Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate a crucial period in the development of the young Hegel. Watching the decline and fall of the Holy German-Roman Empire and the Napoleonic Wars, Hegel laid a first theoretical foundation of the modern State through an allegorical interpretation of Orestes' myth as a sort of study-case of the "tragedy in the ethical life". Hegel atempts in this way to overcome the decomposition of the old classical ideals, which takes place at the time of the emerging egoism of the bourgeois capitalism. The proposed solution by Hegel in 1803 is the last attempt to build a new religion on the basis of the reconciliation of the People with their own destiny.