The political uses of hegelian dialectic

Abstract

This article seeks to present the different political uses of the Hegelian dialectic that we can find within the left-wing critical tradition, the so-called “Hegelian left”. Hegel had a profound impact on political thought ever since his work began to circulate within the intellectual spheres of old Europe. Marx was the main heir of the Hegelian dialectic in the 19th century. But contemporarily, authors such as Slavoj Zizek and the Brazilian Vladimir Safatle continue the Hegelian tradition of the left. Thus, the impact of the Hegelian dialectic within the contemporary political debate has not ceased to produce reverberations. However, there is the question of whether the left-wing critical tradition's use of the Hegelian dialectic is a use that can be considered legitimate if we start from Hegel's own thought. In our work, we will investigate whether the use of Hegel's thought by the left-wing critical tradition is a legitimate use when compared with the Hegelian philosophical enterprise itself.