1. Introduction Our natural state as human beings, Hegel argues in Philosophy of Right, is “an immediate and uneducated [ungebildeten] position” from which we must liberate ourselves.¹ Only in our second nature, through the habits we form in our spiritual education, or Bildung, are we no longer determined by our natural instincts and drives. Earlier liberal political philosophers found justifications for limited government in the state of nature. But Hegel's political science rests on an education that transforms this first nature. To illustrate the origins of self-transcending human nature, Hegel turns again and again to a source text that earlier…