its systematic content still seems to have no significance for the politico philosophical self understanding of our time. Hegel Philosophy of Right- which once divided the most talented minds and which made the of a whole generation and while made the distinction between Hegelians on the Right and Hegelians on the Left possible til the middle of the previous century-has obviously lost its polarizing force. In contrast to Kant's theory of right or John Stuart Mills's treatise on liberty, which have recently returned into the limelight, Hegel's book plays the unfortunate part of a classic that is widely read but no longer heard. to discover the reasons why Hegel's Philosuphy If we Right has so conspicuously lost its appeal to the present, we are immediately struck by two reservations about the treatise that have in the course of time become commonplace in the discourse of political philosophy; these two stereotypes, added together, explain to a certain extent why doubts about Hegel political philosophy are so dominant today that they even eclipse its obvious attractions. The first prejudice, whether de liberately or involuntarily, amounts to saying that the Philosophy of Right has antidemocratic consequences because it subordi nates the freedom of the individual to the ethical authority of the state. It is true that certain details or trains of thought in the book could support such an objection, but in each case the center held by Hegel unmistakable refusal to interpret, as Kant does, the autonomy of all the citizens as the principle of