The Four Thematic Fields
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Chapters 21 and 21a: The Critique of Subject-Centeredness Feminism (Beauvoir, Butler), postcolonialism (Said, Spivak), ecology (Jonas, Næss), and the Rawls debate ask: Who is the “subject” of philosophy? The answer: it was particular – male, European, anthropocentric – while presenting itself as universal. This is not a postmodern dissolution of the subject, but its expansion: recognition must become truly universal.
Chapter 21b: Standpoint Theories
The Combahee River Collective, Hartsock, McIntosh, Young, and Hill Collins develop, between 1977 and 1990, the conceptual apparatus that the later left will use to speak about inequality. Here the connection to Hegel is not rediscovered but known: standpoint theory carries the master-servant structure forward via Lukács. The chapter also shows what happened to this apparatus in its reception – and that these authors objected to it.
Chapter 22: Self-Organization and Complexity Prigogine, Maturana/Varela, and Luhmann show: order does not arise through external planning but through self-organization. Systems produce themselves (autopoiesis), structures emerge from chaos. This is Hegel’s self-reference – without “Spirit,” but with the same underlying structure.
Chapter 23: Signs, Media, Simulation Saussure, Peirce, McLuhan, and Baudrillard show: there is no unmediated experience. Everything is mediated through signs, media, discourses. The “reality” behind the signs becomes questionable. This is Hegel’s mediation – radicalized to the point of simulation.
Chapter 24: Computers and AI Turing, von Neumann, Minsky, and Günther ask: can machines think? The answer is more complex than yes or no. Machines can operate, but not reflect; calculate, but not judge; recognize patterns, but not understand meaning. The difference lies in: self-relation, freedom, responsibility.