ABSTRACT
In political terms, before 1870, Hegel enjoyed a glamorous image among social progressives. His thought was seen inspiring social revolution in favour of human liberty; his role as Prussian state philosopher was played down. From the early third of the nineteenth century, French Hegelian socialists—many of whom were Saint-Simonians—emphasized links between socialism and pantheism. Significantly, the link was implicitly rejected by republican Octave Hamelin's development of an absolute idealism inspired by Hegel. Hegel was proscribed in French academic institutions. Thus, before 1870 in France, there seems to have been no right Hegelian movement to speak of. After 1870, critics of Hegel could only "see" him as a right-wing Prussian apologist for authoritarian militarism. Familiar of Emile Durkheim's, Charles Andler, came to similar conclusions in his own doctoral dissertation on the origins of German state socialism.
