ABSTRACT
The first task of the Philosophy of Right, the most comprehensive, systematic exposition of Hegel's political thought, is therefore a negative one—to rid the mind of abstractions that, though admittedly founded in certain aspects of ethical practice, nevertheless intervene between that mind and the objective world and prevent the reason of the former from recognizing itself in the latter. On the one hand, then, Hegel's account of history must be strictly empirical, and he cannot import into this account his own philosophical concepts. But there is another side to the story. A straightforward narrative account, as history is usually conceived, could hardly provide material for a claim that the course of history demands a certain kind of political philosophy. Any interpretation of Hegel that stresses the historical dimensions of his thought must come to terms with the specter of "historicism," with all its multiple, nefarious connotations, which has come to loom over the history of Hegel interpretation.
