Carl Jung: The thinking form is not authentic any more but is a vehicle.

To Friedrich Seifert

Dear Colleague, 31 July 1935

Heartiest thanks for your kind birthday congratulations.

I owe you particular thanks for your contribution to my Festschrift.

I have read it already and have learnt a whole lot from it.

It was always my view that Hegel was a psychologist manque, in much the same way as I am a philosopher manque.

As to what is "authentic," that seems to be decided by the spirit of the age.

Or perhaps the decisive factor is the historical development of the functions, as I have always suspected, but whose history would have to be written by a professional philosopher.

This development is a very complicated affair, since it would have to be treated not in terms of the contents that have remained more or less the same in the history of civilization but in terms of
form.

Hegel seems to me a romantic thinker in contrast to Kant and hence a typical child of his time; and as a romantic he is already on the way to psychology.

The thinking form is not authentic any more but is a vehicle.

Your essay is a highly significant novum in the interpretation of Hegel's philosophy.

I am extremely pleased that you have gone to all this trouble to contribute to my Festschrift.

I would also like to thank you for sending me your fantasies, which I find extraordinarily interesting and valuable.

So far I haven't had a chance to study them thoroughly and have only skimmed through them, but I have seen already that they are worth thorough study.

In case I should come across something that seems to me particularly worth mentioning, I will write to you again.

Meanwhile with best thanks,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 194-195