HAYDEN WHITE'S ENTHUSIASM FOR HEGEL

Abstract

This article traces the formation of Hayden White's chapter on Hegel in Metahistory by comparing it with his earlier essay titled “Hegel: Historicism as Tragic Realism.” It also analyzes White's review of George Armstrong Kelly's Idealism, Politics and History and White's well-known essay titled “The Burden of History.” This article argues that White's main concerns in his review essay and in Metahistory were (1) to respond to the existentialist challenge, posed especially by Camus, that history does not matter and (2) to use Hegel to articulate an answer regarding how historical consciousness and action can be combined. White created his version of Hegel early in “Hegel: Historicism as Tragic Realism” by absorbing (probably) Josiah Royce's interpretation of the Absolute and (more certainly) Erich Auerbach's idea of tragic realism. However, White's idea of tragedy, which focuses on the consequences of action, is not the same as Auerbach's idea, which concerns treating the psychological depth of characters seriously. In his review of Idealism, Politics and History and in Metahistory, White further injected the Kantian philosophy of history—as interpreted by Lucien Goldmann and Lewis White Beck—into Hegel's idea of tragedy and comedy. In doing so, White affirmed the philosophical activist's ability not only to recognize the tragic circumstance of the past and the present but also to hold on to the hope for a better, comic future.