Abstract

During the first week of June 1970, Marquette University sponsored a symposium to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of Hegel’s birth. For many of us who attended the symposium, it was a memorable week. It was among the very best meetings that I have ever attended - the very model of what civilized speech can be. The symposium was beautifully organized by our hosts at Marquette. A rare group of international scholars were invited to participate. In addition to Hegel scholars from the United States and Canada, Otto Pöggeler from Germany, Eric Weil and Jean-Yves Calvez from France, David McLellan from England, Nathan Rotenstreich and Shlomo Avineri from Israel were present. Papers were distributed to all participants, and there was plenty of opportunity for formal and informal discussion. But what made the symposium so unusual was the spirit that pervaded it. There was a collective sense that we were on the threshold of a new era of Hegel scholarship in the Anglo-Saxon world. As Frederick G. Weiss reported in his “Critical Survey of Hegel Scholarship in English: 1962–69,” there was already clear evidence of a renaissance of serious interest in Hegel. If we consider the works bearing on Hegel that have been published since 1970, the evidence is now overwhelming.