The War as Dialectic of Modernity
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Technology and Annihilation
The First World War was not the first technologized war, not the first world war, not the first with mass mobilization. But it was the first in which all three aspects converged in full totality.
The precursors: The American Civil War (1861-1865) had already anticipated modern war technology: railways for troop transport, telegraphs for communication, submarines, ironclad ships, mass production of weapons (Colt revolvers). The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) had already been a “world war”—fought in Europe, North America, India, on the world’s oceans. And going further back: the Dutch wars against Portugal’s colonial empire in the seventeenth century, the Napoleonic Wars—all these were precursors of global conflict. Finally, the French Revolution had introduced mass mobilization: the levée en masse, the people in arms.
The convergence: What made the First World War unique was the coming together of all three dimensions in a totality unprecedented until then:
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Modern war technology—no longer sporadic, but systemic: machine guns, heavy artillery, poison gas, tanks, aircraft, submarines deployed en masse. Industrial rationality—railways, telegraphs, mass production—served industrial annihilation.
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Mass mobilization—no longer just armies, but entire societies: millions under arms, the home front as a “second front,” women in the armaments industry, total mobilization of all resources.
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War economy—the complete conversion of the economy to war production: rationing, planned economy, state direction. This totality was new. “War socialism” (as Johann Plenge called it) became a model—for Bolshevism as well as for fascism.
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World war—no longer limited theaters of war, but a global conflict: Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific, the world’s oceans. The colonial empires drew their subjects into the war—Indians fought in Flanders, Senegalese at Verdun.
This convergence posed the question of reason in history in a new way. The rationality of the means—technology, organization, mobilization—led to the irrationality of the ends. Millions died for a few kilometers of mud. Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer/Adorno, 1944) answered this question later with the thesis that instrumental reason turns into mythology, enlightenment into barbarism.
But this answer was too simple. Technology as such is not destructive—it can heal and destroy, liberate and enslave. The question was not: Is reason destructive? The question was: under what conditions does reason turn into unreason? This question was Hegelian—it asked about mediations, conditions, constellations.
Mass Society and the Individual
The war produced the “mass” as a political category. Millions of people were mobilized, put into uniform, set in motion. The individual disappeared into the mass—in the trench, in the factory, in propaganda. “Mass psychology” (Le Bon, Freud) attempted to understand this phenomenon.
Hegel’s philosophy of the individual—concrete universality, which realizes itself only in community—was challenged by the experience of the mass. The mass was not a community in the Hegelian sense—not an ethical substance in which the individual comes to itself. The mass was the opposite: the dissolution of the individual into an amorphous collective.
The reactions diverged: fascism celebrated the mass as bearer of the “will of the people.” Existentialism set the isolated individual against the mass. Marxism analyzed the mass as a product of capitalist alienation—and sought its revolutionary potential. All these reactions were confrontations with Hegel—with his concept of community, of freedom, of the individual.
The Question of “Reason” in History After Verdun
Can one still believe in “reason in history” after Verdun? The question was not rhetorical—it concerned the foundation of Hegelian philosophy.
Simple denial was no solution. Whoever claims there is no reason in history presupposes that they themselves judge rationally. The reason that judges history as unreasonable is itself historical—it has developed, it reacts to experiences, it learns. Total critique of reason abolishes itself.
But simple affirmation was no solution either. Whoever claims after Verdun that reason realizes itself in history must explain how millions of deaths fit into this scheme. The “cunning of reason,” which turns the negative into the positive, appeared as a cynical justification.
The productive answer lay between these extremes. Reason does not automatically realize itself in history—it must be realized, through human practice, against resistances, through catastrophes. History is not rational—but it can be made rational. This reading preserved Hegel’s insight—the mediation of reason and history—without sharing his optimism.