Drinking the Kool-Aid
Jeffrey Reid, The Anti-Romantic: Hegel Against Ironic Romanticism
Bloomsbury, 208pp, £65.00, ISBN 9781472574817
reviewed by Alex Fletcher
The trope of irony, it is easy to forget – especially after several decades of a particular form of postmodern irony and its new incarnation in the completely vacuous form of hipster irony – used to carry a significant socio-political, aesthetic and philosophical weight. Marx dispatched countless opponents through his masterly deployment of it and Socrates was obliged to sip hemlock because of its corrupting and corroding force. ‘Drinking the Kool-Aid’, was how Hal Foster referred to his own inability to not sup from the poisonous cup of postmodernism – indefinitely consuming hipster micro-brewed pale ales seems to be our own fate.
This all-consuming and self-consuming drive of irony is intensely embodied in the short-lived moment of Jena or Early German Romanticism, the subject of Jeffery Reid’s book The Anti-Romantic: Hegel Against Ironic Romanticism. Also known as the Athenäum circle (after the title of the journal that they published together), the movement only really found full expression between around 1798 and 1800, and is essentially finished when Hegel (the real subject of the book) arrives in town, in January 1801. Although brief, the impact that this small collective of individuals had on post-Kantian philosophy was significant; this was especially the case, as Reid’s book details, with GWF Hegel. However, the movement, one could argue, has been much undervalued (perhaps the result of Hegel’s condemnation) and it is only fairly recently that German and Anglo-American scholars have begun a reevaluation of the topic. This has also been spurred by the Jena Romantics’ importance for German Critical Theory (especially Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno), but also French theorists such as Maurice Blanchot, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, who predominantly focus on the idea of the romantic fragment.
Reid’s intention, however, as he states in his introduction, is not to compare Hegel’s thought with the Romantics’, i.e. to set up a philosophical confrontation on an even playing field for us the reader to count the goals scored and ultimate winner. Hegel vs. Team Athanäum takes place within an arena conceived by Hegel, where the Romantic hooligans pose a destructive threat to the stadium that is Hegelian Science. If a band of theorists are now recovering Early German Romanticism, Reid seems to want to remind us that Hegel has much to say about the subject, although the Romantics, ‘which blossoms before Hegelian philosophy finds its wings,’ remains (explicitly) ‘mute’ with regard to Hegel. Moreover, it is not Reid’s concern whether Hegel’s interpretation is faithful or not (in fact, he states right away that it is unfaithful due to its polemical nature), but to show that Hegel’s philosophical evolution is one of ‘toughening’ with regard to Jena Romanticism and a staking out of a contrary position:
The three principle culprits in question for Hegel are Friedrich Schlegel (his brother August gets let off the hook due to his excellent translations of Shakespeare), Novalis and Schleiermacher. The Anti-Romantic is consequently divided into three chapters bearing the names of these individuals. Schlegel is the central and most perverse figure for Hegel’s critique; a perversity that is particularly expressed in his proto-postmodern novel Lucinde (think 50 Shades of Grey with the irony and self-reflexivity of Stewart Home), which ironically claims to raise sexual enjoyment to an expression of metaphysical transcendence. Hegel also attacks the theologian Schleiermacher for defending this scandalous novel, and basing his religion on one of sentimental and subjective feeling (Hegel often comes off as a bit of a prude). Hegel considers romantic irony to be an expression of subjective individuality, which as Reid emphasises, articulates itself in ‘discourse’. As Reid observes, ‘ironic discourse is the truth of the romantic individual quite simply because the content of such language is entirely subjective,’ and opposed to Hegel’s scientific objectivity.
The first chapter continually deploys phrases such as ‘objectively true’ and ‘true objectivity’ – and many other variants – without much explanation of what Hegel means. Reid helpfully provides an ‘Intermezzo’, a between-chapter that seeks to contend a link between Scientific objectivity and discourse in Hegel’s philosophy, which is compellingly argued. Reid is not arguing that objective spirit for Hegel is nothing but text (a postmodern reading), but that objectivity is mediated through language and develops into a content-rich, meaningful and systematic scientific discourse. We can see the threat that Romanticism then poses for Hegel if its subjectivity is directed against Science (an objective content-rich discourse, which is nonetheless a speculative philosophy, i.e. not merely empirical). Ironic discourse fragments true objectivity (or systematic truth) into an infinite number of individual things and subjective determinations. The strength of Hegel’s polemical reaction can only be comprehended, Reid claims, in relation to the danger that ironic discourse represents for the discourse of Science. Reid refers a few times to Hegel’s considerable pedagogical activity as a rebuttal to the idea of the notorious Hegelian end of history in an already-realised Absolute knowing, and I found the extensive endnotes, intermezzos, codas in The Anti-Romantic helpful as pedagogical tools for clarifying Hegel’s complex, and arguably historically open philosophy.
Poor Novalis, according to Hegel, incarnates a terminal form of romantic irony, narrated as a kind of black comedy. Hegel goes as far as to interpret Novalis’ actual death by consumption in 1801, at the age of 29, as a manifestation of the discursive illness of romantic irony. Novalis’ subjective individuality, his detached inwardness, constitutes a total disappearance of the world and the self, which is actualised in his death. Novalis’ tragic ‘beautiful soul’ is thus captured as a mere moment in the narration of Hegelian Science, which although preserved, is negated in order to progress on. A second Intermezzo follows the Novalis chapter and attempts to take stock of the one-sidedness for the Hegelian system of both Schlegel and Novalis and what he hyperbolically calls their radical ‘barbarity’. This is followed by the chapter on Schleiermacher, who as Reid puts it, ‘incarnates a kind of monstrous hybrid of both.’ Schleiermacher’s barbarity manifests a contemporary malaise, for Hegel, determined by the ‘modern cultures of empiricism, skepticism and feeling.’ Schleiermacher’s combination of Enlightenment empiricism and a skeptical inwardness, Hegel argues, gives rise to a culture of self-feeling. Here truth can only mean mere self-certainty; a culture of monadic individuality with no room for a true community.
The Anti-Romantic therefore intricately constructs Hegel’s philosophy through these three figures (often, like most philosophers do, referred to in elliptical fashion). As already stated, all three engender a world deprived of any objective essence and meaning and although Science takes place in language, for Hegel, Reid argues that it is only to the extent that language is humanly lived (what Hegel calls ethical life) that its truth proves fully objective. In the conclusion Reid then makes a leap, although hinted at throughout the book, and considers that it is ‘possible to see Hegel’s polemical treatment of ironic romanticism as a critique of postmodernity, which is fundamentally characterized by expressions of critical sophistry, skepticism, and self-feeling.’
The Anti-Romantic could be conceived as written from a similar standpoint to Hegel’s, which then justifies a reevaluation of that time as necessary. Postmodernism, like Early German Romanticism (although lasting longer) was short lived. Yet our world, like the world following the dissolution of Jena Romanticism, which Hegel lived through, is still constituted and consumed by forms of postmodern irony through and through. It does not take too much imagination to recognise in our own contemporary world many of the traits identified in Hegel’s critique of romantic irony; is not his quip about ‘self-conscious vanitization’ not an ideal description of the contemporary hipster? Even the cover of The Anti-Romantic, which features an image of Hegel, mouth cut open South Park style, devouring Jeffrey Reid’s name, is consumed by this ironic world. Reid obviously feels guilty about the one-sided portrayal of the Jena Romantics, however, and offers extensive quotes in the endnotes and two appendixes with essays on readings of Schlegel’s and Novalis’ philosophical engagements with science, especially chemistry.
Although I found the The Anti-Romantic extremely worthwhile and thought provoking, I could not but help feel that focusing on language as a tool of ‘serious’ science, comes at the expense of thinking about Hegel’s necessarily literary and often ironic (as well as satirical and parodying) style. Reid may argue this is simply a moment in the Science which is overcome, but as Bertolt Brecht acutely observed: ‘He has the makings of one of the greatest humorists among the philosophers…I've yet to meet anybody without a sense of humour who understood Hegel.’
This all-consuming and self-consuming drive of irony is intensely embodied in the short-lived moment of Jena or Early German Romanticism, the subject of Jeffery Reid’s book The Anti-Romantic: Hegel Against Ironic Romanticism. Also known as the Athenäum circle (after the title of the journal that they published together), the movement only really found full expression between around 1798 and 1800, and is essentially finished when Hegel (the real subject of the book) arrives in town, in January 1801. Although brief, the impact that this small collective of individuals had on post-Kantian philosophy was significant; this was especially the case, as Reid’s book details, with GWF Hegel. However, the movement, one could argue, has been much undervalued (perhaps the result of Hegel’s condemnation) and it is only fairly recently that German and Anglo-American scholars have begun a reevaluation of the topic. This has also been spurred by the Jena Romantics’ importance for German Critical Theory (especially Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno), but also French theorists such as Maurice Blanchot, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, who predominantly focus on the idea of the romantic fragment.
Reid’s intention, however, as he states in his introduction, is not to compare Hegel’s thought with the Romantics’, i.e. to set up a philosophical confrontation on an even playing field for us the reader to count the goals scored and ultimate winner. Hegel vs. Team Athanäum takes place within an arena conceived by Hegel, where the Romantic hooligans pose a destructive threat to the stadium that is Hegelian Science. If a band of theorists are now recovering Early German Romanticism, Reid seems to want to remind us that Hegel has much to say about the subject, although the Romantics, ‘which blossoms before Hegelian philosophy finds its wings,’ remains (explicitly) ‘mute’ with regard to Hegel. Moreover, it is not Reid’s concern whether Hegel’s interpretation is faithful or not (in fact, he states right away that it is unfaithful due to its polemical nature), but to show that Hegel’s philosophical evolution is one of ‘toughening’ with regard to Jena Romanticism and a staking out of a contrary position:
The fact that the critique of Early Romanticism gathers strength, in writings and lectures, more than 20 years after the demise of the movement itself already indicates that Hegel does not consider the ironic current to be dead.
The three principle culprits in question for Hegel are Friedrich Schlegel (his brother August gets let off the hook due to his excellent translations of Shakespeare), Novalis and Schleiermacher. The Anti-Romantic is consequently divided into three chapters bearing the names of these individuals. Schlegel is the central and most perverse figure for Hegel’s critique; a perversity that is particularly expressed in his proto-postmodern novel Lucinde (think 50 Shades of Grey with the irony and self-reflexivity of Stewart Home), which ironically claims to raise sexual enjoyment to an expression of metaphysical transcendence. Hegel also attacks the theologian Schleiermacher for defending this scandalous novel, and basing his religion on one of sentimental and subjective feeling (Hegel often comes off as a bit of a prude). Hegel considers romantic irony to be an expression of subjective individuality, which as Reid emphasises, articulates itself in ‘discourse’. As Reid observes, ‘ironic discourse is the truth of the romantic individual quite simply because the content of such language is entirely subjective,’ and opposed to Hegel’s scientific objectivity.
The first chapter continually deploys phrases such as ‘objectively true’ and ‘true objectivity’ – and many other variants – without much explanation of what Hegel means. Reid helpfully provides an ‘Intermezzo’, a between-chapter that seeks to contend a link between Scientific objectivity and discourse in Hegel’s philosophy, which is compellingly argued. Reid is not arguing that objective spirit for Hegel is nothing but text (a postmodern reading), but that objectivity is mediated through language and develops into a content-rich, meaningful and systematic scientific discourse. We can see the threat that Romanticism then poses for Hegel if its subjectivity is directed against Science (an objective content-rich discourse, which is nonetheless a speculative philosophy, i.e. not merely empirical). Ironic discourse fragments true objectivity (or systematic truth) into an infinite number of individual things and subjective determinations. The strength of Hegel’s polemical reaction can only be comprehended, Reid claims, in relation to the danger that ironic discourse represents for the discourse of Science. Reid refers a few times to Hegel’s considerable pedagogical activity as a rebuttal to the idea of the notorious Hegelian end of history in an already-realised Absolute knowing, and I found the extensive endnotes, intermezzos, codas in The Anti-Romantic helpful as pedagogical tools for clarifying Hegel’s complex, and arguably historically open philosophy.
Poor Novalis, according to Hegel, incarnates a terminal form of romantic irony, narrated as a kind of black comedy. Hegel goes as far as to interpret Novalis’ actual death by consumption in 1801, at the age of 29, as a manifestation of the discursive illness of romantic irony. Novalis’ subjective individuality, his detached inwardness, constitutes a total disappearance of the world and the self, which is actualised in his death. Novalis’ tragic ‘beautiful soul’ is thus captured as a mere moment in the narration of Hegelian Science, which although preserved, is negated in order to progress on. A second Intermezzo follows the Novalis chapter and attempts to take stock of the one-sidedness for the Hegelian system of both Schlegel and Novalis and what he hyperbolically calls their radical ‘barbarity’. This is followed by the chapter on Schleiermacher, who as Reid puts it, ‘incarnates a kind of monstrous hybrid of both.’ Schleiermacher’s barbarity manifests a contemporary malaise, for Hegel, determined by the ‘modern cultures of empiricism, skepticism and feeling.’ Schleiermacher’s combination of Enlightenment empiricism and a skeptical inwardness, Hegel argues, gives rise to a culture of self-feeling. Here truth can only mean mere self-certainty; a culture of monadic individuality with no room for a true community.
The Anti-Romantic therefore intricately constructs Hegel’s philosophy through these three figures (often, like most philosophers do, referred to in elliptical fashion). As already stated, all three engender a world deprived of any objective essence and meaning and although Science takes place in language, for Hegel, Reid argues that it is only to the extent that language is humanly lived (what Hegel calls ethical life) that its truth proves fully objective. In the conclusion Reid then makes a leap, although hinted at throughout the book, and considers that it is ‘possible to see Hegel’s polemical treatment of ironic romanticism as a critique of postmodernity, which is fundamentally characterized by expressions of critical sophistry, skepticism, and self-feeling.’
The Anti-Romantic could be conceived as written from a similar standpoint to Hegel’s, which then justifies a reevaluation of that time as necessary. Postmodernism, like Early German Romanticism (although lasting longer) was short lived. Yet our world, like the world following the dissolution of Jena Romanticism, which Hegel lived through, is still constituted and consumed by forms of postmodern irony through and through. It does not take too much imagination to recognise in our own contemporary world many of the traits identified in Hegel’s critique of romantic irony; is not his quip about ‘self-conscious vanitization’ not an ideal description of the contemporary hipster? Even the cover of The Anti-Romantic, which features an image of Hegel, mouth cut open South Park style, devouring Jeffrey Reid’s name, is consumed by this ironic world. Reid obviously feels guilty about the one-sided portrayal of the Jena Romantics, however, and offers extensive quotes in the endnotes and two appendixes with essays on readings of Schlegel’s and Novalis’ philosophical engagements with science, especially chemistry.
Although I found the The Anti-Romantic extremely worthwhile and thought provoking, I could not but help feel that focusing on language as a tool of ‘serious’ science, comes at the expense of thinking about Hegel’s necessarily literary and often ironic (as well as satirical and parodying) style. Reid may argue this is simply a moment in the Science which is overcome, but as Bertolt Brecht acutely observed: ‘He has the makings of one of the greatest humorists among the philosophers…I've yet to meet anybody without a sense of humour who understood Hegel.’