{"id":389,"date":"2007-04-11T08:29:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-11T14:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=389"},"modified":"2008-12-29T20:18:27","modified_gmt":"2008-12-29T20:18:27","slug":"solving-tiny-footnote-puzzle-journalism-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2007\/04\/solving-tiny-footnote-puzzle-journalism-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Solving a tiny footnote puzzle in journalism history"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span> love the Internet, for all the usual reasons, but today it helped solve a tiny puzzle over a footnote in a book called Imagined Communities<\/a> by Benedict Anderson<\/a>. In the book (first published back in 1983), Anderson quoted a line from Hegel<\/span><\/a> that has been much copied<\/a>. Here\u2019s an excerpt from the London Review of Books<\/span><\/a>: <\/p>\n

After reading Anderson, one never opens the paper over breakfast without somehow remembering:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe significance of this mass ceremony \u2013 Hegel observed that newspapers serve modern man as a substitute for morning prayers<\/span> \u2013 is paradoxical.\u201d [my italics]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now I love that quote too (since it so resonates with my own opinions<\/a>) and I wanted to find the original. The chunk of Anderson from the LRB<\/span> above is from page 35 of my edition<\/a>. So I checked the footnote, wondering where he got it from.<\/p>\n

That prints a line from a 1968 article<\/a> (subs. req.) by historian Elizabeth Eisenstein<\/a> (\u201cPrinted materials encouraged silent adherence to causes whose advocates could not be located in any one parish and who addressed an invisible public from afar.\u201d) But that line isn\u2019t Hegel\u2019s, it’s Eisenstein\u2019s, and her very enjoyable and thoughtful piece (included in this book<\/a>) doesn\u2019t have the quote either.<\/p>\n

So, does the quote exist? Or is it simply too good to be true? Well – tiny drum roll, curtain draws back – here it is (awkwardly translated, schade<\/span>): <\/p>\n

Reading the newspaper in early morning is a kind of realistic morning prayer. One orients one\u2019s attitude against the world and toward God [in one case], or toward that which the world is [in the other]. The former gives the same security as the latter, in that one knows where one stands.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s quoted<\/a> by academic Susan Buck-Morss<\/a>, and she sources it to page 543 of the 1977 reprint of the nineteenth century biography of Hegel by Karl Rosenkranz<\/a>, at which point we just have to believe her!<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Rosenkranz\u2019s book isn\u2019t in Anderson\u2019s bibliography – still he must have noted it down from somewhere. Interestingly too, Buck-Morss uses the quote to raise the influence of newspaper reading on Hegel (Mr Abstract himself)…but in journalism, sometimes you have to know when to stop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love the Internet, for all the usual reasons, but today it helped solve a tiny puzzle over a footnote in a book called Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson. In the book (first published back in 1983), Anderson quoted a line from Hegel that has been much copied. Here\u2019s an excerpt from the London Review […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2243,2246,2248,389,2245,2244,1741,2247],"class_list":["post-389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-benedict-anderson","tag-elizabeth-eisenstein","tag-hegel","tag-journalism-history","tag-karl-rosenkranz","tag-london-review-of-books-ltd","tag-newspapers","tag-susan-buck-morss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2590,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions\/2590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}