Hegel's beliefs

Published on Friday 6 November 2009 21:46

ADAM J Smith (Letters, 6 November) grasps my view of Hegel accurately but is overly influenced by a tradition of anti-Hegelian invective that proceeds by fundamentally misrepresenting what Hegel said in order to falsely implicate it in the genealogy of Italian fascism and German Nazism. What Hegel argues is that we realise ourselves through relations with other people and that freedom requires the rule of law. These are open to criticism as philosophical statements but are not reasonab

The one sentence of Hegel that Mr Smith quotes was published not by Hegel, but by his liberal follower Edouard Gans two years after Hegel's death and is drawn out of context from an argument against suicide. This is the scholarly equivalent of kicking a dachshund because it is German.

STEPHEN COWLEY

Beaufort Road

Edinburgh