The Explosion of Knowledge – Esotericism, Psychotherapy, the Third World
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The Fragmentation of Rationality
1968 is also the era of pluralization—not one reason, but many rationalities. Interest explodes in all directions:
Esotericism: the I Ching (the Richard Wilhelm translation becomes popular), Zen Buddhism (D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts), yoga, meditation. The “Age of Aquarius” (popularized by the musical Hair, 1967) promises spiritual enlightenment.[1]
Psychotherapy: no longer only Freud (drives, the unconscious), but humanistic psychology (Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers)—self-actualization, the unfolding of potential, authenticity. Wilhelm Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933, rediscovered in 1968) shows: fascism is conditioned not only economically but also psychologically—by authoritarian character structures.[2]
The Third World: Fanon, Che Guevara, Mao—the heroes are no longer Western. The students identify with liberation movements. This is anti-Eurocentric solidarity—but often paternalistic (the students believe they know what is good for the Third World).
The philosophical question: is this pluralization progress (in Hegel’s terms: differentiation is development)—or disintegration (loss of unity)? Habermas will later argue: it is both. Modern society must differentiate itself (science, morality, art follow their own logics). But it also needs communicative integration—otherwise it falls apart into subsystems that can no longer speak to one another.[3]
On the esotericism wave see Wouter Hanegraaff: New Age Religion and Western Culture (1996). ↩︎
Wilhelm Reich: The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933, reissued 1970). On Maslow see Edward Hoffman: The Right to Be Human: A Biography of Abraham Maslow (1988). ↩︎
Jürgen Habermas: The Theory of Communicative Action (1981), especially Volume 2 on the “colonization of the lifeworld.” ↩︎