Hegel, a pure, authentic culture is a culture that progresses toward consciousness of freedom. He believed the “Spirit” directed history through phases, beginning with “the Oriental World,” then moving into the Greek and Roman worlds, and finally culminating in the “Germanic” age with Christianity. Both Horrell and Kelly stress that Hegel’s philosophy of history and progress is a racialized one that promotes a narrative of western European (specifically German) cultural, religious, and racial superiority.2 Other cultures (whether Jewish, Black, Asian, etc.), by default, cannot exert such a
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