42 The Ugly Hegel (Continued)

Karl Marx sets himself in opposition to Hegel, but in doing so actually only more deeply instantiates all the poisonous seeds of Hegel’s philosophy. In both Marxist and National Socialist incarnations, prescriptive Hegelianism as a ruling ideology was catastrophic in the 20th century. Yet instead of abandoning the ideology we continue to double-down on it in new and various forms, progressively marching through our institutions, infecting them with Hegelian reasoning and metaphysics. It is so successful because it appeals to our human nature, and it makes us feel superior to all that came before us, to the stable elements of our world, which it paints as both retrogressive and oppressive, and points to the perfectible future which is infinitely preferable, and which it alone can deliver. It is, in other words, a religion without a transcendent God.