Preliminary Remark: Why a Systematic Theory of Fascism?

Kai Froeb2026

This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.

The history of Hegel reception in the interwar period reveals a painful fact: many Hegelians accommodated themselves to National Socialism, some actively supported it (see Chapter 23.7). Yet this historical entanglement raises a deeper philosophical question: How was it possible that a philosophy of reason, freedom, and recognition could coexist with an ideology of unreason, oppression, and annihilation?

The usual answer is: the National Socialists abused, falsified, instrumentalized Hegel. This is true—but it does not explain enough. For fascism was not merely a political phenomenon but a philosophical worldview with its own inner logic. It invoked philosophical traditions, radicalized certain patterns of thought, mobilized intellectual resources.

An adequate philosophical engagement with fascism must therefore not stop at mere negation or taboo. It must understand:

  1. Which philosophical traditions fascism took up and radicalized
  2. What inner logic its worldview possessed (and why it was attractive)
  3. Why this logic nevertheless led to the most destructive barbarism of modernity
  4. What philosophical lessons must be drawn from this

This chapter develops a systematic theory of fascism as radical counter-Enlightenment—not in order to legitimize it, but to understand it. Only those who understand the inner coherence of an ideology can explain its attractiveness and its destructive dynamic—and philosophically overcome it.

Methodological preliminary remark: A philosophical analysis of fascism must determine it positively, not negatively. The Marxist definition (“fascism = anti-communism”) and Western totalitarianism theory (“fascism = anti-democracy”) both miss the core. They define fascism by what it rejects—not by what it affirms. This renders their own blind spots invisible: the Marxist definition cannot grasp Soviet totalitarianism; the Western theory cannot criticize Western imperialism, surveillance capitalism, and militarism.

We proceed differently: first a positive determination of fascism from its own logic. Then showing why it is anti-Hegelian—as a consequence, not as a definition. First understand, then criticize.

The analysis developed here integrates:

  • Vittorio Hösle’s dialectic of Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment as a systematic framework[1]
  • The ideological precursors in Romanticism, Schelling, and other critics of reason
  • The specific sources of National Socialism (Nietzsche, philosophy of life, social Darwinism, Heidegger)
  • Domenico Losurdo’s thesis of fascism as “colonialism turned inward”[2]
  • Moishe Postone’s analysis of antisemitism as “personification of the abstract”[3]
  • Hegel’s logic as the foundation of a philosophical alternative

  1. Vittorio Hösle: “Moralische Reflexion und Institutionenzerfall. Zur Dialektik von Aufklärung und Gegenaufklärung,” in: idem: Praktische Philosophie in der modernen Welt, Munich: Beck, 1992, pp. 147-169. Available online: https://archive.hegel.net/werkstatt/personen/hoesle/moralische_reflexion.htm ↩︎

  2. Domenico Losurdo: Die Sprache des Imperiums. Zur Kritik der ideologischen Vernunft, Berlin: PapyRossa, 2010; idem: Der Klassenkampf oder die Wiederkehr des Verdrängten, Berlin: Argument, 2016. ↩︎

  3. Moishe Postone: “Nationalsozialismus und Antisemitismus. Ein theoretischer Versuch,” in: Dan Diner (ed.): Zivilisationsbruch. Denken nach Auschwitz, Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1988, pp. 242-254. ↩︎