On Hegel’s Coffee

“A surprising amount of G.W.F. Hegel’s letters to friends and family touch on the subject of coffee. The best manner and machinery for brewing it (e.g., a Rumford coffee maker produced in Munich), the correct way to spell the word in Vienna (‘Kaffeh’), its beneficial qualities as a way to sharpen one’s mind (necessary when one wants to write philosophy and not mere journalism), and, most passionately of all, how poorly all substitute brews compare to that coffee which is made from real coffee beans. Chicory and carrot-based replacements, the primary offenders discussed by Hegel, are described as ‘deceptive’ and compared to ‘bear shit...’ These musings even make their way into the preface of the Phenomenology of Spirit, wherein a parallel is drawn between what might currently pass for philosophy (good common sense and claims to possess immediate revelation of the divine) and what passes for coffee (chicory root). In both instances Hegel seems to imply two things: that the surrogate simply is not up to snuff, and that too many people are willing to treat it as if it were the real deal.”

Marie Louise Krogh, “Hegel’s ‘Brown Rivulet of Coffee’: Colonies, Commodities, and Context” - https://www.jhiblog.org/2025/09/22/hegels-brown-rivulet-of-coffee-colonies-commodities-and-context/. A very good example of how materialist studies of ideas can inform political philosophy. As she concludes, “Following the ‘thing’ in this way provides a lens through which different contextual scales can be refracted against one another: the nearness of everyday life in the German territories in the early nineteenth century and the broad trans-national stakes of imperial formations and trade links across the globe.”