The Revolt Against Hegelianism: Criticisms Applied to The Systemised Self.

Abstract

Hegel's philosophical framework, the dialectical self-development of Spirit (Geist) through alienation toward the Absolute, generated a sustained multi-dimensional and multi-generational revolt. From Marx's materialist inversion to Kierkegaard's existentialist protest, from Russell's analytic dismissal to Heidegger's ontological critique, from feminist deconstruction of Sittlichkeit (ethical life) to post-colonial re-readings of the master-slave dialectic, Hegelianism has been subjected to formidable philosophical challenges. This article surveys thirteen major lines of critique, including an additional neo-pragmatist critique by Rorty, and examines the implications of each for the theoretical framework of the doctoral thesis Absorption of Self into System: The Systemised Self (Galu & Kairos, 2026). The central finding proposed is that the revolt against Hegelianism does not dismantle the thesis's philosophical apparatus but disciplines, enriches, and in some cases corrects it. Several of the most incisive critiques, those of Adorno, Heidegger, Foucault, Lacan, and the existentialists are already structurally incorporated in the thesis's framework. The materialist critique is absorbed through the thesis's Marxian elementals associated with the critical tradition. The pragmatist and analytic critiques impose a productive discipline of empirical rigour and conceptual precision. The feminist and post-colonial critiques identify genuine omissions that constitute the most significant development for the framework. The result of this survey clarifies the utility of the Hegelian inheritance: that of Hegels dialectical structure, his account of alienation as a developmental process with a trajectory, and his insistence that genuine self-knowledge (individual, society, or civilisation) requires passing through contradictions that threaten to foreclose it.

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