Panentheism and Cosmopolitanism

Preface

This short book is based on several of my works on Karl Christian Friedrich Krause’s philosophy. Bits and pieces to be found here have been published previously in the following places: (1) The Panentheism of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832). From Transcendental Philosophy to Metaphysics. Oxford, Berlin: Peter Lang. 2018. (2) Alles in Gott? Zur Aktualität des Panentheismus Karl Christian Friedrich Krauses. Friedrich Pustet. 2012. (3) (with Claus Dierksmeier): The Philosophy and Theology of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause. In: European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Vol 14 (2). 2022. (4) “Panentheism as Cosmopolitanism. Karl Christian Friedrich Krause’s Conception of the Human League.” In: Religious Studies. Online First. 2023. 1–16. (5) “On the Importance of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause’s Panentheism.” In: Zygon. Journal of Religion and Science. Vol. 48 (2). 2013. 364–379. (6) “Gott und die Welt? Bemerkungen zu Karl Christian Friedrich Krauses System der Philosophie.” In: Theologie und Philosophie. Vol. 87. 2012. 25–45. (7) “Das Urbild der Menschheit. Panentheismus als kosmopolitische Gesellschaftstheorie.” In: Benedikt Paul Göcke, Johannes Seidel SJ (Hrsg.): Karl Christian Friedrich Krause: Das Urbild der Menschheit. Philosophische Bibliothek. Hamburg: Meiner-Verlag. 2022. ix–cvii. (8) “Essential Features of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause’s Idealistic Panentheism.” In: Benedikt Paul Göcke, Joshua Farris (Eds.): Handbook on Idealism and Immaterialism. London: Routledge. 2021. 260–276. (9) “Indian in Nature? Karl Christian Friedrich Krause’s Panentheism and the Vedic Traditions.” In: Benedikt Paul Göcke, Swami Medhananda (Eds.): Panentheism in Indian and Western Thought. Cosmopolitan Interventions. London: Routledge. 2023.

Introduction

Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832) left for posterity an impressive and astonishingly contemporary corpus of philosophical creativity.¹ Not only does it cover numerous topics of theoretical and practical philosophy, from a panentheistic-cosmopolitan point of view², but, in terms of the history of philosophy, it may be seen as one of the first works from a European pen which appreciates the Indian roots of European thinking in their systematic importance. As Krause states:

I thought, as early as 1807, that the reunification of the European peoples with the Indians and with Indian science and art, will bring about a more important change […] than the so-called restoration of science after the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks. (Krause 1891: 270)³

The list of Krause’s writings comprises 256 works, plus the handwritten Nachlass, which is a good twenty meters long, kept in the Saxon State Library in Dresden.⁴ All the works published in Krause’s lifetime, the unpublished writings, and his handwritten Nachlass, await historical-critical examination, a complete edition, and a wider reception and appreciation in German and Anglo-Saxon philosophy.

German and Anglo-Saxon philosophy turned away from Krause, after a brief heyday of German Krausism in the nineteenth century, which featured Hermann von Leonhardi, Heinrich Simon Lindemann, Heinrich Ahrens, Carl Röder, August Wünsche and Paul Hohlfeld.⁵ This ignorance of Krause is surprising because Krausism was definitely effective and was acting at the forefront of modernity: The Krausists were not only closely connected to the General German Women’s Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein) and the Fröbelian General Educational Association (Fröbelianischer Allgemeiner Erziehungsverein) led by Bertha von Marenholtz-Bülow, and there campaigned for equal rights for women and the rights of children—both unions “considered Krause to be the first philosopher who philosophically justified the equal rights of women” (Ureña 2007: 312–312)—but the Krausists also organized international philosophers’ congresses in Prague in 1868, and in Frankfurt am Main in 1869, at which women were not only present but also actually had their say.

The reason often given for the turn away from the study of Krause is that his philosophy became incomprehensible and obscurantist, due to the many neologisms that he had introduced. The difficulty in getting used to Krause’s Wesensprache (‘language of Essence’), however, is no good reason to ignore Krause’s philosophy, because, from a logical point of view, it is quite precise and expressive, and, more importantly, it is also increasingly found only in Krause’s private notes and late publications. The vast majority of his published works are written in pleasant prose. Furthermore, Krause himself was aware that his neologistic ‘language of Essence’ (Wesensprache), as well as his pasigraphy, would meet with resistance: