Haddour, Adam;
(2025)
Disentangling Hegel’s Endorsement of Colonial
Slavery From His System of Philosophy:
Hegel’s Dialectic, Bad Infinity and the Pedagogy of Colonialism.
Masters thesis (M.Phil.Stud), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
When faced with the issue of Hegel’s colonialism, many defenders of Hegel place it on the periphery of his system of philosophy. However, in the process of attempting to disentangle it from his system, this thesis found that his endorsement of colonial slavery lies at the heart of his freedom project. The thesis starts with the question: Does Hegel’s system endorse colonial slavery? After rejecting Buck-Morss’ claim that the breakdown of the Master-Slave relation in Hegel’s Dialectic reflects his opposition to colonial slavery, my thesis proposes that the Dialectic justifies Hegel’s claim that slavery is necessary to bring Africa into world history; when read alongside the Lectures, the Dialectic explains how, through labour, the slave develops a newfound sense of freedom. For Hegel, Europe needs to enslave Africa to give them a chance of freedom. However, Long Chu argues that, for Africa, freedom will never be realised and that Hegel is perpetuating colonialism. Hardimon outlines Hegel’s bio-spiritual account of race that claims that black Africans lack the spiritual characteristics for freedom and are resistant to cultural influence. As per Hegel’s account of race, it is unlikely that Africa will ever be brought into world history. This is in direct tension with Hegel’s claim that his freedom project will be realised imminently. The Philosophy of Right places Hegel’s colonial endorsement at the heart of his freedom project when he states that colonialism is logically required by the rational state where freedom is actualised. This text also establishes the colonial process to be of the ‘greatest advantage’ to the mother state. Hegel disguises his endorsement of colonial slavery as an educational process for Africa’s benefit but this reveals that it is, in fact, to liberate Europe.
| Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | M.Phil.Stud |
| Title: | Disentangling Hegel’s Endorsement of Colonial Slavery From His System of Philosophy: Hegel’s Dialectic, Bad Infinity and the Pedagogy of Colonialism |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Philosophy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10203688 |
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