The Unfinished Task After the Catastrophe

This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.

After 1945, philosophy is no longer possible as it was before 1933. The questions have shifted:

No longer merely: “What is truth?” - but: “Which truth serves life and protects against barbarism?”
No longer merely: “What is rational?” - but: “How do we prevent reason from turning into unreason?”
No longer merely: “What is the system?” - but: “How do we immunize the system against totalitarian appropriation?”
No longer merely: “What is recognition?” - but: “How do we protect universal recognition from particular negation?”

These questions structure the reception of Hegel after 1945 - from critical theory through the critique of totalitarianism to the present-day debate.

Critical theory (Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas) - the dialectic of enlightenment and communicative rationality
The phenomenological-existentialist reception (Merleau-Ponty, Sartre) - dialectic and concrete freedom
The hermeneutic tradition (Gadamer) - historicity and truth
The analytic Hegel renaissance (Sellars, McDowell, Brandom) - conceptual precision and normative structures
The postmodern critique (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze) - power, difference, multiplicity
Contemporary systematic Hegel scholarship (Henrich, Pöggeler, Theunissen, Horstmann, Hösle, Stekeler-Weithofer)

The central question remains: Is systematic philosophy still possible after Auschwitz? And if so: what form must it take?