Famed philosopher of science Karl Popper was wary of any social theories that tried to divine a direction in human history. These “specific historical or evolutionary laws whose discovery would enable us to prophesy the destiny of man” were not just bunkum – they were dangerous.

An old example: the idea of the ‘chosen people’, who are an instrument of God’s will on Earth. A newer example: Marxism, which sees a certain class inheriting the Earth. Another: Racialism, which is seen as a “natural law” by which one race will naturally prevail over the rest.

In all of these “historicist” ideas, the individual is nothing before the wider forces and movement of history.

Popper attacks G.W.F. Hegel as a deeply flawed philosopher who worshipped the state and the nation in the same way that Plato did. Hegel was the first official philosopher of the Prussian state.

For Hegel, the individual is unimportant next to the moral authority of the state, to whom her or she owes everything.

The state is the expression of the Blood or the Nation. All moral authority is invested in it, and so propaganda and lying is permissible. War is ethical if it brings glory to the Nation.

Hegel counterpoised the idea of the heroic Man living for the glory of the state, with the debased bourgeois man living only for material ends. Such ideas helped foment the warrior attitude in Germany, which led it becoming a rising militaristic power prior to World War One.

Hegel’s ideas had a devastating effect on Germany, arguably leading to its defeat and humiliation in two world wars. Popper: “Nearly all the more important ideas of modern totalitarianism are directly inherited from Hegel”.

Karl Marx began as a “Young Hegelian” while at university, but came to reject everything about Hegel’s philosophy - save the idea of historical inevitability.

For Marx, it is only when the proletariat becomes “class conscious” and understands that it is being exploited, that change will come. One of Marx’s ideas is that, against these larger impersonal historical forces, day to day politics don’t really matter.