Introduction: Hegel and the Enlightenment

Summary

G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) is without question one of the towering figures of modern thought. Hegel's philosophy has been both adored and reviled, its notorious difficulty spawning a multitude of Hegel myths. Arthur Schopenhauer denounced Hegel as a charlatan, while Nietzsche praised his profound historical sense. Karl Popper accused Hegel of paving the way for totalitarianism, while Alexandre Kojève took his interpretation of Hegel to have the significance of “political propaganda” (quoted in Roth 1988: 118). Even analytic philosophy emerged in reaction to Hegelianism, or more precisely, British idealism, which included figures such as F. H. Bradley, T. H. Green, and J. M. E. McTaggart; for Bertrand Russell, it represented just the kind of dubious metaphysics that conceptual analysis sought to dispel (see Rockmore 2005: 42–53). Despite this controversy, the complex currents of Hegelianism continued to inspire important developments in modern thought, from Marxism and existentialism to critical theory and deconstruction.

Among the most difficult of all modern philosophers, Hegel is also one of the most demonized. As Robert Pippin has remarked, Hegel appears to be “in the impossible position of being both extraordinarily influential and almost completely inaccessible” (1989: 3). The history of Hegelianism has therefore always been the history of the partial appropriation of selected Hegelian themes and concepts, rather than a comprehension or productive development of Hegel's system as a whole. One could even say that there is no such thing as a pure “Hegelian” philosopher in the sense that one talks of “Kantian” or “Heideggerian” philosophers today.