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Interview

Terry Pinkard

Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University in Washington DC, helps Amirali Maleki dispel some popular misconceptions about G.W.F. Hegel’s political thought.

Do you think that in his philosophy of history Hegel (1770-1831) wanted the ‘Aryan spirit’ to work, and that the formation of the German race was necessary for the emergence of absolute truth in the world?

The question itself is badly formulated. Hegel did not speak of the ‘Aryan’ spirit at all, much less ‘wanted it to work’.

The very idea of the Aryan spirit did not come from Hegel but from Friedrich Schlegel, an opponent of Hegel, who introduced this term into the scholarship around 1819. And the idea of the Aryan race as such did not itself really begin to be used until long after Hegel’s death.

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