Systematic Balance - The Threefold Reaction to 1968

Kai Froeb2026

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

The reactions to 1968 show a dialectical pattern:

Thesis (1968): spontaneous revolt, critique of the system, the utopia of liberation.

Antithesis (reaction): threefold counter-movement:

  1. Conservative: institutions against chaos (Gehlen, Schelsky, the Ritter School)
  2. Theoretical: systematization of the critique (Dutschke, Negt/Kluge)
  3. Terroristic: violence as ultima ratio (RAF, BR, Weather)

Synthesis (after 1989)? The synthesis comes only later - in the 1980s/90s. It consists in the sublation of 1968:

  • Preservation: feminism, ecology, civil society become institutionalized (the Greens, NGOs, equality laws)
  • Overcoming: utopianism, dogmatism, violence are overcome
  • A higher stage: pluralistic democracy that integrates critique (but does not revolutionize)

The Hegel question: which reading of Hegel was correct?

The conservatives read Hegel as a thinker of stability - institutions, ethical life, preservation. Critique: one-sided. Hegel was a thinker of transformation, not of ossification.

The New Left read Hegel as a thinker of critique - negation, contradiction, movement. Critique: also one-sided. Hegel wanted not only to negate, but to sublate - to create something new, not only to destroy the old.

The terrorists read Hegel as a thinker of violence - the master-slave struggle, revolution, upheaval. Critique: fundamentally wrong. Hegel explicitly criticized terrorism (Sand, the French Revolution as terror). For Hegel, violence is not a means of liberation, but a regression into the state of nature.

The correct reading: Hegel is a thinker of mediated transformation. Institutions must change when they violate their own principles. But this change happens through critique, organization, reform - not through spontaneous revolt or individual violence. This is arduous, slow, often frustrating. But it is the only path that does not end in regression (restoration) or catastrophe (terror).