EXPLORING THE ATLANTIC SPIRIT. COLONIZATION, SLAVERY, AND REVOLUTION IN HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY OF WORLD-HISTORY

While historians today agree on its importance in the formation of the modern world, Hegel’s treatment of the Atlantic area in his philosophy of world history seems rather marginal. Hegel’s Euro-centric and even racist perspectives notwithstanding, we hypothesize in this article that his philoso- phy of history contains sufficient material to explore the Atlantic world and highlight its significance in the constitution of modernity. By examining the way in which Hegel envisaged European colonial expansion, the allegedly ‘state of nature’ situation in Africa, and slave revolts in the Americas, we attempt to show how the ‘Atlantic spirit’ carries with it a discontinuous, properly dialectical conception of what it means to achieve freedom and thus to ‘make history’.