Right-hegelianism redivivus. Considerations on Richard Bourke’s <i>Hegel's World Revolutions</i>

Hegel's World Revolutions.It sounds like a book on Hegel's theory of world history, not currently the most fashionable topic for contemporary Hegel scholars.Yet that's not quite how Bourke presents his project.He sees it more as a defence of Hegel that focuses on his political thought and historical method.The book has the following structure.There are three parts, each one constituting a long freestanding essay, and each subdivided into three chapters.The first is a treatment of Hegel's early engagement with Christianity, from his time at the Tbingen seminary up to the Jena writings.The chapter on Kant's Copernican Revolution is sandwiched between two chapters on the young Hegel.The second part is devoted to Hegel's critique of the Roman world and the French Revolution, as well as his analysis of, and apologia for, the modern constitutional state, in his writings from the Phenomenology of Spirit of 1807 through to the Elements of the Philosophy of Right of 1820.The third and final part and the conclusion stand alone.They comprise reflections on Hegel's historical method, a compendious discussion of the post-war reception of Hegel's ideas, including a blistering polemic against various strands of twentieth Century thought including Heidegger, Frankfurt School theorists, and various anti-humanist French philosophers from Derrida to Foucault.The final chapter is taken up with critical reflections on the method of intellectual history and political theory.The first two parts are roughly chronological and are similar in style and substance.They are predominantly expository.Bourke's exposition is punctuated with references to the primary literature and exhibits a broad and comprehensive knowledge of Kant's and Hegel's oeuvres.His style is concise and curatorial rather than explanatory or analytic.He rarely pauses to analyse or criticize the material he is conveying, or to zero in on particular arguments, although he does spice his exposition with polemical one-liners.All this helps his narrative to move briskly through large volumes of material.It is a kind of tour guide to the political writings of Kant and Hegel.However, it is hard for the reader to see where all his exposition is heading.The difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that Bourke devotes so little time to developing and arguments of his own, and even more so, by the lack of critical engagement with the secondary literature.Bourke holds that while there has been a revival in interest in Hegel's epistemology and metaphysics, and several books written on his 'moral philosophy', since Avinieri's 1972 work, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State, 'there has barely been a monograph devoted to his political ideas' (2).That is a perplexing double claim, which merits further examination.Take, first, the positive claim about Hegel's 'moral philosophy'.It is common nowadays to make a distinction between 'morality' and 'ethics'.Arguably, Hegel was the first to draw such a distinction.However one draws it, Kant and Kantian theories will naturally fall under morality/moral philosophy, while Hegel and Hegelian theories will naturally fall under ethics/ethical life.And for Hegel the realm of politics falls within the