Doubt, Despair and the Conditions of Left Hegelian Critical Theory

This essay examines two readings of Hegel, namely Robyn Marasco’s The Highway of Despair: Critical Theory After Hegel and Stephen Houlgate’s Hegel On Being to construct a Hegelian political theory. From radically different perspectives, both books ask what it means to be “critical.” Some interpret being critical as implying avoiding ontological claims. Against this, I argue that Marxists should guard against reducing philosophy to history because this blinds us to the ontological conditions of historical narratives. Drawing on Houlgate’s book, the essay argues that by investigating general ontological conditions, one could construct a new critical theory of forms of consciousness. For example, through reading Hegel’s Logic and Phenomenology the essay suggests that recent experiences of despair might be connected to what Hegel calls the “unhappy consciousness,” which stems from both misunderstanding ontology and specific historical conditions. Radical political theories can mobilize despair when they understand its ontological and social conditions.