On the Essence of Philosophical Criticism

The unsigned manifesto that opened Hegel and Schelling's joint journal, claiming the right to judge philosophy by its own idea and to reject whatever lacks it.

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel29 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Über das Wesen der philosophischen Kritik überhaupt
First published: 1802(aged 32)
Original language: German

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Overview

No article in the Critical Journal of Philosophy (Kritisches Journal der Philosophie) carried a signature. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Hegel edited it together in Jena, the Tübingen house of Cotta published it, and in 1802 its first issue opened with these pages, the journal's statement of what it was for. Who wrote them has never been settled: they are generally credited to Hegel, Schelling's share is still argued over, and the text is printed today in the collected works of both men. Its argument concerns the right to judge: criticism in art or science, it says, needs a yardstick that belongs neither to the critic nor to the author under review, and in philosophy that yardstick is the idea of philosophy itself. Where a book shows even a glimpse of that idea, criticism can hold the book to it and show where it falls short; where the idea is absent, criticism has only one move left, which is rejection. The targets are named by type rather than by person: the author who takes a single angle from Kant or Fichte and announces it as a new system, and the popular philosophy that flattens every thought until anyone can own it. Against the second the essay recalls an old story about Alexander the Great, who wrote from the depths of Asia to rebuke his teacher Aristotle for publishing what they had discussed in private. Philosophy, the essay holds, must let the people rise to it, never lower itself to them. The journal ran to six issues before it ended in 1803, the year Schelling left Jena.

Key concepts

What yardstick can criticism of a philosophy use?

The idea of philosophy itself. Criticism of art does not invent its standard for each painting; it presupposes the idea of beautiful art. In the same way, the essay argues, a philosophical critic judges a book by the idea of philosophy that belongs to neither the critic nor the author. Without that shared measure, a review would only set one private opinion against another.

What does the essay call 'unphilosophy'?

Unphilosophy is writing that presents itself as philosophy while the idea of philosophy is absent from it. Criticism can do nothing with it but reject it. The essay's example is a manner that philosophizes 'provisionally': it lays out its material not because a system of knowledge needs it, but because such material seems useful for exercising the mind. What wants to be nothing but philosophy, and is not, counts as nothing.

How does real originality differ from mere peculiarity here?

Genius, the essay grants, gives every true philosophy the stamp of its own form. Peculiarity only mistakes itself for originality: it invents a 'wholly new' system, yet stays on the broad highway of the culture around it. The test is recognition. Whoever has grasped the idea of philosophy recognizes it in other systems too, and so has no need to claim a name of their own.

What is popular philosophy, and why does the essay fight it?

Popular philosophy, in the essay's sense, is the habit of making every philosophical idea common the moment it appears, until it fits the everyday understanding. The essay calls that everyday understanding the local, temporary narrowness of one generation. Flattening a thought, it argues, does not share it but empties it, and nothing is more repellent than turning philosophy's seriousness into platitude.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The right to judge a philosophy

By what right does anyone call a philosophy bad? Unless the yardstick belongs to neither critic nor author, every verdict is just one taste set against another.

Criticism needs a measure independent of judge and judged alike, and in philosophy that measure is the idea of philosophy itself. Where a work shows a glimpse of it, the critic holds the work to its own best intention. Where the idea is missing, only rejection remains. Two targets are named by type: the writer who borrows one angle from Kant or Fichte and calls it a new system, and popular philosophy, which flattens every thought for easy ownership. Philosophy, it insists, must let the people rise to it, never stoop.

philosophical criticism
absolute
philosophy
finitude
knowledge
subjectivity
reason
objectivity
philosophical method
systematic philosophy
popularization
truth
modernity
originality
common sense
individuality
genius
novelty
polemics

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Within this work

passages held: 29
distinct concepts: 63
by passages held, corpus-wide: #735

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “absolute” and “finitude”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 6 concepts, joined by 11 pairings. 15 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
absolute	finitude	3
philosophical criticism	philosophy	3
philosophical criticism	subjectivity	3
absolute	knowledge	2
absolute	philosophical criticism	1
absolute	philosophy	1
absolute	subjectivity	1
finitude	subjectivity	1
knowledge	philosophical criticism	1
knowledge	philosophy	1
knowledge	subjectivity	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1801 The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy (Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophie)
The book that opened Hegel's Jena years and first put his name before the public — as Schelling's ally, a role his essays for their Critical Journal continued.
DE
1802 Faith and Knowledge (Glauben und Wissen)
Written at the height of the alliance with Schelling: the longest of Hegel's pieces for their journal, and his fullest early reckoning with Kant.
DE
1802 How the Ordinary Human Understanding Takes Philosophy (Wie der gemeine Menschenverstand die Philosophie nehme)
Of Hegel's reviews for the Critical Journal, the most openly mocking: the journal's programme of severity turned on a single named Kantian.
DE
1802 On the Essence of Philosophical Criticism (Über das Wesen der philosophischen Kritik überhaupt) you are here DE
1802 On the Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law (Über die wissenschaftlichen Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts)
Spread across the Critical Journal's last two issues: Hegel's longest published early writing on law and the state, composed while he was still an unsalaried lecturer at Jena.
DE
1802 Relationship of Skepticism to Philosophy (Verhältnis des Skeptizismus zur Philosophie)
Between the Krug review and Faith and Knowledge in the Critical Journal's run, the essay in which Hegel first says what doubt does for philosophy.
DE
1807 Phenomenology of Spirit (Die Phänomenologie des Geistes)
Written as Napoleon's army entered Jena and published in 1807, the book Hegel meant as the doorway into his system — and the one many readers still enter him through.
DE
1812 Science of Logic (Wissenschaft der Logik)
The larger of Hegel's two versions of the Logic, written away from any university while he ran a Nuremberg school; the metaphysical core the rest of the system rests on.
DE
1817 Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline (Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse)
The frame for Hegel's other books: its first part condenses the Science of Logic, and the Philosophy of Right expands one section of its third part. Hegel taught from it and rewrote it twice.
DEEN
1821 Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts)
The last book Hegel published in his lifetime apart from new editions of the Encyclopaedia: the textbook of his Berlin law lectures, and the one of his books most argued over by political readers.
DE
1831 On the English Reform Bill (Über die englische Reformbill)
Some three decades after his first, unpublished pamphlets on Württemberg and on the German constitution, Hegel's last venture into the politics of the day.
DE
1833 Lectures on the History of Philosophy (Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie)
Among the posthumous lecture books, the course Hegel carried through nearly his whole teaching life, and the one that closes on his thanks to the students who had followed it.
DE
1835 The Philosophy of Fine Art (Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik)
Not a book Hegel wrote but Berlin lectures assembled by a student after his death — the most influential philosophy of art of the nineteenth century, and a contested reconstruction of it.
EN
1835 Who Thinks Abstractly? (Wer denkt abstrakt?)
Hegel in the manner of a magazine essayist: short, comic and aimed at the general reader, though he never published it himself.
DE
1837 Lectures on the Philosophy of History (Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte)
For decades the most widely read of Hegel's works, and now the most contested — lectures on world history, published after his death, reading it as the growth of human freedom.
DE

— or open another of their works