Plato, Hegel and the Crisis of Liberalism

Abstract

In this paper I propose to use Hegel’s theory of history, especially as he applies it to Plato, to diagnose the crisis of liberalism. In other words, I will argue that in the same way Plato’s Republic is a rational reconstruction of the aesthetic political unity of the ancient world, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is a rational reconstruction of the politics of the modern, liberal, world. My main thesis, based on a Marxist reading of Hegel, is that the crisis of liberalism is intimately bound up with the crisis of capitalism. Hegel, in my view, was aware of this crisis but failed to resolve it because he could not see beyond the horizon of free enterprise capitalism.