Becoming Historical

John Edward Toews is Professor of History at the University of Washington. He is the author of Hegelianism: The Path Toward Dialectical Humanism, 1805–1841 (Cambridge, 1981) as well as numerous articles in scholarly journals. He also is the editor of The Communist Manifesto: By Karl Marx and Frederick Engels with Related Documents (1999).

• List of illustrations; Preface; Acknowledgements; Philosophical prologue: historical ontology and cultural reformation: Schelling in Berlin, 1841–5; Part I. Historicism in Power: 1840 and the Historical Turn in Prussian Cultural Politics: 1. Nation, church, and the politics of historical identity: Frederick William IV's vision of cultural reformation; 2. 'Redeemed nationality': Christian Bunsen and the transformation of ethnic peoples into ethical communities under the guidance of the historical principle; Part II. Architectural and Musical Historicism: Aesthetic Education and Cultural Reformation: 3. Building historical identities in space and stone: Schinkel's search for the shape of ethical community; 4. The generation of ethical community from the spirit of music: Mendelssohn's musical constructions of historical identity; Part III. Law, Language, and History: Cultural Identity and the Self-Constituting Subject in the Historical School: 5. The tension between immanent and transcendent subjectivity in the Historical School of Law: from Savigny to Stahl; 6. The past as a foreign home: Jacob Grimm and the relation between language and historical identity; 7. Ranke and the Christian-German state: contested historical identities and the transcendent foundations of the historical subject; Antiphilosophical Epilogue: historicizing self-identity in Kierkegaard and Marx, 1841–6; Index.

Review of the hardback: 'In Becoming Historical, John Toews provides a challenging and thought-provoking reworking of the cultural and intellectual history of Berlin in the early nineteenth century. The analysis Toews offers is sophisticated, subtle and perceptive, providing new perspectives both on the 'old chestnuts' of German intellectual history and on the cultural politics of nationhood. It will undoubtedly emerge as a key text on the cultural and intellectual history of this period.' English Historical Review