The Two Hegels (1807 vs. 1827)

Merleau-Ponty's structural distinction between the Hegel of 1807 (the Phänomenologie des Geistes) and the Hegel of 1827 (the Encyclopädie + Philosophy of Right). Developed in the 1946 essay "Hegel's Existentialism" (Chapter 5 of Sense and Non-Sense, originally Les Temps modernes No. 7, April 1946), the distinction enables MP's existentialist appropriation of Hegel: the existentialist correction of Hegel does not refute him but chooses the early Hegel against the late. MP's compressed diagnostic: "the real debate between Marx and Hegel has nothing to do with the relationship of ideas to history; rather, it involves the conception of historical movement, which ends for the Hegel of 1827 in a hierarchical society whose meaning is accessible to none except the philosopher but which the Hegel of 1807 perhaps saw culminating in a genuine reconciliation between men" (p. 65).

Key Points

  • The 1807 Hegel is militant, not yet victorious — describes consciousness's Unruhe (restlessness) without claiming the philosopher's vantage; "philosophers do not create history but always give voice to a situation already established in the world before their appearance on the scene" (paraphrase of pp. 64-65).
  • The 1827 Hegel offers "a palace of ideas" (Kierkegaard's phrase) — a hierarchical society in which historical antitheses are overcome only in thought; "has understood everything except his own historical situation."
  • Kierkegaard's objection (mere thought is insufficient to enable the individual to overcome contradictions facing him) and Marx's objection (where are you speaking from?) are diagnosed as objections to the late Hegel — and MP shows they leave the early Hegel intact.
  • The Phänomenologie "does not try to fit all history into a framework of pre-established logic but attempts to bring each doctrine and each era back to life and to let itself be guided by their internal logic" (p. 65). It is in this sense an existentialist work.
  • The Hegel of 1807 "stops being an existentialist" the moment he assumes Absolute Knowledge — and Hyppolite reads the Phänomenologie as making the move to history, hence the move out of existentialism. MP demurs: the move to history is the affirmation of the individual, properly understood (because the for-others is internal to consciousness).

What the Concept Does

  1. It enables existentialist Hegel-recovery without endorsing Hegelian Absolute. The standard view in 1946 — both anti-Hegelian (Kierkegaard, Sartre) and pro-Hegelian (orthodox Marxism) — treats Hegel as a system-builder whose value or worthlessness depends on whether one accepts the system. MP's two-Hegels distinction breaks this: there is a non-system Hegel (1807) whose dialectical-phenomenological method survives the rejection of Absolute Knowledge.

  2. It re-frames the Marx-Hegel debate. The standard reading (Engels via Plekhanov) treats Marx's relation to Hegel as the inversion of an idealist system into a materialist one — ideas vs. matter. MP's two-Hegels reading: Marx's debate with Hegel is intra-Hegelian; Marx is closer to the 1807 Hegel than to the 1827 Hegel, just as MP's existentialism is closer to the 1807 Hegel than to the 1827 system.

  3. It explains Hyppolite's importance. Hyppolite's translation of the Phänomenologie (1939-41) and his Genèse et structure (1946) made the early Hegel available to a French readership for the first time. The two-Hegels distinction is partly Hyppolite's discovery; MP follows Hyppolite "freely rather than textually."

  4. It clarifies what gets rejected when MP rejects the Hegelian Absolute. What gets rejected: Absolute Knowledge as the philosopher's vantage; the de jure synthesis; the hierarchical-society conclusion of Philosophy of Right. What is kept: the dialectical method; the affirmation of historical contingency; the Unruhe of consciousness; the master-slave dialectic; the religion-of-the-death-of-God reading of Christianity.

What It Rejects

  • Standard system-builder readings of Hegel (whether sympathetic or hostile).
  • The Engels-via-Plekhanov inversion-thesis that frames Marx's relation to Hegel as ideas-vs-matter.
  • The Kierkegaardian wholesale rejection of Hegel — MP keeps the "thought-is-insufficient" objection but applies it only to the late Hegel.
  • The Hegel-as-totalitarian reading (which would later become prominent in Anglo-American political philosophy via Popper, et al.) — MP's diagnosis is more diagnostic than condemnatory.

Stakes

If accepted:

  • Existentialism gains a Hegelian genealogy without inheriting the Absolute.
  • Marxism is re-readable as the political extension of the early Hegel rather than the inversion of the late Hegel.
  • The Phänomenologie's master-slave dialectic, the unhappy-consciousness analysis, and the religion-of-the-death-of-God doctrine become available as resources for existentialist phenomenology.
  • The 1827 Hegel's system is not the price of the 1807 Hegel's insight.

Problem-Space

The concept addresses the problem of which Hegel is the philosophical Hegel. The Hegel scholarship of the 1930s-40s was divided: some held that the Phänomenologie was a juvenile work superseded by the mature system; others held that the Phänomenologie was the philosophical Hegel and the system its falling-off. The two-Hegels distinction takes the latter position decisively, and provides the structural argument: the 1807 work has the existentialist method, the 1827 work has the system-pretensions.

Connections

  • attributed to / shared with jean-hyppolite — Hyppolite's wartime translation and his Genèse et structure are MP's immediate sources.
  • applies g-w-f-hegel — the two-Hegels distinction is the structural axis of MP's Hegel-reading.
  • enables MP's existentialist appropriation of Hegel — see "consciousness of life is consciousness of death," master-slave dialectic, "we are all Jews."
  • enables MP's reading of karl-marx — Marx as continuator of the 1807 Hegel.
  • contrasts with the Engels-Plekhanov-Lenin inversion-thesis.
  • connects to propaedeutic-dialectic / hyper-dialectic — the 1807 dialectic is propaedeutic to MP's later hyper-dialectical refinement.

Open Questions

  • Whether the two-Hegels distinction is historically accurate (rather than philosophically useful) is contested by Hegel scholars. Some argue the Phänomenologie already contains the synthesis-pretensions of 1827; others argue the "two Hegels" are a Hegelian-existentialist artifact.
  • The relation between MP's two-Hegels and Kojève's famous Phänomenologie lectures (1933-39) is implicit but not explicit in S&NS. Kojève's master-slave dialectic shaped MP's reading; MP's two-Hegels distinguishes itself from Kojève's by rejecting the eschatology Kojève reads into the Phänomenologie.

Sources