39. Renewal of the World View

All previous renewals were not as radical as the one that took place in our century.

Those at the cutting edge of knowledge today can no longer relate to the feelings of the great minds of the first half of the century. If I am to describe the transformation, I have to say that man has gone from being a weak, dependent creature to a self-confident, proud one. He no longer wants to be governed. He wants to take his fate into his own hands. Repeated attempts have been made to develop this world view. But a remnant of the old sentiments has always remained. Hence the many relapses. For example, Fichte. What he said in Jena and what he said in Berlin.

The external, political revolutions cannot fulfill their task if the internal revolution of the minds is lacking. All effects were inadequate. Dull indifference after the wars of liberation. The heart yearned for liberation; the head had not yet been liberated.

The July Revolution was a relief for the minds languishing in dull sadness. Börne in Frankfurt.

The great ones were not interested. Goethe.

His room reflected what was a deep character trait of the time.

He was interested in the intellectual revolution. He knew that swords and cannons can only win if they have a great worldview to defend.

They all could not go with the poets of the revolution. The new worldview had not entered their blood and therefore it did not produce the necessary pathos.

With the tones of an old worldview, old religious ideas, they stormily demanded the dawn of freedom.

But the old worldview, the old religion and the old forms of state and society belong together.

This is the meaning and spirit of Hegel's philosophy. This world view has been much criticized, much attacked, much ridiculed. Hegel has even been accused of denouncing the freedom swears of state power.

And yet [he] only spoke the last right word that had to be spoken if the old worldview was to be fully realized to the last end.

Reason is ideas. And Hegel's ideas were the old ideas. The new ones had yet to be born. They had to be there before they could become real. The bearers of the new ideas did not want to have anything to do with reality imbued with the old ideas.

Hegel was able to become a professor because he was rooted in the old reality. Feuerbach could not become a professor. As a professor, he would have had to fit into the existing order of things.

Indeed, Feuerbach could not even join the political revolution. Reality was too immature for the revolution to be victorious.

The singers of the forties did not emphasize positive new views, did not build up new forms of life and society, but rather negated and fought against the old, the old institutions.

Young German Romanticism: all still believing in God, Christian. Real politics cannot be practiced without a foundation of Weltanschauung. This Weltanschauung evokes the pathos of progress, it also evokes the revolutionary pathos. It was elements of an old Weltanschauung that evoked the pathos of political lyricism.

Goethe and the July revolution. – Feuerbach, the new pathfinder, standing on the ground of knowledge.

Stirner, of a different nature, out of old political pathos, old political energy. Therefore, everything is in the air. He remains the least [noted] in our time of all those who stand on the ground of the natural-scientific world view.