“The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of History in a more definite shape than before; that in which Freedom obtains objectivity, and lives in the enjoyment of this objectivity.” This is Hegel and it sounds clear enough. Something, however, should be said about this notion of “the Divine Idea.”

The state is here defined as the highest expression of what Hegel normally, but not exclusively, calls the Geist, or spirit. This is the mover of all world history, and its goal is maximum, or universal, “freedom.” It logically and irresistibly approaches this goal courtesy of ever higher, or progressive, social forms. Naturally this evokes the concept of God, as Hegel acknowledges repeatedly in The Philosophy of History. But Hegel's “God” is free of dogma (for in principle, if not always in practice, it excludes and condemns nothing), and its intentions are worked out through the ruthless triumph of each developing social system. It is certainly not a God of pity or contemplation; that is, it is not the God that Nietzsche found so contemptible in late Wagner, above all in Parsifal. For Hegel, pietism and happiness are quite literally nonproductive: “The History of the World is not the theater of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.” 168 Therefore the metacommentary needs a driving force, and this too Nietzsche would have read with pleasure. The animating force of history is passion.

As a result there is an interesting, but logically accounted for, paradox. Because the spirit encompasses everything, everything that occurs in the world is rational. Hence we have no option but to take on board the fact that “Reason” is the defining characteristic of the spirit.