Strasbourg: A Laboratory of German Idealism

The reception of German Idealism in nineteenth-century France tends to be viewed through the lens of Victor Cousin’s eclecticism, yet this perspective neglects key cross-border exchanges on the margins of the Parisian centre, including those that took place in Strasbourg. In Strasbourg there were two competing centres of knowledge that were representative of the broader French philosophical landscape: the Séminaire protestant and the Faculté des lettres. This article focuses on the leading figures of these two competing institutions from 1830 to 1870, when the reception of German Idealism in France was most dynamic. It first outlines the reception of German Idealism by three Protestant philosophers—Christian Bartholmèss, Jacques Matter, and Joseph Willm—who were closely associated with Cousin’s eclecticism, and then its reception in its Catholic counterpart, the Faculté des lettres, whose leading philosophers, represented by Louis Marie Bautain, opposed Cousin’s eclecticism. The aim of this study is to describe the Strasbourg philosophical ecosystem, particularly in so far as it was representative of the transnational and hybrid dimension of early nineteenth-century French philosophy, which constituted itself in parallel to German Idealism. In so doing, this article offers an alternative and more complex history of the French reception of German Idealism from the unique perspective of the “Université de Strasbourg.”