[12th Paragraph]
Even so, Hegel sees a stroke of luck in this. Shallow philosophizing has collided with actuality: with a state that takes rights and duties seriously. It has come to an open breach. Now one sees clearly what is at stake.
It is about the relation of philosophy to actuality. Philosophy seeks the rational. So it grasps what is there: the present. It does not design a beyond, and nobody knows where that is supposed to be. Or rather, one does know: in empty reasoning that loses itself.
A famous example is Plato. His book on the state is seen as the model case of an empty, unreachable ideal. Hegel sees it differently. In truth, Plato grasped the life of the Greeks of his own time. But he sensed something new breaking in: the freedom of the individual person, his own conviction. Plato took this for downfall and wanted to ward it off. In doing just that, he wounded this freedom most deeply.
And yet it is here that his greatness shows. For the great upheaval of the world that was coming then turned on exactly this new thing.
Hegel’s text: Preface, paragraph 12 →