Much has happened in the field of Danish Golden Age studies and Kierkegaard studies since the original publication of the present tome in 2007. I was therefore delighted to have the opportunity to go back to the text and revise it in the light of the research that has taken place in the intervening period. The present tome has been substantially augmented and improved vis-à-vis the first edition. Most of the original analyses have been rewritten or supplemented, and several new sections have been added to treat new material.
I have slightly modified the periodization of what I have designated the second stage of the Danish Hegel reception which is the subject of the present tome. The first edition of this work ended with a section on Hans Martensen’s article “The Present Religious Crisis,” which appeared in Heiberg’s Intelligensblade on March 15, 1842.1 It is of course absurd to talk about periods of intellectual history beginning or ending on a single day. Ideas take time to develop and disseminate, and this is seldom a quick process. When intellectual historians try to define and delineate specific periods, it is always with the caveat in mind that these are artificial constructs that are used to provide a general framework for understanding what is an often messy and chaotic reality. As I continued to work on the material, it became clear to me that it was best to mark the end of this tome with Brøchner and the examination scandal at the close of 1841. By this time there had already been a fall in the popularity of Martensen’s lectures at the university, which signaled the end of what I have designated the second period in the Danish Hegel reception. As a result, the four sections from what was Chapter 6 in the original edition of the present tome have been moved to Tome III, which begins with the year 1842. The second period is thus now regarded as encompassing the years from 1837 to 1841.
With regard to formalia, the present tome follows the same basic principles established in the first tome as they are described in the Preface to the Second Edition of that work.2 It has been a desideratum to maintain consistency as much as possible with the formalia throughout all three tomes of this study. The present tome uses first editions and printings for the works examined here. For references to Hegel’s works, the original editions have been used
Since the Jubiläumsausgabe is based on Hegel’s Werke, it has been beneficial to use it as the standard edition for our purposes.6 However, a problem arises with the referencing of the first and second editions of the Lectures on the Philosophy of History.7 In the present tome and the following one, it is important to distinguish which of these two editions is being referenced by the Danish authors. I have generally used the standard English translation of the lectures;8 however, it should be noted that this translation uses the second edition from 1840 as its textual basis as does the Jubiläumsausgabe. When referencing both the first edition from 1837 and the second edition, I have generally provided the parallel references in the English translation and the Jubiläumsausgabe, although strictly speaking these do not apply to the 1837 edition. I have followed this practice for the sake of simplicity and as a help to the reader, although this is admittedly problematic from a philological point of view.
As in Tome I, in referencing unpaginated Danish journals, I have added the de facto pagination in square brackets. An exception to this principle is Heiberg’s Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, where the references in the square brackets refer to the page numbers in Uffe Andreasen’s more accessible facsimile edition.12 I have also followed this principle for references to The Corsair, where I include in square brackets the page numbers as they appear in Andreasen’s reprinted edition of this journal.13
In accordance with the principle observed in Tome I, I have on occasion allowed myself the liberty of modifying stillschweigend the English translations of the works of Hegel and Kierkegaard in order to bring out more clearly the desired point of the quoted passage. All the translations of the original materials in Danish, German, and Latin are my own unless otherwise indicated.
Bratislava, 2023
Hans Martensen, “Nutidens religiøse Crisis,” Intelligensblade, vol. 1, no. 3, 1842, pp. 53–73. (English translation: Jon Stewart, “Hans Lassen Martensen’s ‘The Present Religious Crisis,’” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2017, pp. 423–438.)
Jon Stewart, A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age Denmark, Tome I, The Heiberg Period: 1824–1836, 2nd revised and augmented edition, Leiden and Boston: Brill Rodopi 2024 (Danish Golden Age Studies, vol. 13), pp. XII–XVII
Hegel, Sämtliche Werke. Jubiläumsausgabe in 20 Bänden, ed. by Hermann Glockner, Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag 1928–41.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe, vols. 1–18, ed. by Ludwig Boumann, Friedrich Förster, Eduard Gans, Karl Hegel, Leopold von Henning, Heinrich Gustav Hotho, Philipp Marheineke, Karl Ludwig Michelet, Karl Rosenkranz, Johannes Schulze, Berlin: Duncker und Humblot 1832–45.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Forelæsninger over Historiens Philosophie, ed. by Dr. Eduard Gans, 2nd edition by Dr. Karl Hegel, trans. by S. Kattrup, Copenhagen: H.C. Klein 1842. See Chapter 5, Section IX, pp. 622–626 below.
It will be noted that in the running headers the Jubiläumsausgabe usefully provides the corresponding page and volume numbers of the text in Hegel’s Werke for easy reference.
Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, ed. by Eduard Gans, vol. 9 (1837), in Hegel’s Werke. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, 2nd edition, ed. by Karl Hegel (1840), vol. 9 in Hegel’s Werke.
Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. by J. Sibree, New York: Willey Book Co. 1944. This work is abbreviated here as Phil. of Hist.
Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vols. 1–28, K1–K28, ed. by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Johnny Kondrup, et al., Copenhagen: Gad Publishers 1997–2012.
Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. I to XI-3, ed. by Peter Andreas Heiberg, Victor Kuhr and Einer Torsting, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1909–48; 2nd expanded ed., vols. I to XI-3, ed. by Niels Thulstrup, vols. XII to XIII supplementary volumes, ed. by Niels Thulstrup, vols. XIV to XVI index, by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1968–78.
Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, vols. 1–11, ed. by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press 2007–2020.
Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, vols. 1–4, ed. by Uffe Andreasen, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1980–84.
Corsaren 1840–46, vols. 1–7, ed. by Uffe Andreasen, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1977–81. The principle is complicated somewhat in this case since The Corsair did in fact have its own pagination. References to articles in this journal thus first refer to the pages of the original printing, and then in square brackets to the page numbers of the reprint in order to facilitate easy reference.