Herbart: The Institutional Antagonist
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) was the most significant systematic antagonist of Hegel in the early nineteenth century—not through direct polemics, but through establishing a complete philosophical alternative. When he was appointed to Kant’s former chair in Königsberg in 1809, he developed a post-Kantian school philosophy explicitly directed against speculative idealism.
The Systematic Counter-Position
Erdmann characterizes Herbart’s system as the “diametrical opposite of pantheism.”[1] The opposition concerns not individual theses but the entire conception of philosophy:
On method: While Hegel understands contradiction as the “motor” of dialectical development—the negative as the concept’s “own activity”—Herbart teaches that contradictions must be strictly avoided. For him, philosophy is the “working-through of concepts” to eliminate contradictions, not their productive unfolding. Erdmann remarks sharply that the Herbartians accused Hegel of “taking pleasure” in contradiction.[2]
On metaphysics: Instead of Hegel’s monistic conception of the self-developing concept or spirit, Herbart advocates a pluralistic ontology of “simple beings” (Realia). These Realia are absolutely simple, unchangeable, and without relations—the exact opposite of Hegel’s dialectical mediation. Michelet aptly characterizes this: Herbart “colorlessly falls back on Leibniz.”[3]
On psychology: Herbart’s Psychology as a Science, Newly Founded on Experience, Metaphysics, and Mathematics (1824-25) establishes a mathematical-mechanistic psychology of representations. Representations are treated as quasi-physical forces that can displace one another. His “threshold of consciousness” is the first systematic theory of a dynamic unconscious—a concept that would later prove important for Freud. But this psychology is the opposite of Hegel’s speculative philosophy of subjective spirit: empirical-descriptive rather than conceptually developing.
On the educational mission: Herbart founded scientific pedagogy as an independent discipline. His theory of formal stages (clarity, association, system, method) became the dominant instructional theory of the nineteenth century. But this pedagogy is school philosophy in the literal sense—practical guidance for teachers—not Hegel’s concept of Bildung as self-alienation and return to self-consciousness.
The Institutional Dimension
Herbart remained relatively unnoticed during his lifetime—only after his death did a coherent school take shape. Erdmann describes how Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch (professor in Leipzig) made Herbart’s works known through critical commentaries and contributed to forming the school. The Herbartians—Drobisch, Gustav Hartenstein, Ludwig Strümpel, and others—held together, according to Erdmann, “almost like Freemasons” and conducted a systematic polemic against the Hegelian method.[4]
A remarkable detail: Herbart was the direct predecessor of Karl Rosenkranz in the Königsberg chair. When Rosenkranz was appointed to Königsberg in 1833, he took over the chair of the just-deceased Herbart—a symbolic succession that proved institutionally impermanent. For while Rosenkranz remained relatively isolated as a Hegelian, Herbartianism gained increasing influence in Prussia and especially in Austria.
The Systematic Assessment
C.H. Weisse already recognized that Herbart, by fleeing from contradiction, remains stuck at the standpoint of “abstract understanding” and thereby places himself outside speculative systems.[5] This diagnosis hits the core: Herbart’s avoidance of contradiction is itself a philosophical position that would need to be justified—but this justification cannot proceed without self-reference, which in turn exhibits dialectical structures.
The legitimate intuition lies elsewhere: Herbart emphasizes the independence of psychology as an empirical science. The question of how speculative philosophy relates to the emerging individual sciences becomes a central challenge in the nineteenth century. Herbart’s answer—strict separation—misses the mediation, but the question itself is legitimate.
The Transatlantic Rivalry
The competition between Hegelianism and Herbartianism was not confined to German universities. It continued in the United States, where both schools competed for influence over education. Notably, Rosenkranz’s Pedagogics as a System (Königsberg, 1848) appeared in English translation in St. Louis as early as 1872.[6]
The translation appeared in the orbit of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, which William Torrey Harris edited in St. Louis—the center of American Hegelianism. Rosenkranz’s Hegelian pedagogy thus competed directly with Herbart’s theory of formal stages, which was likewise received in the United States. The struggle over Kant’s succession was continued across the Atlantic.
Johann Eduard Erdmann: Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. 3: Die Philosophie in ihrer neuesten Entwicklung, Berlin 1866/1878, section on the Herbartian school. ↩︎
Erdmann (1866/1878), Vol. 3, ibid. ↩︎
Karl Ludwig Michelet: System der Philosophie als exacter Wissenschaft, Vol. 3: Die Philosophie des Geistes, Berlin 1876-1881, §694. ↩︎
Erdmann (1866/1878), Vol. 3, ibid. ↩︎
Erdmann (1866/1878), Vol. 3, section on C.H. Weisse. ↩︎
Karl Rosenkranz: Die Pädagogik als System, Königsberg 1848. English translation: Pedagogics as a System, translated by Anna C. Brackett, St. Louis: R. P. Studley Company 1872 (reprinted from the Journal of Speculative Philosophy). Digitized versions available through Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive. ↩︎