Abstract
This article provides an introduction to Johan Ludvig Heiberg’s “On the Principle of the Beginning of History” from 1843. The Danish poet, playwright and critic attended Hegel’s lectures in Berlin in 1824 and returned to Copenhagen a convinced Hegelian. He spent the next two decades pursuing a campaign to spread the word about Hegel’s philosophy in the Kingdom of Denmark. His little-known article on history draws substantially on Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History, which had been published by Heiberg’s acquaintance Eduard Gans in 1837 as a part of the complete works edition of Hegel’s writings. Kierkegaard makes Heiberg’s article the object of criticism in The Concept of Anxiety and a draft of Prefaces. In the former he claims that Heiberg’s occupation with the beginning of world history trivializes the issue of sin. In the latter he charges Heiberg with plagiarism. The present article introduces Heiberg’s article and gives an account of Kierkegaard’s criticism.
This work was produced at the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. It was supported by the Agency APVV under the project “Philosophical Anthropology in the Context of Current Crises of Symbolic Structures,” APVV-20 – 0137. Jon Stewart is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Visiting Professor, Universidad Panamericana, Instituto de Humanidades, Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer 101, Aguascalientes, 20290, Mexico. I also gratefully acknowledge the help of my friend Finn Gredal Jensen from the Society for Danish Language and Literature.
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
