THIS BOOK TOOK A LONG TIME TO WRITE. Along the way, there have been many distractions, mostly good, some bad. What has remained unwavering throughout is my gratitude to the many people who have supported, encouraged, fed, entertained, and sparred with me. One of the many perks of finally finishing a project like this, beyond a huge sigh of relief and a moment of existential angst about what comes next, is the opportunity finally to offer thanks.
I should begin by acknowledging the institutions that allowed me to pursue this work. The University of Pennsylvania supported a year of leave, which allowed me a long sojourn in Paris, and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales welcomed me as a visiting scholar while I was there. Penn proved flexible in allowing me to take time away from teaching when further opportunities presented themselves. The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton provided support and a tranquil environment in the otherwise turbulent year of 2001. A fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in 2004–2005 allowed me to spend a wonderful year in Germany affiliated with the research group on “Symbolische Kommunikation und gesellschaftliche Wertsysteme vom Mittelalter bis zur französischen Revolution” in Münster. Though personal circumstances led me to live in Berlin, I am grateful to the Münsteraner for their hospitality. The opportunity to serve as the academic director of the Berlin Consortium for German Studies in 2008–2009 brought me back to that city, and though it was a year full of official duties, it was a time of great strides toward completion of this book.
I have presented elements of this project at many conferences and invited lectures in America, Canada, Europe, Turkey, and Israel, and I am thankful for these invitations and the engaged audiences who responded to my work. Many people discussed my ideas with me, read and improved my drafts, and generally bore with me as I groped around for the proper paths. For all sorts of help, criticism and encouragement, thanks go to Andrew Arato, Andrew Baird, Jonathan Beecher, Michael Behrent, Benjamin Binstock, Julian Bourg, James Brophy, Roger Chartier, Andrew Chitty, Jean Cohen, David Ames Curtis, Laurence Dickey, Ben Dorfman, Johan von Essen, Bernard Flynn, Don Forgay, Peter Gordon, Anthony Grafton, Stephen Hastings-King, Andreas Hetzel, Dick Howard, Gerald Izenberg, Martin Jay, Andreas Kalyvas, Randy Kaufman, Dominick LaCapra, Ernesto Laclau, Anthony La Vopa, Claude Lefort, Suzanne Marchand, Paola Marrati, Clara Gibson Maxwell, Allan Megill, Douglas Moggach, Dirk Moses, Samuel Moyn, Carmen Müller, Theresa Murphy, Elliot Neaman, Andrew Norris, Heiko Pollmeier, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Anson Rabinbach, Ulrich Raulff, Michèle Richman, Wolfert von Rahden, Camille Robcis, Paul Rosenberg, David Ruderman, Hans Christoph Schmidt am Busch, Ulrich Johannes Schneider, Joan Scott, Bernd Seestaedt, Jerrold Seigel, Ralph Shain, Jonathan Sheehan, Ludwig Siep, Gareth Stedman Jones, Andrew Stein, Christian Strub, Tom Sugrue, Judith Surkis, Luke Thurston, Lars Trägårdh, Hent de Vries, Norbert Waszek, Richard Wolin, and Rachel Zuckert. I’m indebted to Lynn Hunt in a slightly perverse way. Her invitation to contribute a volume on European Romanticism to her series with Bedford/St. Martin’s sidetracked me for at least a year, but it forced me to think more deeply about that pivotal phenomenon. More straightforwardly, as my colleague at Penn, Lynn first encouraged my idea to depart radically from the field of my first book on Karl Marx and the Young Hegelians and embark on a project on recent thought. Zoé Castoriadis opened her doors to me and attended patiently as I worked in the well-organized archive now housed in the home she had shared with her husband Cornelius. Claude Lefort was generous in meeting with me while I lived in Paris in 1998. My undergraduate and graduate students at Penn have risen to the challenges of seminars taught on various aspects of my project, and they’ve often given back at least as much as they’ve taken. I have also benefited from a number of diligent research assistants, particularly Eric Leventhal and Alex Zhang.
I am ever grateful to my parents and my family for all that they have given me in love and support. Above all, I owe the existence of this book to Cordula Grewe. In her, I have been graced with the best of companions. Ours is a romantic friendship in every sense, for she is not only my wife and closest friend, but also a great historian of Romantic art and aesthetics. She has been a limitless partner in my own explorations. This book reflects her influence in more ways than I could count. Our relationship began almost exactly when this book began and I hope it will continue decades after the ink is dry. But it gives me boundless pleasure to thank her, underway and in the middle, for bringing me this far.
I have published earlier versions of some of the material in this book. It appears here revised, extensively in most cases. I am grateful for permissions to use the material here: “The Symbolic Dimension and the Politics of Young Hegelianism” in Douglas Moggach, ed., The New Hegelians: Politics and Philosophy in the Hegelian School, copyright © 2006 Cambridge University Press, reprinted with permission; “Politics in a Symbolic Key: Pierre Leroux, Romantic Socialism and the ‘Schelling Affair,’” Modern Intellectual History 2, no. 1 (2005): 61–86, copyright © 2005 Cambridge University Press, reprinted with permission; “Democracy Between Disenchantment and Political Theology: French Post-Marxism and the Return of Religion,” New German Critique 94 (Winter 2005): 72–105, copyright © 2005 New German Critique, Inc., reprinted with permission; “The Post-Marx of the Letter” in Julian Bourg, ed., After the Deluge: New Perspectives on Postwar French Intellectual and Cultural History, copyright © 2004 Lexington Books, reprinted with permission; “The Return of the King: Hegelianism and Post-Marxism in Žižek and Nancy” in Warren Breckman, Peter E. Gordon, A. Dirk Moses, Samuel Moyn, and Elliot Neaman, eds., The Modernist Imagination: Intellectual History and Critical Theory. Essays in Honor of Martin Jay, copyright © 2009 Berghahn Books, reprinted with permission.