On Young Hegelian Women

Louise Dittmar and Louise Aston

Bibliographic Data

ID24226978
AuthorsAndreas Tagmose Grønkjær (Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark)
Year2026
Pages1-21
Publication date2026-10-08
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory of European Ideas (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0191-6599 • E-ISSN: 1873-541X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01916599.2026.2745126
OpenAlexW7221123695
LanguageEN
References cited22

This article reconstructs Louise Aston and Louise Dittmar as original participants in Young Hegelian political thought. Although both engaged with philosophical debates of the Vormärz, Aston has primarily been treated as a literary author, while Dittmar’s concepts of harmony, human nature, and sexual difference have complicated her inclusion within conventional accounts of Hegelianism. Comparing their writings, the article shows how both appropriated and transformed Young Hegelian criticism into competing programmes of women’s emancipation. Aston developed Bruno Bauer’s conception of criticism into a feminist practice of scandal and autobiographical intervention directed against marriage, religious morality, and the state. Dittmar transformed Ludwig Feuerbach’s anthropological materialism into a programme for reforming marriage, women’s material conditions, and the state. Their disagreement over human nature, institutional reform, and the meaning of freedom demonstrates that they were not merely recipients of male philosophers' arguments, but original thinkers who expanded the political horizons of Young Hegelian criticism. The article distinguishes between Left Hegelianism as a theological position concerning Christian revelation and Young Hegelianism as a broader political discourse directed against arbitrary authority and social alienation. Recovering Aston and Dittmar reveals both the significance of women’s emancipation within Young Hegelian political thought and the movements pluarality.

Bruno Bauer · critique · feminist political theory · Freedom · Human Nature · left Hegelianism · Ludwig Feuerbach · marriage reform · Sexual difference · Vormärz · women's emancipation · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Marxism and Critical Theory · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel

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