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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: French Revolution
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At the seminary Hegel read deeply in German poetry and Greek literature, in the company of Friedrich Hölderlin, the poet, and Schelling, who was to reach early eminence as a philosopher of romanticism. The three friends professed ardent sympathy with the French Revolution and took for their motto "Freedom and Reason."
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Hegel was a dedicated student with universal interests who kept methodical records of what he learned and developed a life long habit of cataloging excerpts from books. (Indeed, these inclinations found expression in Hegel’s massive and comprehensive philosophical system.) In 1788, he started seminary at Tübingen where his fellow students were the poet Friedrich Hölderlin and philosopher Friedrich Schelling. Hegel was a critic of his contemporary political situation, e.g., he approved of the aspirations for freedom exemplified in the French Revolution (1789), though he deplored the excesses of violence.
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In Berne Hegel maintained a focus on the turmoil of political events in France. His sympathies went soon to the "Girondist" faction, as he grew increasingly disillusioned with the excessive brutality of the Reign of Terror. Contrary to many of his contemporaries, he kept an optimistic yet sober consideration of the changes introduced by the successive revolutionary governments in France. He never abandoned his earlier positive judgement on the achievements of the French Revolution.
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There are several overall themes that reoccur in these political writings and that connect with some of the main lines of thought in Hegel's theoretical works. First, there is the contrast between the attitude of legal positivism and the appeal to the law of reason. Hegel consistently displays a "political rationalism" which attacks old concepts and attitudes that no longer apply to the modern world. Old constitutions stemming from the Feudal era are a confused mixture of customary laws and special privileges that must give way to the constitutional reforms of the new social and political world that has arrived in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Second, reforms of old constitutions must be thorough and radical, but ... cautious and gradual. This might sound somewhat inconsistent, but for Hegel a reform is radical due to a fundamental change in direction, not the speed of such change.
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As for the revolution in Belgium and the insurrection in Poland, Hegel expresses towards them feelings of distrust, seeing in the Catholic and Nationalist ideology that partially inspired them a regression towards a pre-revolutionary way of thinking. In this, Heinrich Heine, a well-known radical, agreed, whose judgement of both events is all but positive.
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