Political Thought

The Later Significance of Hegelianism. Despite the technicalities in which Hegel cloaked his thoughts and the apparent abstraction of his conclusions, few political theories had a more intimate relationship to political realities. It reflected in a very real way the state of affairs in Germany at the close of the Napoleonic Wars, her bitter national … Read more

Hegel’s theory of the state, as was said above, depended upon the peculiar nature of the relationship existing, as he supposed, between the state and civil society. The relation is at once one of contrast and mutual dependence. The state as Hegel conceived it is no utilitarian institution, engaged in the commonplace business of providing … Read more

Hegel Freedom and Authority. Hegel’s critique of individualism was directed against two different conceptions. In the first place he identified individualism with the provincialism and particular-ism which had prevented Germany from achieving modern national statehood. This national trait he attributed largely to the influence of Luther, who had made Christian liberty a mystical independence of … Read more

Individualism and the Theory of the State. The importance of the Philosophy of Right did not depend upon the formal structure of its argument but upon its reference to political realities, a reference which the formalism sometimes made almost surreptitious. It dealt with two subjects of fundamental importance, the relationship between the human individual and … Read more

Dialectic and Historical Necessity.The Philosophy of Right is a book that cannot profitably be summarized. This is true in part because of the technical elaborateness of its logical apparatus but chiefly because, from any empirical point of view, it is fundamentally ill-arranged. This was not due to confusion or carelessness on Hegel’s part but precisely … Read more

The Historical Method of Dialectic & Nationalism. The philosophy of Hegel aimed at nothing less than a complete reconstruction of modern thought. Political issues and ideas were an important but still only a secondary factor in it as compared with religion and metaphysics. In a broad sense Hegel’s problem was on a that had been … Read more

Convention and Tradition: Hume and Burke. The philosophy of Rousseau attacked only one limited segment of the system of natural law, the artificiality of seeing in society merely an agent to secure individual goods and in human nature merely a capacity to calculate advantages. Against this he set a single counter proposition, that the core … Read more

Jean Jacques Rousseau: The Rediscovery of the Community. Between the writers most characteristic of the French Enlightenment and Jean Jacques Rousseau is fixed a great gulf. Its existence was patent to everyone concerned; its exact nature has never been finally settled. Diderot described it as the vast chasm between heaven and hell and said that … Read more

France: The Decadence of Natural Law. The Revolution of 1688 and the publication of John Locke’s tracts brought to a close the astonishing half-century creative Political philosophy which accompanied the civil wars in England are followed, as often happens, a period of quiescence or even of stagnation, The need of the moment was that the … Read more

Halifax and Locke. The final act in the drama of English politics in the seventeenth century came with climactic suddenness in the bloodless Revolution of 1688. The ill-judged efforts of James II to foster Catholicism touched Protestant opinion in England as the stupidities and degradation of Restoration government had not, for this question was settled. … Read more