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Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

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Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

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Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

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How Trump fits the “great man” theory of history — sort of

Is Donald Trump the kind of world-historical figure imagined by Hegel? In an upside-down way, yes

Published March 28, 2026 6:30AM (EDT)

I saw the Emperor — this world-soul [Weltseele] — riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it. — G.W.F. Hegel As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. — H.L. Mencken

I saw the Emperor — this world-soul [Weltseele] — riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it. — G.W.F. Hegel

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. — H.L. Mencken

All credit goes to John B. Judis, formerly of In These Times and the New Republic, for his ecumenical spirit. A lifelong democratic socialist, Judis has authored a scrupulously fair biography of William F. Buckley Jr., and has lately pondered the world-historical significance of Donald John Trump through the philosophical lens of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Watching Napoleon ride into the German university town of Jena in 1806 shortly before his great victory over the Prussian army, Hegel had an epiphany: He was seeing the mysterious forces of history embodied in one man. He later elaborated on this theme in his “Lectures on the Philosophy of World History,” a posthumous compilation of his lecture notes and transcripts from his time teaching at the University of Berlin between 1821 and 1831.

Judis gives us a brief tour d’horizon of history from Hegel’s perspective. Figures like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Napoleon were adventurers, and........

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