Eduard Gans

Eduard Gans (1797–1839) was a philosopher of law and the decisive organiser of the Hegelian school. Without him it would have had no institutional base.

In 1826/27 he was instrumental in founding the Sozietät für wissenschaftliche Kritik and became its secretary general. The society and its Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik worked as a Hegelian counter-academy to the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, into which Hegel had not been admitted — without being a mere party organ, for non-Hegelian contributors wrote in it as well.

After Hegel’s death Gans belonged to the core of the Verein der Freunde des Verewigten, which produced the edition of the works from 1832 to 1845. He himself edited the second edition of the Philosophy of Right (1833) and set out in its preface Hegel’s methodological position against the Historical School of Law — in this he was Savigny’s antagonist.