Systematic Conclusion: Pluralization Without Mediation
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 ended the era of Hegel’s dominance—but it also opened up new possibilities at the same time. The interwar period (1918-1939) was a phase between scientific professionalization and political instrumentalization.
The systematic question: was this diversity decay or enrichment? The answer depends on whether one understands unity as uniformity or as mediation. If truth is the mediation of various perspectives, then pluralization was productive—provided the perspectives relate to one another.
The interwar period did not accomplish this mediation. The various images of Hegel existed side by side, often without knowledge of one another:
- The German academic knew little about Kojève
- The French existentialist knew little about the Soviet dialectics debate
- The Marxist dialectician knew little about the Anglo-Saxon analytic critique
- The philological work of editing remained isolated from the systematic debates
This fragmentation was not dialectical mediation, but positivistic coexistence. Each school cultivated its own truth—without seeking confrontation with the others.
The Second World War would shake this fragile plurality once again—and at the same time force new syntheses. But that is already the story of Volume II.