Reading Hegel

A spirit is haunting contemporary thought - the spirit of Hegel. All the powers of academia have entered into a holy alliance to exorcize this spirit: Vitalists and Eschatologists, Transcendental Pragmatists and Speculative Realists, Historical Materialists and even 'liberal Hegelians'.

Which of these groups has not been denounced as metaphysically Hegelian by its opponents? And which has not hurled back the branding reproach of Hegelian metaphysics in its turn? Progressives, liberals and reactionaries alike receive this condemnation.

In light of this situation, it is high time that true Hegelians should openly admit their allegiance and, without obfuscation, express the importance and validity of Hegelianism to the contemporary intellectual scene.

To this end, a small group of Hegelians of different nationalities have assembled to sketch the following book - a book which addresses a number of pressing issues that a contemporary reading of Hegel allows a new perspective on: our relation to the future, our relation to nature and our relation to the absolute.

Review:

"If our situation is marked by the fact that an order seems to continue that has long since begun to disintegrate, then Hegel is the thinker of the present. He is not the guardian of this order, which the current liberal, pragmatist reading makes him out to be. Instead, he thinks of what dissolves it from within. Reading Hegel shows what the true Hegelian presence is."
Christoph Menke, Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt am Main

"The authors take a firm stance against all attempts to normalize or domesticate Hegel - what they find most inspiring in him is precisely what is usually seen as his most problematic points: the notion of absolute knowing, his philosophy of nature, his advocacy of the state, his take on religion. In what appears outrageous in Hegel, they find the formidable thinker of the future."