Concluding Remarks on Chapter 3: The German Hegel Renaissance Between Rehabilitation and Domestication
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The German Hegel renaissance of the 1950s to 1970s was a necessary response to the totalitarian-theory appropriation of Hegel. Ritter showed: the Hegelians were progressive, not reactionary. Gadamer integrated Hegel’s historicity into hermeneutics. Liebrucks developed a monumental reconstruction of the linguistic dimension in Hegel. Even Voegelin, the most critical mind, helped sharpen self-critique through his warning against hubris.
But: all these rehabilitations had their price. They made Hegel acceptable to postwar German society by defanging him:
- Ritter turned him into a conservative thinker who affirms rather than criticizes modernity.
- The Ritter school reinforced this tendency: institutions were sacralized, the philosophy of history abandoned, practice neutralized.
- Gadamer adopted Hegel’s historicity but renounced systematic criteria for distinguishing ideology from truth.
- Liebrucks developed a brilliant reconstruction that was scarcely received—too difficult, too isolated, too little dialogical.
- Voegelin warned against hubris but hit the vulgar Hegelians more than Hegel himself.
The central tension: how can one rehabilitate Hegel without domesticating him? How can one preserve his critical force without falling into the errors that led to abuse?
The answer can only be: through self-critical systematics. A philosophy that applies its own principles to itself, that remains open to critique, that not merely proclaims recognition but practices it. The three basic movements within the framework of recognition offer the standard for this:
- Self-reference: the system applies its criteria to itself.
- Dialectical movement: it differentiates precisely and integrates productively.
- Sublation: it preserves what is true, overcomes what is one-sided, raises it to a higher level.
- Recognition as framework: it presupposes the critical other, does not immunize itself.
The nine ethical criteria, properly understood, systematically protect against dogmatism:
- Openness (3) against rigidification
- Participation (6) against exclusion
- Transparency (5) against concealment
- Reciprocity (4) against domination
- Self-reflexivity (implicit in 3) against immunization
The German Hegel renaissance laid the foundations. It defended Hegel against totalitarian-theory appropriation, worked out his significance for modernity, opened up various approaches. But it did not fully exploit the radicality of his method.
The next chapters will show: while Hegel was being domesticated in Germany, his revolutionary potential exploded in France. Kojève, Hyppolite, Sartre, postmodernism—they all read Hegel differently: as a thinker of negativity, of alienation, of struggle. The question will be: can these two readings—German preservation and French revolution—be productively mediated?