On Part VI: The Interwar Period (1920-1945, Chapters 14-18)
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Soviet Reception as State Ideology (Ch. 21): Lenin read Hegel in 1914-1916 and productively rediscovered the dialectical method. But under Stalin, dialectics became a mechanical schema (thesis-antithesis-synthesis), an orthodoxy, a catechism. Stalinization was not only intellectually devastating but became the ideological legitimation of terror. Dissenting voices were physically annihilated.
German Academic Consolidation (Ch. 23): Philological groundwork through editions (Lasson, Hoffmeister, Glockner), systematic interpretations (Kroner), the founding of the International Hegel Association (1930) - but at the same time entanglement with National Socialism (Haering, Larenz).
The Phenomenological Challenge (Ch. 24): Husserl demanded “To the things themselves” against speculative construction. Heidegger “destroyed” Western metaphysics - with Hegel as its culmination and closure. But both overlooked something: Hegel’s Logic is already phenomenology - an explication of what shows itself.
The Early French Discovery (Ch. 26): Jean Wahl discovered the “unhappy consciousness” (1929), Kojève delivered his legendary lectures on the Phenomenology (1933-1939: recognition, desire, the struggle to the death), Hyppolite translated the Phenomenology (1939-1941). This prepared the postwar flourishing.
The Italian Consummation (Ch. 27): Croce developed a liberal historicism (preserving what is living in Hegel, discarding what is dead), Gentile radicalized this into actualism - and became entangled with fascism. The balance sheet is painful: brilliant philosophy under the shadow of politics.