‘Hegel in France’ is a title which poses two questions: (i) the extent of French acquaintance with Hegelian thought, (ii) the influence exercised by Hegel on French philosophy. Initially it is necessary to recall what Hegel's personal contacts were with the French and the time he spent in France.
In 1818 Victor Cousin (1792–1857), who had already been to Germany in 1817, suggested going to Munich. He wrote to Hegel asking him for letters of introduction. Hegel was still at Heidelberg, but had just been named Professor at Berlin and he replied on the 5 August 1818. Cousin thus met Hegel at Heidelberg. In 1824 while accompanying the Duke of Maitebello's son in Germany he was arrested in Dresden by Saxony police at the request of the Prussians who then imprisoned him in Berlin. Hegel intervened on his behalf to free him. In 1827 Hegel visited him in Paris, a visit about which Hegel wrote extensively to his wife, and Cousin followed him back to Germany.
To what extent had Cousin, who exercised a wide influence on French universities himself, been an Hegelian and would he have contributed to the diffusion of Hegelian philosophy in France? In the important year 1828 when the change of government allowed him to take up his teaching again, he declared: ‘In Germany, a philosophy which draws its glory fran calling itself the philosophy of nature, has succeeded subjective idealism and in France if not on the ruins of, at least in the face of empiricism, a philosophy has developed which certainly has pronounced spiritual dimension. What can we conclude from these changes?
