Hegel, Life and Death in the Writings of Frankfurt and Jena

Abstract

G.W.F. Hegel's philosophy in the early Frankfurt period is linked to the idea of unity, the totality of life, in relation to nature.  Hölderlin will concur with his Hyperion in this idea of the exaltation of life, which is found in Hegel's manuscript of 1800 shortly before he left Frankfurt. Love is developed as a reconciliation between lovers which, without suppressing the differences, unites the separated, but life is "feeling" and there is no room here for the reflection of the understanding. Hegel analyses love in relation to presence and identity, unity and children and property. Particularly in the Jena text of the System Sittlichkeit, Hegel goes on to analyse intersubjectivity from the point of view of violence. The possibility of admitting both value and passivity that abandons itself to fate. Although self-consciousness, Hegel considers, is to be found in the recognition of the self-consciousness of the spouses established by the conciliation of love (where he analyses modesty). However, he understands that there is no room for reflection on life except in violence through the exposure of life to death. It is a different concept to life as principle and process (werden) in a different way to the Frankfurt elaboration of that organic unity of the whole in which the multiplicities integrated in organic life fit and he will think (Jena) that "the only master is death". But he also thematises "the beautiful soul", which he identifies with Jesus and associates with pure love and destiny.