SOURCE: Berry, Christopher J. “Hegel on the World-Historical.” History of European Ideas 2, no. 2 (1981): 155-62.

In the following essay, Berry focuses on illuminating the sense in which Hegel's used the term “world-historical.”

Hegel's notion of a world-historical individual has always been troublesome. This is exemplified by two of his most recent commentators in English. Shlomo Avineri, on the one hand, regards Hegel's various pronouncements as inconsistent, since, in one place, the world-historical individual is said to be wholly conscious of the idea of history and its development, in another place, is said to be instinctively conscious of it and in yet another place is said to be totally unaware of it.¹ Whereas Charles Taylor, on the other hand, noting Avineri's discussion, remarks that these positions all come from lectures, and not from a work Hegel himself published, so that (it is seemingly held to be inferable) they can be...