Philosophy 06

“A man counts as a man in virtue of his manhood alone, not because he is a Jew, Catholic, Protestant, German, Italian, etc.”

Quote: Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel (1896): Philosophy of Right, translated and first Published: S W Dyde, G Bell: London 1896. Picture: Lazarus Gottlieb Sichling/ Nach Friedrich Julius Ludwig Sebbers - Wikimedia, Creative Commons.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a philosopher of German Idealism.

In particular in his lectures, Hegel repeatedly makes racist arguments. He describes the inhabitants of the socalled sub-Saharan Africa as "a child nation", who could "so easily be made into slaves" due to their lack of consciousness of personality. In the quote here, Hegel emphasizes that in modern bourgeois society all people are equal, regardless of religion or nationality. The condition for this, however, is that this legal equality must first be achieved historically. This idea harbors the possibility of devaluing other forms of life that do not correspond to the European, modern, bourgeois order as underdeveloped.

*Jamila Mascat (2022): Race, Feminism and Critical Race Theories: What’s Hegel Got to Do with It?, in: Lettow, S., Pulkkinen, T. (eds.): The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Feminist Philosophy. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Londing: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 329-349. *Michael Hardimon (2024): Where Did Hegel Go Wrong on Race? Hegel Bulletin 45(1), p. 23-42.

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