twenty-one men formed the nucleus of the group, and together wrote 229 books over twenty years, not counting Harris's 419 titles.32

The St. Louis Mission

In both k Writer of Books (1910) and TheSt, Louis Movement (1920), Snider proclaimed that the current state of post-civil War darkness and chaos would be challenged by Hegelian order mediated through the two mental giants, Harris and Brokmeyer, who, although differing in appearance and presentation, were nonetheless privy to the secrets of the master. The result of their efforts, Snider continued, would be a synthesis of a greater St. Louis within the context of world history. The environment had to be made to fit this system, and Snider thus began by illustrating how an Hegelian

12

sense of progress applied to St. Louis and, by extension, to the West and the world. He acknowledged the movement's cultural affinities to the Germans, but nonetheless insisted that it was unique. Because Snider's primary mission was to create an identity for the American West, and to place himself within this development, the movement's German roots were likely much less threatening to him than any potential connection to the eastern Transcendentalists would have been. Thus Snider wrote that if Brokmeyer and the Transcendentalist Bronson Alcott would ever engage in a philosophical joust, poor Alcott would leave Mnot a philosophic grease-spot."33

Snider's Hegelian system was inextricably bound to St. Louis civic pride, which rested, unfortunately, on the unsound foundations of a "Great Illusion.*' St. Louis had emerged from the Civil War a seemingly invincible metropolis, ready for world dominance. Whereas the East was tired, Union forces of the West had not even lost a major battle, and the particular success of the St. Louis Germans in securing their city by seizing the arsenal at Camp Jackson proved an additional source of pride, according to Snider;

They [the population] seemed animated with the spirit of the Camp Jackson deed, which marked a new turning-point, even if very local and minute, in the World's History.A vast hope lay in the time, in the city, and particularly in the Philosophical Society, which proposed to reconstruct the whole universe after some model now dimly evolving in St. Louis, and certainly not altogether transmitted from the Past.34

13

14

The census of 1870 misled the population into expecting additional success, and furthermore, the Chicago fire of 1871 seemed to have eliminated St. Louis's only competition for dominance as the major metropolis in the West. Snider, seeing St. Louis as symptomatic of Hegel's philosophy, subscribed completely to the logic that brought forth Brokmeyer's gleeful announcement that "Chicago was the completely negative city of our West and indeed of our time, and now she has carried out her principle of negation to its final universal consequence? she has simply negated herself."35 Only in 1880 did St. Louisians realize that their northern nemesis Chicago had retaken the lead (and indeed had never lost it). Snider wrote that the dates of the Philosophical Society, 1866-1885, roughly paralleled the golden years of St. Louis, brought to an end with the census of 1880 and the ensuing "Great Disillusion."36

In fact, Snider's belief in external manifestations of Hegel's triadic dialectic was so firm that he was convinced that every event had significance. On the construction of the Eads Bridge in 1867, Snider exclaimed, "There! Behold now God's Thought creating the world, even embodied in one little man? see your gossamer abstractions turning concrete and practical? and just watch your Hegel's Logic with its intricate fine-spun web of Pure Essences realizing itself in

15

yonder structure with all its turns, nodes, iron rods and braces.1,37 The dialectic even crept into his writing, as when Snider declared that "the West did the great positive act of preserving the Union.*'38 When Snider admitted, "All that I had ever known or done I Hegelized with a sort of desperation,"39 he was not far from the truth.

The St. Louis Ph ilosophical Soc iety and the.Gormans

Snider's chronicle of the roots of the M . Louis Movement began in earnest with his arrival to the city in 1864, when he said he immediately noticed the presence of four distinct cultural elements: the Catholic, the NewEngland, the Southern, and the German. If the New Englanders were interested in education, for instance, the Southerners excelled in leadership. Snider found, however, that all four streams were limiting to a certain extent.40 He regarded the St. Louis Movement as unique; it would fill the void left by "the four imported elements"— elements which "our president Brokmeyer, himself a German, branded as negative--hostile to all positive thought and intentions."41 Again, note the dialectic.

Although Snider defined the St. Louis Movement as the fifth cultural element in St. Louis, it was by nature closest to the already existent German element. Because the St.

16

Louis Movement consisted of poetry and art in addition to philosophy, a German connection was ensured. Hegel, Goethe, and Beethoven, after all, proved that the “Age's Genius...spoke German.”42 Srider further integrated the two by writing that the rise of St. Louis as a German city paralleled the “Great Illusion’* of the St. Louis Movement.He said that this was no accident, for the two were

jksymptomatic of the same larger energy. ‘ The postwar St. Louis city council was almost completely German, and German was taught in all of the public schools.44 Snider wrote:

This upburst and domination of Germanism.... I followed it not from the cutside but from the inside; I not only studied it as an object, but felt it and appropr ioted ittill it became a part of myself. And there were manynatives here like me— many who experienced it as the uplift of a new strange spirit...as the revelation of the peculiar racial consciousness of old Teutonia welling forth just now on the banks of the Mississippi.45

Although Snider had warm feelings for the Germans, he nevertheless insisted that the St. Louis Movement was conceived by Americans for America.46 In a passing complaint, Snider commented that the English-speaking part of St. Louis took little enough notice of the Hegelians as it was; to have allied themselves any more closely with the Germans would have proved foolhardy.47

17The Issue of Eastern Influence: Harris vs. Brokmeyer

When Snider compared Harris and Brokmeyer at that propitious meeting in 1865, he singled out for emphasis a single trait, Harris's eastern roots. "Very decided was his Yankee intonation of speech," Snider wrote. "Harris was never able to get rid of this peculiar streak in his pronunciation, in his character and in his thinking; no wonder that some years later he fled back to his symphonious New England out of the discordant West."48 Harris had been born in 1835 into an affluent Connecticut family, and after attending Phillips Andover and then Yale, moved to St. Louis, arriving in 1857. No matter how much he had otherwise proven himself a devoted Hegelian, Snider maintained that Harris's eastern upbringing set him apart. He wrote that Harris never made the West his home, always intending to return to his "ideal Yankeeland."49 And, with exaggeration, Snider added that Harris never again surpassed his literary productivity while in St. Louis. Snider's test was mainly philosophical, for Harris was conseguently distinguished in education, serving as U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906.50 Snider's Hegelian system was associated with a western identity, and any easterner, no matter how well intentioned, could not fully participate.

18

Snider was a little more forgiving toward Brokmeyer, whom he referred to as ”genius unharnessed.”51 Brokmeyer emigrated to the United States in 1844 at age sixteen, and became in guick succession a bootblack, currier, tanner, and shoemaker, even owning slaves. After a short spell at Brown University, where he was exposed to the Transcendentalists, Brokmeyer left the East to go live in a cabin in Warren County, Missouri. Snider was rather proud of Brokmeyer's first flight from civilization, for he said that what the Transcendentalists only spoke, Brokmeyer had been unafraid to live. But the truth was that Brokmeyer left for the West both because of his desire to live in communion with nature and because a business venture had failed and he was insolvent. In 1856, Harris and others financed Brokmeyer's return to the city, where he worked as a mechanic and philosopher. His forceful personality provided much of the energy behind the movement. And where Harris was the “yankee,” Brokmeyer would always be the quintessential Westerner, whose informal ways and demonic energy shocked even Snider at their first meeting: ”1 looked upon him as aruie, self-taught specimen of the wild west.”52 In later life, Brokmeyer left St. Louis, with Snider writing: ”Onceat Muscogee in the Indian Territory I heard him explaining the deeper philosophy of deer-stalking in a pow-wow with some Creek Indians.”53

As a result of Harris's coaxing, the Concord School of Philosophy was formed with the expressed intent of uniting the eastern and western movements. Every summer from 1879 to 1888, philosophers would gather, at the beginning to hear Jones and Harris debate the merits of Plato and Hegel. But while the early years were exciting contests between the neo- Platonists and the Hegelians, interest waned.54 All of the original Transcendentalists were by this point too old to participate, and Snider soon concluded that "The Mississippi could not be made to flow eastward through New England.”55

19

&n ..Oh io .He g e l ia n

Johann Bernhard Stallo was born in the village of Sierhausen in Oldenburg, Germany in 1823. As his was a family of teachers, Stallo's education began early, with his grandfather tutoring him in Greek, Latin, and English, and his father instructing him in math. Heinrich A. Rattermann, Stallo's biographer and himself a prodigious German-American esSayis^ that the philosopher's education did notsuffer for lack of French language instruction, for although his grandfather "hated the French with his whole soul,”5 ̂

Stallo learned French surreptitiously from his father. Already a promising scholar, at age fifteen Stallo entered a

20

normal school at Vechta and concurrently attended the gymnasium, where he was first exposed to the idealism of Kant.

Since Stallo's family did not have the money to send him to a German university, stallo, determined not to be another teacher, emigrated in 1839 to Cincinnati, where his uncle owned a printing business. Stallo's first American job was as a school teacher, an irony that Rattermann could not resist noting. He soon found a better position, however, as a German instructor at St. Xavier College, and continued his study of math and Greek in his spare time. In 1844, Stallo began teaching math exclusively; this work led him to his next job as a professor of physics, chemistry, and mathematics at St. John's College in Fordham, New York. In 1848, while still at St. John's, Stallo published The General Principles of the Philosophy of Nature. As this book received little notice, Stallo, perhaps discouraged, gave up writing and returned to Cincinnati to begin a new career as a lawyer. When Rattermann asked him why he did not continue his more theoretical pursuits, Stallo answered, MI wanted to be practical like the Americans are.1,57 stallo displayed a life-long consciousness of the relationship between national identity and human spirit, a very Hegelian notion.

21

Stallo's ”011101001031 Revelries11

Unlike Snider, Stallo never applied Hegel specifically to any conception of civic destiny, but nonetheless made a thorough study of his philosophy his earliest avocation. And indeed, where Snider saw Hegel's potential to provide an external system to express the rapidly changing post-civil War West, Stallo was more interested in achieving a personal understanding of the development of Hegel's total system in relation to the German philosophers who came before him.

Stallo's 1848 book on the philosophy of nature was primarily an effort to place Hegel's system in the larger German context. The first portion was an exposition of the general principles involved in a philosophical study of the natural sciences, and the latter, a comparison of Schelling, Oken, and Hegel, with Kant included as **the acme of the old dualism.**58 Stallo wrote that he had probed deeply into Hegel, and, reflective of his personal search for a system, insisted that the ideas he ultimately presented were his own.59 Understandably, there were striking similarities between Stallo and Hegel. Stallo wrote, **The fundamental principle, upon which, according to my conviction, all true philosophy of nature rests, is, that the different manifestations of the vitality which bursts forth in nature's phenomena are comprehensively united, centered in the

22

mind.1*60 Hegel had similarly said that unity could be found in the self-mediated, in the Spirit. Stallo, like Hegel, saw the Whole reflected in every part, and also believed in spiral development.61

But if a study of the connection between philosophy and science remained Stallo's chief personal interest, he did not by any means confine himself to an empirical examination of nature. Stallo's primary motive in publishing his General Principles was to introduce the German idealists to the American public. "The words, 'German philosophy,' or 'German idealism,' are heard every moment," Stallo wrote, "but the only sense attached to them (if there be any) is a medley of vague abstractions, or a series of distractive day-dreams." Stallo continued, "The Germans could not descend to the material world; hence they became idealists;— the English and French were unable to ascend to the summits of the Absolute; on that account they remained materialists."62 Stallo would provide the Americans with step-by-step instructions for scaling the summit if they could but devote the necessary time and energy to the project.63

Even though Stallo later recanted much of his earlier dependency on Hegelian metaphysics, he never wavered from his contention that the Germans would play a leading role in the development of an appropriate American philosophy. In a series of speeches delivered to German audiences over a

thirty-year period, Stallo implicitly tied Hegel to the American West, if not by name, then certainly through his repeated assertions that a German philosophical system was essential to the development of the country. If Snider's mission had been to appropriate an Hegelian-based identity for the West, then Stallo's task was to insist that part of this identity be German.

Thomas Jefferson: Stallo's Anglo-German Synthesis

On March 2, 1855, the anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's inauguration as president of the United States, Stallo delivered an address that reflected the Hegelian orientation he envisioned for America. He began by comparing the evolution of America with that of the European states, specifically France. When Stallo stated that the struggle between England and America during the revolution was quite simply the struggle between the Old World and the New, he, like countless Americans, was reciting an age-old litany. Hegel himself wrote in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History that MIt is for America to abandon the ground on which hitherto the History of the World has developed itself.1,64 That Stallo still believed at this time in a Hegelian spiral development is clear through his statement

24

that "the past can exert no power over the present? every age makes its own rules."0*-*

But acknowledging difference was not yet evidence of any system-building, or "systematicity," and Stallo proceeded to illustrate just how important he felt a system to be. Jefferson, he noted, was not to be lauded because of his accomplishments in general, although they were manifold, but rather for one accomplishment in particular: he raised therevolutionary issue from one of nation versus nation to one of principle. Jefferson was noteworthy precisely because he made a conscious effort to integrate values and action, and in this process a philosophic system was essential. In this early speech Stallo was in complete harmony with Hegel, because Hegel himself had suggested that if the revolution had been fought on less than the principle of independence, the outcome may have differed.66 There could be no underestimation of the power of an idea.

So America was unique, and was expanding. Just as Snider's St. Louis had looked to itself for guidance, so Stallo's America would, and yet America could not simply expand without some inner sense of unity, some self-imposed system. It would be in the imposition of this system, in the implementation of a philosophy, stallo suggested, that the Germans could make their greatest contribution. Jefferson was Stallo's representative American because he embodied both

’’Anglo” and MG6rmanM values* Stallo, in fact, often made a distinction between the two, and illustrated it by relating the story of the Anglo-American and the German-American who were both told to dig a well. While the Anglo immediately asked how deep, and set off to work, the German became lost in the implications of creating nothingness out of existence, and was literally paralyaed by the thought of measuring the absence of space.6; It was not that the Anglo-American had no principles, but rather that the German spent more time discerning exactly what the proper principles should v̂ e.

In what would become a recurring theme, Stallo stated that freedom of thought was to the Germans the most important right, and indeed an integral part of the German spirit. For the English and the French, he said, this freedom was far less important.68 Thus did Stallo call upon his German brothers to rise up to defend Jefferson's principles, which were coming under attack from the ’’Puritan” establishment,”The idea of a republic to the Americans is essentially one of the police state? the government is everything, the people nothing; the individual is, thanks to our Maine Laws and similar statutes, neither free in his home nor in his person.”69 It is tempting to see this speech as an embodiment of the Hegelian dialectic, for this Anglo-German conflict would be expected to yield a greater American synthesis. If it might be reaching to attribute Stallo's

25

structure to Hegel's triadic dialectic, however, it is no stretch to note that where the Anglo-Americans may not have viewed the German element as essential to American development, Stallo evidently thought it crucial.

A German Philosophy for America

Rattermann became a close friend of Stalic's in the philosopher's later years, and encouraged him to publish some of the speeches that he had given to the German Turnvereine in Cincinnati over the course of almost three decades. Theresulting Reden, Abhandlungen, und Briefen (1893) is anamalgam of Stallo's varied interests, ranging from the strictly philosophical, as in his critique of materialists in "Der Materialisinus” (1855) , to the social, as in a commentary on the separation of church and state in "Das Bibeilesen in den Staatsschulen" (1870). In one speech, Stallo lauded the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1859), and in another, "Die englische Sprache" (1870), he even hazarded an examination of the connection between language and national character.

Because Stallo wrote all of these speeches for a general audience and thus did not employ the complex metaphysical terminology that had made both of his books relatively inaccessible, these papers provide valuable evidence for his

27

idea of an external American philosophical system. As Snider had done for St. Louis, so too had Stallo presented a Hegel for public consumption. Like Snider, Stallo celebrated the uniqueness of America and called progress a basic identity. But this progress needed direction, and a philosophical articulation of it would therefore be essential. But where Snider saw a Hegelian-based system emerging from the genius of the West, Stallo pointed to German culture to supply the appropriate philosophy. And where Snider celebrated the West and made veiled criticisms of the East, Stallo lauded the Germans and censured the dominant Anglo-American culture. Although Stallo was speaking to a German audience and could therefore be expected to have adopted a pro-German stance, his acceptance in the Anglo-American community indicates that he was no radical and that his grievances were valid.

Stallo's philosophical system for America took much from Hegel and some from Humboldt. In his speech on Humboldt, Stallo said, "The world of ideas constructs the foundation for an entirely new outlook on life.”70 And reminiscent of Hegel, Stallo continued, "every experience of the scientist, every phenomenon that he makes subordinate to a general rule, i a contribution to the life history of the Whole.1*71 Stallo said that Humboldt did not obtain a result and then stop his questioning, but rather treated each new finding as a step in the contingjpg process of a greater understanding,

a s

a spiral development.72 Although by this point Stallo had already denounced Hegel as being too metaphysical, and had appropriately transferred his admiration to Humboldt, the scientist and the philosopher seemed to share the same values.73 In other words, Hegel by any other name was still the same.

The philosophical system that Stallo envisioned for America incorporated Hegelian elements, and to him, Hegelian philosophy was indivisible from the greater German spirit that had given it life. Stallo, like Snider, believed that the "Age's Genius... spoke German." To Stallo it was thus symbolic that both Humboldt and Hegel were born within a year of one another.74 Humboldt was:

a German, not because his cradle stood under German sky, but because his spirit was German. Humboldt could only have emerged from the people for whom Kant and Hegel philosophized and Schiller and Goethe poetized, and only these people recognized in Humboldt's perception and ideas the form of their own spirit.75

An Anglo-American appreciation of the German cultural element would be essential to America's healthy philosophical development, for the philosophy best-suited to America was German. And indeed, Stallo's frequent attacks against "Anglo" values do not seem misplaced when viewed in the context of his battle to keep German values from disappearing. In his "Bibellesen" speech, for instance,

stallo complained that, "Behind the school teacher...stands the entire force of Puritan fanaticism, which even today usurps the law, and constricts our social and political life.”76 Stallo's championing of German ideals extended to his comparison of the German and English language in his essay "Die englische Sprache." The English mind, he contended, was not concerned with the ideal.

The highest principle of their morals is that the purpose of all human striving is for power and wealth, and that these ends make all means holy; the first axiom of their philosophy is that nothing has a real or ideal meaning unless it can be entered in a business account book.77

It followed naturally that the English language was filled with short words, as if to speak was to detract from business time. The German language, on the other hand, was rich with meaning, and reflective of the German character. "The German expression,” Stallo remarked, "is heart-felt and full of meaning, like the German disposition.”78 And furthermore, the German language was better equipped to handle philosophical discussions. Harris was by no means the first American to have had difficulties in "making Hegel speak English.''79 It was not only a matter of Hegel's dense configuration of thoughts, but also that the English language, unlike the German, could not make processes the subjects of actions. Where the German could say "das

30

Warden,” ”das Leben,” and "das Lieben,” his English counterpart could only say "the process of becoming,” "the process of living,” and "the process of loving.”80 As Hegel's traidic dialectic turned on the process of becoming, this was understandably no small deficiency.

By the time Stallo published his last strictly philosophical work, Concepts and Theories, he had recanted much of General Principles, published when he was only twenty-five:

That book was was written while 1 was under the spell of Hegel's ontological revelries— at a time when I was barely of age and still seriously affected with the metaphysical malady which seems to be one of the unavoidable disorders of intellectual infancy.*

And indeed, Stallo's disenchantment with the promises of Hegel was not unique among American Hegelians. Hegel was optimistic and idealistic, but, in important ways, simply incomprehensible. Even Emerson, exemplar of an another idealistic tradition, had cautioned the members of the St. Louis Philosophical Society in 1867, "the hideous skeleton of philosophy [should] be covered with beautiful living tissue,*

I do not enjoy for my intellectual repast the dry bones of thought."82

In fact, all who studied Hegel with the intention of formulating a popular American system eventually realized that German idealism was ill-suited to the American experience. Westerners, no longer grappling with the meaning of the Civil War, were increasingly absorbed by the demands of the present, and had little time for philosophizing.Snider even deserted his HFuture Great City of the World'1 to migrate to, of all places, Chicago. When Stallo wrote that "The English are no metaphysicians,"83 he might just as well have meant the Americans. "Anglo" values had remained dominant in American life, and a German philosophy like Hegel's which was so enmeshed in German culture would never achieve a lasting following. By the late nineteenth century, American intellectuals were already espousing Pragmatism as better tailored to the American spirit. Even Brokmeyer, the quintessential western exponent of German metaphysics as an appropriate American philosophy, wrote of his translation of Hegel's Larger Logic:

Just leave it in the attic for the vermin? I have enjoyed every minute of my life devoted to it, in the hope that I might justify my existence by leaving something to posterity worth-while, but apparentlyfithere is no demand for anything like that at this time."84

As Hegel's LargerLogic was destined to reside in a pile of old clothing and discarded goods in Brokmeyer's attic, so too was his philosophy soon relegated to the back of the American mind.

Endnotes

1 Denton Snider, A Writer of Books in His Genesis (St. Louis, 1910), 307.

2 Denton Snider, The St. Louis Movement in Philosophy. Literature, Education. Psychology with Chapters of Autobiography (St. Louis, 1920), 100.

3 Snider, Writer of Books, 310.4 Ibid., 302, 303, 308-9, 311.~ Paul R. Anderson, Platonismin the Midwest (New York

and London, 1963). ̂ Cleon Forbes, "The St. Louis School ot Thought," The

Missouri. Historica 1 Revjew, 26 (1931-32), 76.7 Loyd D. Easton, Hegel's First American Followers, The

Ohio Hegelians: John b. Stallo, Peter Kaufmann , Moncure Conway, and. August Wi11ichM with Key Writings (Athens, Ohio,1966) . 8 * * * 12 13 14

8 Heinrich A. Rattermann, "Johann Bernhard Stallo. Deutsch-Amerikanischer Philosoph, Jurist, und Staatsmann,"Poi^sgh-Ameil kan1sches biographikon und Dichter-Album, 7(Cincinnati, 19il). Most of the biographical details known about Stallo's life come from Rattermann's work. Rattermann was himself an active German-American essayist writing in Cincinnati during the 1880s.

q J. B. Stallo, General Principles of the Philosophy of Nature:with anOutline of Some of its Recent Developments Miarigithe, ac ing the Philosophical J /stems ofScheliing and Hegel, and Oiken's _§ys£gjn of Nature (Boston, 1848), vii.

30 Easton, 83.Quoted in Easton, 4.

12 Quoted in Snider, writer of Books. 330.13 Snider, .Movement, 12.14 Snider, Writer.o f Books. 331.

35 Easton, 25.Snider, St..Louis Movement. 127.

17 Henry A. Pochmann, German Culture in America:Philosophical and Literary Influencos* 1600-1900 (Madison, 1957), 259. See also Snider, St. Louis Movement, 118.

18 Easton, 35, 43.19 Bronson Alcott wrote in his journal after visiting

members of the St. Louis Movement, "Westernize is a verb meaning progress.'1 Quoted in Henry A Pochmann, New England Transcendentalism and St . Louis Hegelianism : Phases in the History of American Idea 1 ism (Philadelphia, 1948), 51 .

20 Emerson wrote in a manuscript journal: "here in America [is] a nation ol Germans living with the Organon of Hegel in their hands, which makes the discoveries and thinking ol the English and the Americans look of a Chinese narrowness, and yet good easy dunces that we are, we never expect our inferiority." Quoted in Pochmann, German Culture, 206.

21 William Torrey Harris, "The specu1ative," Journal of Speculative Phi 1osophy, 1 (18 67), 4.

22 Ibid., 5.2 3 Ibxd., 6.2 Snider, St. Louis Movement, 121-22.25 Harris, "Preface," Journal of Speculative Philosophy ,

1 (1867).26 Snider, Writer of Books, 18.27 Snider, St. Louis Movement, 42.

i n ,Pochmann, New England Transcendentalism. 17.31 Ibid., 16.32 Pochmann, German Cu1ture. 640.

33 Snider, W r i t er o f B o o k s, 336.34 Snider, St. Iou is Movement, 25.3 5 Ibid., 135,3 6 Ifeid*/ 36.37 Ibid., loe.3 8 Ibid., 29.3 9 Ibid. , 11').4 0 Ibid.. If-17.4 1 I b I. ,4 2 Ibid., 1vf.4 3 lb jd., 1 -10 .4 4 ibid., 142.4 6 I_b i cl. , 1 4 2-43.4 6 P o c h m a n n , N ow JR ng 1and Transeendenta 1 ism, in4 7 Snider, St . Lou i s Movement, 167 .48 Snider, Writer of Books, 309114 9 Snider, St . Louis Movement, 7 4 .50 Kurt F. Leidecker, Yankee Teacher: The Life

William Torrey Harris (Neui York, 1946).51 Snider, St. Louis Movement, 166.52 Snider, Writer of Books, 30553 Snider, St. Louis Movement, 102.54 Snider. Writer of Books, 307-8.55 Ibid.. 431.56 MDer Franzenthum von qanzer Seele hasste."

Rattermann, 12.

3657 "Ich wollte praktisch we*den, wie es die Amerifcaner

sind.H Quoted in Ibid.; 24.58 Stallo, , viii.59 I M d., vi.6U Ibid., vii.61 Easton, 34.62 Stallo, general Principles, ix.63 In the Belknap edition (Cambridge, 1960) of Stallo's

CQD.6igp.fc§„,̂ ,Dd Theories of Modern Physics (1881), editor Percy W. Bridgman commented that much of Stallo's work did not receive the attention it deserved because it was simply too difficult for most people to understand.

64 william H. Goetzmann, ed., TheAmerican Hegelians;.Jfcte.il isj^y.j>jL^s£^iL America(New York, 1973), 20.

65 MDie Vergangenheit hat kein Recht an die Kraefte der Gegenwart; jedes Zeitalter 1st sich selbst Gesetz.” J. B. Stallo, atdeoJ Abh^pdlUDgeni upd Briefe (New York, 1893).The copy in the Rare Book and Special Collections Library of the University of Illinois was inscribed by Stallo to Rattermann.

66 The exact quote from Hegel was 19Less power would have been displayed.” Quoted in Goetzmann, 20.

67 Stallo, Red ep, 68.68 Ibid., 14.69 MDet Begriff der Republik bei den Amerikanern 1st

wesentlieh der eines Polizeistaats; die Regierung ist alles, das Volk nichts; der Einzelne ist, Dank unseren Maine- Gesetzen und aehnliche Statuten, weder in seinem Hause noch in seiner Haut frei.” Ibid., 19.

70 MDie Welt der Ideen...biiden die Grundlage einer ganz neuen Lebensanschauung." Ibid., 26.

71 HJede Erfahrung, die der Naturforscher sammelt, jedeErscheinung, die er einem allgemeinen Gesetz unterordnet, ist sin Beitrag zusr cIas Alls.* ̂ * # 30*

: U i ;

72 Stallo, Bedsn# 41.73 Easton, 31.74 Stallo, ESSlSD# 32.75 MEin Deutscher, nicht well seine Wiege unter

deutschen Himmel stand....sondern weil sein Geist einen deutschen Stammbaum hatte. Nur aus dem VoIke, fuer welches unaechst Kant und Hegel gedacht und Schiller und Goethe gedichtet, konnte ein Humboldt hervorgehen, und nur dieses Volk erkennt in Humboldts Anschauungen und Ideen die Formen seines eigenen Geistes.” Ibid.. 47.

76 "Hinter dem Lehrer,.,steht der ganze puritanische Fanatismus, der sich noch 4.mmer das Recht anmasst, unser soziales und politisches Leben in seinen Uniform zu huellen.M Ibid.. 179.

77 MDer oberste Grundsatz ihrer Moral ist, dass der hoechste Zweck alles menschlichen Strebens in der Macht und dem Reichthum der Englaender besteht und dass dieser Zweck alle Mittel heiligt? das erste Axiom ihrer Philosophic, dass nichts reale Oder ideale Geltung hat, was sich nicht als saldirender Posten in ihr geschaeftliches Hauptbuch eintragen laesst. *' Ibid., 66.

;8 *Der deutsche Ausdruck ist innig und sinnig wie das deutsche Gemueth.1' Ibid.. 74.

79 Quoted in Forbes, 301.80 Stallo. Reden. 73.81 stallo, Concepts, 6.82 Quoted in Snider, Writer of Books. 330.83 "Die Englander sind keine Metaphysiker." Stallo,

Reden. 68.84 Quoted in Pochmann, New England Transcendentalism.

24.

tiMiogjciste

Anderson, Paul R. Platonism in the Midwest. New York and London: Temple University Publications, 1963*

Brokmeyer, H. C. A Foggy Night at Newport. St. Louis: Gray and Crawford, 1860.Brokmeyor's Hegel-inspired play was indeed so '•foggy*1 that not even Snider could understand it.

A Mechanic's Diary. Washington, D. C.: E. C. Brokmeyer, 1910.Brokmeyer would often hit upon a philosophical insight while doing some everyday task, making this book amusing, if not over]y-significant reading. The philosophical passages do, however, tend to get a bit heavy.

Curti, Merle. The Social Ideas of American Educators with HewChapter on the Last Twenty-five Years. Paterson,New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams, and Co., 1959.A good background essay on William Torrey Harris's influence on the education system.

Dobbert, Guido Andre. The Disintegration of an ImmigrantCommunity: The Cincinnati Germans. 1870-1920. New York: Arno Press, 1980.

Easton, Loyd 0. .ElrttfcI m i i s m Thft QfrHegelians: John B. Stallcu Peter Kaufmann, Moncure Conway, and August Willich. with KeyWritings* Athens: Ohio University Press, 1966.An excellent study. Easton's strong historical detail and his systematic explanation of the intellectual development of Stallo were especially valuable to me.

Forbes, Cleon. "The St. Louis School of Thought." TheMissouri Historical Review. Vols. 25-26 (1931-32).An average presentation of the St. Louis Philosophical Movement. Although Forbes introduces all of the principal he adds little that is new.

Goetzmann, William H., ed. The American Hegelians; AnIntellectual Episode in the History of Western America . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973.A collection of Hegelian source material.

Goss, Charles Frederic. Cincinnati; The Queen City,1768-1912. Vols. I and II. Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1912.A celebratory study of the history and personalities of Cincinnati, typical of many such compendia.

Had1ey, Frances. A Cultural Survey of St. Louis from 1860 to 1904. M.A. Thesis. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1953.

Harmon, Frances B. The Social Philosophy of the St. LouisHegelians. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943.

Harris, William Torrey, "Herbert Spencer." The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Vol. I, No. 1 (1867).Harris outlines the Hegelians' attack on Spencer.

Harris, William Torrey. "The Speculative." The Journal of Speculative Philosophy . Vol. I, No. 1 (1867).A clear and concise explanation of speculative philosophy.

Hawgood, John A. The Tragedy of Cerman-Ainerica; The Germans in the United States of America during the Nineteenth Century— and After. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons,1940

Leidecker, Kurt F. Y_ajikee,.Ieacherr Tbe Li£§.gfJHilllmTorrev Harris. New York: The Philosophical Library, 1946.A well written and detailed biography of Harris.

Perry, Charles M. The St. Louis Movement in Philosophy: Some Source Material. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1930.Perry includes letters written by the surviving St. Louis Movement members or by their families.

Pochmann, Henry A. German Culture in America: Philosophical and Literary Influences, 1600-1900. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957.This comprehensive work, especially the chapter on Emerson's reaction to the Hegelians, proved very helpful.

----. MewEngland-Transcendenta1ism and St. LouisHegelianism:PhasesintheHistory of American idealism. Philadelphia: Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation, 1948.Here Pochmann adopted a rather light tone, reminiscent of Snider, and emphasized the amusing aspects of the St. Louis Movement.

Rattermann, Heinrich A. Gedenkreden. Vortraae. undAbhandlunaen Gelesen im Deutschen Literarlschen Klub von Cincinnati. Cincinnati; Selbstverlag des Verfassers,1906.Rattermann addressed many of the same German cultural issues that Stallo had spoken about some twenty years before, including German language instruction and the temperance movement.

-— . MJohann Bernhard Stallo. Deutsch-Amerikanischer Philosoph, Jurist und Staatsmann," Gesammelte Werke: Deutsch-Amerikanisches Biooraphikon und Dichter Album der Ersten Haelfte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Cincinnati: Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 1911.

41

Rattermann, Heinrich A. Correspondence with J. B, Stallo, in Heinrich A. Rattermann Collection, Illinois Historical Survey, University of Illinois Library.Unfortunately, most of these letters were written in the old script of German which makes them extraordinarily difficult to read.

Schneider, Herbert W. A History. 9.1 American P h U Q ggpto*Orig. publ. 1946; Second ed., New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1963.

Sell, Donna-Christine, and Dennis Francis Walle. Guide tothe Heinrich A. Rattermann Collection of German-American Manuscripts. Robert B. Downs Publication Fund, No. 4. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1979.

Snider, Denton J. The st. Louis Movement in Philosophy. Literature. Education. Psychology with Chapters of Autobiography. St. Louis: Sigma Publishing, 1920.

A Writer of Books in His Genesis. St. Louis: Sigma Publishing, 1910.Both this and the St. Louis Movement are interesting and highly readable. Although one wonders if Snider was altogether historically accurate, his energy and optimism nonetheless seem to embody the movement he was trying to present.

stallo, J. B. The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics. Percy W. Bridgman, ed. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1960.

• General PrincIMss of the Philosophy of Nature: With an Outline of Someof its Recent Developments Among thegermaDSx insL-the gh.nM.mbJLg.al .£xa&£mj9lSchellIna and Hegel, and Oken#s System of Nature. Boston: Wm. Crosby and H. P. Nichols, 1848.A very difficult book. I went pages without having the faintest idea what Stallo was saying.

Stallo, J. B. HDer Materialismus#M Atlantis. Cleveland: 1855, 369-386.A well written attack on the materialists.

Reden. Abhandlunqen, und Briefe. New York: E. Steiger and Co., 2893.A fascinating book. Stallo speaKs on a wide range of topics with a great deal of authority.

wittke, Carl. WeWho Built America; TheSaga.of-theImmigrant.Orig. publ. 1939? Second revised ed., Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University, 1967.