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Western Political Thought

Notes When Napoleon ruled, he earned Hegel’s acclaim, and when he was defeated in 1814, for Hegel it
was a tragedy, a genius vanquished by mediocrity. This admiration of Napoleon highlighted a
very significant component of German political theory of this period, with its primary focus on
dealing with the question of organizing the modern state and society on the basis of reason, and
that meant protection of the freedom and interests of the individual. The Enlightenment philosophy
was actualized by the temper and ideas of the French Revolution. Even the subsequent terror did
not lead to this adulation of the spirit of the revolution, though the terror itself was severely
criticized by German thinkers. The well-known sentence that “issues become political at a particular
time and place” was exemplified by the quest of the German thinkers to create a modern order
with the abolition of feudalism, and putting the middle class and individual at the centre stage.
With confidence in science and knowledge, a political order based on reason looked both plausible
and desirable. The setting of the formulation came out of an awareness of the relative backwardness
of Germany, and the acceptance that an external agency was necessary to bring about the desired
change in Germany and hence the adulation for Napoleon in Hegel, one of the three heroes, the
other two being, Socrates and Julius Caesar. Hegel regarded Napoleon as the person who carried
forward the real progressive element of the French Revolution, by liquidating the extremities and
excesses of the revolution, exemplified by Robiespierre’s terror and by providing the necessary
order and rule of law which allowed industrial production to grow at great speed. Hegel grasped
what later Socialists and Marxists put at the central stage of analysis, the capacity of the modern
industrialized civilization to meet the needs and aspirations of every single individual. Saint
Simon, whom Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) described as the second-most encyclopaedic mind alter
Hegel, was also popularizing the possibility of the establishment of a free and rational society,
based on reason as a positive outcome of this revolutionary and industrial process. Hegel’s emphasis
on human reason had to be understood in the context of this new temper and optimism, created
by the possibilities of the creation of a new and prosperous societal order. All his important
concepts—freedom, subject, mind and notion—were based on this unshakeable faith in human
rationality. His eulogy of the French Revolution also emanated from the conviction that both
reason and right were established by the philosophical basis of the revolution.
One significant change that could be found in this kind of understanding from the pre-revolutionary
belief-structure was that there was no automatic or uncritical acceptance of the contemporary
reality, as it was recognized that a minimum standard was expected from a given political and
societal structure, and what logically followed was that if that structure did not have the capacity
to absorb the positive aspects of this new epoch, then that structure had to be replaced with a more
modern one which was conducive to the needs and aspirations of the contemporary situation. The
first important thing that was regarded as being an obstacle to this modern Germany was the
continuation of feudalism, seen as a structure that did not allow healthy and free competition
which was the basis of progress and affluence. It was also an obstacle to the establishment of a
modern political order that was based on equality before law.

10.1 Life Sketch
Hegel was born in Stuttgart, Germany on August 27, 1770. His father was a civil servant, and most
of his relatives were either teachers or Lutheran ministers. He was 19 when the French Revolution
broke out. By the time he was 21, the revolutionary wars had begun. This was also the golden age
of German literature.
Hegel was a brilliant student, and at school he excelled and won a scholarship to a reputed
seminary at Tubingen in 1788, where he studied philosophy and theology. After completing his
studies, he accepted the position of a family tutor with a wealthy family in Switzerland from 1793
to 1796. This was followed by a similar position at Berne and Frankfurt from 1797 to 1800. His
philosophical speculations began at this time.

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