This book shows that the 1848 revolutions played a key role in the development of the political thought of the Young Hegelians, Arnold Ruge, Bruno Bauer, Moses Hess and Karl Marx. They all developed revolutionary ideas in the 1840s and hoped for revolutionary events as those that occurred in 1848, but their theories failed to predict the outcome of the revolution. By an empirical analysis this work clearly demonstrates that the Young Hegelians under study changed their theoretical outlooks as a direct result of the 1848 revolutions. It is argued that the mechanism for this change is...