Nathaniel Boyd's pathbreaking book argues that Hegel's political thought was shaped by German public law. This tradition of legal discourse, especially through its imperial tradition, was crucial to European modernity, influencing foundational philosophical concepts such as sovereignty, the state and the diverse legal systems that emerged from them. Hegel and German Public Law examines the impact of Johann Jacob Moser, Johann Stephan Pütter and Johann Christian von Majer on Hegel's intellectual development. It reveals how the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire informed his early speculative system and constitutional theory. In doing so, Boyd extends our understanding of Hegel's relation to European legal and political thought while offering an original interpretive framework for Hegel's absolute idealism and unfolding institutional theory of the state.

Nathaniel Boyd is Senior Post-Doctoral Researcher on the Leverhulme Trust-funded project Rethinking Civil Society: History, Theory, Critique, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of York, UK.