The title (and the opening line) of Ruge's article serve to underscore the significance of the "political" in his thought: The Politics and Our Times. This turn of phrase, is intended to be, tongue in cheek as it reflects the context of the ensuing political discourse. Ruge sees contemporary German thought and society at the turning point of a new political philosophy, theory, and praxis which attains not only to true freedom, but also a political freedom that can and will resonate out into the world. His idiomatic expression is intended to reference the novel character of his political thought, while also acknowledging it as the product of a time which was ripe for fruitful political philosophy—in so doing, the turn of phrase fundamentally typifies and embodies the dialectic nature of the political that he will unpack through his analysis.

"Political" is used throughout the remainder of his article to represent a complex dialectic orientation of the individual, their relationship with the state and the way this relationship is mediated vice verse. He therefore orbits around a score of different nuances that all encapsulate a complex view of the political individual. This analysis will investigate the compound relationship between the individual's inward political orientation as it exists in theory and speculation, their outward political orientation as it concerns their role and function as consistuents of the state, and consequentially, the dialectic relationship between the inward and outward orientation of the political character.

Beginning with the inward orientation of the political person, Ruge places the political opposition to the philosophically theoretical. [1] His criticism of Hegel and Kant form the context for this thought throughout the article: Neither of these men came out in opposition; they were staisfied to be in opposition. [...] Yet it would be extremely unfair to mistake how deeply both Kant and Hegel fit into the consciousness of their own times and the limits of its standpoint or to deny that they are to be understood as having different ethical positions when they did not wish to represent the opposition that they really were. [2] If the "political" being ends his search at the freedom to self-approbate one's own inward private virtue (even speculation in the Hegelian sense [3] ), then there is no proper state or political realm only "self-directed subjects." [4] Rather, for Ruge, proper political virtue is fundamentally framed by its outward insinuation and reverberation, that is—"not only to say publicly the whole truth, but also to demand it." [5] Hegel was not "presented with the opportunity to stand up for his theory," as a result, he could not have "attained a political character." [6] Therefore, the inward orientation of the political being must be characterized by involvement in the dynamic process of history. [7] This is not just to say that an individual's theory is made political by the nature of having to declare it in the public square (although this is true in an incomplete sense) but that the nature of having to declare one's own philosophy in public square impresses a political and social character back onto the individual's thought-life that more completely consecrates it as a real manifestation of, and political interaction with historical process. [8] The inward orientation of the proper philosopher goes "even beyond morality" [9] by considering "public virtue" judgments not in opposition or contrast to "private virture" but rather as the natural, exteriorizing consequence of a complete and coherent expression of political virtue. [10]

Ruge's critique of Hegel and Kant is likewise a jumping off point for the outward orientation of the political individual. He criticizes this improper, theoretical, withdrawal from politics as inter-connected with the sterility of the idealism and disconnection typical of the contemporary German mentality. [11] Rather, while he see Hegel's theoretical retreat as politically infertile, the content of his theory can inform a helpful political understanding tapping into the dialectic nature of the state's existance: the state is a self-determining structure arising from the communal, public ethic and social (self-)conciousness. The political being is the subject of the essence of the state: [Y]et the essence is not only the goal, but also the product of the activity of the self-conscious subject, and thus freedom is the self-producing and self-ruling thinking and willling, which exists immediately as mores, but mediately by self-conscious subjects. [12] The outward orientation of the political being is intrisically linked with his own inward self-concious virtue that takes into account the "political movement of feeling" (i.e. the state in history) and consequently freely philosophizes about its object—the state. Earlier in this analysis, it was suggested that the outward orientation of the political individual to the state in the realm of the

public square was particularly significant because it mediates itself back onto the theoretical reality of the individual—in this sense, the individual can become properly, inwardly, political. Here, however, we can analyze the outward dimension of the political in the opposite direction, that is, it still remains the individual's responsibility to move beyond one's own speculative self-approbation and subject oneself to the public mores that from which, in turn, the state has been, is and will be generated. [13] In this way, the political individual is responsible for the Ruge defines history as "[...] the political movement of feeling, the life of the human Spirit in its most proper element [...]" [14] which is only possible insofar as these individuals possess the freedoms necessary to engage in the public square in a way that genuinely contributes to the shared building of the world, shaping of the state and mutual participation in the historic process. Virtue, art, philosophy, etc. are all engendered by the proper outward orientation of the free political being who converses and engages with the state and allows likewise the political mode of their existence to reflect it, and the properly impress itself back upon it. Furthermore, religion, as the "practical pathos for the ideal, for the truth" therefore, is the ultimate outward orientation of the political individual by the power of an embodying group of individuals organizing around the praxis inherent to a given idea or theory, and insodoing, manifesting theory, by practice as incarnation. [15] None of these higher values can be adequately expressed by an individualistic retreat from history.

To conclude: All of these taken together—public virtue, historical art, and free philosophy—express the very jolt of consciousness by which we have been raised out of a narrow domesticity and have become capable of a new life, the political life. [16] The political life for Ruge is an intricate and intimate dialectic between the individual and the state— the political individual is the subject of the state, and the state the subject of the political individual. Both of them informing each other and arising out the dynamic movement of each entity through society and history respectively: the inward world of theory and philosophy is refracted out toward the state in the form of political action and public virture which in turn fashions and structures the frame of reference for an the individual's capacity for thought-life. That is, the individual is self-determining, and therefore, the state is self-determining [17]: and any process, institution, structure, mode of theory, philosophical methodology—whether they be products of the state, individual or otherwise—that inhibits the reflexivity of this self-determining political dialectic between the individual and the state is a testimony to that product's unsuitable nature and grounds for its abandonment. [18] This, therefore, is the dynamic, arbitrated reality of the dialectic's relationship with past, present and future—it is the constant struggle of the state to preserve its own social hegemony and the political individual, constituents constant response and repositioning to the fluctuations of the state in order to preserve ones constituent authority over it.

Cf. Lawrence S. Stepelevich, The Young Hegelians: An Anthology, (New York: Humanity Books, 1999), 223: "[Hegel's] standpoint is essentially theoretical." (Emphasis original).

Ibid., 220. Emphasis original.

Cf. ibid., 224: Ruge cricizes Hegel's understanding of the ongoing reconciliation between the speculative (theoretical) and the state (the spiritual reality and the external reality) as incomplete because "the state did not need to change its forms for the sake of the theory, especially since the theory recognized the reason in it."

Ibid., 222.

Ibid., 222. Cf. 221f: "[In Kant's Werke ] it reads, 'Contradiction or denial of one's inner conviction is base, but keeping silent in a situation such as the present is the duty of a subject and if everything that one says must be true, that does not also mean the duty to say the full truth publicly. ' The maxim is negative; but, if one also accords to morality the positive obligation to duty, then it might well happen that philosopher might consider it precisely to be the highest philosophical duty to say publicly all of the truth of the whole truth. And, in fact, what is the philosophical duty if not this?" (Emphasis original).

Ibid., 225.

Cf. ibid., 213f: Here, Ruge defines history as "[...] the political movement of feeling, the life of the human Spirit in its most proper element [...]".

Ibid., 227: "The historical process is the relating of theory to the historical existences of Spirit; this relating is critique. [...] This application of theory to existence is lacking in Hegel's political thought." (Emphasis original).

Ibid., 213f.

Cf. ibid., 222: This is one way sees Kant and Hegel as inadequate by setting political virtue and private virtue in opposition.

Ibid., 215.

Ibid., 216. Emphasis original.

Ibid., 216 .

Ibid., 213f.

Cf. ibid., 232f.

Ibid., 215. Emphasis own.

Ibid., 216, 225: "It is impossible to grasp the state absolutely and to detach it from history because every concept of it, as every determinate philosophy, is itself already a product of history. But it is also impossible to grasp a system of state govenment, i.e., a determinate state, as an eternal form becasue the determinate state is nothing but an existence of Spirit in which Spirit is realized historically."

Ibid, 216: "Thus, in order to have the state in the form of the state, it is necessary to have all those great institutions, national representation, juries, and freedom of the press [...] that raise humans in their total worth and in the full light of public consciousness to creators of their own freedom."