Hegel and Hermes

Hegel and Hermes August 16, 2006

In a 2001 book (Cornell), Glenn Magee argues that Hegel must be understood as a hermetic thinker. Hegel claims to have moved beyond the ancient notion of philosophy as “pursuit of wisdom” to an absolute knowledge that is simply identical with wisdom. As Magee says,

“Hegel’s claim to have attained wisdom is completely contrary to the original Greek conception of philosophy as the love of wisdom, that is, the ongoing pursuit rather than the final possession of wisdom. His claim is, however, fully consistent with the ambitions of the Hermetic tradition, a current of thought that derives its name from the so-called Hermetica (or Corpus Hermeticum), a collection of Greek and Latin treatises and dialogues written in the first or second centuries A.D. and probably containing ideas that are far older . . . .


“The legendary author of these works is Hermes Trismegistus (‘Thrice-Greatest Hermes’). ‘Hermeticism’ denotes a broad tradition of thought that grew out of the ‘writings of Hermes’ and was expanded and developed through the infusion of various other traditions. Thus, alchemy, Kabbalism, Lullism, and the mysticism of Eckhart and Cusa — to name just a few examples — became intertwined with the Hermetic doctrines. (Indeed, Hermeticism is used by some authors simply to mean alchemy.) Hermeticism is also sometimes called theosophy, or esotericism; less precisely, it is often characterized as mysticism, or occultism.

“It is the thesis of this book that Hegel is a Hermetic thinker. I shall show that there are striking correspondences between Hegelian philosophy and Hermetic theosophy, and that these correspondences are not accidental. Hegel was actively interested in Hermeticism, he was influenced by its exponents from boyhood on, and he allied himself with Hermetic movements and thinkers throughout his life. I do not argue merely that we can understand Hegel as a Hermetic thinker, just as we can understand him as a German or a Swabian or an idealist thinker. Instead, I argue that we must understand Hegel as a Hermetic thinker, if we are to truly understand him at all.”

Magee finds many references to hermeticist writers in Hegel’s work, and many hermetic themes: “These include, in broad strokes, a Masonic subtext of ‘initiation mysticism’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit; a Boehmean subtext to the Phenomenology’s famous preface; a Kabbalistic-Boehmean-Lullian influence on the Logic; alchemical-Paracelsian elements in the Philosophy of Nature; an influence of Kabbalistic and Joachimite millennialism on Hegel’s doctrine of Objective Spirit and theory of world history; alchemical and Rosicrucian images in the Philosophy of Right; an influence of the Hermetic tradition of pansophia on the system as a whole; an endorsement of the Hermetic belief in philosophia perennis; and the use of perennial Hermetic symbolic forms (such as the triangle, the circle, and the square) as structural, architectonic devices.”

Further, it can be established that “Hegel’s library included Hermetic writings by Agrippa, Boehme, Bruno, and Paracelsus. He read widely on Mesmerism, psychic phenomenal dowsing, precognition, and sorcery. He publicly associated himself with known occultists, like Franz von Baader. He structured his philosophy in a manner identical to the Hermetic use of ‘Correspondences!’ He relied on histories of thought that discussed Hermes Trismegistus, Pico della Mirandola, Robert Fludd, and Knorr von Rosenroth alongside Plato, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. He stated in his lectures more than once that the term ‘speculative’ means the same thing as ‘mystical.’ He believed in an ‘Earth Spirit’ and corresponded with colleagues about the nature of magic. He aligned himself, informally, with ‘Hermetic’ societies such as the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians. Even Hegel’s doodles were Hermetic . . . .”

Though Hegel was clearly responding to Kant and the German philosophical tradition, his work must also be seen in the context of the “theosophical Pietist tradition” of his home area of Württemberg.

Magee is not the first to make such connections: “It is important to note that these claims would not have been particularly controversial in the decades after Hegel’s death. In the 1840s, Schelling publicly accused Hegel of having simply borrowed much of his philosophy from Jakob Boehme. One of Hegel’s disciples, Friedrich Theodor Vischer once asked, ‘Have you forgotten that the new philosophy came forth from the school of the old mystics, especially from Jacob Boehme?’Another Hegelian, Hans Martensen, author of one of the first scholarly studies of Meister Eckhart, remarked that ‘German mysticism is the first form in which German philosophy revealed itself in the history of thought’ (‘philosophy’ for Hegelians generally means Hegel’s Philosophy). Wilhelm Dilthey noted the same continuity between German mysticism and speculative philosophy.”

Yet, “the most famous nineteenth-century study of Hermetic aspects in Hegel was Ferdinand Christian Bauer’s Die christliche Gnosis (1835). Bauer’s was one of the first works to attempt to define Gnosticism and to distinguish between its different forms. The term Gnostic is used very loosely even in our own time, and very often what would more properly be termed ‘Hermetic’ is labeled ‘Gnostic’ instead . . . . After a lengthy discussion of Gnosticism in antiquity, Bauer argues that Jakob Boehme was a modern Gnostic, and that Schelling and Hegel can be seen as Boehme’s intellectual heirs, and thus as Gnostics themselves. Die christliche Gnosis is about the closest thing to a book on Hegel and the Hermetic tradition that has yet been published, though, as I have said, Bauer’s focus is on gnosticism, not Hermeticism. In 1853, Ludwig Noack published a two-volume work, Die Christlich Mystik nach ihrem geschichtlichen Entwicklungsgange im Mittelalter und in der neueren Zeit dargestellt , in which he dealt with the Idealists as modern representatives of mysticism.” More recently, “Jacques d’Hondt’s Hegel Secret (1968) is an extremely important study of Hegel’s relationship to Hermetic secret societies such as the Masons, Illuminati, and Rosicrucians.”

Eric Voegelin discerned gnostic elements in Hegel, writing that “For a long time I studiously avoided any serious criticism of Hegel in my published work, because I simply could not understand him.” Once he began to read gnostic literature, Hegel’s thought was clarified; Voegelin writes, “by his contemporaries Hegel was considered a gnostic thinker,” and says that Hegel’s philosophy “belongs to the continuous history of modern Hermeticism since the fifteenth century.” Magee says that “Voegelin’s principal statement on Hegel’s Hermeticism is a savagely polemical essay, ‘On Hegel: A Study in Sorcery,’ referring to the Phenomenology of Spirit as a ‘grimoire’ which ‘must be recognized as a work of magic — indeed, it is one of the great magic performances.’”

Magee continues: “Voegelin’s claims are unique in that he does not simply claim that Hegel was influenced by the Hermetic tradition. He claims that Hegel was part of the Hermetic tradition and cannot be adequately understood apart from it. Unfortunately, however, Voegelin never adequately developed his thesis. He never spelled out, in detail, how Hegel is a Hermetic thinker. Voegelin has, however, encouraged other scholars to develop his thesis more systematically (and more soberly). David Walsh, for instance, has writ

ten an important doctoral dissertation entitled The Esoteric Origins of Modern Ideological Thought: Boehme and Hegel (1978), in which he makes strong claims about Hegel’s indebtedness to Boehme. Gerald Hanratty has also published an extensive two-part essay, entitled ‘Hegel and the Gnostic Tradition’ (1984-87).”


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