ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel distinction between the two faces of the state is vital for an understanding of modern government. The English situation dismayed him; the government’s Reform Bill was grossly inadequate. Although the proposed reform was illusory, Hegel feared it would make England’s free market experiment even more attractive to radicals on the continent. Hegel was the most prominent member of a whole generation of highly educated Germans who suffered career blockage at the close of the eighteenth century, and eagerly embraced the new order promised by the French Revolution and the reforms of Napoleon Bonaparte. Hegel was hardly the grizzled apologist of a repellent reactionary order, as claimed by Karl Popper and many others. Many commentators have interpreted the famous passage as Hegel’s confession that philosophy cannot bring about change. Hegel’s emphasis on aristocratic power differed radically from the classic Marxist model; for him, aristocrats rather than capitalists were the ruling social group.
