Philosophy of Right

Among the most influential parts of the philosophy of G W F Hegel (1770-1831) were his ethics, his theory of the state, and his philosophy of history. The Philosophy of Right (1821), the last work published in Hegel’s lifetime, is a combined system of moral and political philosophy, or a sociology dominated by the idea of the state. Here Hegel repudiates his earlier assessment of the French Revolution as a marvellous sunrise in the realisation of liberty. Rejecting the republican form of government, he espouses an idealised form of a constitutional monarchy, whose ultimate power rests with the sovereign.