Abstract

According to Steinberger, many, defending Hegel against Karl Popper and other critics, have reinterpreted Hegel as an "accommodationist," solving the apparent contradiction between individual and society by a modification of each polis--thus approximating something like liberalism. Steinberger maintains, however, that Hegel was more precisely a "perfectionist," following in a tradition which includes Rousseau and Marx, engaged in the enterprise of dissolving the discrepancy between the individual and society, and confident that in some way the "Rose" of reason might be found in the "Cross" of the present.