News Summary

• G.W.F.
• Hegel saw the mysterious forces of history embodied in one man, Napoleon.
• John B. Judis: Trump, like the titans of Hegel’s metaphysical reflections, brought down the existing order in such a way that there can be no going back to the status quo ante.
• Mencken: Hegel was a metaphysician whose insistence that Geist, or spirit, pervades the historical process and moves it to some grand culmination is difficult to distinguish from New Age mysticism, and hence charlatanism.