Three Reactions: Rejection, Integration, Instrumentalization
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The actual reactions of the Hegelians to Darwin turned out to be very different. They show the spectrum of possible ways of dealing with the evolutionary challenge.
Rejection: The Idealist Defense (Michelet)
Carl Ludwig Michelet (see Ch. 2.4.1) knew Darwin well. His System der Philosophie als exacter Wissenschaft (1876-1881) discusses evolutionary theory extensively. His verdict: Darwin is “thoroughly materialistic” and misses the truth.
Michelet holds fast to Hegel’s position: there is an ideal sequence of stages, not a real descent. Natural forms did not historically emerge from one another, but were logically developed from one another. The concept of life unfolds from simple to complex forms—but this unfolding is conceptual, not biological. The plant is the immediate Idea of life, the animal the mediated one, the human being (as spirit) the one that has come to itself. This order is eternal, not temporal. It shows the logical structure of the organic, not its historical genesis.[12]
Michelet’s argument runs: if Darwin were right, there would be no fixed species, no stable forms, no conceptual distinctions. Everything would be flux, transition, transformation. Science would no longer need concepts, only genealogical trees. Philosophy would become superfluous.
This position was not absurd. Michelet saw the problem: if everything is merely adaptation, there are no normative standards left. The human being would be a mere natural product, morality a mere survival strategy. Reason would be an epiphenomenon of evolutionary fitness. Idealist philosophy of nature wanted to secure the dignity of the human being—its capacity for reason, freedom, self-determination. This dignity seemed threatened if the human being was merely a “more highly developed ape.”
But the price was high: Michelet had to ignore the empirical findings. The fossils, the geographic distribution, the homologies—all of this spoke for Darwin. Comparative anatomy showed relationships explicable only through common descent. Michelet’s “ideal sequence of stages” became speculation without empirical basis. Natural science passed him by.
The systematic lesson: conceptual necessity and historical contingency do not exclude one another. The logical order (what is conceptually connected) and the historical order (how it factually arose) are different perspectives on the same reality. Michelet misses this because he reads the conceptual order directly as a historical order. He confuses systematic with temporal priority.
Integration: Evolutionary Monism (Haeckel)
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) attempted the synthesis: Darwin + Hegel = evolutionary monism. His Die Welträthsel [The Riddle of the Universe] (1899) became a bestseller—a materialist-pantheist worldview that interpreted evolution as a cosmic principle of development. With 400,000 copies sold by 1933, it was one of the most influential philosophical books of its time.[13]
Haeckel’s thesis: evolution is not blind. It shows progress—from simple to complex, from unconscious to conscious. The “biogenetic law” (“ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”) was meant to show that individual development repeats the development of the species. The human embryo passes through fish, amphibian, reptile stages. Nature remembers its own history in the becoming of every individual. Evolution is thus spirit becoming conscious of itself—but understood materialistically. There is no pre-existing Idea that realizes itself. Matter itself develops consciousness.[14]
Haeckel understood himself as a materialist Hegelian. He criticized the “dualistic” Darwin, who kept matter and spirit, body and soul, nature and God separate. True monism, he held, must derive everything from a single principle—the developing matter-spirit substance (which he called “Urstoff,” or primordial substance). This is neither purely material (as with Feuerbach) nor purely spiritual (as with Hegel), but both at once. Evolution is its process of self-unfolding.[15]
The problem: Haeckel moralizes biology. “More highly developed” becomes “more valuable.” The history of the species becomes a hierarchy of value. In Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte [The History of Creation] (1868), he writes: “The lower human races (such as, for example, the Veddahs or the Australian Aborigines) are psychologically closer to the apes than to the highly cultivated European.”[16]
The irony: Haeckel wanted to complete Hegel materialistically, but instead created a vulgar-materialist Hegelianism that missed Hegel’s critical point. Hegel had shown that reason must remain the standard, not factual development. What is, is not necessarily rational—it must justify itself before reason. Haeckel naturalizes reason: whatever prevails in evolution is rational. This is Social Darwinism—the confusion of is and ought.
The systematic lesson: evolution does not explain normativity. That something is evolutionarily successful does not make it right. That humans can cooperate (because it brings survival advantages) does not explain why they ought to. The naturalistic fallacy (from “is” to “ought”) remains a fallacy, even when formulated in evolutionary-biological terms.
Instrumentalization: Social Darwinism and Eugenics
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) coined the term “survival of the fittest” in 1864—not Darwin himself. Spencer transferred Darwin’s biological theory of evolution to society: the “struggle for existence” was, he held, not only a law of nature but also a social principle. The “strong” prevailed, the “weak” perished—and this was not only factual but also good. Pity and solidarity with the “weak” were counterproductive—they kept the “unfit” alive and weakened the population as a whole.[17]
Francis Galton (1822-1911), Darwin’s cousin, developed from this the doctrine of eugenics—the theory of “improving” the human race through selective breeding. His main work, Hereditary Genius (1869), claimed that human abilities were primarily inherited. Galton called for “positive eugenics” (promoting the reproduction of “valuable” people) and “negative eugenics” (preventing the reproduction of “inferior” people). The term “eugenics” was adopted internationally—as an apparently value-neutral science.[18]
In the United States, eugenics developed into a mass movement, borne by respected scientific institutions and financed by the country’s wealthiest foundations. Between 1907 and 1963, over 64,000 people were forcibly sterilized—for “feeble-mindedness,” “epilepsy,” “criminality,” but also for poverty or ethnic origin. The Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of this practice in 1927: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough” (Oliver Wendell Holmes).[19]
Nazi racial policy explicitly invoked American models. The “Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring” (1933) took its bearings from US sterilization laws. The policy of extermination radicalized the eugenic logic: if “harmful” genes must be eliminated, why not eliminate the carriers directly? Medicine became the executor of a biologistic ideology. (See Chapter 28.3.6 for a detailed discussion.)[20]
The fatal logic: if evolution works through selection, one must eliminate “harmful” genes. Biology becomes politics, science becomes ideology. Darwin himself had warned against this transfer. His theory explained the emergence of species, not the evaluation of human beings. But the warning went unheeded. The pseudoscientific legitimation was too tempting for all who wished to naturalize hierarchies.[21]
The systematic lesson: the greatest perversion of dialectical thought is its biologization. Hegel had shown that development is the self-movement of the concept through contradictions toward a higher unity. To transfer this structure to biology—the “struggle” of species, the “selection” of the stronger, “progress” toward the higher—is not an application of dialectics but its destruction. Dialectics is a method of the critique of reason, not a law of nature. It demands the justification of existing conditions, not their naturalization.