Arash Abazari’s Hegel’s Ontology of Power is a deeply ambitious philosophical project that reorients the prevailing readings of Hegel, challenging entrenched liberal interpretations that have long dominated Hegelian scholarship. The heart of Abazari’s intervention is to unveil a critical dimension within Hegel’s Science of Logic, specifically within the “logic of essence.” This approach diverges markedly from the conventional focus on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, which has often been mined to support liberal and communitarian political frameworks. Abazari does not merely reinterpret Hegel, but reclaims him as a theorist of power and social domination, articulating an ontology of capitalist structures that is radically subversive of the bourgeois-capitalist order that Hegel ostensibly sought to justify.
Abazari begins with a striking departure from mainstream Hegelian scholarship, especially that which tends to eschew the metaphysical implications of Hegel’s work. His analysis contends that the Philosophy of Right—despite its critical potential—is ultimately an affirmation of the rationality of modernity, a defense of the political and economic structures that underpin bourgeois society. Hegel’s optimism about reconciling individuals with their social world, via the ethical institutions of family, civil society, and the state, presents an image of freedom grounded in the institutional mediation of individual interests. In contrast to this conciliatory vision, Abazari finds a much more crucial critical framework in Hegel’s logic, particularly the “logic of essence,” which offers insights into the deeper structures of domination and inequality embedded within capitalist society.
Drawing from a dialectical method that emphasizes relations of opposition and contradiction, Abazari locates the essence of social domination in capitalism not in overt forms of coercion or oppression, but in the very ideological and material structures that perpetuate the illusion of freedom and equality. This illusion is sustained by the formal equality of legal and economic relations in capitalism—most notably the exchange of labor for wages and the equality before the law—which disguises the underlying asymmetry of power between capital and labor. Here, Abazari mobilizes Hegel’s intricate dialectic of essence and appearance to argue that the apparent freedoms in capitalism obscure the real dynamics of domination. In this sense, freedom in capitalist society is not genuine but illusory, a façade that hides deeper systemic inequalities and power imbalances.
Abazari’s work is heavily informed by the Marxist tradition, particularly the idea that the capitalist mode of production is sustained by an exploitative class structure that masks itself in the guise of equality. He highlights how Marx’s critique of political economy borrows from Hegel’s dialectical method while simultaneously inverting its conclusions. Where Hegel viewed the reconciliation of individual freedom with the rationality of the state as the culmination of history, Marx saw capitalism’s social relations as fundamentally antagonistic, structured by the exploitation of labor by capital. Abazari’s analysis extends this Marxist critique by showing that Hegel’s Science of Logic—particularly the logic of essence—can be read as an ontology that exposes the inner workings of social domination under capitalism.
In this regard, Abazari draws extensively on Theodor Adorno’s negative dialectics, which emphasizes the non-identity between concepts and reality. Abazari argues that Hegel’s logic is a critical tool that can unveil the contradictions of capitalist society. In capitalism, the opposition between essence and appearance—between the real conditions of domination and their ideological representation—is crucial to understanding how power operates. Capitalist society functions through a mystification of these relations, wherein individuals are led to believe in their own freedom and equality, even as the very structure of the economic system perpetuates their subjugation.
Abazari further argues that social domination in capitalism is not simply a matter of interpersonal relations or state oppression, but is grounded in the totality of capitalist social relations. Here, he invokes the Hegelian concept of totality to explain how the relations of production in capitalism constitute a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. This totality of social relations is characterized by systemic contradictions that cannot be resolved within the framework of capitalism itself. The opposition between capital and labor, for instance, is not merely a conflict between two groups with competing interests, but a structural antagonism that defines the entire capitalist system. The very possibility of freedom and equality in capitalism is thus undermined by the system’s internal contradictions, which generate forms of domination that are both pervasive and invisible.
In this way, Abazari advances a radical critique of contemporary capitalist society, one that moves beyond both liberal and communitarian interpretations of Hegel. By focusing on the ontology of power as developed in Hegel’s Science of Logic, Abazari provides a framework for understanding how domination operates at the most fundamental levels of social reality. Power in capitalism, according to Abazari, is not merely a matter of coercive state apparatuses or overt oppression; it is embedded in the very structures of economic and social life, in the relations of exchange, property, and labor that define the capitalist mode of production.
This reading of Hegel is profoundly influenced by the critical theory tradition, especially the Frankfurt School, which sought to uncover the hidden forms of domination that sustain capitalist society. Like Adorno and Horkheimer, Abazari rejects the view that the Enlightenment project of reason and progress can be reconciled with the realities of modern capitalism. Instead, he argues that capitalism represents a form of “reified” social domination, where human relations are mediated through impersonal and abstract systems of exchange that alienate individuals from one another and from their own labor.
Abazari’s reinterpretation of Hegel thus opens up new possibilities for critical social theory. By grounding his analysis in the Science of Logic, he not only offers a fresh perspective on Hegel’s thought, but also provides a powerful critique of contemporary capitalism. This approach challenges the prevailing view that Hegel is a philosopher of reconciliation and institutional freedom, offering instead a vision of Hegel as a theorist of power, opposition, and domination.
Hegel’s Ontology of Power represents a significant contribution to both Hegelian scholarship and critical theory. It bridges the gap between metaphysics and social theory, showing how the most abstract elements of Hegel’s logic can be mobilized to critique the concrete structures of domination in capitalist society. Through a nuanced and sophisticated engagement with Hegel’s thought, Abazari demonstrates that the logic of essence contains the seeds of a radical critique of capitalism, one that transcends the limitations of liberal political philosophy and offers new insights into the nature of power, freedom, and domination. In doing so, Abazari not only revitalizes Hegelian social theory but also provides a potent critique of the capitalist social order that continues to shape our lives.
Simon Gros 
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