THE PHILOSOPHY OF BAADER.
[The following letter from Dr. Franz Hoffmann to the St. Louis Philosophical Society has been handed us for publication. It gives us pleasure to lay before our readers so able a presentation of the claims of Baader, and we trust that some of our countrymen will be led by it to investigate the original sources herein referred to.
We are requested to correct a misstatement that occurs in the first paragraph regarding the objects of the Philosophical Society. It was not founded for the special purpose of “studying German Philosophy from Kant to Hegel,” although it has many members who are occupied chiefly in that field. The Society includes among its members advocates of widely differing systems, all, however, working in the spirit of the Preamble to the Constitution, which says: “The object of this Society is to encourage the study and development of Speculative Philosophy; to foster an application of its results to Art, Science, and Religion; and to establish a philosophical basis for the professions of Law, Medicine, Divinity, Politics, Education, Art, and Literature.” We are indebted to Dr. A. Strothotte for the translation of the letter.—Editor.]
Würzburg, Dec. 28, 1866.
Mr. President: In the first number of Vol. XLIX of the “Zeitschrift für Philosophie,” published at Halle, in Prussia, edited by Fichte, Ulrici and Wirth, notice is taken of a philosophical society, organized at St. Louis, with the object of pursuing the study of German philosophy from Kant to Hegel.
This fact promises a correlation of philosophical movements between North America and Germany which is of great importance. I presume, however, that you have already been led, or that you will be led, to go back beyond Kant to the first traces of German philosophy, and proceed from Hegel to the present time.
Now, although a thorough and comprehensive view of Hegel’s philosophy is in the first place to be recommended, yet the other directions in the movement of thought must not be lost sight of.
In the Berlin organ of the Philosophical Society of the Hegelians—Der Gedanke—edited by Michelet, may be found, as you perhaps know, an index of the works of Hegel’s school, by Rosenkranz, whereas on the other hand the rich literature of the anti-Hegelian writers is nowhere met with in any degree of completeness. Many of them, however, are noticed in Fichte’s journal, and in the more recent works on the history of philosophy, particularly in those of Erdmann, and still more in those of Ueberweg.
Among the prominent movements in philosophical thinking, during and after the time of Hegel, the profound utterances of a great and genial teacher, Franz Baader, reach a degree of prominence, even higher than is admitted by Erdmann and Ueberweg. This may be readily perceived by referring to the dissertation on Franz Baader, by Carl Philipp Fischer, of Erlangen, and still more by having recourse to Hamberger, Lutterbeck, and to my own writings.