Abstract

This dissertation reinterprets the nature of Young Hegelian political radicalism by studying Ludwig Feuerbach and Arnold Ruge within the context of neglected debates of the 1820s-40s. Feuerbach and Ruge offered a radical response to the problematic relationship between citizenship, commerce, and Christianity. Their misgivings about civil society and their association of Christianity with anti-social egotism led them to criticize the effects of "Christian civil society" upon the possibility of constructing a free and virtuous polity. This contention links the Young Hegelians to eighteenth-century republicanism. Yet it also points to the adaptation of republican themes to the new conditions of the nineteenth century. ;The familiar scholarly distinction between the exclusively "religious" concerns of Hegelians in the 1830s and the socio-political concerns of the 1840S is challenged by arguing that Feuerbach's work in the 1830s comprised a constellation of religious, political, and social themes. The same pattern is revealed in Ruge's work. To examine this constellation, wide-ranging debates over the critical issue of "personality" are studied. This issue preoccupied Hegelians and non-Hegelians alike; it marked the intersection for discussion of theological and socio-political issues in the 1830s. Debates over the personal God are examined in the thought of orthodox Protestants, Speculative Theists, and the later Schelling. Friedrich Stahl is studied to show how homologous "personalist" arguments were employed to create a Restorationist political theology supporting personal monarchical sovereignty and private property. ;Feuerbach and Ruge made equally direct connections between the idea of the personal God, society and politics. Hence, they criticized the idea of personality as it was used to support a political theology of authoritarian monarchy and atomized Christian civil society. Further, they eventually transferred their critique of Christian personalism to Hegel himself. Studying Feuerbach and Ruge's participation within this debate deepens our understanding of the break-up of the Hegelian School, the radicalization of Young Hegelianism, and the broader ideological context that structured politico-theological debate in vormarz Germany