The Hidden Sources of Hegelian Thought（Part 1） : J.H.Campe and his“Robinson der Jungere”

The following thesis aims to give some comments on the relation of Hegelian thought to the lesser known authors of the eighteenth century. The first name l wish to render here is J. H. Campe，a German pedagogue of the Enlightenment period， whose novel Hegel utilized in his lectures， though this is not generally known today. Campe was an admirer of Rousseau and a colleague of J. B. Basedow，a reformer of the educational system and the founder of the experimental school，Philanthropin，in Dessau. In 1780， Campe rewrote Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, so that it would suitable for children as inspired by Rousseau's Emile. Different from the original， the story was reconstituted to illustlate how mankind has developed his world by processing and utilizing natural products for existence and inventing or innovating tools and machines， and how he has joined together to form a society. It was an achievement of the German pedagogies of the Aufklarung， and，as it established itself succesfull， it transmitted the new spirit of the education in Emile among the people in Germany during the last two decades of the eighteenth century. Hegel denied or， at least， did not expose the relation of his thought to Campe， who was well known for his enthusiasm for the French revolution causing suspicions of his being a Mason；but he knew Campe's works very well， as his diary， extracts， unpublished manuscripts， and lectures show us. He was also critical of the instruction of farming or handworking in the philanthropic school. But his thought on the education of mankind is，in its principle， similar to that of Philanthropes. The fact that Hegel treated the labor and the tool as the fundamental categories of the human mind in his early Philosophy of Mind， tells us for certain that Hegel’s philosophy inherits the pedagogical achievements of the German Enlightenment stimulated by Emile