Hegel and Utopia

ABSTRACT G.W.F. Hegel is usually held to be anti‐utopian in his political philosophy. I aim to challenge that standard reading, outlining and defending a more positive account of his relation to utopianism. The rational state described in Hegel's Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (1820) is shown to fit an uncontroversial account of utopia without straining, and two standard reasons for resisting such a characterisation are shown to be based on misunderstandings of utopia and Hegel, respectively. In addition, I provide an alternative reading of the Preface – conventionally seen as the locus classicus of Hegel's anti‐utopianism – showing that, rather than rejecting utopia as such (as usually thought), Hegel distinguishes two kinds of utopias, one of which he associates with Fries and rejects, and one of which he associates with Plato and endorses. This reading preserves textual consistency between the Preface and the rest of the volume; and helps explain Hegel's otherwise surprising suggestion that Plato's Republic exemplifies the approach that philosophy should take towards the world. Finally, I suggest a typology of the positive aims of Hegel's utopian project (including construction, criticism, clarification, and consolation), and identify the tradition of ‘realistic utopias’ that his work might be thought to belong to.