Abstract

As The Owl of Minerva spreads its wings anew, perhaps the time has come to stop talking about the Hegel revival. If we look at what has happened in the twenty-five years since Findlay’s Hegel book appeared, or even in the fifteen years since the Hegel Society of America was founded, it is clear that we are no longer in a “birthtime and a period of transition to a new era” so far as Hegel studies in the English speaking world are concerned. The transition has occurred. We are past the time when, under the influence first of Russell and Moore and then of Popper, Hegel was a “dead dog,” a philosophical swear word on the lips of most and the exotic treasure of only an esoteric few. His rightful place as a major figure in our philosophical heritage has been firmly reestablished by the growth of a Hegel literature in English remarkable both for its quantity and its quality.