History in Hegel's Philosophy of Right

Abstract

Hegel's Philosophy of Right is the first work to make a doctrine of progress in history conceived as an organized whole into an integral, even culminating, part of a systematic, philosophic political teaching. Certainly Kant and Rousseau, at the least, preceded Hegel in giving history an emphasis soon to be seen as characteristically modern; yet Hegel nevertheless transformed and deepened their rather tentative approaches into something more solid and comprehensive, perhaps also more grandiose, speculative and questionable. In establishing the view that history could be made theoretically intelligible, and an essential element of political philosophy, he produced a concept of historical progress which is free of utopian idealism, distinguishable from theologically inspired precursors, compatible with freedom (indeed, history becomes the story of the realization of freedom), and an alternative to a quite different form of historicism which thought insight into history would justify anti-rationalist realism or subjectivism.