I remember an old short story in which Hegel meets Napoleon…supposedly, Hegel fell to his knees, in awe of him. what did Hegel think Napoleon was-some new god? As far as i can tell, Hegel thought Bonapart was great-why?
Napoleon was a nasty little fellow, full of insane ego; however he was also a genius.
The fact he would have been nane the waur of a hanging should not make us deny his greatness. Most of the then ( mostly German at that time ) philosophers saw this, although they despised the man eventually.
I don’t really know much about Hegel, but one thing to remember is that Napoleon started out as someone basically defending the French Revolution from being forcibly suppressed by foreign powers. Many people do consider “Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood” worth supporting as ideals. And in practice there might have been a little more gulliotining than necessary, but some might well think that a few aristocratic heads unnecessarily chopped off is a small price to pay for stopping the endless parade of peasant children run over by aristocratic coaches (or worse, if the girls survived to puberty). So, before his turn into dictatorship and trappings of an Emperor, he was kind of like a George Washington with actual tactical genius – the poor revolutionary taking his outnumbered forces and spanking all the rich Kings’ armies.
If we do our best to ignore two centuries of English propaganda about how he ate children for breakfast every day, it’s really not all that hard to imagine him being admired – at least at some point in time – is it?
Nz
Do you keep a spreadsheet of these, or what?
A decade ago, a single reply, and no actual answer? Seems fair enough to have another stab at it.
The unfound short story in that thread could have been by Luise Mühlbach.
That’s only a guess; but she wrote massively on that period.
[ And actually, in translation, although dryish, a lot more readable than George Elliot, and a lot less ‘Prithee, Gadzooks’ than Harrison Ainsworth’s historical work in England. )