ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s passages which either clearly or equivocally support democratic monarchy. In spite of the implicit value placed on the quantity of rational living which might be read into the Hegelian encouragements to popular participation and sovereignty, at several points, Hegel’s tone toward “numbers” is dismissive to say the least. While Hegel’s conception of “sovereignty” might logically demand that ultimate control be vested in one of the organs, Hegel fails himself plainly to specify which organ. Hegel’s reference to the “monarchical organ” literally reads, “to which the highest decision belongs”. In PP279, Hegel recalls some of the characteristics of the human will’s subjectivity which he had explored earlier in PP4-PP7 of the Introduction to The Philosophy of Right. Hegel frequently assumes and asserts that the head of a rational state must be hereditary but only explicitly and in piecemeal fashion develops his arguments for this conclusion.
