Systematic Balance: Integrating the Irrational
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The challenge posed by Romanticism, Schopenhauer, Darwin (see next chapter), Hartmann, Nietzsche (in Aspect I), Bergson, and Freud (see the chapter after next) at first glance seems to expose a fundamental problem in Hegelian logic: can systematic thought do justice to the living, the willful, the unconscious, the felt, the intuitive? Can reason grasp what seems to elude it? The analysis shows, however: many critiques do not hit Hegel himself but a caricature. At the same time, they mark aspects that may have remained underexposed in Hegel’s presentation or that require more explicit integration.
What Was Already Developed in Hegel
Intuition and concept (vs. Schopenhauer, Bergson): Hegel had already accomplished the integration of intuition and concept. The Phenomenology of Spirit shows the development from sense-certainty through perception to understanding. The Science of Logic shows the development from immediacy through reflection to the concept. Not an opposition, but mediation. Intuition without concept is empty, concept without intuition is blind. Schopenhauer’s critique thus hits a phantom - a position Hegel never held.
Differentiated account of unconscious structures (vs. Hartmann, Freud): Hegel had developed a differentiated account of unconscious structures. Mechanism as lawlike interaction without any interiority. Chemism as affinity without subjectivity. Teleology as external purposiveness, where the end is external to the object. Life as internal purposiveness without consciousness, as self-organization and self-preservation. Instinct as rational, but not known as reason. Nature as a whole as “the Idea in the form of otherness” - rationally structured but outside itself. Hartmann’s unified “Unconscious” levels these differences and falls behind Hegel’s precision.
Integration of immediacy and mediation (vs. Romanticism, Bergson): Hegel had shown the integration of immediacy and mediation. The immediate as the result of mediation - sedimented practice, appropriated culture. The fragment as determined by limitation, by the category “something and other.” Feeling as culturally-historically mediated. Romanticism polarizes what Hegel thinks as moments of the same process. It reacts to a pre-Kantian Enlightenment thought, not to Hegel.
What First Becomes Explicit in Our Interpretation
The three circles - performative, chronological, systematic - (vs. Schopenhauer) were present in Hegel but not explicitly distinguished, which invited misunderstanding. In our account, the explicit distinction is made to avoid conflations.[1] This answers Schopenhauer’s legitimate critique of the conflation of levels of justification.
The resistance of experience (vs. Schopenhauer, Bergson) was treated by Hegel as “the Other” of logic, as the contingency of nature, as philosophy of reality. In our account, this is made an explicit theme as a constitutive limit of logic.[2] Logic arises in dialogue with what does not fit.
The logic of reflection and implicit reflection (vs. Hartmann, Freud) were present in Hegel in the distinction between in-itself and for-itself, but not terminologically explicit. In Johannes Heinrichs, on whose foundation our interpretation works, one finds the distinction between implicit and explicit reflection.[3] It systematically captures what Hartmann called the “Unconscious,” without metaphysical hypostatization.
The Irony of History and the Achievement of the Critics
The post-Hegelian critics reacted to the difference between what Hegel explicitly said - more than was understood - and what was publicly received - usually a caricature, a “system of pure conceptuality,” a “panlogism,” an “absolute idealism.” They formulated as critique what was already present in Hegel as insight. Their polarizations constructed oppositions that Hegel had thought as moments of a process. Intuition against concept, instead of intuition and concept as moments. Existence against system, instead of existence as concrete mediation within the system. Will against reason, instead of will as a moment of reason. Unconscious against conscious, instead of development from unconscious to conscious structuredness. Fragment against system, instead of fragment as determined by limitation.
This does not mean that the critics were superfluous. They accomplished something important. They pointed out where explication was needed: what was implicit in Hegel had to become explicit, such as the three circles. They marked one-sidednesses: Hegel emphasized too little the living, the resistant, facticity. They developed new terminology: “the Unconscious,” “existence,” “the will,” “the fragment” - concepts that capture certain aspects more pointedly. They spurred concrete research: the psychology of the unconscious from Hartmann to Freud, existential philosophy from Kierkegaard to Heidegger, the psychology of the will from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche. They directed public attention: they made visible themes that in Hegel were “merely” transitional moments.
The Systematic Task of a Contemporary Integration
What was present in Hegel? The unconscious, the instinctual, is not absent - but it is not systematically thematized. Hegel speaks of “drive” in the Anthropology, of “desire” in the Phenomenology. But these moments are quickly sublated into higher forms.
What is new? The systematic explication of pre-conceptual, unconscious processes as an independent dimension. Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Freud, Bergson show: there are psychic dynamics that elude conscious control. Nietzsche radicalizes this: reason itself is an expression of the will.
How can it be integrated? The task consists in distinguishing living from fixed concept-formation. Concepts can grasp the living - if they themselves remain alive, if they are open to the non-identical, if they think their own provisionality along with them. The unconscious does not withdraw in principle from conceptual articulation - but this articulation must not become forced subsumption.
Hegel’s Science of Logic (in preparation), Ch. 25. ↩︎
Hegel’s Science of Logic (in preparation), Ch. 25 and Hegel’s Science of Logic (in preparation), Ch. 24.1. ↩︎
Johannes Heinrichs: Reflexion als soziales System. Zu einer Reflexions-Systemtheorie der Gesellschaft, Bonn: Bouvier, 1976; Logik des Sozialen, Hamburg: Meiner, 2005. ↩︎