Framing: The Movement of the Whole
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
When the Allies liberated the concentration camps in April 1945, philosophy faced an existential question. Not only: “How could this happen?” But more radically: “Can one still philosophize after Auschwitz?” And if so: “Can one still read Hegel – the philosopher who said ‘the truth is the whole’ and ‘world history is the world court of judgment’?”
For Jewish philosophers this question was not abstract. Many had lost family in the extermination camps. Some had themselves been in exile, in captivity, in flight. They could not simply move on to business as usual. Philosophy had to confront absolute negation – or fall silent.
This chapter examines how Jewish philosophers responded to this challenge between 1945 and 1989. A paradoxical movement emerges: they reject Hegel’s thinking of reconciliation – but they work with dialectical structures. They criticize totality – but they develop systematic philosophies. They say “no” to Hegel – but this “no” is itself Hegelian in structure.
The Temporal Constellation
1945-1950: Immediate postwar period. The Shoah is documented, comprehended, grasped in its enormity. The Nuremberg trials (1945-1946) make its extent public. The founding of Israel (1948) is a practical answer – but philosophically unresolved.
1950s-1960s: The philosophical engagement begins. Emmanuel Levinas develops his ethics of the Other. Martin Buber dies in Jerusalem in 1965. The Eichmann trial (1961) in Jerusalem forces Israel to come to terms with the Shoah.
1970s-1980s: The “second generation” formulates its response. Emil Fackenheim coins the “614th Commandment” (1967, elaborated 1970-1982). Hans Jonas gives his 1984 lecture “The Concept of God after Auschwitz.” Academic Hegel research (Yovel, Avineri) begins sober analysis.
1989: With the fall of the Wall, an era ends. The division of Europe, which was also a result of Auschwitz (East against West, both “against fascism”), is overcome. The question of Hegel poses itself anew.
The Systematic Question: Enlightenment after Its Darkest Night
In Volume 1, we learned about Vittorio Hösle’s dialectic of Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment. Counter-Enlightenment wanted, in a reflective manner, to return to immediacy – and failed at the performative contradiction. National Socialism was the most radical form of this Counter-Enlightenment (Volume 1, chapter on fascism): it biologized thought itself as “Jewish” and attempted, through the annihilation of those who think, to overcome reflection.[1]
After 1945 the question posed itself differently: not “How do we overcome Enlightenment?” (that had led to catastrophe), but: “How can Enlightenment criticize itself without turning into Counter-Enlightenment?” The Jewish philosophers we will examine take this path: self-critical Enlightenment. They reject Hegel’s affirmative reconciliation, but not reason itself. They criticize totality, but not from outside (that would be irrationalism), but from inside – by showing its limits.
Three Response Patterns to Hegel after Auschwitz
The philosophers we examine can be divided into three groups – though these groups are not exclusive, but mark emphases:
First group – rejection of totality (Emmanuel Levinas): Hegel’s systematic thought is criticized as the violence of mediation. The Other of the Other cannot be totalized. Ethics must come before ontology, not follow from it. This position is radical – but it falls into performative contradictions of its own.
Second group – negative theology (Hans Jonas): Hegel’s God in history becomes impossible. After Auschwitz one can no longer say: “The actual is rational.” Jonas develops the conception of a becoming, suffering, powerless God – a negative theology that uses Hegel’s structures in order to overcome Hegel.
Third group – open dialectic (Emil Fackenheim): Hegel’s dialectic is not rejected, but transformed. Reconciliation is not fact, but task. History has no guaranteed end – but it has a direction. The “614th Commandment” is practical philosophy after Auschwitz: neither despair nor naive optimism, but active hope.
Fourth group – academic sobriety (Yirmiyahu Yovel, Shlomo Avineri): Hegel is analyzed historically and critically. Was he anti-Semitic? How did he view Judaism? These researchers work with Hegel, not against him – but they see his limits.
Where Does This Chapter Stand in the Overall Architecture?
This chapter stands at the end of the section on the Western bloc (Part II). It describes an independent path within Western philosophy – a path that grows out of the specific experience of the Shoah.
Jewish philosophers after Auschwitz share with the Frankfurt School the crisis of Enlightenment. Adorno’s “Dialectic of Enlightenment” (1947) and his dictum “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” (1949, later modified) formulate a similar despair.[2] But the Jewish philosophers proceed differently: they do not reject dialectic (as Adorno does in “Negative Dialectics”), but transform it.
With analytic philosophy they share skepticism toward systematic thought. But while the analysts dismiss Hegel as “confused” (Russell), the Jewish philosophers take him seriously – precisely because he is so powerful, precisely because he explains so much, his limit must be precisely determined.
The Jewish philosophers after Auschwitz are a voice of their own – neither a continuation nor a simple rejection of Hegel. They are productive critique in the literal sense: critical, but productive.
Methodological Preliminary Remark
We will not treat all Jewish philosophers – that would be a book of its own. We concentrate on those who explicitly engage with Hegel or whose thought is systematically relevant to the question: “Can one still read Hegel after Auschwitz?”
Not treated: Martin Buber (died 1965, but his main work predates 1945), Gershom Scholem (a scholar of mysticism, little reference to Hegel), Walter Benjamin (died 1940). These thinkers are important – but not for our specific question.
Treated: Levinas (explicit critique of Hegel), Jonas (implicit transformation of Hegel), Fackenheim (explicit engagement with Hegel after Auschwitz), Yovel/Avineri/Rotenstreich (academic Hegel research).
The structure follows the tried method from Volume 1: for each thinker, framing – intellectual history – steelman – sublation I-III. No checklists, but organic development of ideas and their inner contradictions.
Emmanuel Levinas: Totality and Infinity, pp. 211–216. The face as ethical epiphany, which comes before all ontology: “Le visage parle. Il parle, en tant que c’est lui qui rend possible et commence tout discours” (p. 213)—“The face speaks. It speaks, insofar as it is what makes possible and begins all discourse.” ↩︎
On the critique of Hegel’s “bad infinity” see: Hegel: Science of Logic I, TWA 5, pp. 149–165. Hegel distinguishes “bad infinity” (the endless progression: 1, 2, 3, …) from “true infinity” (which returns into itself, grasps itself). Levinas reverses this evaluation: his infinity is precisely not the one that returns into itself (that would be totality), but the positive transcendence that never lets itself be totalized. See Levinas: Totality and Infinity, pp. 37–42: “L’infini ne se totalise pas”—“The infinite does not totalize itself.” ↩︎