The Collapse of Progressive Optimism
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Hegel’s Philosophy of History as a Narrative of Progress
Before 1914, Hegel’s philosophy of history—despite all criticism—had been a reference point for belief in the progress of reason. The Lectures on the Philosophy of History had sketched a grand narrative: world history is progress in the consciousness of freedom. From the oriental despotisms through the Greco-Roman world to the Germanic-Christian world—an ascending line, a meaning in history.
This reading was simplified. Hegel himself had not held a naïve belief in progress—history does not advance linearly, but through contradictions, catastrophes, “slaughter-benches.” But the popular reception had flattened this dialectical complexity. “Reason rules the world”—this sentence became a creed of historical optimism that died in the trenches in 1914.
The Crisis of Belief in “Reason in History”
What did Verdun mean for the philosophy of history? Millions of young men died for a few kilometers of mud. Industrial rationality—railways, telegraphs, mass production—served industrial annihilation. Science, the bearer of progress, invented poison gas. Reason, which was supposed to realize itself in history, had turned into its opposite.
The question was no longer: How does reason realize itself? The question was: Is there any reason in history at all? The answers diverged radically:
- Irrationalism (Spengler, later Klages) denied reason altogether
- Existentialism (the Kierkegaard revival, later Heidegger) emphasized finitude against the claims of system
- Marxism (Lukács, later the Frankfurt School) sought reason in revolutionary practice
- Dialectical theology (Barth, Brunner) set revelation against all immanence in history
All of these reactions were—consciously or unconsciously—confrontations with Hegel. For Hegel had posed the question of the meaning of history most sharply. Whoever denied this question had to reckon with Hegel.
Oswald Spengler: The Decline of the West as a Symptomatic Reaction
Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1918/1922) was the most widely read philosophical work of the postwar period—a symptom, not a solution.
The basic thesis: cultures are organisms. They pass through cycles of birth, flowering, decline, death. The “Occident” (European-American culture) has reached its phase of decline. What comes next is “civilization”—the mechanical rigidification of a once-living culture. Technology instead of art, mass instead of community, money instead of values.
The anti-Hegelianism: Spengler explicitly rejected Hegel’s universal philosophy of history. There is no world history as progress—there are only parallel cultural spheres that have nothing to do with one another. Egyptian, ancient, Arabic, Western culture—each is self-contained, none leads to another. “Eurocentrism,” which reads all history toward Europe, is a self-deception.
The irony: precisely in his rejection, Spengler remained Hegelian. Organic development, the phases of spirit, the necessity of the course of events—all of this came from Hegel’s arsenal. Spengler pluralized Hegel—many cultural souls instead of one world spirit—but he retained the structure. His “decline” was a pessimistic variant of Hegel’s philosophy of history.
The impact: the book struck the nerve of the age. The catastrophe was not interpreted as an avoidable misfortune, but as a fated decline. This perspective was defeatist—but it relieved people of responsibility. If decline is inevitable, one need not look for the guilty. Spengler became the keyword-giver of the “Conservative Revolution,” which delegitimized the Weimar Republic.