The Historical-Political Defense of Hegel: D'Hondt and Losurdo
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Framing: A countercurrent
While Althusser, Della Volpe, and Colletti sought to push Hegel out of Marxism, a countercurrent emerged: the historical-political defense of Hegel. Its thesis: Hegel was not the reactionary Prussian state philosopher his critics (from Haym to Popper) portrayed him as, but a progressive thinker who philosophically processed the French Revolution and, under the conditions of the Restoration, had to conceal his true convictions.
This school stands in the tradition of Joachim Ritter (see Chapter 3.1) but radicalizes it: where Ritter read Hegel as a thinker reconciling revolution and tradition, D’Hondt and Losurdo read him as a concealed revolutionary. And where Ritter depoliticized Hegel, they repoliticize him – but from the left.
Jacques D’Hondt (1920-2012) – Hegel the Closet Jacobin
D’Hondt was the central figure of French Hegel scholarship after Hyppolite. A student of Hyppolite and Ricœur, a Resistance fighter in the Second World War (a member of Combat, deported to Germany as a forced laborer from 1943 to 1945), he founded the Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur Hegel et Marx in Poitiers in 1970 and presided over the Société française de philosophie (1981-1991).
His life’s work circles around one thesis: Hegel was a political thinker who wrote under conditions of censorship and had to conceal his true convictions. His early works develop this thesis:
”Hegel philosophe de l’histoire vivante” (1966): Hegel as philosopher of history, who does not bring history to a teleological close but understands it as a living process.
”Hegel secret” (1968): The hidden sources of Hegel’s thought – his connections to Freemasons, Jacobins, liberal reformers. D’Hondt shows that Hegel stood within a network of progressive intellectuals and never abandoned his sympathies for the French Revolution.
”Hegel en son temps” (1968): Hegel’s precarious situation in a restorationist Prussia. The Philosophy of Right appeared under conditions of censorship (the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819); much had to be concealed. D’Hondt reconstructs Hegel’s protectors (Hardenberg, Schulze) and his enemies (Fries, the persecutors of “demagogues”).
”De Hegel à Marx” (1972): The continuity from Hegel to Marx – not as a break, but as further development.
”L’idéologie de la rupture” (1978): Directed against Althusser – the thesis of an epistemological break between the young and the mature Marx is itself ideology, concealing the continuity.
The late work crowns these studies: ”Hegel. Biographie” (1998) is the first comprehensive Hegel biography in French. It gathers the results of thirty years of research: a Hegel who does not fit bronzed clichés, but appears living, contradictory, politically engaged.
The systematic significance: D’Hondt shows that separating philosophy from politics in Hegel’s case is impossible. Anyone who ignores Hegel’s political convictions also fails to understand his philosophy. Logic is not otherworldly – it reflects the experience of the Revolution and its contradictions.
Domenico Losurdo (1941-2018) – Hegel as Thinker of Modernity Against Its Critics
Losurdo, an Italian philosopher and Communist, radicalized D’Hondt’s approach. His project: to defend Hegel against liberal criticism – while simultaneously criticizing liberalism itself.
”Hegel and the Freedom of the Moderns” (1992, German 1999): The central thesis: Hegel is not the enemy of modern freedom but its most consistent defender. Liberal critics (from Haym to Popper) project onto Hegel what they themselves repress: bourgeois society is not the realization of freedom, but a contradiction that requires mediation through the state.
Losurdo reconstructs Hegel’s position on the central questions of modernity: human rights (which Hegel defended against their abstract formulation, not against human rights themselves), private property (which Hegel limited, not deified), war (which Hegel did not glorify but analyzed as a necessity under certain conditions), colonialism (which Hegel judged ambivalently, not uniformly legitimized).
The result: liberal Hegel-criticism is itself ideological. It accuses Hegel of what liberalism itself represses – the violence underlying bourgeois society. Hegel names this violence; liberals conceal it.
”Hegel und das deutsche Erbe” (1989): Against the thesis that Hegel was a precursor of German nationalism or even of National Socialism. Losurdo shows: Hegel was a cosmopolitan, an admirer of Napoleon, a critic of German provincialism. The “Prussian legend” is an invention of his opponents.
”Controstoria del liberalismo” (2005, German “Freiheit als Privileg”): The underside of liberalism’s history of freedom – slavery, colonialism, the exclusion of women, workers, colonized peoples. Hegel appears here as a critical observer of these contradictions, not as their apologist.
”Il linguaggio dell’Impero” (2007): The language of empire – how the West ideologically legitimizes its domination. Hegel’s critique of “abstract” human rights is brought up to date: human rights as a pretext for imperial intervention.
The link to Chapter 19: Losurdo’s thesis of fascism as “colonialism turned inward” (see Losurdo’s Thesis - Fascism as “Colonialism Turned Inward”) belongs in this context. The colonial violence that Europe projected outward was, in fascism, turned inward. Hegel could have analyzed this – his critique of bourgeois society contains the tools for it.
The systematic common ground
What connects D’Hondt and Losurdo?
First: Both defend Hegel against his liberal critics – but from the left, not from the right. Hegel is not the conservative state philosopher, but the critical analyst of bourgeois society and its contradictions.
Second: Both emphasize historical-political contextualization. Philosophy does not arise in a vacuum, but under particular political conditions. Anyone who reads Hegel without the French Revolution, without the Restoration, without censorship, fails to understand him.
Third: Both see continuity between Hegel and Marx – against Althusser’s thesis of a break. Marx radicalizes Hegel; he does not refute him.
Fourth: Both are Marxist intellectuals who resisted the spirit of their times. When Marxism was in crisis (after 1968, after 1989), they held fast to it – but in an original, non-orthodox form.
The line to Klaus Vieweg
This tradition continues into the present. Klaus Vieweg (b. 1953), a professor in Jena, produced a major Hegel biography, “Hegel: Der Philosoph der Freiheit” (2019), which stands in the tradition of D’Hondt and Losurdo: Hegel as a thinker of freedom, not as an apologist of the state; as heir of the French Revolution, not as a Prussian reactionary.
Vieweg will be treated in more detail in Volume III. Here it need only be noted: the line Ritter -> D’Hondt/Losurdo -> Vieweg shows that the political interpretation of Hegel remains alive – against the widespread trend of depoliticizing or demonizing him.
Systematic significance
What remains of D’Hondt and Losurdo?
First: The warning against dehistoricization. Anyone who reads Hegel only as a systematizer misses the political dimension of his thought.
Second: The critique of liberal Hegel-criticism. Many charges against Hegel (deification of the state, nationalism, totalitarianism) are projections that reveal more about the critics than about Hegel.
Third: The connection between defending Hegel and critiquing capitalism. Hegel’s analysis of bourgeois society – its contradictions, its tendency toward self-destruction – is not outdated. It can be updated.
Fourth: The question of concealment. If Hegel wrote under conditions of censorship – how then do we read him? This hermeneutic question remains open.