ABSTRACT
In this section, I contrast Hegel’s early writings with his first mature work, the Phenomenology, on the Beautiful Soul. My argument will be that the later negative and marginalising treatment reflects Hegel’s attempt to reconcile (and thereby to control) the inchoate, radical impulse of Enlightenment thinking (which becomes ‘the ideal’) with the actually existing/developing social relations and institutions of Western society (which becomes ‘the actual’).
