 Hegel was ambivalent towards the French Revolution, the world-historical event against which his generation thought out their political philosophy and stance towards the Enlightenment (Taylor 1977: 403). The German Constitution was critical, lamenting with Burke the “blind clamour for freedom” and radical egalitarianism (Hegel PW: 93); the abstract, Rousseauean notion of freedom, attempting to construct society on the basis of “subjective reason”, caused a “fury of destruction”. The “Preface” of Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821) is a Burkean attack on those who suppose