Neo-Hegelianism

Idealist philosophical school that emerged in Britain and the United States at the end of the 19th century, and in the first half of the 20th century especially between the two world wars, it has exerted an important influence in Germany, Italy and other developed countries. With the slogan of “Hegel Renaissance”, neo-Hegelianism attempted to revive the idealism and mysticism of the Hegelian philosophical system, especially Hegel's conservative doctrine of the State and society, and to turn Hegelian dialectics into a polemical doctrine by distorting it. Neo-Hegelianism was used by the imperialist fascist countries to justify monopolistic dictatorship and aggressive foreign expansionist policies. The chief representatives of neo-Hegelianism were Bradley, Bosanquet, Royce, Kroner, Croce, Gentile among others. There were obvious differences and disputes among these representative figures in philosophical theory, and their theories also had vastly different influences in Western countries. Since the democratic tradition in the Anglo-Saxon countries was relatively strong, neo-Hegelianism has never been dominant in these countries; however, in Germany, Italy and other countries which had a relatively weak democratic tradition and fascist rule during this period, neo-Hegelianism had a huge impact. For example, Gentile, who had been the Minister of Education in the Mussolini government and was executed after the war.

Neo-Hegelians cannot be strictly regarded as a unified philosophical school, but they all revived Hegelian objective idealist tint from the Right to confront Marxist philosophy; at the same time, it also has a strong tendency towards subjective idealism, a kind of hybrid philosophy. They tended to transform Hegel’s absolute spirit, which has an objective meaning into a subjective spirit in harmony with the individual’s thoughts and feelings. For example, the British philosopher Green believed that “relations are the work of the mind”, “related appearances are impossible apart from the action of an intelligence”. Bradley believed that, outside of spirit, there is not and there cannot be any reality. Croce believed that all reality was spirit.

The neo-Hegelian world outlook mingled objective idealism and subjective idealism; it inherited the Hegelian system of objective idealism but placed it under Berkeley’s subjective idealism. On the whole, whereas the neo-Hegelians favored objective idealism in the early period, subjective idealism grew in proportion in the later period. In epistemology, the neo-Hegelians changed Hegel's rationalism to anti-rationalism, and they held that human reason could not recognize the real, that scientific knowledge obtained through rational thinking was not the truth and had no reality, and that in order to reach the real and obtain the truth, the only way was to rely on irrational instincts and intuition. The neo-Hegelians disguised themselves as dialecticians, completely emasculated the Hegelian dialectics, explicated Hegel's idealism from an anti-rationalist point of view, and took advantage of the incompleteness of Hegel's dialectic to distort the law of unity of opposites of the dialectics and develop dialectics into sophistry with an increasing tendency towards anti-rationalism and mysticism. In the conception of history, the neo-Hegelians abandoned the progressive elements in Hegel’s conception of history, used and repackaged its conservative and reactionary elements, denied the laws of socio-historical development, held that history was made up of isolated and individual figures and events, and that history was merely a record of events in social development and played no dynamic part. History was made and dominated by heroic figures whose will was “general will” or “national will”. In this way, neo-Hegelianism was more suitable for the needs of the monopoly bourgeoisie. Neo-Hegelianism has been in existence for more than a hundred years and has a certain influence in Europe and America today.