Journal of the History of Ideas

Abstract:

Jon Stewart has recently argued that Hegel's defense of Friedrich Creuzer's controversial Symbolik should give us pause to reconsider the widely held view of Hegel's philosophy as racist and Eurocentric. More attention needs to be paid, however, to the strategy that Hegel employs in this defense. This article argues for the influence of Aristotle's theory of epigenesis on Hegel's philosophy of nature as well as his understanding of the stages of world-historical development. This Aristotelian understanding privileges the masculine West in relation to the feminine East that provides the material but not the vital efficient cause that animates Greek culture.