ABSTRACT
I am grateful to Sidney Hook for focusing his review article so sharply and accurately on the problem of Hegel's basic political attitude, which is indeed the central theme of my introduction to Hegel's Political Writings. I am very glad to have his support for my conviction, which was the raison d'être of my essay, that the political writings do throw important light on that complex and controversial problem. But I failed to grasp how after reading the political writings he can maintain his own interpretation of Hegel and dismiss so absolutely the one I have put forward. Although he professes to steer a middle course between those who, like Karl Popper, have painted Hegel in the darkest colors as a proto-Nazi and an enemy of an "open society," and those like Joachim Ritter, John Plamenatz and myself who, allegedly, seek to pass off Hegel, scrubbed and whitewashed, as "a prophet of liberal- 81ism," it is difficult to see where Professor Hook's moderation really lies. There is a difference of degree in the unobjectivity of his and Popper's approach, but basically "Hegel Rehabilitated?" is yet another political tract, an outburst of righteous liberal-democratic-radical indignation, all the more powerful and persuasive since the underlying political passion is kept under control and released in carefully graduated doses.
