ABSTRACT
Historical reason in Hegel’s philosophy is the result of specific historical conditions. In particular, it may be connected to the developments in European politics that followed the defeat of Napoleon and were meant to establish lasting institutional ties, an example being the Congress of Vienna. The European Union may be seen as a further development of this idea, and the hypothesis of a historical rationale behind its action might relate to the long-running debate about Europe’s ‘normative power’. The Eastern enlargement may be seen as a process through which unexpected events such as the collapse of the Soviet bloc were ‘reappropriated’ by a historical mindset in order to make them rationally understandable. However, current developments in Central European politics seem to indicate that such a ‘reappropriation’ is questioned, which could be nonetheless a proof of the aforementioned ambivalence of European integration and its dynamics.
