This is Europe

When I was a boy, the US was in our films and in our dreams: Kennedy, Muhammed Ali, Lassie, a small step for a man … oh, how long is the list of American gods! We even ate American food – which is, to say the least, crazy.

But one thing we were told by our teachers, would forever limit American supremacy. “They are superficial!“ And we, that is: we Europeans, we were always ready to consider stacks of books, metaphysical abysses in every question of our lives.

If this is a correct opposition, or at least was one before things like “Bologna“ crushed our universities, then it is clear why the translators of the famous “System-Fragment”, written by Hegel and/or by Schelling and/or by Hölderlin ... or most probably by all the three of them, why in its American translation they write about being »clever«:

»One cannot be clever in anything, one cannot even reason cleverly in history – without aesthetic sense.« (philosophyproject.org)

Quite obscure, so far. »Aesthetic sense« and »cleverness« – what might be the connection?

»Clever« in German would be something like schlau, maybe schnell und schlau? In a text from our young idealists a word like this simply could not have appeared. Cleverness concerns something they regarded as meaningless everyday activities. They might have written about being reasonable (not in the practical sense!), about being rational, and they most definitely would not have protested against »thinking beautifully« – seeing as they proclaim the importance of »aesthetic sense«, but »clever«? Never.

Indeed they wrote:

Man kann in nichts geistreich sein, selbst über Geschichte kann man nicht geistreich raisonnieren – ohne ästhetischen Sinn.

This is not easy to translate. Nowadays geistreich is something near to what we consider British humour, say: »witty«. But if we take the word geistreich literally, we get nearer to what those invincible three philosophers may have meant: »rich/full of spirit« – »spirit« taken as the (more or less) human faculty of reasoning – reasoning »about«, not »in« history. And if they use raisonnieren please leave it like that in your translation: At that time, that was still French stuff and you could hear it.

German! British? French! Just do not forget that he is from Europe when you make Hegel (and/or …) speak American.