Fifty Years With Hegel

Following a Twelve-Year Dalliance with Marx

My four years in High School

Art course

Pottery by Jane Baigent, photo by poet

Taught me how to draw

But not how to succeed at University

So I repeated Grade 12 at age 20

And in the High School library discovered

An edited version of Marx

Just as Kennedy was getting shot

In 1974 I finished my MA thesis in Sociology:

The Concept of Ideology

Mostly about Marx and Mannheim

Which got me a three year scholarship

1975-78

At the London School of Economics

Where Donald MacRae

Founder and editor

Of the British Journal of Sociology

Turned me onto Hegel

In time for the end of my scholarship years

I submitted Studies in the Concept of Ideology

My Ph D thesis which eventually became

The Communist Ideal in Hegel and Marx (1984)

Not well received by Marxists to my surprise

(Or, sadly, Hegelians)

Initial publisher’s anonymous review:

“Grotesque mockery” and “ self-conscious distortion”

So it goes

Takes 6 years to publish because of resistance

Later recommended by the book review journal

Choice

Called “the best book on the relationship between Hegel and Marx”

For some reason theologians appreciated the book

40 years of not teaching Hegel

Except as a sideline

One morning in a dog park

In Parkdale, Toronto

Got this big idea

Another dumb idea

Like the one about Hegel and Marx

That will get me into trouble

Hegel I burst out to myself

While reminiscing on

The Philosophy of Right

And thinking about Alexander Hamilton

Is all about America!

It was 2011

Four years later

Hamilton! was released on Broadway

The book is still underway

Berlin Nights: Hegel and the American Revolution