Abstract

"Philosophy of the crisis" is the expression the author choses in order to illustrate the thought of those "Vormärz" thinkers better known as "young Hegelians". In this essay the author attempts a mapping of the common matrix of those thinkers through the intertwining of crisis and critique, and the different, often antithetical, ways in which they sought to give answer to a common problem. The crisis at stake takes its political bearings from the theory of the dissolution of the "Stände". This very element, indeed, will mark a gap with the Hegelian reflection and will pose political problems that the post-Hegelian reflection will try to solve by recurring to theories of history.