The War as the End of an Era
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The First World War (1914-1918) was not only a military and political catastrophe—it was a rupture in the European mind. Philosophy, which before 1914 had developed its systems in relative security, found itself after 1918 confronted with a shattered world. What had previously appeared as reasonable development, as the progress of culture, as the realization of freedom, had turned into industrialized mass killing.
For the reception of Hegel, this meant a double break. First: the philosophy of reason in history became a laughingstock. Millions dead, civilization destroyed, empires collapsing—where was the “cunning of reason” here? Second: Hegel was politically instrumentalized—as Prussian state philosopher, as legitimizer of militarism, as intellectual pioneer of the war. These attributions were historically false, but they were effective.
Anglo-American Hegel dominance collapsed (see Chapter 16.5). In Germany, defeat led to philosophical reorientation. In France and Russia, new forms of reception emerged from the war. The international philosophical community that had formed before 1914 fell apart—and had to be laboriously rebuilt after 1918.