Abstract
This chapter discusses the developments of Young Hegelianism in
Restoration Prussia, with a special focus on Max Stirner’s radical critique
of Hegelian thinking. It presents an overview of the history of Hegelianism in the 1830s and 1840s, and addresses the theoretical
issues raised by Stirner’s attack in 1844. It examines important aspects
of Young Hegelianism, including ideas of a modernized civic humanism
and emancipation, and traces the Young Hegelians’ reconfiguration of
Hegel’s thought in order to eliminate what they saw as its conservative
or insufficiently critical elements. The refurbished republicanism of
the Young Hegelians took up the new challenges of the industrial age
that was dawning in Germany, with special attention to the social question
and the intransigent conflicting interests that typified the emergent
economic order. Stirner’s critique is framed by its anti-humanist
repudiation of Left Hegelian emancipatory projects.