Klaus Vieweg’s eight-hundred-page biography of Hegel made something of a sensation when the German original appeared in 2019. More lies have been told about Hegel than about any other philosopher, Vieweg averred, and the biggest lie of all painted Hegel as an apologist for the Prussian . . . . Continue Reading »
In the autumn of 1933, Alexandre Kojève announced to his class that history was over. He did not mean that the apocalypse was at hand, that wars and violence had ceased, that human beings would no longer love, mate, and play. Kojève called himself a god and made a radical reading of . . . . Continue Reading »
Our editors reflect on their latest reads. Continue Reading »
One generation's progress may fall victim to the next generation's very different agenda. If there is a lesson to be taken from this, it is that history is not, after all, a singular progressive movement along some grand Hegelian trajectory. Continue Reading »
Romanticism: A German Affair by rüdiger safranski northwestern, 376 pages, $35 During the early Romantic era, subjective sentiments and an often solipsistic quest for personal fulfillment began to challenge Enlightenment ideals of rational dialogue. John Keats’s 1817 plea “for a life of . . . . Continue Reading »
In 1989, as the Cold War entered the bottom of the ninth inning, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote a memorable essay entitled “The End of History?” And despite the question mark in the article’s title, the argument resolved itself in a straightforward answer: “Yes.” Continue Reading »
The ice is beginning to crack in another section of the cold, hard surface of modernity. The part of the frozen lake that is breaking up this time is Darwinism, or at least Darwinism as a worldview with implications for culture and social policy. And as with the breaking up of Marxism and . . . . Continue Reading »
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