ABSTRACT
It has always been the strategy of the revolt against freedom ‘to take advan tage of sentiments, not wasting one’s energies in futile efforts to destroy them’1. The most cherished ideas of the humanitarians were often loudly acclaimed by their deadliest enemies, who in this way penetrated into the humanitarian camp under the guise of allies, causing disunion and thor ough confusion.This strategy has often been highly successful, as is shown by the fact that many genuine humanitarians still revere Plato’s idea of ‘justice’, the medieval idea of ‘Christian’ authoritarianism, Rousseau’s idea of the ‘general will’, or Fichte’s and Hegel’s ideas of ‘national freedom’. 2 Yet this method of penetrating dividing and confusing the humanitarian camp and of building up a largely unwitting and therefore doubly effective intel lectual fifth column achieved its greatest success only after Hegelianism had established itself as the basis of a truly humanitarian movement: of Marxism, so far the purest, the most developed and the most dangerous form of historicism.
