In Chapter 4 we examined Adorno's anti-Hegelian Hegelianism, his attempt to construct a negative dialectic that would rescue the dimension of non-identity threatened by the rule of instrumental rationality. This chapter continues the exploration of what I am calling “German Hegelianism”, which engaged in a critique of Hegelian thought but also retained a sense of its relevance for the problem of modernity and the theory of intersubjectivity. In this chapter I explore the appropriation of Hegelian themes in the work of the next generation of Frankfurt school critical theorists, Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth. In particular, I shall focus on their approach to the critique of modernity, their Hegelian-inspired turn to a theory of intersubjectivity, and their renewed emphasis on the concept of mutual recognition as an essential feature of social identity. In doing so, I hope to show that Hegelian thought remains a source of philosophical inspiration for comprehending our experience of modernity and for renewing contemporary social and political philosophy.

One of the most striking differences between French and German Hegelianism is the emphasis given to the philosophical problem of modernity. As we shall see in Part III, French Hegelians frequently turned to Hegel's master/slave dialectic and his account of the unhappy or alienated consciousness; but there is rarely any mention of Hegel in relation to what Habermas has called the “philosophical discourse of modernity”. Indeed, French Hegelianism placed far more emphasis on the problem of alienated subjectivity and with the new generation of the 1960s turned sharply against Hegelian conceptions of the subject.