led by William Torrey Harris (1835-1909) and Henry Conrad Brokmeyer
(1828-1906). Harris, a New Englander born in Connecticut and educated
at Yale, first became acquainted with idealism through the
Transcendentalists, mainly from his attendance in 1857 at the Orphic
Seer's Conversations of Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888). The
experience inspired Harris to leave Yale before obtaining a degree,
and set off west to St. Louis to seek his vocation. Initially he took
a position teaching shorthand in the St. Louis Public Schools, but he
quickly advanced through the system, eventually becoming
Superintendent of Schools, a position he held from 1867 to 1880.
Brokmeyer was a Prussian immigrant who arrived in New York as a young
man of sixteen. Bold and restless in temperament, he made his way
westward, acquiring a small fortune by running a shoe factory in
Mississippi. Desiring to further his education, he abandoned his
business pursuits to enter Georgetown University in Kentucky, but his
quarrelsome character led to his departure for Brown University in
Providence, Rhode Island, only to leave that institution as well after
a heated debate with President Wayland. The venture to New England,
however, did give him an exposure to Transcendentalism, which inspired
him, like Harris, once again to head west–first to the back country of
Warren County Missouri, where he expended his energy in a close study
of German thought, particularly Hegel, and then, in 1856, to St.
Louis.
It was there that Harris and Brokmeyer met in 1858 at the St. Louis
Mercantile Library, where Harris was offering a public lecture.
Brokmeyer convinced Harris of the significance of Hegel's system, and
its relevance to the historical trends of American society. They
immediately joined forces, attracting a number of other youthful
followers with intellectual ambitions, many of whom were, like Harris,
teachers in the public schools. The nascent Hegelian movement was
temporarily stalled when Brokmeyer went off to serve as a Colonel in
the Union Army during the Civil War, but it rebounded in full force
upon his return with the formation of the St. Louis Philosophical
Society in 1866, and the launching of the Journal of Speculative
Philosophy, the official organ of the Society, in 1867.
Brokmeyer was the acknowledged intellectual leader of the movement. He
published little, but his charismatic personality, quixotic meliorism,
and extraordinary skills in argument and debate, consistently employed
in the application of Hegelian dialectical logic, established his
status as the framer of the ideals and aims of the movement. The
manuscript of his translation of Hegel's Logic, although never
published, became the theoretical text of the group, copied and
distributed not only in St. Louis, but to sympathetic thinkers in
other parts of the United States. Harris was, more than any other, the
movement's public voice and organizing genius. He edited the Journal,
contributing many of its articles himself. He also orchestrated a
number of attempts to bring about a rapprochement between the western
and New England idealists, first by inviting Alcott, Harris's former
mentor, and Ralph Waldo Emerson to St. Louis, later by his
participation in the formation of the Concord School of Philosophy, a
summer school headed by Alcott that merged the two groups within its
faculty. (Harris taught for all nine of the sessions of the Concord
School's existence, from 1879 to 1887, and his disquisitions on Hegel
became the most popular of the faculty's offerings.) But although
these efforts furthered the influence of the St. Louisians, they were
not, because of philosophical differences, wholly successful.
Even though Harris and Brokmeyer were first inspired to philosophical
pursuits by the Transcendentalists, the thought of the St. Louis group
was distinguished from the latter by its greater concentration on
philosophical understanding guided by Hegelian method, without the
literary and theological concerns of the New England movement, and a
greater stress on social responsibility and reform. The emerging views
of the various members of the group varied somewhat in details, but
they shared a common conviction in the relevance of a Hegelian social
philosophy, inspired mainly by Hegel's The Philosophy of Right and The
Philosophy of History, to the problems and challenges facing the
American society of their day, and the importance of education as a
means of effecting necessary social change. Brokmeyer insisted on the
necessity that thought issue in practical action directed to the
social good, and the St. Louisians took this imperative to heart. The
emphasis on education is evident in the pages of their journal, which
were largely dedicated to the dissemination of European idealism,
either through translations of Hegel and other German writers or
summations of their work. They also shared a common enthusiasm for the
prospects of their home city, divining by a clever but highly
questionable use of the Hegelian dialectic what they believed to be
historical forces that would propel St. Louis into an era of cultural
supremacy in American society.
Gradually the group dissolved during the 1870s and 1880s as the core
members of the group struck out on their own to pursue separate
interests and aims. Characteristically, education and moral
advancement were the themes of many of these individual pursuits.
Denton Snider (1841-1925), a central figure within the movement who
eventually became its historian, set upon a course of freelance
teaching and lecturing as well as pursuing literary ambitions. In
addition to offering lectures throughout the eastern and midwestern
United States, including the Concord School, he founded or played a
leading role in the operation of a number of visionary educational
projects, such as the Communal University in Chicago and later St.
Louis, the Chicago Kindergarten College, and the Goethe School in
Milwaukee. Thomas Davidson (1840-1900), another key player in the
original St. Louis movement, established the Breadwinner's College in
New York City, a school devoted to the education of the working class,
and later established a summer school at his home in Glenmore, New
York.
The theme is echoed in the careers of the St. Louis movement's
founders, Harris and Brokmeyer, during and after the dissipation of
the movement itself. During his years as Superintendent of Schools in
St. Louis, Harris was a strong proponent for the advancement of public
education in Missouri. After his involvement at the Concord School he
was appointed the United States Commissioner of Education in 1889.
Brokmeyer entered the political arena in Missouri, and played a key
role in the state's Constitutional Convention of 1875, which
established a legal guarantee of education for all between the ages of
six and twenty. Brokmeyer eventually served a term as Lieutenant
Governor of the state, and acting Governor during 1876 and 1877, but
when his political prospects turned against him, he returned to the
wilderness life in numerous sojourns to the west. For a time he lived
with the Creek Indians in Oklahoma. In 1896 he settled back in St.
Louis, returning to a quiet life of scholarship and reflection until
his death in 1906.
Despite the fact that the members of the group produced an
extraordinary output of published writing, both in their journal and
independently, the movement's ideas had little lasting influence on
American philosophy, due in large part to the orthodoxy of their
Hegelianism, which was soon overshadowed by the emerging naturalism of
American thought during the first decades of the twentieth century.
The one exception was George H. Howison (1834-1916), who came under
the influence of the group while teaching mathematics at Washington
University in St. Louis. Howison later settled in Berkeley,
California, and developed a pluralistic form of idealism that survived
as the twentieth century school of thought known as Personalism. The
most significant contribution of the group to American thought was
their journal, which offered a much needed vehicle for the publication
of the early work of some of the most prominent figures of the next
generation of American philosophy, such as John Dewey, William James,
Charles Sanders Peirce, and Josiah Royce. In fact, Harris's
encouragement when a young John Dewey timidly submitted his first
philosophical essay for publication was crucial in the budding
philosopher's decision to continue his studies. Although the ideas of
the movement had little enduring influence, the St. Louis Hegelians
represent an important chapter in the history of American
philosophical thought and the developing relationship between
intellectual and popular culture in the nineteenth century.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Elizabeth Flower and Murray G. Murphy, "The Absolute Immigrates to
America: The St. Louis Hegelians" in A History of Philosophy in
America, vol. 2 (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1977), pp. 463-514.
William H. Goetzmann, ed., The American Hegelians: An Intellectual
Episode in the History of Western America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1973).
Frances A. Harmon, The Social Philosophy of the St. Louis Hegelians
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1943).
Henry A. Pochmann, German Culture in America, Philosophical and
Literary Influences, 1600-1900 (Madison, WS: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1961).
Denton J. Snider, The St. Louis Movement in Philosophy, Literature,
Education, Psychology, with Chapters of Autobiography (St. Louis:
Sigma Publishing, 1920).
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