Between Ideology and Utopia: The Politics and Philosophy of August Cieszkowski

392 Pages·1979·21.268 MB·English

by  Andrè Liebich (auth.)

BETWEEN IDEOLOGY AND UTOPIA
SOVIETICA
PUBLICATIONS AND MONOGRAPHS
OF THE INSTITUTE OF EAST-EUROPEAN STUDIES AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF FRIBOURG/SWITZERLAND AND
THE CENTER FOR EAST EUROPE, RUSSIA AND ASIA
AT BOSTON COLLEGE AND THE SEMINAR
FOR POLITICAL THEORY AND PHILOSOPHY
ATTHE UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH
Edited by T. J. BLAKELEY (Boston), GUIDO KUNG (Fribourg), and
NIKOLAUS LoBKOWICZ (Munich)
Editorial Board
Karl G. Ballestrem (Munich) George L. Kline (Bryn Mawr)
Helmut Dahm (Cologne) T. R. Payne (Providence)
Richard T. DeGeorge (Kansas) Friedrich Rapp (Berlin)
Peter Ehlen (Munich) Andries Sariemijn (Eindhoven)
Michael Gagern (Munich) James Scanlan (Columbus)
Felix P. Ingold (St. Gall) Edward Swiderski (Fribourg)
Bernard Jeu (Lille)
VOLUME 39
ANDRE LIEBICH
BETWEEN IDEOLOGY
AND UTOPIA
The Politics and Philosophy of August Cieszkowski
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
DORDRECHT : HOLLAND I BOSTON: U. S. A.
LONDON: ENGLAND
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Liebich, Andre, 1948-
Between ideology and utopia.
(Sovietica; v. 39)
Bibliography: p.
Includes indexes.
1. Cieszkowski, August Do)',.ga, brabia, 1814--1894. I. Title. II. Series.
B4691.C54L53 199'.438 78-11297
ISBN-13: 978-94-009-9385-3 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-9383-9
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-9383-9
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Copyright © 1979 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 18t edition 1979
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
PART I: GERMANY AND PHILOSOPHY
I. Romantics and Hegelians 1830-1840 13
II. Die Prolegomena zur Historiosophie 32
III. Gott und Palingenesie 72
IV. Schelling and the Dissolution of the Hegelian School 93
PART II: FRANCE AND THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT
V. A Hegelian in France 113
VI. Du Credit et de la Circulation 129
VII. Economic and Social Articles 1840-1848 150
VIII. De la Pairie et de l' Aristocratie Modeme 188
P ART III: POLAND AND MESSIANISM
IX. Exile and The Messianic Option 215
X. Messianism Refused 236
XI. Our Father 269
Conclusion 295
Bibliography 301
Notes 315
Index 387
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is the revised version of a doctoral dissertation presented to
the Government Department of Harvard University in 1974. The
dissertation was supervised by Professors Adam B. Ulam and Judith N.
Shklar and I am happy to acknowledge once again both their tolerance
and their criticisms
lowe a particular word of thanks to Miguel Abensour who intro
duced me to Cieszkowski and who persuaded me that a critique of
politics might begin with a critique of dominant ideological currents.
Professor Richard Pipes allowed me to tum a reading seminar on
Russian Hegelianism into a study of Cieszkowski. Professor Wiktor
Weintraub read the original manuscript and offered valuable advice.
Professor Andrzej Walicki, in his writings and in far too brief conver
sations provided not only information about Cieszkowski but a stan
dard in intellectual history which I shall strive to achieve. Professor
Thomas J. Blakeley invited me to submit the manuscript and other,
anonymous, members of the SOVIETICA board recommended revi
sions which have made this a more thorough and more readable work
than it would otherwise have been.
My research was facilitated by the kind and knowledgeable help of
librarians and archivists at the following institutions: the Widener and
Bodleian Libraries; the St. Antony's College Library; the University
Library in Warsaw and in Poznan; the Polish Library in Paris and in
London; the State Archives in Poznan. I should especially thank Dr. T.
Kozanecki, director of the Library of the Polish Diet, for having lent
me his typescript of Cieszkowski's Diaries.
And I am grateful to Hayat, Nadya, Rayya who put Cieszkowski
into perspective.
ANDRE LIEBICH
July 1978
vii
INTRODUCTION
Nineteenth-century European intellectual history has given rise to such
varied and abundant research that one is surprised to find certain
important problems long identified and yet still relatively unexplored.
Such is the case for certain aspects of the crucial transition from Hegel
to Marx, for minority tendencies among French socialists and for the
Messianic phenomenon, national and religious, so central to the
period, particularly in Eastern Europe, and so rarely studied in detail.
Certainly, these lacunae are exemplified by the absence of any com
prehensive work on August Cieszkowski whose overall contribution to
the history of the period may be marginal but whose specific role in
each of the areas mentioned is both significant in itself and illustrative
of certain wider problems.
Cieszkowski first achieved recognition as the author of the Pro
legomena zur Historiosophie in 1838. This short tract never became
popular among the Berlin Hegelians for whom it was intended but it
affected a number of radical intellectuals outside their circle. His next
work, Gott und Palingenesie, was a defense of personal immortality
against Hegelian revisionism. The following year, however, he founded
the Philosophische Gesellschaft as a bulwark of the Hegelian school
against external critics and internal dissolution.
Throughout the 1840's France provided the framework for much of
Cieszkowski's interests and writings. His two principal works of the
period, Du Credit et de la Circulation and De la Pairie et de I' Aristo
cratie modeme, were both projects of economic and political reform. His
other writings dealt with what was then called "the social question"
and today would probably be termed welfare or development. There is
evidence of innumerable contacts with French intellectual figures of all
ideological persuasions though it is his co-operation with the Fourier
ists which is best documented.
Cieszkowski's later years were devoted to the realization of his life
project, the Our Father. Originally conceived in the 1830's, sixty years
1
2 INTRODUCTION
later this work had expanded to four volumes for the most part
unpublished, unfinished and secret. The Our Father is a philosophy of
history on a grand scale, inspired equally by Hegel and Christianity. It
encompasses a systematization of Cieszkowski's earlier views and its
principal significance lies in adding to those views an utopian vision of
the future as the age of the Holy Spirit. It is this vision which gives
sense and unity to the entirety of Cieszkowski's writings and work.
In addition to this substantial and wide-ranging corpus of writings in
German, French and Polish, Cieszkowski attained prominence as a
national leader in his native Poland and an active participant in the
intellectual life of the continent. 1848, with all its implications for
European intellectual and political life, marked Cieszkowski's entry
into politics. As a deputy to the Prussian diet he became a leading
spokesman of the Polish cause and, simultaneously, created the first
mass political organization in Posen. As the wave of 1848 receded
Cieszkowski tried to re-orient the struggle for national survival into a
programme of enlightenment and modernisation which came to be
adopted by the following generation. At the same time he remained a
cosmopolitan figure, respected abroad and ever abreast of general
European currents, sharing the hopes and concerns of his contem
poraries. Indeed, even those aspects of his system which may today
seem fantastic or merely quaint - his profound eschatological certitude
above all-identify him closely with his age.
II
My purpose in undertaking the following study is threefold. First, I
hope to present a reasonably thorough intellectual biography of
August Cieszkowski. By this I understand an analysis of his writings, a
description of his social and intellectual milieu, and an examination of
the former in relation to the latter. In doing so I hope to counter the
neglect into which Cieszkowski has fallen and hopefully provide the
reader with the elements necessary to form his own judgement on
Cieszkowski's relative importance.
My second purpose is to contribute to the understanding of the
thought structures existing, perhaps prevalent, at a given period in" the
past. It is a premise of my study that thought can be understood as a
collective enterprise, a movement which creates certain objective
INTRODUCTION 3
structures which are significant units of study in the history of thought;
indeed, that the study of such models is the beginning of political
theory!.
A corollary of this premise is that the history of political theory is
not the exclusive domain of those magnificent figures whose greatness
compels us to listen. The study of the truly great has a value of its own
but it is problematical to the extent that these figures dominate their
exegetes, transcend models and proclaim history to be the exclusive
playground of their heroic feats. In fact, the analysis of a minor figure
may shed as much light on the problems confronting an age and offer
certain methodological advantages in allowing a set of perspectives
appropriate to the object.
My third purpose is to illustrate through the example of August
Cieszkowski the weakness inherent in the dominant model of relations
between ideological allegiance and theoretical position. In simplest
terms this is a model which assigns groups or individuals a spot on a
spectrum from left to right by virtue of their answers to certain
questions concerning authority, equality, human nature. When
couched in historical terms and in reference to the period to be
considered here, these are questions regarding Reason, Religion, the
French Revolution. A particularly sophisticated model of this sort is
Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia and it is his construct which I
propose to use as a point of departure for the study of Cieszkowskf.
III
In Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia the term ideology has both a
particular and a total meaning. In the former it refers to ideas which
"are regarded as more or less conscious disguises of the real nature of
a situation". In the latter it means "the total structure of the mind of
this epoch or this group,,3. Mannheim's argument is that the two
meanings have a tendency to merge. The result is a structure of mind
termed ideological which re-enforces an existing order. Ideologies may
transcend reality but they remain ideologies unless "they shatter,
either wholly or partially, the order of things prevailing at the time,,4.
In Mannheim's model ideologies occupy a residual position. They
are uniform expanses of static rationalizations whose destiny is to be
punctured by utopias, "that type of orientation which transcends
4 INTRODUCTION
reality and which at the same time breaks the bonds of the existing
order"s. Utopias are of four types: the chiliastic, the liberal
humanitarian, the conservative and the socialist-communist. The sug
gestion is that modes of thought can be either ideological or utopian
and that intellectual history consists of an interaction between these
two categories.
The model lies open to a variety of criticisms. Such bifurcation of
thought tends to create dichotomies and impose contradictions where
differentiation along a continuum or even ultimate compatibility are
more appropriate relationships. Moreover, the distinction between
thought structures which break the bonds of the existing order and
those which merely transcend them without breaking them is an
extraneous one. It rests either on a subjective evaluation or on the
success of a given ideology or utopia in imposing itself on its age.
The differentiations within the major categories are themselves
problematical. The sub-divisions of utopia follow each other in tem
poral sequence; chiliastic utopianism, for instance, is the first modem
form of the utopian mentality, thus skirting the problem of the
co-existence of several forms of utopian mentality contemporaneously,
even simultaneously within the same individual. Furthermore, the
various types of utopian mentality are not equally transcendent nor
even similar in origin and aim. Eschatological structures negate reality
and radicalize alternatives on the basis of a concept of human nature
and divine salvation which sets them apart from most utopian thinking
with its usual premise of an essentially good and autonomous man6•
The conservative utopia is different from other utopian forms in its
very impulse as well as in its function.
The image of ideologies as monolithic structures does not bear
examination. Certainly, opposition to radical change does not denote
agreement on any substantive question. Nor, in Mannheim's under
standing, are ideologies any more congruent with reality than utopias.
Finally, the distinction between the two is profoundly ahistorical. It
rests on formal criteria wich ignore the concrete circumstances under
which a given ideology and utopia arise.
If Mannheim's categories are applied to Cieszkowski he appears to
be a maze of contradictions. In the most general terms the contradic
tion is one between utopian theory and ideological practice. How else
can one explain the discrepancy between the uses to which
Cieszkowski's formulation of praxis was subsequently put and