Carl Schmitt, James L. Kelley (2022/1957). The Other Hegel-Line: Hans Freyer on His 70th Birthday. Translated by James L. Kelley (Submitted to Política Común). (original) (raw)

A thinker such as Hans Freyer, so salient in a line inaugurated by Hegel, has to endure the most intense hostility [intersivster Feindschaft]. This is because another line, one that also begins with Hegel, ends with Lenin and Stalin, and this line claims a monopoly on Hegel interpretation, which for them has become a source of their intellectual prestige, indeed, of their historical legitimization. Here the struggle to lay claim to Hegel spills out beyond the schoolroom and enters the realm of historical forces. Arthur Rimbaud’s words apply here: The struggle of Spirits [Geister] is as brutal as the bloodiest battle. Nietzsche, in a fit of rage, declaimed: Hegel is the great delayer on Germany’s path to atheism. Every hastener of this path, however, will be of one mind regarding a man like Hans Freyer, who writes in his works about the katechon of 2nd Thessalonians, which is the force that temporarily restrains the diabolical power, along with the most egregious accelerators along the route to the abyss [Abgrund].

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