International Archives of the History of Ideas 217 Archives internationales d'histoire des idées Cecilia Muratori The First German Philosopher The Mysticism of Jakob Böhme as Interpreted by Hegel The First German Philosopher INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D’HISTOIRE DES IDÉES 217 THE FIRST GERMAN PHILOSOPHER Cecilia Muratori Board of Directors: Founding Editors: Paul Dibon† and Richard H. Popkin† Director: Sarah Hutton, University of York, United Kingdom Associate Directors: J.C. Laursen, University of California, Riverside, USA Guido Giglioni, Warburg Institute, London, UK Editorial Board: K. Vermeir, Paris; J.R. Maia Neto, Belo Horizonte; M.J.B. Allen, Los Angeles; J.-R. Armogathe, Paris; S. Clucas, London; P. Harrison, Oxford; J. Henry, Edinburgh; M. Mulsow, Erfurt; G. Paganini, Vercelli; J. Popkin, Lexington; J. Robertson, Cambridge; G.A.J. Rogers, Keele; J.F. Sebastian, Bilbao; A. Thomson, Paris; Th. Verbeek, Utrecht More information about this series at h ttp://www.springer.com/series/5640 Cecilia Muratori The First German Philosopher The Mysticism of Jakob Böhme as Interpreted by Hegel Translated from Italian by Richard Dixon and Raphaëlle Burns Cecilia Muratori University of Warwick Coventry , United Kingdom Translated from “Il primo fi losofo tedesco. Il misticismo di Jacob Böhme nell’interpretazione hegeliana”. Copyright © 2012 Edizioni ETS – Pisa, w ww.edizioniets.com ISSN 0066-6610 ISSN 2215-0307 (electronic) International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées ISBN 978-94-017-7338-6 ISBN 978-94-017-7339-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-7339-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015958922 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 T his work is subject to copyright. 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Dordrecht is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Contents Note on Translations ....................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... xi List of Abbreviations ....................................................................................... xiii Introduction ..................................................................................................... xvii 1 The Reception of Böhme’s Philosophy Around 1800 ............................. 1 1 Preamble: Böhme’s Comeback in Germany and the Romantic Reception .............................................. 1 1.1 The “Mystical Cobbler” and Franckenberg’s Biography of Böhme .................................... 1 1.2 Böhme and the Jena Circle ........................................................... 7 1.2.1 Tieck’s “Hypochondriac Enthusiasm” for Böhme’s Writings ............................................................................ 9 1.2.2 Böhme’s P oesie According to Friedrich Schlegel ............ 20 2 The Reception of Böhme’s Philosophy Through the Theories of Animal Magnetism and Theosophy ............................. 29 2.1 Naturphilosophie and Animal Magnetism: Nature’s Dynamics and the Mystical Experience of Magnetic Sleep ...................................................... 29 2.2 Böhme’s Mysticism Between Paracelsus and Theosophy ............ 42 3 The Historical Context of Hegel’s Encounter with Theosophia Revelata .................................................... 56 3.1 Magnetic ‘Torpor’ and Böhme’s Speculation: The Reasons for a Missing Link .............................. 58 3.1.1 The Correspondence Between Hegel and van Ghert ........ 58 3.1.2 Animal Magnetism and H ellsehen in the Encyclopedia ... 66 3.2 The Infl uence of Pietism and Mysticism on the Young Hegel....................................................................... 73 v vi Contents 2 Two Different Conceptions of Mysticism in Hegel’s Writings .............. 87 1 The Meaning of Mysticism and Its Role in the Early Writings ............ 87 1.1 Mysticism in Fragments on Popular Religion and Christianity ............................................................................ 88 1.2 Mystical Action and Mystical Object ........................................... 97 1.2.1 Mystical Action and the Difference Between the Mystical and the Symbolic ......................................... 97 1.2.2 The Mystical Object and Its Contradictions ..................... 104 1.2.3 Luther and the “Mystical Point” of the Ritual .................. 112 1.3 Speaking Mystically: Mysticism, Movement and Schwärmerei in The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate ................................................................................... 123 2 Mysticism and Mystifi cation: The Hegelian Attack on the Mystical Alienation of the Romantics and of the Followers of Schelling .......................................................... 133 2.1 The Leap Beyond the Limit and the Pistol Shot in the Preface to the Phenomenology ................................... 133 2.2 Hegel’s Review of Solger’s Writings and the “Mystical Tendency” of Romanticism ............................. 145 2.3 From Mystifi cation to Mysticism ................................................. 151 3 Mysticism and Speculation ................................................................... 159 3.1 The Mystery and the Secret .......................................................... 161 3.2 Mystical Enthusiasm and the Movement of Thought ................... 172 3.2.1 The Neoplatonists and the Mystical Scholastics .............. 172 3.2.2 The Dispute over the Notion of Mystical Enthusiasm ( Schwärmerei) ............................................... 179 3.2.3 The Case of Jakob Böhme ................................................ 184 4 Appendix. The Loss of Mystical Mobility: Schelling ........................... 192 3 Hegel as Interpreter of Böhme ................................................................. 201 1 The Beginnings: References to Böhme in the Jena Texts ..................... 201 1.1 Mysticism as a Middle Way: Böhme and Oriental Mysticism .................................................... 202 1.2 The “Life Cycle of God”: Böhme’s Use of Imagery in Fragment 49 .................................................... 209 1.3 The Dialectic Vitality of the Divine Triangle ............................... 214 2 Böhme in Hegel’s Published Works ...................................................... 219 2.1 References in the E ncyclopedia and in L ogic, Or: What Is Alive and What Is Dead in Böhme’s Philosophy ................................................................. 221 2.1.1 Böhme and Paracelsus ...................................................... 222 2.1.2 Lucifer and the Negativity of Nature: The Z usatz to Paragraph 248 of the E ncyclopedia .............................. 228 2.1.3 The “Famous Question Regarding the Origin of Evil in the World” ........................................................ 231 2.1.4 The Movement of Böhme’s Quality ................................. 237 Contents vii 3 Böhme in the Lectures ........................................................................... 244 3.1 The Concept and Its Representation ............................................. 245 3.1.1 The Barbarity of the Enthusiast ........................................ 246 3.1.2 Böhme’s Struggle at the Origins of German Philosophy ...................................................... 254 3.1.3 Rediscovering the Vitality of the Concept: Translating Böhme’s Terminology ...................................................... 259 3.2 Trinity, Movement and Speculation .............................................. 266 3.2.1 The Serpent’s Truth: Division, Knowledge and Self-Consciousness .................................................... 267 3.2.2 Dialectics of Lucifer’s Separation .................................... 274 3.2.3 The Speculative Mystery of Evil ...................................... 281 Conclusion, or How to Liberate Böhme’s Philosophy ................................. 289 Appendix: H.G. Hotho, Nachschrift aus Hegels Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie (Winter Term 1823–1824), fol. 129v–fol. 136r ............................................................................................ 293 Bibliography .................................................................................................... 303 Name Index ...................................................................................................... 317 Subject Index ................................................................................................... 323 Note on Tr anslations A ll translations from German into English are by Cecilia Muratori, unless otherwise stated. Since terminological consistency is crucial to the development of the argu- ment, most passages quoted from non-English primary sources were translated especially for this volume. Nevertheless, references to important modern transla- tions of Hegel’s works are given in the footnotes, and signifi cant divergences are noted. Partly for reasons of copyright permissions, quotations from Hegel and other primary sources are taken wherever possible from editions now in the public domain. In these cases, references to current standard editions have also been included in the footnotes. This system has been adopted for quotations in which any differences between the older and the newer editions are minor and do not affect the formulation and the meaning of the passages in question. (Signifi cant differences are always pointed out.) This system of referencing also has the advantage that the reader can easily consult online texts in the public domain or choose to use the newer editions. Raphaëlle Burns translated the Introduction, Chapter 2, and the Conclusion; Richard Dixon translated Chapters 1 and 3 and revised the entire manuscript. ix