History and reciprocity in Hegel's theory of the State

Abstract

Hegel's logic provides a basis for an interpretation of his philosophy of history and political theory which avoids many of the difficulties that traditionally have been associated with his views, leaving us with a clear and useful model of modern political interaction. The unification of content and form provides for the inherently historicist features of the model, that resolve the traditional dichotomy of description and prescription by presenting the state as an historical process, developing through the opposition between the normative claims of its constituents and the determinate socio-political arrangements existing at any particular stage in its history. The discussion begins with a brif examination of Hegel's doctrines of the concept and the Idea, which it subsequently applies to an interpretation of his concepts of Sittlichkeit and the state