This article examines Hegel's view of love in his ''early theological writing,'' ''The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate,'' where he saw love as a basis of autonomy in the modern self which could overcome the divisions between reason and emotion, self and other and finite and infinite. The article also examines Hegel's attempt in the essay to come to grips with why a community of love cannot be sustained by modern individuals. Consideration of this essay is seen to be valuable because of the insight it offers into the nature of the modern subjectivity. Even more importantly, it throws a different perspective on the mature Hegel. Contrary to the feminist view of Hegel as basing his political community on a reason that is exclusive of love and intuition, and the Marxist view of him as building the political community upon the abstract labouring will, this article argues for the ongoing importance of love in Hegel's mature political philosophy. Furthermore, it suggests that the need to protect and preserve the knowledge of love from the eclipsing effects of a narrow instrumental reasoning was an essential motive in the development of Hegel's mature philosophical system.