Le dodici tesi di Hegel sulla Romanitas

This paper aims to provide an overview on the conceptual role played by the Roman world in Hegel’s philosophy, especially in the Phenomenology of Sprit and the Berlin Lessons on Philosophy of Universal History. Through the analysis of 12 fundamental thesis, it will be systematically shown that the Roman Empire is depicted by the mature Hegel as the realm of irrationality, violence, injustice, and merely formal relations, and that these categories are not only related to a juridical and political standpoint, but also apply in the fields of aesthetics, religion and history of philosophy. The last thesis explores the possibility of a new comprehension of the notion of recognition and the master-slave dialectic inversion in Chapter 4 of the Phenomenology, linked to the role played by Rome in Hegel’s philosophy.