When Hegel wrote his masterpiece, The Phenomenology of Spirit, he was full of conviction that a true idea would always manifest itself in practice, in a concrete form of rights supported by the institution. When Napoleon was defeated in 1815, Hegel had a big problem making sense of his own theory. How could the universal idea of revolution lose to the particularistic interests of the European aristocrats?

Hegel didn’t have to be in despair. He very soon found the answer in every place Napoleon conquered. Even after Napoleon fell and the old regimes were reestablished, the liberal legal conducts that Napoleon implemented did not disappear. Everywhere in Europe, particularly where Napoleon directly intervened and implemented the “Napoleonic Code”, a new liberal form of nation-states emerged. Hegel found at least two important things.

First, Hegel found that the nation-state was the only viable institution that realized the harmony of universality and particularity. For individuals’ particular interests, the state gives individuals formal rights, such as property rights. The universal rights are also guaranteed by the state, by formally endorsing freedom and equality of all population. When there is a conflict between the universal rights and the particular interests, the state will resolve it by the rule of law. This big turning to realism partially came from Hegel’s reasoning that the universal truth would always be manifested by a concrete form of institution.

Second, Hegel concluded that you could not know where the Spirit would go in advance; you could only catch up with what Spirit already accomplished. In other words, you can’t claim that you know the direction of history and let everyone follow you to that direction. The truth of human reason should be found in what is already concretely realized and manifested in reality; thus Hegel famously put it as “what is rational is real, and what is real is rational.” Also, the conclusion demonstrated Hegel’s humble recognition that philosophy can understand the truth only in hindsight. Thus “the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk.” You can find these phrases in the preface of Hegel’s Philosophy of Rights.

Now what? The conservative turn of Hegel made a big division among the Hegelian school. Scholars who believed in “what is real is rational” became Old Hegelians. The Old Hegelians explicitly supported the Prussian semi-constitutional monarchy and their bureaucratic state apparatus. The idea of freedom, equality, and fraternity was realized as positive law, and that’s it.

The other group, the Young Hegelians, tried to keep Hegel’s earlier conviction in the power of idea and its force in reality. They believed only “what is rational is real” and refused to accept all of what is real as necessarily rational.

Intrustions;

Political question- Income inequality between men and women

According to Hegel, you have to prove that your idea is real. You have to show the concrete political agent and institution that is not only capable of changing the status quo, but also mediate different interests under the rule of law. How would you do that? What are the political agents and institution that you can think of in order to make a breakthrough in your political question? How can we deal with the situation where no concrete agent or institution to tackle the issue is foreseeable?

think about any possible institutional changes and the agents who can push such changes.