In brief: Hegel is a Eurocentrist, and not by accident but on grounds he gives. That cannot be explained away, and this edition does not try. What can be shown is that the concepts he works with – above all recognition – are stronger than the world history into which he harnesses them, and have been turned against him.
The finding, unvarnished
In § 351 Hegel justifies „civilized nations“ regarding and treating others „as barbarians, with the consciousness of an unequal right“, and their independence as „something merely formal“. In § 347 one nation at a time receives the right to be the bearer of world history, „against [which] … the spirits of the other nations are without right“. In § 206 note the Indian castes serve as an example of complete degradation. The lectures on the philosophy of history contain passages on Africa and Asia that go beyond condescension and are racist.
This is no marginal feature of the system. World history is in Hegel the place where spirit comes to itself, and it has a direction – from east to west. Whoever reads § 341–§ 360 reads this construction along with it.
Why the concepts are usable nonetheless
The reason is simple: Hegel’s most important concept demands exactly the opposite of what he permits in § 351. Recognition is in him not something the stronger party grants. It is actual only when it is reciprocal – whoever does not recognise the other as free is not recognised by someone free, and has gained nothing. That is the point of the analysis of lordship and bondage in the Phenomenology, and it is Hegel’s own standard.
Measured by that standard, § 351 is not an unpleasant subordinate clause but a self-contradiction. It has been used in exactly that way. The anticolonial theories of the twentieth century – from the Caribbean to South Africa – argued against European domination not in spite of Hegel but with Hegel’s concept of recognition. The concept was stronger than its author.
What in the Groundlines is worth having
The sentence from § 209 note belongs here, and it refutes the author of § 351:
The human being counts, thus, because he is a human being, not because he is a Jew, Catholic, Protestant, German, Italian, and so on.
Groundlines, § 209 note
Likewise § 57 note on slavery. Hegel there lists the justifications – physical force, captivity in war, the saving of life, sustenance, upbringing, benefits conferred, „one’s own consent“ – and finds that they all rest on the same mistake: taking the human being as a natural entity. The opposing side he holds to be one-sided, but it has the decisive merit:
The side of the antinomy that asserts the concept of freedom therefore has the merit of containing the absolute starting point – but only the starting point – for the truth, while the other side, which stops at existence without the concept, does not contain the point of view of rationality and right at all.
Groundlines, § 57 note
And § 270 note demands civil equality for Jews with a grounding that names exactly the level at which § 351 fails: „that they are, first and foremost, human beings“.
How this edition deals with it
The incriminating passages stand in the text, with commentary, unembellished. A book from which the objectionable paragraphs have been removed is no longer a book but an argument. Whoever has not read § 351 cannot join the discussion of Hegel and colonialism – and whoever has read only § 351 just as little.
Sources. Groundlines § 57 and note (slavery), § 66 note, § 206 note, § 209 note, § 270 note, § 341–§ 360 (world history), in particular § 347 and § 351. – Phenomenology of Spirit, chapter IV A (independence and dependence of self-consciousness). – Lectures on the Philosophy of History, introduction, the geographical basis. – In the glossary: Recognition, Lordship and Bondage, World History. – Literature. Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, Pittsburgh 2009; Robert Bernasconi, „Hegel at the Court of the Ashanti“, in: Stuart Barnett (ed.), Hegel after Derrida, London 1998; Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs, Paris 1952, there the chapter on lord and bondsman.