In his 1958 article “The Hegel Legend of ‘Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis’”, Gustav Mueller delivers what the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy today describes as the classic criticism of the misattribution of thesis-antithesis-synthesis schema to Hegel.1 2 This article, to my understanding, set a precedent about the history of the misattribution which goes largely unnoticed or unchallenged today. It contains the corrective narrative of thesis-antithesis-synthesis as terms borrowed from Fichte and attributed or applied to Hegel by Chalybaus.
Unfortunately, the article is built upon tenuous arguments and circumstantial evidence, concealed by a thick fog of Cold War anticommunism (including such delightfully nostalgic academic slurs as “Marxistic”). Mueller dispenses with any presupposition of neutrality towards Marxism. He names three Hegel myths, through gritted teeth, all of which point in some way to Marx and Engels.
His frustration is understandable, at least somewhat. While I won’t act as though Marx scholarship is today in the fortunate position of completely overshadowing Hegel’s, there is a sort of reverent subordination Hegel receives in the Marxist tradition. Hegel’s system is treated as authoritative exclusively in its announcement of a method, the true significance of which only Marx fully reveals. It isn’t surprising that an anticommunist Hegelian scholar views Marxism as a false successor and vulgarizer.
The three Hegel myths named in the article are
1) The misattribution of thesis-antithesis-synthesis to Hegel,
2) That “There is in Hegel no longer a history in the order of time, but only a sequence of ideas in reason,”
3) That Hegel’s philosophy culminates in the glorification of the existing Prussian state as the final realization of Spirit.
I expect to have the most to say about the first myth, so I’ll leave it until after the others. Otherwise, they might feel awkwardly insignificant by comparison.
Marx says: ‘There is in Hegel no longer a history in the order of time, but only a sequence of ideas in reason.’ Hegel, on the contrary, says: ‘The time-order of history is distinguished from the sequence in the order of concepts’ (Werke, XII, 59).
The above quote is Mueller’s refutation in its entirety. Marx, at least in my reading, criticizes Hegel’s inappropriate privileging of the interpretation of history as the development of Spirit. Why would Hegel saying he “distinguishes” (unterscheiden, lit. differentiates) the two concepts suggest against his privileging one over the other? The only way that quote could be decisive is if we read Marx’s point as claiming that Hegel literally didn’t acknowledge that history in chronological succession exists at all. Unfortunately, I don’t have too much patience for Marx Sarcasm Interpreting, so I may have to leave that as it is. Either way, and more importantly, I don’t think anyone’s methodological self description of their work should be taken seriously as a faithful representation of the work itself. The quote is a textual piece of evidence worth considering, but to present it unelaborated is completely bizarre. What audience is supposed to accept “Hegel investigated himself and found no wrongdoing”?
A third minor legend is innocently taken for granted in the recent work by R. Tsanoff, The Great Thinkers (New York, 1953, p. 487): “Actually, the closing pages of the Philosophy of Right review, in rapid survey, the historical evolution of mankind—and discover ‘the unity of the divine and the human’ in the German Empire! All these stiff Prussian notions are recorded in Hegel’s works: they cannot be ignored.” In the first place, Hegel is not a Prussian, but a Suabian, and he is not stiff, but flexible. “Actually,” the text referred to contains not a word justifying the accusation. “Germanische Welt,” as Hegel calls it, does not mean German (“Germanisch” is not “Deutsch”), but simply refers to the incontestable historical fact that various Germanic tribes, after the disintegration of the Roman Empire, reconstituted Europe, or what we now call “the West,” in distinction from the Arabic and Slavic worlds. Germany is not even mentioned, let alone Prussia. Hegel’s theme, further, is not “the historical evolution of mankind” culminating in some particular state, but the omnipresent self-manifestation of the Absolute—always submerged in the distortions of irrationality. This interpretation is, in its origin, a vicious Marxistic smear: it occurs almost verbatim in Friedrich Engels’s crude diatribe, “Ludwig Feuerbach and the Exit of Classical German Philosophy” (1847). To him, Hegel’s organic conception of the state is, of course, a hated bulwark against the totalitarianism of his “economic class-interests…”
I should first mention the confusing factual errors in this paragraph. The title of Tsanoff’s book is The Great Philosophers, not “The Great Thinkers“. The word “Exit” instead of “End” in the Engels title is conspicuously nonstandard. The publication date for the Engels is also conspicuously nonstandard by about 40 years.
I was only able to access the 1964 2nd edition of Tsanoff’s book which reads, “Actually, the closing pages of the philosophy of right review, in rapid survey, the historical evolution of man-kind, and discover “the unity of the divine and the human” in the German Empire, or the German realm, Germanische Reich.”3 This refers to the (incontestable historical) fact that Hegel exclusively uses the phrase “Germanische Reich” and not “Germanische Welt” in the Philosophy of Right.4 “Germanische Welt” appears in Lectures on the Philosophy of History, and probably elsewhere, but not in the text in question.
The Prussian/Swabian moment is admittedly very funny. There is no mention of any Prussian notions in the 2nd edition of Tsanoff. Charitably assuming that it appears in the 1st edition as presented by Mueller, Tsanoff’s statement is clearly about Hegel’s political orientation, not his ancestry. An explanation of why a Swabian could not possibly hold a Prussian notion is badly needed. Not to mention, Hegel held a professorship at the University of Berlin, the capital of Prussia, while writing Philosophy of Right.
Mueller’s argument that “Hegel’s theme is not “the historical evolution of mankind,” culminating in some particular state, but the omnipresent self-manifestation of the Absolute,” is exceedingly hard to justify when posed alongside Hegel’s writing itself: see especially §257-8, 279, 280(remark), 301, 305, 341-2.
Tsanoff and Engels make the point that these features sound suspiciously similar to the vain promise of establishing a liberal constitutional monarchy made by Frederick William III in 1813. So Tsanoff and Engels are not presenting a false quotation, they are making a (rather obvious) political inference. Mueller does not attempt to evaluate the truth of this argument on its own merits. It is either a critical misreading or brazen dishonesty on the part of Mueller to consider their position so unworthy of legitimate contestation as to label it a “myth”.
On Engels’s “vicious Marxistic smear”, the criticisms he levels at Hegel read only as qualifiers to overwhelming praise:5
“The conservatism of this mode of outlook is relative; its revolutionary character is absolute — the only absolute dialectical philosophy admits.”
“The inner necessities of the system are, therefore, of themselves sufficient to explain why a thoroughly revolutionary method of thinking produced an extremely tame political conclusion.”
“Each of them [Hegel and Goethe] was an Olympian Zeus in his own sphere, yet neither of them ever quite freed himself from German philistinism.”
“But all this did not prevent the Hegelian system from covering an incomparably greater domain than any earlier system, nor from developing in this domain a wealth of thought, which is astounding even today.”
“And as he was not only a creative genius but also a man of encyclopaedic erudition, he played an epoch-making role in every sphere. It is self-evident that owing to the needs of the “system” he very often had to resort to those forced constructions about which his pigmy opponents make such a terrible fuss even today. But these constructions are only the frame and scaffolding of his work. If one does not loiter here needlessly, but presses on farther into the immense building, one finds innumerable treasures which today still possess undiminshed value.”
How much more respectful does Engels have to be to please Mueller? Considering such limited criticism among an otherwise reverent retrospective as a vicious threat seems to reveal Mueller’s perception of vulnerability in Hegel. Is he really so fragile that the common charge of idealism or philistinism warrants such a contemptuous defense? It invites all sorts of speculation around what assumptions Mueller must have been making about his audience for him to expect this openly tendentious characterization to be received seriously. Or that it has been.
“The legend was spread by Karl Marx, whose interpretation of Hegel is distorted. It is Marxism superimposed on Hegel. ‘Thesis, antithesis, synthesis,’ Marx says in Das Elend der Philosophie, is Hegel’s purely logical formula for the movement of pure reason, and the whole system is engendered by this dialectical movement of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis through all categories. This pure reason, he continues, is Mr. Hegel’s own reason, and history becomes the history of his own philosophy, whereas, in reality, thesis, antithesis, and synthesis are the categories of economic movements. (Summary of Chapter II, Paragraph 1.) The few passages in Marx’s writings that resemble philosophy are not his own. He practices the Communistic habit of expropriation without compensation. Knowing this in general, I was also convinced that there must be a source for this ‘thesis, antithesis, and synthesis,’ and I finally discovered it.
In the winter of 1835–36, a group of Kantians in Dresden called on Heinrich Moritz Chalybaus, professor of philosophy at the University of Kiel, to lecture to them on the new philosophical movement after Kant. They were older professional men who, in their youth, had been Kantians and now wanted an orientation in a development they distrusted; but they also wanted confirmation of their own Kantianism. Professor Chalybaus did just those two things. His lectures appeared in 1837 under the title Historische Entwicklung der speculativen Philosophie von Kant bis Hegel: Zu näherer Verständigung des wissenschaftlichen Publikums mit der neuesten Schule. The book was very popular and appeared in three editions. In my copy of the third edition, published in 1843, Professor Chalybaus says on page 354: ‘This is the first trilogy: the unity of Being, Nothing, and Becoming. . . . We have in this first methodical thesis, antithesis, and synthesis . . . an example or schema for all that follows. This was, for Chalybaus, a brilliant hunch that he had not used previously and did not pursue afterward in any way at all. But Karl Marx was at that time a student at the University of Berlin and a member of the Hegel Club, where the famous book was discussed. He took the hunch and spread it into a deadly, abstract machinery. Other Left Hegelians, such as Arnold Ruge, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Max Stirner, use ‘thesis, antithesis, synthesis’ just as little as Hegel.”
At the risk of coming off as carping, I find it too hard to resist attempting a line by line indictment of this section.
First, Mueller claims Marx’s interpretation of Hegel is Marxism superimposed on Hegel. Marxism as such did not exist during Marx’s lifetime, so I’m not sure exactly what Mueller is suggesting. Does he mean Marx’s own thought? That seems tautologically necessary to the definition of interpretation. From the perspective of materialism, which I think is a more appropriate word, it could be argued that Marx’s distortion of Hegel is the same distortion a correction makes to a mistake.
Then, in an absolutely astonishing display of method, Mueller paraphrases a French text through an unidentified German edition or translation, supplies no citation, and labels the result merely a “summary” even though his accusation of distortion turns on the precise function of Marx’s language.
🤯
Unsurprisingly, his summary of the chapter 2’s first observation is unfairly selective. The two lines where TAS appears are these:6
“Impersonal reason, having outside itself neither a base on which it can pose itself, nor an object to which it can oppose itself, nor a subject with which it can compose itself, is forced to turn head over heels, in posing itself, opposing itself and composing itself – position, opposition, composition. Or, to speak Greek – we have thesis, antithesis and synthesis. For those who do not know the Hegelian language, we shall give the ritual formula: affirmation, negation and negation of the negation.”
“So what is this absolute method? The abstraction of movement. What is the abstraction of movement? Movement in abstract condition. What is movement in abstract condition? The purely logical formula of movement or the movement of pure reason. Wherein does the movement of pure reason consist? In posing itself, opposing itself, composing itself; in formulating itself as thesis, antithesis, synthesis; or, yet, in affirming itself, negating itself, and negating its negation.”
In the first line, Marx associates but demarcates TAS from what he calls Hegel’s ritual formula. In the second line they appear to be interchangeable or at least very closely related. At no point does he attribute TAS to Hegel as an originator. He does use TAS to interpret Hegel’s method. It’s important to remind ourselves that Mueller’s corrective is specifically aimed at the exact three nouns thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Were his problem to be with the interpretation that Hegel’s method operates through forced triplicities, he would have a very, very long list of offenders to confront before Marx. Including Proudhon himself, of course. From What is Property? (1840):7
To express this idea by an Hegelian formula, I will say:
Communism — the first expression of the social nature — is the first term of social development, — the thesis; property, the reverse of communism, is the second term, — the antithesis. When we have discovered the third term, the synthesis, we shall have the required solution.
Then, from Philosophy of Poverty (1847):8
The resolution of two antithetical ideas in a third of a superior order is what the school calls synthesis. It alone gives the positive and complete idea, which is obtained, as we have seen, by the successive affirmation or negation — for both amount to the same thing — of two diametrically opposite concepts. Whence we deduce this corollary, of the first importance in practice as well as in theory: wherever, in the spheres of morality, history, or political economy, analysis has established the antinomy of an idea, we may affirm on a priori grounds that this antinomy conceals a higher idea, which sooner or later will make its appearance.
…
I am sorry to have to insist at so great length on ideas familiar to all young college graduates: but I owed these details to certain economists, who, apropos of my critique of property, have heaped dilemmas on dilemmas to prove that, if I was not a proprietor, I necessarily must be a communist; all because they did not understand thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
So, the misattribution originally made by Chalybaus in a book published in German in 1837 is supposed to have trasmitted to Proudhon who takes it as a literal Hegelian formula by 1840. Then in 1847, before Marx’s polemic, he apologizes for even explaining TAS because it’s an “idea familiar to all young college graduates.” The implication is that by then, at least in Proudhon’s mind, it was common knowledge in French academic circles to associate TAS with Hegel. To dispel any doubt that one might have about Proudhon’s continued misattribution into 1847, since he doesn’t explicitly connect the triad to Hegel in the passage, there is evidence that he sustained the misattribution late into his life. He does so again at least once in 1862. “Until then, I had believed, with Hegel, that the two terms of the antinomy—thesis and antithesis—had to be resolved into a higher term, the SYNTHESIS” (translation mine).9
It isn’t possible that Proudhon received TAS from the Chalybaus book directly, or at least it’s exceedingly unlikely, given that, according to Marx, Proudhon did not speak German in 1844.10 Proudhon himself admits in 1845 that he had not yet read Hegel.11 Proudhon’s interpretation of Hegel is understood to have its origin in the diffuse intellectual milieu of French writers at the time. We can see evidence of a totalizing and recurring trichotomy interpretation in the French reception of Hegel vis-à-vis Eugène Lerminier as early as 1831.12 This evidence suggests that there may have been a pre-Chalybaus Francophone Hegelian tradition which informed Proudhon’s 1840 misattribution of TAS to Hegel. Even a cursory look into the first available avenue of inquiry makes Mueller’s just-so story of linear transmission and popularization through Marx appear as an increasingly distant possibility.
Also, though it isn’t a necessary component of Mueller’s main argument, it’s not even accurate to say Chalybaus had an isolated “hunch” that he immediately abandoned. Later in the very same book cited by Mueller, Chalybaus returns to the thetic model as a “universal thesis for a universal process”.13 Chalybaus returns again to a thetic-antithetic-synthetic model in later books, but doesn’t seem to associate them with Hegel.14 Whether or not he associates it with Hegel, Mueller’s claim that he does not return to the idea “in any way at all” is untenable. His assertion also draws uncomfortable attention to the fact that Marx himself never engages with TAS as a three part formula for dialectics before or after Poverty of Philosophy.
Mueller’s resulting hypothesis is of one likely person-to-person transmission that is just insufficiently documented. He should provide evidence of Marx encountering Chalybaus’s work or present his hunch more tentatively.
The most common Marxist response to Mueller’s criticisms (or those like it) in regards to Marx’s use of TAS is to retreat to defending the philosophy and method of the mature Marx. But even the limited research done here shows that Marx did not explicitly attribute that triad to Hegel, and that the Poverty of Philosophy passage sits within an already established interpretive tradition that reads a universally triplifying schema in Hegel. Whether or not “If the shoe fits…” suffices as a defense, Marx is not successfully indicted by Mueller of having a uniquely incorrect reading of Hegel.
I’m not completely satisfied that I didn’t find a French language TAS noun connection. I may look into how TAS has been transmitted since then, especially among Soviet Marxists. It’s an interesting thread if for no other reason than how often it comes up today and how little its origin seems to be documented despite the high visibility of the characters involved.
I’ll leave you with these.
https://www.animalz.co/blog/thesis-antithesis-synthesis
https://functional-strength.org/thesis-antithesis-synthesis-legislate-contrast/
https://thefilmstage.com/sxsw-review-i-love-boosters-finds-boots-riley-again-taking-dead-aim-at-capitalism-in-zany-comedy/