This question must be answered with an emphatic “Essentially no, but…“
No, in the sense of a philosophically grounded “essentialist racism” that defines certain peoples (“races”) as such as theoretically and necessarily biologically inferior. As if, according to Hegel’s philosophy, there had to be human races which were furthermore ordered by a biologically determined hierarchy. The fundamental principle of Hegel’s entire philosophy is the exact opposite: the Spirit (Geist) is universal, and its essence is freedom. Every determination is merely a stage in a process of development of freedom, of the Spirit.
Personally, Hegel was known as a thoroughly “inclusive” personality (regarding his Jewish acquaintances, etc.); his personal disdain was primarily directed at his intellectual opponents, whom he frequently and gladly insulted as “shallow,” etc.
But: In his works, particularly in the Lectures on the Philosophy of World History and the Encyclopedia, there are passages (especially concerning Africa) that, by today’s standards, must be regarded not only as problematic but as objectively racist and untenable.
The cause of this contradiction lies not in Hegel’s personality and not in the philosophical principle itself, but in its flawed application by Hegel himself, which may also be attributed to a misplaced demand for systematic completeness.
1. The Problem: The “Concept” and “Empiricism”
Hegel’s philosophy is a philosophy of development and of the Spirit. It derives the necessary stages of the Spirit from the philosophical Concept (Begriff).
However, in order to grasp Actuality (Wirklichkeit), Hegelian philosophy must rediscover these logical stages as forms within the empirical world. The philosopher must “look around in language and representations (Vorstellungen)” to see where the Concept has taken “shape.”
This is precisely where Hegel’s fatal error lay.
2. The Error: The “Premature” Assignment
The empirical basis of his time regarding foreign cultures was catastrophic. Hegel’s knowledge of Africa or the indigenous peoples of the Americas came from the “representations”—the reports—of missionaries and explorers who were themselves steeped in the deepest prejudices.
- Hegel incautiously took this profoundly deficient, racist empiricism as the actuality of the matter itself.
- Hegel “prematurely”—and in that respect, unscientifically—projected a logical stage of development (e.g., “Spirit in its immediate naturalness”) onto an entire continent (Africa).
- In doing so, Hegel—contrary to his own principle—excluded these peoples from the dialectic of world history and degraded them to an “In-itself” (An sich) without a “For-itself” (Für sich).
Had Hegel possessed more empirical data on, for example, the people of sub-Saharan Africa, and had he conversely known of the existence of, say, Neanderthals, he would—one hopes—have readily assigned the “non-thinking thinking” to the latter, or to other early humans who stood at a less developed stage. Had Hegel possessed better empiricism, the assignment of the philosophically necessary Concept (that there must have been—qua development—a certain form of thought that was not yet fully developed thought) would have turned out differently.
As it was, however, the lack of available empiricism led Hegel to premature fallacies that he ought to have avoided. Scientifically, it would have been more honest if Hegel had said: “Here I lack experience,” or “Here empirical science is not yet sufficiently developed.” Through this approach, Hegel simultaneously revealed a structural weakness of his philosophy as a whole.
3. What this means for reading the Philosophy of Right
It would be a grave mistake, however, to discard the entire system under the label of racism. Why?
- The Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien) is universalistic: The work is based on Abstract Right, which grants every human being the status of a Person. The central command is: “be a person and respect others as persons.” This is the opposite of racism.
- The Method is the tool of critique: The dialectic, the unfolding of the Concept, and the doctrine of recognition (Anerkennung) are the best tools we have today to criticize every form of essentialism and regressive forces. The Phenomenology shows that the master who does not recognize the former servant remains unfree himself.
- The critique of Hegel must be conducted with Hegel: Today, we must apply Hegel’s own method (dialectical critique) to his own prejudices. We must separate the flawed application of the Concept by the philosopher from the universality of the Concept (of freedom) itself.
Conclusion: Hegel’s texts are (unfortunately) also a document of the limits of bourgeois consciousness in the early 19th century. But the truth of his philosophy—the teaching that the Spirit is only free by recognizing itself in the Other—is the sharpest weapon against those limits.
