What the Hell, Hegel?

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/12/what-the-hell-hegel/

by guerrilla • 4 years ago

8 7 4 years ago

pasabagi4• 4 years ago

The way to square this particular circle is to note that the Russian revolution happened in 1917, and Marx went from being the bitchy jewish writer of an incredibly boring tome of economics called Capital (so boring that many countries didn't even ban it), to being literally the devil.

Consequently, Hegel transitioned from being a popular philosopher, to being, essentially, the devil's foremost philosophical influence.

His citation count and impact factor declined commensurately.

guerrilla2• 4 years ago

I'm not saying your general idea is wrong (or right) but this misses how influential Marx's ideas already were. Revolutionary unions, trade unions, social democratic and communist parties had been started all over Europe... The SDAP, for example, was founded in 1869 and was hugely influential in shaping things to come.

pasabagi4• 4 years ago

The analogy in my mind was somebody like Mark Fisher. In hard left circles, he's a common reference point, and terms like 'capitalist realism' creep into the left mainstream. Outside of those circles, he's an absolute unknown.

Obviously Marx was a lot more influential than Fisher, but you actually see this phenomenon all the time: consider Foucault, or Zizek, or even Said, or Fanon. They are absolute giants amongst certain groups, and absolute unknowns outside.

Regular-Former• 4 years ago

I think one problem you and the author are ignoring is the fact that Hegel's (un-)popularity varied at different times from country to country.

In Germany, for instance, Hegel was immensely popular just in the 1830s and 1840s, but soon became old-fashioned. This is visible in Marx's works: in his writings from the 1840s he's very critical of Hegel, while in his later texts became much more reverential, as to oppose the prevailing bourgeois mentality (in the preface of Capital, he complains it was fashionable to treat Hegel as a "dead dog" [1]).

But this is just Germany. In US & UK Hegel became popular only during the end of the XIX century (with the British Idealists and the St. Louis Hegelians). In Italy, his popularity dates to the early XX century (with Croce and Gentile). And in France I think he was never really popular.

[1] https://www.marxists.org/subject/dialectics/marx-engels/capi...

pasabagi4• 4 years ago

To an extent, I agree: Hegel is subject to the normal waxing and waning of intellectual trends. On the other hand, I think really seismic shifts in faculty are generally driven by outside pressure - and the largest source of pressure, historically, has been political witch-hunting, closely followed by marketization.

What the Hell, Hegel?

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