Book Reviews: Stephen Brockmann (ed.): Bertolt Brecht in Context

Abstract

Thus, Stewart amply demonstrates how Hegel ‘cast a long shadow’ (pp. 64, 244, 282) on philosophy in the nineteenth century, and this book confirms his view that the history of philosophy in the nineteenth century is characterized not much by a radical break as by various attempts to come to terms with some of the key analyses of Hegel (p. 203) – attempts that continued well into the twentieth century and, indeed, continue into our own (pp. 294–301); Hegel’s shadow is very long. Stewart envisages that his book might be used as a companion or textbook in classes on philosophy or the history of ideas, and it could very well serve this useful function. But there is another significant point: apart from Hegel himself, none of the figures discussed here was a university philosopher (or, if they were, it was not for long; p. 293). (Tellingly, in Eduard Gaertner’s painting of Unter den Linden (1873) that graces the dust jacket of this book, the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great and the Staatsoper are clearly in view, but the Humboldt University on the other side is largely occluded . . . ). In fact, Stewart suggests that there is ‘something powerful in the idea that something important was lost in the practice of philosophy once it became institutionalized’, speculating that ‘the true spirit of philosophy can only exist outside these structures in the spirit of free inquiry’ (p. 281). There is a lesson here for us all.