Abstract
Hegel formulates the concept of lack as essential for consciousness long before the existentialists. Before Sartre, he states that consciousness is essentially what it is not.
This is important from the point of view of the philosophy of history. From a systematic perspective, the author shows that Hegel draws from this insight different conclusions than those suggested by romantics and existentialists.
The essential difference is that Hegel emphasizes the concept of the whole as something positive without denigrating the individual. Rather he shows that the whole needs to be conceived in order to understand the individual.
The concept of the whole is, therefore, not "totalitarian", as often suggested. Quite on the contrary, it enables the individual to formulate one's own position in the midst of a "bacchantian revel whose no member remains sober".