ABSTRACT

As a representative of the Counter-Enlightenment, Hegel creates an all-embracing, progressive temporality which is embodied in one person and one state: Napoleon’s France. After about 1817, he rejects the linear time of progress and its corresponding incarnation. He then becomes an adept of the romanticist-historicist time of rise and fall, without completely abandoning the idea of a better future. His temporality then takes the form of a spiral. Starting at the Protestant state and its institutions, time becomes embodied and thus incarnates in reality. He comprehends this process as the solver of social disintegration.