The Philosophy of Hegel by Speight Allen;

Author:Speight, Allen; [Allen Speight]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1886954
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Hegel and politics

Hegel's theory of the state, like the work of any political theorist, should be compared with his actual views of concrete political affairs. As we mentioned at the start of the chapter, although Hegel was in fact allied with a group of fairly distinguished reformers when he came to Berlin, the charge of accommodationism seemed to stick with him, not just during his life but especially in the period of much harsher Prussian government that followed his death.24

Hegel's political interests ranged from an initial enthusiasm (and then horror) at the French Revolution to a fairly steady interest in reform in German institutions during the post-Napoleonic period, including an attempt to support the new king of Wiirttemberg in his attempt at drawing up a modern constitution and, after his Berlin arrival, to contribute to the reform of institutions there. One of his most bitter rivals, J. F. Fries, characterized Hegel's political positions as giving in to whatever regime was in power at the moment: "Hegel's metaphysical mushroom has sprouted indeed not in the garden of science but on the dungheap of servility. Until 1813, his metaphysics was French, then it became monarchically Wurttembergian and now it kisses the bull-whip of Herr von Kamptz . . ."25

One should not, of course, let one's bitterest rivals define one's contributions, politically or otherwise. And there is a more philosophically compelling way to view the development of Hegel's political views in the broader perspective. As Terry Pinkard has emphasized in his biography, Hegel came of age at a time when politics had a choice between new claims to rationality inspired by the universal goals of the French Revolution - the "great teacher of constitutional law", Hegel once said, was none other than Napoleon himself - and the existing, quite local established order that had held sway in the range of German duchies and principalities since the Middle Ages. Between these two poles of universal principle and hometown custom, Hegel may be said in many ways to have attempted a middle course: defending, as he did in the Philosophy of Right, a set of institutions that included many that were part of existing Prussian life but many others (the jury trial, for example) that would have to be considered reforms.

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