ABSTRACT
Spinoza gives us a vision of ecological wholeness, but one which does not evolve historically. Hegel corrects this oversight. He does his best work in the midst of a Europe embroiled in the aftermath of the French Revolution. With the emergence and rise to power of Napoleon, the spirit of revolution morphs into open warfare, which roils the continent for the next 18 years. Hegel and (many of) his contemporaries did not see Napoleon as a war-mongering despot but rather as the avatar of political freedom. In this chapter, we show how this was worked out in Hegel’s own philosophical system concerning the historical evolution of freedom and political rights. Rights, we show, are now a centrally important way of protecting the biosphere.
