Modern Philosophy (Essay)
Ainsley Brigham; Rob Thompson; Modern Philosophy ; 1 May 2025
A Hegelian Reflection on Globalization
We live in a time where globalization is so embedded in daily life that we barely notice it—until it starts to come apart. Your T-shirt, your coffee, your phone: they each pass through the hands, borders, and stories of countless others. The movement of capital, people, and culture has rendered our world more interconnected than ever before, yet alongside this unprecedented entanglement, there’s been a noticeable pull in the opposite direction. Nationalist slogans, protectionist policies, and isolationist rhetoric gain traction as borders harden and neighbors are seen with increasing suspicion. The same world that feels intimately close also feels painfully divided.
There’s a popular quote that circulates in one of my media literacy circles:
“Your car is German. Your vodka is Russian. Your pizza is Italian. Your kebab is Turkish. Your democracy is Greek. Your coffee is Brazilian. Your movies are American. Your tea is Tamil. Your shirt is Indian. Your oil is Saudi Arabian. Your electronics are Chinese. Your numbers are Arabic. Your letters are Latin. And you still complain that your neighbor is an immigrant? Pull yourself together.” (Unknown)
It’s funny—and biting—but it also gets at a serious contradiction. Globalization is part of our lived experience, and yet nationalism is far from dead. How do we make sense of that tension?
This paper doesn’t take a side in that conflict. Instead, I turn to the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel to help reframe the question. Hegel offers a way of thinking that doesn’t demand we erase contradiction but asks us to move through it. His dialectical method doesn’t resolve conflict by picking winners and losers; it reveals how contradiction is the very mechanism by which history unfolds. In that spirit, I’m not interested in taking a position for or against globalization (if that is even a thing), but in asking: what might it mean to think more ethically about globalization and nationalism if we understand them not as irreconcilable forces but as moments within a larger historical process of becoming?
I. Globalization as Lived Contradiction
Globalization is often defined in economic terms—free trade, global markets, transnational corporations—but it’s more than that. It’s a condition of being. Arjun Appadurai describes globalization as “a tension between cultural homogenization and heterogenization,” noting that while globalization makes distant cultures more visible and accessible, it also risks erasing difference in favor of a standardized global norm (Appadurai, 32). This creates a strange duality: a world where everything is connected, but where identity and place feel more precarious than ever.
We experience this tension every day. We shop international brands, stream foreign shows, and eat imported foods. At the same time, we see policies that aim to close borders and restrict who counts as part of the “we.” This dissonance—between the universalizing drive of globalization and the particularizing impulse of nationalism—feels like a core contradiction of our time.
And yet, Hegel would tell us: this isn’t a mistake. It’s how history works. The Spirit is unfolding!
II. Hegel’s Dialectic and the Movement of History
Hegel’s dialectical method is often reduced to a formula: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. But this shorthand misses the depth of his insight. For Hegel, dialectic is not a rigid template but a dynamic movement. Reality isn’t static—it’s always becoming. Every claim to completeness or truth (a thesis) carries within it a tension or limit (its negation). That tension gives rise to a new shape of truth (a synthesis), which holds together both the initial claim and its opposition, but in a transformed way.
This process is historical. As Hegel writes, “The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom” (Reason in History, 70). History moves forward through contradiction—not despite it. Each historical moment carries with it the seeds of its own overcoming, and each overcoming gives rise to new tensions. There’s no final resting point—just the unfolding of Spirit as it comes to know itself more fully.
In a rudimentary—though clearly limited—way, Hegel’s dialectic can be glimpsed in something as mundane as a speed limit sign. The sign (thesis) sets the rules: structure, order, a sense of control. The driver’s urge to speed (antithesis) pushes back against that order. Maybe they get pulled over, maybe they have a scare. Either way, the experience doesn’t just enforce obedience—it sparks reflection. Next time, they might leave earlier, drive more intentionally, or reconsider their relationship to rules altogether.
What results isn’t just a compromise—it’s a new kind of understanding. The synthesis that emerges doesn’t erase the difference between structure and resistance; it holds both together. The tension doesn’t disappear—it becomes a tension held in unity rather than in conflict. The original thesis calls forth its own negation, and the synthesis contains both, not as opposites but as parts of a fuller truth. Of course, this example doesn’t begin to capture the scope of Hegel’s dialectic, which unfolds through history, being, and freedom. Still, it sketches the movement of the dialectics basic rhythm: thesis, opposition, and a shift into something new.
III. Globalization as Thesis
From a Hegelian perspective, globalization functions as the thesis of our historical moment. It presents itself as a universalizing force—one that promises efficiency, connection, and mutual prosperity. In Thomas Friedman’s words, globalization is “the integration of markets, nation-states, and technologies to a degree never witnessed before” (Friedman, 7). Under this vision, global connectivity is not just an economic arrangement—it’s a step toward progress.
But Hegel teaches us that the universal cannot sustain itself without also reckoning with the particular. When the universal overreaches—when it tries to erase history, flatten difference, or impose sameness—it invites its negation. Globalization, in asserting itself as the dominant shape of history, creates the conditions for its own opposition.
IV. Nationalism as Antithesis
The nationalist backlash we’re seeing now—the rise of protectionist policies, populist leaders, and “us first” mentalities—is not random. It’s a necessary response to a universal that has forgotten the particular. Globalization promised progress, but many people have felt left out of that promise. Job loss, cultural dilution, and a loss of control over local economies have bred resentment—not necessarily out of hatred, but out of a desire for rootedness and recognition.
For Hegel, recognition is central. In his famous master/slave dialectic, he shows how true freedom requires mutual acknowledgment. A one-sided domination only breeds resistance. Similarly, globalization without regard for local voice and sovereignty breeds nationalist pushback. This pushback is not necessarily reactionary—it can be understood as a demand to be seen, to be taken seriously.
As Pankaj Mishra writes, today’s populist anger is “the deferred price of modernity”—the emotional cost of a system that promised universality but delivered unevenly (Mishra, 17).
V. Toward a Synthesis?
So what comes next? If globalization is the thesis and nationalism the antithesis, what might a synthesis look like? Hegel would say: not a return to the past, and not a doubling down on the present. The way forward is transformation. Not a shallow reconciliation that pretends contradiction has been resolved, but a deeper movement through the contradiction—a holding of both poles that gives rise to something new.
An ethical globalization—if such a thing is possible—would need to preserve the insights of nationalism: identity, sovereignty, dignity. But it would also need to retain the awareness globalization has brought: that we are entangled, interdependent, and responsible for one another. The synthesis wouldn’t erase the difference between these forces—it would preserve the tension, but now as a tension held together rather than torn apart.
As Hegel says, “Spirit is at war with itself… but this war leads to reconciliation…” (Phenomenology of Spirit, 19). That reconciliation isn’t peace as we typically imagine it. It’s not about everyone getting along. It’s about creating structures—political, economic, cultural—that allow conflicting truths to exist in dynamic relation, without one having to obliterate the other.
VI. Naming the Weariness
At this point, I want to acknowledge something I felt while writing this: weariness. A hesitation. I don’t want to be a cheerleader for progress or pretend that conflict always leads to transformation. It doesn’t. Sometimes things fall apart. Sometimes recognition never comes. Hegel’s optimism—that history is the rational unfolding of Spirit, that freedom is inevitable—can feel misplaced, especially in moments of injustice, violence, and regression.
But I also don’t want to abandon the hope that we can become more conscious. That we can name the contradictions we’re in, not to explain them away, but to sit with them. Hegel doesn’t give us answers—he gives us a way of looking. And in looking, we might begin to live differently. Even if I don’t want to defend every implication of Hegel’s system, I find something useful in his insistence that nothing is wasted. That contradiction is not a dead end, but a site of possibility. That the work of history is slow, painful, and filled with reversals—and still, it moves.
VII. Proleptic Time and the Pull Forward
Hegel’s conception of time isn’t linear. He’s committed to what scholars call prolepticism—the idea that the future draws the present forward, that history is not simply moving from point A to B, but is always being pulled toward a culmination that gives the present its shape.
In this view, contradiction isn’t something to “solve” immediately. It’s something to live with. We don’t yet know what the synthesis of globalization and nationalism will look like—but we can trust that the contradiction will not simply persist forever. It will be transformed. That transformation may not come quickly, and it may not look the way we expect. But if we keep walking, keep naming, keep including all voices—even the ones we’d rather leave behind—we may find ourselves closer to something that resembles freedom.
VIII. Creative about the Synthesis
Unfortunately, I lack the confidence of a Hegel or Marx, and I’m not going to declare some triumphant, final shape of history. But if we take Hegel seriously—if we grant that Spirit moves through contradiction toward freedom—then perhaps it’s not unreasonable to ask: what might that next movement look like?
…Maybe the synthesis begins with redefining sovereignty—not just at the level of the nation-state, but at the level of the individual. If the modern contradiction is between global systems and personal voice, then the path forward may be a kind of democratization of sovereignty—extending agency beyond the loudest or richest, beyond those with the biggest followings or most data. Legal structures could evolve to protect individuals from being overrun by networked mobs. Some countries, like Singapore, are already exploring ways to curb performative outrage cycles, though it’s unclear whether regulatory answers can keep pace with the cultural ones.
…Maybe the synthesis is cultural rather than political—a slow, collective learning process, the way an ecosystem adjusts to invasive species. Take gym culture, where there's now a growing backlash against viral mobbing. Some creators dedicate entire channels to saying “mind your business”—a kind of informal immune system to counteract the performative group mind. It’s small, but it's something. Maybe cultural norms can evolve to domesticate the chaos we’ve unleashed.
…Or maybe it’s spiritual. A renewed emphasis on forgiveness—as awkward and antiquated as that sounds—has been quietly emerging. You can see it in high-profile conversions, in literature that still insists on human fallibility, even in memes that ironically ask us to “touch grass.” Perhaps what’s needed isn’t just more recognition, but a deep acceptance of the crooked timber of humanity: that we’re not rational agents or ideological avatars, but flawed, inconsistent creatures deserving of mercy.
…Then again, maybe it’s technological. Neural interfaces, collective cognition, AI-mediated discourse—perhaps synthesis will look like a restructuring of thought itself. Not a solution, but a shift in how the conflict expresses.
All of this is speculation. But Hegel allows us to speculate responsibly—not to predict, but to ask what opposition demands of us. If the defining antithesis of our moment is the emergence of a new psychic actor—the group mind, a kind of supra-observer within all of us—then maybe the synthesis is the domestication of that organism. Like the fire-breathing foxes in the Soviet domestication experiments, perhaps we are still in the first generation of something untamed, something we don’t yet know how to live with. But it’s here. It’s already in our homes.
And the task, now, is not to slay it—but to live beside it.When we can do that, then maybe we’ll know this particular dialectic has run its course. And that another has begun.
IX. Conclusion
The opposition between globalization and nationalism isn’t going away, and maybe that’s not something to fear. Maybe, as Hegel would suggest, contradiction is the very ground on which change becomes possible.
But as we've seen through this difficult, almost grief-laden entry into the Hegelian framework, these opposing forces will inevitably move toward some form of synthesis. What that synthesis will look like, we don’t yet know. What we do know is that both sides—the universal and the particular—will be carried forward into whatever comes next. As a global society, we will continue to wrestle with these tensions as part of our ongoing, unfinished march toward progress—toward what some might call the end of history.
Works Cited
Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Friedman, Thomas. The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.
Hegel, G.W.F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V. Miller, Oxford University Press, 1977.
Hegel, G.W.F. Reason in History. Translated by Robert S. Hartman, Macmillan, 1953.
Hegel, G.W.F. Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline. Translated by Steven A. Taubeneck, Hackett Publishing, 1991.
Mishra, Pankaj. Age of Anger: A History of the Present. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
"Hegel's Dialectics." Accessed April 2025. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-dialectics/