Hegel on Political Philosophy and Political Actuality

Hegel is the most prominent philosopher who argued that ophilosophy is its own time comprehended in thoughto, and he argued for this with an elaborate theory about the necessarily historical and experiential content of normative principles and ideals, especially, in his own historical period, the ideal of a free life. His insistence that philosophy must attend to the oactualityo of the norms it considers is quite controversial, often accused of accommodation with the status quo, a omight makes righto theory of history, and the abandonment of philosophy's critical and reflective task. In this article, I explore Hegel's case for this position in his Phenomenology of Spirit, using as a model for his argument his account of the way the intention of an action can only be properly understood as it is oactualizedo in an action, and I consider some of the standard objections in the light of this model.