«Die negierte Zeit»: natura senza storia e spazi senza Stato nella concezione hegeliana del diritto statuale esterno

This paper will try to provide the theoretical framework of the Hegelian perspectives on international law and history, within which the German philosopher placed the so called “people without history”. Here we propose an interpretation of this category drawing a strict link between his philosophy of nature, his philosophy of history, and finally his philosophy of international law, all aspects that are rooted in his overall idealistic conception. In fact, the Hegelian concept of nature is developed through an idealistic account of the spirit and nature relationship in which the latter stand in a relation of discontinuity and antagonism towards the former. The Berliner professor’s use of geography, influenced by the works of his colleague Carl Ritter, is subordinated to the implicit end to provide a geographical as well anthropological base to his idealistic Weltgeschichte, in which not all people escape from the state of nature, but instead just a few nations are properly historical subjects: the inhabitants of Europe, on the margins of the Eurasian landmass. Main Hegelian historical-philosophical thesis could be summed up in the following idea: where natural condition are too strong for the human life, nature rules and men are imprisoned in a nonhistorical condition.