The Search for Historical Meaning: Hegel and the Postwar Right, by Paul Edward Gottfried (Northern Illinois, 178 pp., $27)
The main argument of this extremely interesting book is that “Hegelian concepts shaped the historical attitudes and cultural judgments of prominent postwar conservatives, who because of their concern for personal freedom as a political and ontological value denounced Hegel and ascribed their own Hegelian ideas to less offensive sources.” The author shoots with no blunderbuss. He makes it very plain that for the purposes of his study he is ignoring, on the one hand, acknowledged Hegelians who have had little influence on the development of contemporary conservatism and, on the other hand, conservatives, however prominent, in whom Hegelian ideas have played no part. The last includes such conservative luminaries as Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr., and Richard Weaver.
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