4. To apprehend the State as the realisation of freedom was the aim of Hegel’s _Philosophy of Right_, which has perhaps been more grossly misrepresented { 247} than any work of a great political philosopher, excepting Plato’s _Republic_.
Popular criticism will tell us that Hegel found his ideal in the Prussian bureaucracy, and will further hint that his doing so was to his advantage. Such suggestions imply two misapprehensions, for one of which Hegel’s tactlessness was responsible, while the other depends on a genuine difficulty attending any philosophical analysis of society. I will try to throw light on each of these misapprehensions.
_(a)_ If Hegel had wished to have a partisan tendency attributed to his book, he could not have timed it better nor written a preface more certain to mislead. In 1820, when the book was published, the minds both of governments and of peoples were full of irritation. The anti-constitutional reaction had recently declared itself. [1] The demonstration at the Wartburg, celebrating the anniversary of the Reformation, and of the Battle of Leipzig, took place in October, 1817. The unaccountable change in the ideas of the Czar from Liberalism to reaction took place, we are assured, [2] in June, 1818. The murder of Kotzebue, a Russian agent, reactionary journalist, and decayed dramatist, took place in March, 1819. Kotzebue seems to have been popularly credited with perverting the views of the Czar. His assassination had an effect in no way related to his real importance. Hardenberg, the Prussian minister, exclaimed on hearing of it that a Prussian constitution had now become impossible. Innocent persons { 249} were arrested in Prussia at Metternich’s instigation, and private papers were seized and published in a garbled form. The publication of Hegel’s book with a preface attacking Fries for some expressions used by him at the Wartburg festival, took place, as we said, in 1820, and Hegel had moved from Heidelberg to Berlin, having obtained the honour of a Berlin professorship, in 1818. Small wonder that “it was pointed out that the new professor was a favourite of the leading minister, that his influence was dominant in scholastic appointments, and that occasional gratuities from the Crown proved his acceptability,” or that Fries remarked that Hegel’s theory of the State had grown, “not in the garden of science, but on the dunghill of servility.” [3] Hegel himself “was aware that he had planted a blow in the face of a shallow and pretentious sect, and that his book had given great offence to the demagogic folk.” [4]