ABSTRACT
One of the political philosophers, who have been most suspicious of nature, without, however, following the emancipatory path, is G. W. F. Hegel. With the intention of obtaining greater clarity regarding the matter, this chapter analyses the reasoning of an apparent, at least, opponent of nature as an authority for political legitimization. For Hegel, purely formal ethics is impolitic, and results in a separation between morality and legality. Religious and moral conviction emigrates towards the inside and relationships between citizens become mechanical. What Hegel is criticizing in both cases is an ateleological conception of nature which leaves the ethical-political world without truth: that world is understood as being the realm of freedom, but there is no science in it. Modernity therefore proclaims 'the atheism of the ethical world' in one of the apt expressions in the prologue to the Philosophy of Right. Hegel indicates that the true idea of freedom cannot be more than in a speculative way.
