Abstract

Most American scholars know and admire the works of Jean Hyppolite, Jean Wahl and Alexandre Kojève. The French Hegel revival, thirty or forty years ago, resulted from a rereading and reevaluation of the Phenomenology and of the early writings published by Nohl as well as of some of the Jena manuscripts. Especially in the case of Hyppolite’s and Kojève’s interpretations, one could find in them clever insights which nevertheless involved Existentialist or Marxist presuppositions. Though very stimulating, these interpretations were not entirely faithful to Hegel’s thought. More and more French Hegel scholars progressively made this point clear and understood that a new approach was needed. In this paper, I will try to assess the current state of French Hegel scholarship, pointing out the most recent outstanding contributions and discussing them.