The final 20 paragraphs of the Philosophy of Right (and the final 5 paragraphs of objective spirit section of the Encyclopaedia) are devoted to world history (die Weltgeschichte), and they also coincide with the point of transition from objective to absolute spirit. We have already seen the relevance of historical issues for Hegel in the context of the Phenomenology of Spirit, such that a series of different forms of objective spirit can be grasped in terms of the degree to which they enable the development of a universalizable self-consciousness capable of rationality and freedom. Hegel was to enlarge on these ideas in a lecture series given five times during his Berlin period, and it was via the text assembled on the basis of these lectures by his son Karl, that many readers would be introduced to Hegel’s ideas after his death.