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Chapter 21

Hegel, History, a nd  Rac e

Rocío Zambrana

Where is the Rhodus
on which the political philosopher
is supposed to perform his political dance?
​Henrich Paulus (quoted in Bernasconi 2000)

Notwithstanding the critical reception of Hegel’s philosophy of history throughout

the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, versions of his defense of modernity are alive and
well. Consider, for instance, Axel Honneth’s work (2014). It is a normative reconstruction
of Hegel’s claim that historical development is a matter of the actualization of freedom. The
Hegelian notion of freedom remains tied to an Enlightenment conception of autonomy,
yet it recognizes the social conditions of possibility for autonomous agency. Such concep-
tion of freedom is itself the historical achievement of Western modernity. It is articulated
through struggles for recognition pursued by different social movements (Honneth 1996).
Although we should interrogate the forms of exclusion and violence out of which it is born,
the Enlightenment conception of freedom retains normative power on its own. An insti-
tution or practice can thus be assessed in light of its capacity to actualize freedom. A phi-
losophy of history and its world-​historical perspective is accordingly necessary not only for
reconstructing this conception of social freedom but also for establishing social freedom as
the correct normative framework for thinking about justice.
Honneth’s work is arguably the most prominent example of a “reactualization” of Hegel’s
conceptions of history and right. It is exemplary of one of two approaches to Hegel’s think-
ing of history. Honneth seeks to further develop the form of Hegel’s arguments, dropping
the offensive content—​Hegel’s comments on race—​that would contaminate the normative
power of Hegel’s insights. Robert Bernasconi’s work is exemplary of the second approach,
which seeks to assess the form of Hegel’s philosophy of history by interrogating the content of
Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit and his Lectures on the Philosophy of History. Indeed, Bernasconi
has called attention to the role that race plays in the unabashed Eurocentrism of Hegel’s phi-
losophy of history (see Bernasconi 1998, 2000, 2003, 2010). For example, he has examined
Hegel’s treatment of the sources on which he based his infamous treatment of Africa in order
to call into question Hegel’s notion of world history (Bernasconi 1998). Bernasconi has also

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suggested that the relation between Hegel’s anthropological account of race and his philoso-
phy of world history establishes the racial basis of the latter (Bernasconi 2000).
In what follows, I examine the entwinement of Hegel’s philosophy of history and his treat-
ment of race. I do so, however, not in order to provide an assessment of Hegel’s views on
race, which should simply be rejected. Rather, I aim to consider the ways in which scholars
and teachers working within a Hegelian context ought to engage Hegel’s understanding of
history and of a philosophical thinking of history. My focus takes up Bernasconi’s impor-
tant challenge to contemporary philosophy. He argues that we ought to engage the ugly pas-
sages of the Western canon, yet not merely to establish the racism of historical figures such
as Locke, Kant, or Hegel. Instead, we ought to reflect on the “institutional racism of a disci-
pline that has developed subtle strategies to play down the racism of Locke, Kant and Hegel,
among others, with the inevitable consequence that, for example, in the United States philos-
ophers are disproportionately white” (Bernasconi 2003, 35). In this context, it is instructive
to consider Susan Buck-​Morss’s Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. Buck-​Morss both exam-
ines the entwinement of history and race in Hegel, and she defends a reconstructed notion
of universal history. Her argument hinges on an interrogation of the academic practices that
repressed Hegel’s knowledge of the revolution in Haiti. She thereby attempts to develop fur-
ther Hegelian insights by marking the very limits of Hegel’s thought and Hegel scholarship.

Hegel on Race and World History

Hegel’s comments on race are part of his discussion of anthropology within his account of
subjective spirit, but they gain theoretical significance within his discussion of world his-
tory, which is part of his account of objective spirit. It is important to bear in mind that with
the notion of spirit, Geist, Hegel denotes both individual mind and collective mindedness.
In the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, comprised of a logic, a philosophy of nature,
and a philosophy of spirit, Hegel gives an account of subjective spirit through an anthropol-
ogy, a phenomenology, and a psychology. He gives an account of objective spirit through
an assessment of right, morality, and ethical life (family, civil society, state), which includes
world history. In the anthropology of the Philosophy of Spirit, Hegel’s comments on race are
an abridged version of what is explored at greater length in the Lectures on the Philosophy of
History. To be sure, there are substantive editorial challenges that need to be kept in mind
when assessing the additions to the Philosophy of Spirit and the Lectures on the Philosophy of
History (see the introduction to Hegel 2011 and Walker 2014). These texts are comprised of
student transcriptions and author manuscripts. Nevertheless, both discussions respond to a
thorny, yet central issue in Hegel’s system: the relation between nature and spirit.
Although spirit has nature as its “presupposition,” Hegel argues that spirit is the “truth” of
nature (Hegel 1978, 24, 25). Famously, Hegel maintains that nature “vanishes” in this truth.
Key to understanding this odd claim is the conception of freedom that is at the core of Hegel’s
idealism. Hegel’s notion of freedom transforms Kantian autonomy by understanding spon-
taneity relationally. In this context, we must understand freedom in light of Hegel’s charac-
terization of spirit as a “product of itself ” (Hegel 1975, 51). Spirit is a form of individual and
collective self-​relation. It is a form of self-​consciousness through practices and institutions
of self-​articulation (see Zambrana 2015b). A form of life articulates the truth of nature, self,

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Hegel, History, and Race    253

and society through scientific, political, artistic, religious, and philosophical practices. Now,
Robert Pippin argues that, although initially an awkward characterization, we should under-
stand the nature–​spirit relation as a form of “compatibilism” (Pippin 1999). Because (contra
Kant) Hegel rejects all accounts of freedom that require an appeal to a realm exempt from
the laws of nature, Hegel’s insistence that spirit leaves nature behind must be tempered. It is
not an ontological claim, but rather a claim about the type of account giving that is appro-
priate. We can account for social-​historical phenomena appropriately by appealing to the
institutional actualization of freedom, rather than appealing to determinations of nature. In
other words, modes of individual and collective self-​understanding, and their institutional
embodiments, are said to be free, to make possible a free life, if they are products of self-​
articulation, rather than products of nature.
This is the framework for making sense of the metaphysics laid out in the introductions
to the Lectures on the Philosophy of History. Moreover, it is the framework for making sense
of the relation between Hegel’s anthropological discussion of race and the philosophical dis-
cussion of world history. The common thread between the two discussions is Hegel’s insis-
tence on tracking racial diversity to geographical, geological, and climactic diversity. In fact,
Hegel rejects the monogenesis and polygenesis debate crucial for his predecessor’s accounts
of race (see de Laurentiis forthcoming and Parekh 2009). In the Philosophy of Spirit, Hegel
argues that the variability of the “soul” or “natural spirit,” which is to say all “planetary life,”
is the result of geological transformations (Hegel 1978, §392; see de Laurentiis forthcoming).
He adds that this includes humankind and its races (Rassen), peoples (Völker), and native
groups (Lokalgeister). In the Lectures, Hegel argues that history is progress, since it is the
development of the consciousness of freedom. It is humankind’s progressive freedom from
nature through becoming conscious of its capacity to be a product of itself. Freedom is here
not something abstract or individual, but exhibited in the type of institutions distinctive of
a people. In the Lectures, Hegel tracks the actualization of freedom from east to west. World
history begins in China and ends in Europe. Properly speaking, world history begins in
Persia, which is deemed to belong to the “Caucasian race,” and hence to begin “continuous
history” (Hegel 1956, 180). As we will see, Africa is outside of history. America remains inde-
terminate (see Hegel 1975, 170).
In the addition to section 393 of the anthropology, Hegel argues against the idea that the
“mental and spiritual superiority of one race over another” could be explained by descent.
“[M]‌an is implicitly rational,” he reportedly explains, and “herein lies the possibility of equal
justice for all men and the futility of a rigid distinction between races which have rights
and those which have none.” Nevertheless, he adds that the difference between races is a
“natural difference,” one that derives from geographical location. Hegel proceeds to explain
the “distinctive character” of the continents, which provides the basis for his account of the
classification of the races. To be sure, Hegel simply accepts Kant’s division of four races and
Blumenbach’s five varieties (see Bernasconi 2010). However, geological, geographical, and
climactic circumstances determine a race’s capacity to achieve consciousness of freedom,
to leave behind its natural existence. We should immediately note that Hegel’s distinction
between the universal rationality of humankind and the natural difference of the races fol-
lows his nature–​spirit distinction. As social-​historical, “man” is implicitly rational. Justice is
a matter for all. As natural, different races admit of different capacities and dispositions.
In both the anthropology and the lectures on history, Africa and Africans fare the worst.
Infamously, Hegel argues the following (see Hegel 1978, §393; 1975, 173ff.). North Africa “up

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to the boundary of the sandy desert” is not Africa proper. Its inhabitants are not Africans,
“that is, Blacks [die Neger],” but rather European in character. Africa proper, sub-​Saharan
Africa, is a “landmass belonging to a compact unity.” Its “fiery heat” is “a force of a too pow-
erful nature for man to resist, or for spirit to achieve free movement and to reach a degree
of richness which is necessary for it to cultivated form of actuality.” Because it is cut off
from sea, its inhabitants are cut off from economic and cultural commerce. Its inhabitants
are therefore a “race of children that remain immersed in a state of naiveté.” They are tied
to sensuousness, which is reflected in their disposition and their religion (see Bernasconi
1998, 2000). They lack the “drive [Trieb] toward freedom.” Though they can be educated
(Bildung), they have no propensity (Trieb) for culture (Kultur). These claims inflect his
assessment of slavery. Slavery is a natural relation among Africans. The slave and the mas-
ter are thus “distinguished arbitrarily,” by the contingency of victory in war. This contin-
gency establishes African slavery as an “absolute injustice,” by which he means outside of
proper political relations. Addressing the Atlantic slave trade, Hegel concludes that slavery
is best “eliminated gradually,” as a part of a process of education (Bildung). Through slavery,
Europeans had begun the process by which Africans could become conscious of their own
freedom.
Africa is outside of history, it seems, given its natural determination. The nature–​spirit
relation that frames the intersection of race and history in Hegel’s system, however, compli-
cates matters. Indeed, it opens up interpretive space that has allowed for defenses of Hegel
against the charge of racism, as we will see. Hegel states that the subject matter of a philoso-
phy of history is the “world historical significance of peoples,” not races. In section 394 of
the anthropology, Hegel argues that racial diversity “expresses itself in particularities, in
spirits which may be said to be localized.” This expresses itself both “externally” and “inter-
nally,” both in ways of life, bodily constitution, and disposition, and in the propensity and
capacity of “intellectual and ethical character.” In the addition, we read that Hegel argues
that the history of peoples “exhibits the persistence of this type in particular nations.”
National difference is as “unchangeable” as the “racial variety of men.” Hence, “national
character” is but the “germ out of which the history of the nations develops.” The histori-
cal significance of peoples is thus established by a move from a “natural history of man”
to a world-​historical perspective. This is to say, for Hegel, we must move from a natural to
a spiritual (geistige) explanation of individual and collective character if we are to assess a
people’s capacity for freedom.
In Hegel’s philosophy of history, it is not nations but rather the nation as a state, Volk als
Staat, as he puts it in the Philosophy of Right, that exhibits freedom (Hegel 1991, 331). The move
from race and indeed national character to the nation as a state concerns the self-​consciousness
of a nation. Such a nation is no longer tied to natural dispositions. It is a matter of rational
institutions that embody freedom, that make possible autonomy. This is the normative core
of Hegel’s famous claim that world history is a court of world judgment—​“Die Weltgeschichte
ist das Weltgericht” (Hegel 1991, 341). World history can judge, given the “rationality” of insti-
tutions that comprise a way of life. The move from a natural to a geistige account of peoples
is thus tantamount to a move from a crude biological notion of race to an account of culture
as the basis for understanding the progress of world history. This has been the crucial point
for defenders of Hegel, like Joseph Mccareny. Mccarney points out that, for Hegel, insofar as
people are also nations, their principle is a natural one (see Mccarney 2000, chap. 9). Far from
basing his account of world history on race, he stresses, Hegel understands world history as a

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Hegel, History, and Race    255

matter of ethical-​political institutions. World history is a matter of the “rationality” of those

institutions, where rationality is defined in light of an Enlightenment conception of freedom.
Given that “groups whose principle is a natural one, such as nations, tribes, castes and races,
cannot as such figure as historical subjects,” Mccarney writes, “[i]‌t follows that, for Hegel, there
literally cannot be a racist interpretation of history” (Mccarney 2003, 33).
In contrast, Bernasconi argues that, while such terminological moves might map onto the
nature–​spirit relation such that they indicate a move away from a crude biological notion
of race to a notion of cultural difference, Hegel reinscribes the hierarchy of races in his phi-
losophy of history (Bernasconi 2000, 2003). Notwithstanding the move from a natural to a
spiritual account, in the Lectures Hegel argues that “nations whose consciousness is obscure”
are not the “object of philosophical history of the world.” That is to say, peoples who have
not achieved self-​consciousness of their freedom, who have not left nature behind, are not
“objects” of world history. They are not part of the progress of history as reconstructed by a
philosophy of world history. Yet, rather than ignored, these peoples are deemed “savages.”
What is more, Europeans are not only deemed cultured. They are vehicles of culture. For
Bernasconi, assessment of a people in light of their capacity to break with the bonds of nature
clearly tracks the racial hierarchy at the center of Hegel’s natural history of humankind. That
the beginning of world history is linked with the “Caucasian” race, that Africa is literally out-
side of history, are determinations that remain tied to the naturalist account of the anthro-
pology. Bernasconi makes clear that this does not merely expose Hegel’s Eurocentrism.
It expresses the racial politics of nineteenth-​century European and American colonial-
ism (Bernasconi 2000, 190–​191). Hegel’s views on race, then, should make us question the
nature–​spirit distinction that structures Hegel’s thought. Therefore, they should make us
question the conceptual structure of Hegel’s philosophy of history.
Earlier I  stated that Hegel’s comments on race gain theoretical significance within his
discussion of world history. Hegel’s insistence that the truth of nature is spirit presses us to
assess the relation between race and history in light of the world historical sublation (auf-
hebung) of race. This does not mean an overcoming of race, however. As Bernasconi’s work
has shown, the aufhebung in question retains the determinations of nature sketched in the
anthropology within Hegel’s philosophy of history. Race remains inseparable from world
history, even if we argue that they are distinguishable modes of giving an account of the his-
tory of humankind. A world historical perspective, which aims to critically assess the actual-
ization of freedom by tracking its institutional embodiment, remains tied to a conception of
freedom that gains descriptive traction and normative force from opposing its non-​Western,
indeed non-​“Caucasian” Other. Although Mccarney’s defense of Hegel is theoretically acute,
the entanglement of race and history in Hegel cannot be denied. The question becomes,
Why should it be denied? Does recovering Hegelian concepts depend on purifying them
from their problematic content? Most important, what are the consequences of this theoreti-
cal operation?

World History as Universal History

In her important essay “Reason, Power, and History,” Amy Allen calls attention to the philos-
ophies of history that frame contemporary critical theory (Allen 2014; cf. Zambrana 2015a).

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The essay focuses on Jürgen Habermas’s understanding of historical progress, arguing that
this philosophy of history has made possible critical theory’s virtual silence on colonialism
and imperialism. Habermas and Honneth, among others, have failed to substantially engage
the postcolonial and decolonial critiques of modernity, given the notions of historical prog-
ress that they have sought to recover from the Enlightenment tradition, albeit in a nonmeta-
physical key. In attempting to carry forward the unfinished project of the Enlightenment,
they have failed to fully assess modernity’s violence.
The entanglement of race and history in Hegel deepens the problems that Allen identifies.
Here, considering Susan Buck-​Morss’s Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History is instructive (see
Buck-​Morss 2009). Buck-​Morss examines the entwinement of history and race in Hegel,
yet she does so in order to recover, rather than reject, “modernity’s universal intent” (Buck-​
Morss 2009, ix). Indeed, she confronts Hegel in order to radically reconstruct a Hegelian
notion of universal history. Such reconstruction, however, depends on critically assess-
ing the academic practices that repressed Hegel’s knowledge of the revolution in Haiti—​
knowledge of a slave revolt that culminated not only in the elimination of slavery but also in
the founding of a black republic, the Republic of Haiti. Buck-​Morss’s work, then, attempts to
recover Hegelian insights by marking the limits of Hegel’s thought, by articulating precisely
where and how it fails. But more important, she attempts to recover Hegelian insights by
marking the limits of Hegel scholarship.
In Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, Buck-​Morss confronts Hegel’s account of Africans
as outside of history and of slavery as requiring gradual dissolution with his own knowl-
edge of the Haitian Revolution. Hegel had knowledge of the Haitian Revolution through
the leading political magazine of his time, Minerva, which not only reported on the events
in St. Domingue but also ran a series devoted to the revolution from fall 1804 to winter
1805. This year-​long series included “source documents, new summaries, and eye witness
accounts” (Buck-​Morss 2009, 42). Hegel’s early philosophical development was inspired
by the events in Haiti, Buck-​Morss argues, while his mature lectures on Africa are sim-
ply evidence of Hegel becoming “dumber” throughout the years (Buck-​Morss 2009, 73).
Indeed, Buck-​Morss argues, Hegel’s early conceptions of lordship and bondage and his
famous master–​slave dialectic in his 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit were inspired by the
revolution in Haiti. His mature lectures on Africa express a conservative view in tension
with his early work.
What is crucial for Buck-​Morss is the fact that the significance of the Haitian Revolution
for Hegel’s early work was repressed within Hegel scholarship. Silence about Hegel’s knowl-
edge of the revolution is a product of an Enlightenment bias, which developed a notion
of universal equality that underestimated the events in St. Domingue. Such notion privi-
leged the French Revolution, which in turn led to privileging the significance of the French
Revolution in Hegel’s intellectual development (see Buck-​Morss 2009, 48ff.). The repres-
sion, Buck-​Morss argues, is also a product of a North-​American ignorance, which follows
from the exclusion of the Haitian Revolution from histories of the Age of Revolutions and
the Enlightenment. The crucial point is that specialized scholarship that fragments the pro-
duction of knowledge into fields that do not collaborate made the conjunction of Hegel and
Haiti an unlikely one (see, e.g., Buck-​Morss 2009, 22–​23). Indeed, the division between phil-
osophical work and historical work made possible a lack of reflection on how Hegel’s most
influential philosophical claims were developed from historical sources that ought to have
made some of those very claims untenable.

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Hegel, History, and Race    257

For Buck-​Morss, uncovering Hegel’s knowledge of the Haitian Revolution recovers

the world historical significance of the events in St. Domingue. This recovery incorpo-
rates what Hegel called “unhistorical histories” into world history, thereby subverting an
Enlightenment narrative from within. It interrupts the official narrative of histories of and
by the Enlightenment. But it also interrupts the very idea of world history distinctive of the
Enlightenment tradition and central to Hegel’s own philosophy of history. This interruption
makes possible counternarratives. “What happens when,” Buck-​Morss writes, “in the spirit
of dialectics, we turn the tables and consider Haiti not as a victim of Europe, but as an agent
in Europe’s construction” (Buck-​Morss 2009, 80)? We would be able to construct an alter-
native history of modernity as a product of the colonial system. Now, for Buck-​Morss, this
interruptive operation rewrites, rather than rejects, modernity’s universal intent. Indeed, a
counternarrative remains a universal history, one in which “human universality emerges in
the historical event at the point of rupture” (Buck-​Morss 2009, 133). Marginalized events,
instead of history’s progress, ground a universalist perspective. A universalist perspective
is necessary, if we are committed to bringing to light what Buck-​Morss calls our “inhuman-
ity in common” (Buck-​Morss 2009, 138ff.). For Buck-​Morss, then, the failures of universal
emancipation must inform our conceptions of universal intent. The crucial point is that
unhistorical histories and the counternarratives that they make possible “inspire action,”
rather than reinscribe power (Buck-​Morss 2009, 110).
Buck-​Morss’s work helps us think through the entanglement of race and history in
Hegel’s work. But it does so by pushing us to think through the entanglement of race and
history in our academic endeavors—​repressions that are produced by conceptions of
race, by conceptions of history, by disciplinary divides. Buck-​Morss’s book attempts to
“blast open the continuum of history,” to borrow Walter Benjamin’s words, by rescuing
the “unhistorical history” of the Haitian Revolution from oblivion, a forgetting imposed
by a Hegelian understanding of world history (Benjamin 1969, thesis 15; for Buck-​Morss’s
work on Benjamin, see, for example, 1991). In other words, the book crumbles the official
narrative that a Hegelian philosophy of world history weaves, which privileges the French
Revolution. Whether or not we agree that what ought to be salvaged in Hegel is the uni-
versal intent of his philosophy of history, the lesson here is that we ought to reflect on the
repressions that our academic practices consciously or unconsciously preform. When we
read, teach, and write on Hegel, we cannot afford to ignore this lesson. For what Buck-​
Morss’s work achieves, what Bernasconi’s work also achieves, is blasting open the contin-
uum of Hegel scholarship.

How to Read Hegel

In his “Hegel at the Court of the Ashanti,” Bernasconi turns the tables and puts Hegel on
trial. He exposes Hegel’s treatment of the source materials from which he based his lec-
tures on Africa, arguing against those who excuse Hegel’s Eurocentrism by blaming his
scholarly resources (see Bernasconi 1998, 41ff.). Hegel, for example, embellished stories of
cannibalism and human sacrifice, thereby facilitating his characterization of Africans as
outside of the rational unfolding of world history (Bernasconi 1998, 46). In Hegel, Haiti,
and Universal History, Buck-​Morss discusses Bernasconi’s essay and stresses one aspect

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of his account. She emphasizes the fact that, for Bernasconi, it is vital to turn the tables
on Hegel because it presses us to reflect on ourselves. “[T]‌here must always be a reflex-
ive moment,” Bernasconi writes, “in which the reader of Hegel, as of the travel diaries on
which Hegel based his account, must ask him-​or herself about the extent that he or she
remains captive to this account, not only in maintaining a certain image of Africa, but also
in retaining a conceptuality about Europe and about history that is more closely tied to
that image than one is aware until the question is asked” (Bernasconi 1998, 43–​44). Albeit
in different ways, Buck-​Morss and Bernasconi interrupt Hegel’s narrative in order to inter-
rupt our own.
Reading Hegel today requires such critical interruption, whether we aim to reject
Hegel’s idealism or to recover aspects of Hegel’s idealism that we might deem insightful.
Here again the point is not merely theoretical. We must not merely read Hegel with critical
acuity, developing intellectual strategies to engage the ugly passages in Hegel’s corpus. It
is practical. We must read Hegel by interrogating rather than suppressing those very pas-
sages that might call his theoretical armature into question. Doing so might address some
of the problems in professional philosophy that Bernasconi identifies, much more so than
excising Hegel from our reading lists. In closing, then, allow me to suggest what a critical-​
interruptive reading that responds to the challenging intersection of history and race in
Hegel’s corpus requires.
A critical-​interruptive reading of Hegel would need to transform the two general
approaches to Hegel’s thinking about history that I mentioned at the beginning of this chap-
ter. Recall that while the first seeks to develop the form of Hegel’s arguments by dropping the
offensive content of Hegel’s thought, the second seeks to call into question the form of Hegel’s
idealism by interrogating the difficult content of Hegel’s corpus. A critical-​interruptive read-
ing of Hegel requires acknowledging that although the form and content of Hegel’s claims
can be distinguished, they cannot be seen as separable. Indeed, we fail to critically examine
the form and the content of Hegel’s corpus if we ignore their entanglement. This means that
engaging Hegel’s thoughts on race cannot be the sole task of those who seek to crumble the
structure of Hegel’s idealism or of those who work on philosophy and race. It should be a task
for any and every reader of Hegel. Perhaps, we might add, it should especially be a task for
those who find elements of Hegel’s thought insightful.
Within Hegel scholarship, there are compelling interpretive options that could be seen
as methodologically critical-​interruptive. We find attempts to think through the moments
in Hegel’s writings where he examines the forms of violence intrinsic to modernity, and
to rethink Hegelian negativity as a way of rewriting the task of a philosophical thinking of
history (see, e.g., Comay 2010; de Boer 2010; Nuzzo 2012; Zambrana 2015b). We also find
attempts to rewrite his defense of modernity, his conception of history, or his understanding
of right by focusing on what might be seen as marginal elements of Hegel’s social-​political
thought (see, e.g., Buck-​Morss 2009; Ruda 2011; Moland 2011). These interpretive options are
critical-​interruptive in their method, since they require reading Hegel beyond the Hegelian
framework. They hinge on constructing a counternarrative about Hegel’s texts by focusing
on an element in Hegel’s thought that calls its structure—​as traditionally understood—​into
question. The intersection of history and race in Hegel, however, presses us to take these
reading practices much further. They press us to confront Hegel’s texts with the “unhistorical
histories” and, indeed, the “unhistorical peoples” that were understood as “unhistorical” by
his account of world history.

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Hegel, History, and Race    259

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