Các nguyên lý của triết học pháp quyền

Lectures on Aesthetics #0

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Bùi Văn Nam Sơn (Translator)

Phần 1: Pháp quyền trừu tượng

Chương 1: Sở hữu

Chương 2: Hợp đồng

Chương 3: Sự phi pháp

Phần 2: Luân lý

Chương 1: Chủ ý và trách nhiệm

Chương 2: Ý định và sự An lạc

Chương 3: Cái thiện và Lương tâm

Phần 3: Đời sống đạo đức

Chương 1: Gia đình

Chương 2: Xã hội dân sự

Chương 3: Nhà nước

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Classics, Law, Theory, German Literature

916 pages, Bìa cứng

First published January 1, 1821

About the author

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a German philosopher and one of the founding figures of German Idealism. Influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism and Rousseau's politics, Hegel formulated an elaborate system of historical development of ethics, government, and religion through the dialectical unfolding of the Absolute. Hegel was one of the most well-known historicist philosopher, and his thought presaged continental philosophy, including postmodernism. His system was inverted into a materialist ideology by Karl Marx, originally a member of the Young Hegelian faction.

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 1 out of 5]

THIS BOOK IS BORING I READ 3 PAGES THEN I SAID IM TIRED OF THIS

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Among the pantheon of philosophers, Hegel is one of the most intimidating. His very name evokes fear: the towering behemoth of obscure German prose, looming in the distance, spinning out sentences that can trip up the most astute and careful readers.

Yet, after reading two of his books, I feel that his reputation for obscurity is—like Kant’s—significantly exaggerated. It’s a certain style of writing, sure; and several sentences are, as far as I’m concerned, gobbledygook. But like any academic worthy of the title, Hegel takes care to repeat his points again and again; so the reader at least comes away with the gist of what Hegel wishes to say. What’s more, Hegel’s particular oracular style of writing can be alluring, even powerful.

Prose aside, Hegel is worth reading because his ideas are both extraordinary and extraordinarily influential. To understand either Marxism or much of continental philosophy, Hegel must be grappled with. So what is he trying to get across in this book? What are Hegel’s views on politics? On the state? And why are they so controversial?

I’ll do my best to summarize what I understand (or, more accurately, what I think I understand), to help any wayfarers that are battling their way through this German sage. But, to be clear, I’m no Hegel scholar. I’m just a man with a Goodreads account.

Hegel, to me, is Spinoza with a twist. Let’s start with what the two thinkers have in common. For both, the kind of freedom prized by liberals—religious freedom, economic freedom, even free will itself—is, in a sense, illusory. This ‘freedom’ is really a misunderstanding. To think of people as being ‘free’ requires that you think of them as individuals distinct from their surroundings and the laws of the universe. But humans are products as much shapers of the universe, and obey the same fundamental laws; so humans cannot be adequately understood as free beings. Consequently, for Spinoza and Hegel, to think yourself ‘free’ is merely to fail to understand the reasons why you are doing something.

Both thinkers also consider the universe to be some kind of absolute. Every part of reality fits together into a perfect whole—a whole that can only be improperly understood when subdivided into its constituent parts. Therefore logic, not empirical science, is more effective at coming to grips with the nature of things, since logical categories are not bound by space and time. Furthermore, this reality is, for them, not something wholly material. For Spinoza, mind and matter are two aspects of the underlying substance of Nature; for Hegel, externality and internality are two aspects of Geist.

But now for their important differences. Spinoza thought that Nature went on its course indifferent to human survival: “Nature does not work with an end in view. For the eternal and infinite Being, which we call God or Nature, acts by the same necessity as that whereby it exists.” Hegel couldn’t disagree more. Hegel views history are the unfolding of the World Spirit. This leads him to making all sorts of teleological claims (claims about the purpose of things). When Hegel looks at human history, he does not see the chance machinations of politicians, princes, and priests, but the necessary and fated development of the World Spirit as manifest in human affairs. The Chinese, Indians, Greeks, and Romans become merely different aspects of this Spirit—rungs on the ladder in its climb towards perfection.

So what is the final stage of the World Spirit for Hegel? It is the realization that everything that is, is mind (or spirit; Geist is a difficult word to translate). Therefore, humans become sort of like Aristotle’s prime-mover: thought thinking about thought. For mind to understand itself as everything is to understand everything in itself. All contradictions disappear. Objective and subjective turn into mere illusions.

This is Hegel’s jumping-off point into the world of political thought. In this book, Hegel is trying to figure out what the end of history would be like, what form would the perfect state would take. He makes several twists and turns in his argument as he approaches this picture, all following his famous dialectic method. And he arrives at a state that many have found to be totalitarian. Several passages in this book are striking for the amount of power and authority Hegel thinks the perfect state should wield. Why did Hegel think that totalitarianism was a swell thing?

At times like this it is important to remember that you cannot understand Hegel through traditional categories, since these are the very things he is trying to leave behind. Something more is going on here; Hegel doesn’t merely wish to set up a fascist tyranny. What separates his idea and a repressive regime hinges on his conception of freedom.

Consider this: if you were omniscient—if you knew everything—would you have free will? It seems to me that, to know everything would require knowing what will happen in the future; and to know what will happen in the future would mean that you aren’t really choosing. It’s like the Tralfalmadores in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. They see all things, past and future, and so the idea of choosing never even occurs to them: “I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.”

Just so, at the final stage in Hegel’s historic process, the idea of choice will disappear. That’s because choice requires that you think of yourself as distinct from the external world. But at the end of history, mind understands itself as mind, and humanity understands itself as one with the world. “The gaily coloured world is before me; I stand opposed to it, and in this relation I cancel and transcend the opposition, and make the content my own. The I is at home in the world, when it knows it, and still more when it has conceived it.” Therefore, the kind of freedom that liberals prize—“negative freedom” as it is normally termed—disappears: “Negative freedom is actuated by a mere solitary abstract idea, whose realization is nothing but the fury of desolation.”

As in the great mystic texts, all oppositions and contradictions disappear in this state of total knowledge. The distinction between slavery and freedom disappears because the citizens make no choices, and yet are not compelled by outward force to do anything, since all of reality is understood to be mind and, therefore, a part of them.

The opposition between citizens and the state also disappears. If you think about it, in order for the state to think of it as being opposed to the people, it has to think of itself as distinct from the people. But, of course, to understand the situation fully and completely is to understand that, in the perfect state, the interests of the people and the state exactly coincide. Therefore the ruler/ruled distinction also melts away in Hegel’s utopia. The monarch, the legislature, the executive, and the people all become necessary and self-conscious aspects of a complete whole.

This all strikes me as (more or less) theoretically unimpeachable. But the reason it raises eyebrows and attracts condemnation is—as I’m sure many of you have thought by now—because this sort of perfect harmony is practically impossible. Almost 200 years after this treatise was written, the state and the people’s ‘superficial’ differences in perspectives have not melted away; and too many examples from history since Hegel’s time have shown the danger in trusting too much in the state. So how could Hegel suggest something so totally impracticable?

This is where the religious side of Hegel comes into play. It seems to me that Hegel’s philosophy does not depend on logic alone—not even the idiosyncratic logic he liked to employ. Rather, to be a Hegelian (and to be a Marxist or a Freudian) requires a certain kind of faith. It is obviously not logically necessary that a World Spirit exist, and that it manifest itself in the few thousand years of human history—a mere blink of the eye in comparison with the history of the universe. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, it is bizarre to think that a development of cosmic importance took place in a few hundred years in the vicinity of the Mediterranean.

I’ll cut short my attempted summary and criticism here; I fear it has been banal and superficial enough. I will only add that students of this book should keep in the back (and front) of their minds Hegel’s dialectical method. Look out for his tripartite divisions, and try and figure out how they’re related. Also try and spot points where Hegel shifts from logical criticism to a kind of dogmatic insistence on his worldview. Or, if the feeling takes you, just let yourself get swept away in the torrent of gnomic prose, and enjoy the mad contortions of a mind both strange and profound.

[Erick · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Philosophy of Nature allowed Hegel to don the hat of a natural scientist and the Philosophy of Right introduces us to Hegel the politician and lawyer. Hegel is never at his most intolerable than when he leaves the realm of speculative philosophy for other disciplines in order to apply his philosophy and make it absolutely comprehensive. This is usually when he is the most arrogant and the most annoyingly tedious.

Hegel's political philosophy is a bizarre amalgam of collectivism and monarchy. It is bizarre because its application and actual practice seems altogether paradoxical and ludicrous. Hegel sees the monarch as the embodiment of the will of the state; the state is the very manifestation of God and the spirit in the world and in history. The church, instead of being a moral check for the state, is simply a tool in its hands and must have blind allegiance. The people, according to Hegel, cannot be trusted with democracy (not that I totally disagree), so he has accorded to the monarch the embodiment of his collectivist fantasy. The people have some voice as public opinion, but only after education (or re-education) that conditions them to the monarch and his role as their sovereign voice. Apparently, Hegel does believe in constitutionalism and branches of government, but not as checks and balances - that would destroy Hegel's vision of unity! That unity is embodied in the monarch, and maybe to some degree in a cabinet of advisers. Hegel says the citizens are capricious, but, one must assume, the sovereign monarch is not. Exactly how the sovereign monarch is to be kept in check is not altogether clear. Presumably, he will naturally be dedicated to the constitution and his advisers. He will have to be a Hegelian, I assume.

If no one as yet sees the problem with Hegel's politics, I am afraid there is a problem with your judgment. While I certainly agree that the masses of people are often idiotic as a majority, and often unruly, the idea that any monarch can be trusted to be less so, is incredibly naive; history is full of examples otherwise. Hegel's system does look incredibly like Fichte's system as laid out in the Characteristics of the Present Age -a work I detested. If you want to know what Fichtean and Hegelian society would look like, imagine a colony of ants; that's it, just a colony of ants. That is Fichte's and Hegel's ideal society. If this brings images to mind of a bunch of goose stepping storm troopers, it does that to me as well! Oh, the irony! And, yet, Hegel still believes that his system embodies some kind of freedom. Hegel was sadly deluded.

This book has the most obvious examples of what Kierkegaard disliked about Hegel: collectivism, statism, arrogance, system building, etc. I certainly would encourage people who read this to read Kierkegaard; he is quite the opposite of Hegel. I would also highly recommend William Stringfellow. Stringfellow is the most astute at showing why collectivism and statism should not ever be confused with divine authority.

I give this book two and a half stars. There are still some elements of the idealist dialectic in here I find interesting and there's an interesting section on the rather intriguing notion of punishment as a right. That is something I have never considered before.

[Otto Lehto · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a book that is wrong about almost everything, it is remarkable how much I enjoyed it.

Much ado is made about Hegel's impenetrable style, but after one gets used to it, it isn't all that bad in itself. But it relates to the German philosopher's tendency to be vague where precision is needed, and to emphasize holistic harmony as a masturbatory poetic license where differentiated, more analytical approach would have revealed the devil in the details. Hegel, in other words, has a bad habit of waxing lyrically about idealized versions of events (it is called idealism for a good reason), and of eschewing traditional analysis in favour or a "logic" of his own making (i.e. the dialectic).

Hegel attempts to create a theory where religion, phenomenology, individual freedom, laws of the state, and the divisions between social classes, are harmonized in an organic whole. (He uses the living body metaphor, where all parts are members of the whole, in more places than one.)

In practice, it exalts the state as the highest form of rationality and spirituality (for Hegel pretty much identical), and the German state, with its peculiar habits and constitution, as the highest of them all. The end result is a total absurdity, and it led German thought to a vacuum filled by Marxist nonsense (of the class struggle) and the eventual rise of fascism (of the corporate state). All those evil results are contained in Hegel, who openly advocated for corporate fascism. The analysis arises from a particular Zeitgeist (another term Hegel perhaps invented), and is limited in scope to a particular era's needs. This does not excuse Hegel's shortsighted megalomania, however.

Taking all of this into consideration, how is it possible to rate Hegel's achievement so highly? Well, we should be able to distinguish between CORRECTNESS of analysis and the VALUE of the said analysis. The former relates to the specific solutions it poses (and which we can deem problematic); the latter relates to the new perspectives it opens up (which we can deem highly successful).

In Hegel's case, the merit lies in a few factors: 1) It had an undeniable impact on thinkers as wide-ranging as Marx, Feuerbach, Stirner, etc. (who, after all, developed Hegel into wonderful and crazy directions). Hegel's unique analysis was dynamite. It was stronger than any aphrodisiac. One could call it intellectual opiate for the elites. 2) It launched a whole new way of looking at the relationship between society and individuals. The idea of rationality expressed in concrete organization launched sociology. The idea that individuals, in their freedom, can embody, ethically and politically, "concrete universality" launched a new analysis of individual rights as social constructs. 3) The dialectical method, while logically iffy, provided a tool of analysis that is undeniably important, regardless of one's persuasion and political leaning, in understanding the the ever-rising struggle for power and recognition between individuals, classes, ideologies and nation states. 4) And yes, even the most ridiculous part of the book, Hegel's apotheosis of the Prussian state as the highest culmination of world history (at least SO FAR), can be interpreted, with a dose of excessive generosity and hindsight, as a valuable insight into the progressive nature of history. Today, with Fukuyama and others professing the end of history, such analyses are quite vital. The concept of Pax Americana, and of 1 billion Facebook accounts, are totally Hegelian insights about world spirit realizing itself in absolute, concrete freedom - even while under a total surveillance state. 5) Overall, since the underlying theory - the application of his Phenomenology to Society - is so strong, the end result, while a complete mess and a moral travesty, is highly illuminating. It's like the first attempt at manned flight: sure, people died, and we didn't get very far, but we DID it.

Overall, while Hegel's greatest accomplishments are undoubtedly his other books, i.e. his Phenomenology and Logic - which are purely FORMAL INNOVATIONS for PURE THEORY - his "practical" philosophy, in this book, is nonetheless a valuable, useful and inspirational sub-chapter in German philosophy, and a valuable (if problematic) addition to Hegel's corpus. The book can be read as madness that one can learn from (fully aware of its danger to one's health and sanity), even if we are cognizant of its utter failure to satisfactorily meet the particular challenges it poses itself.

And this, indeed, how the best Hegelians - from Marx and Stirner to Sartre and Zizek - have read him: without scruples, without veneration. They have realized that Hegel provides visions rather than solutions. Dreams of clarity obscured by bad faith. To be a good Hegelian, in other words, is to go BEYOND Hegel; but to go beyond him, you need to read him. Ignoring him is not an option, since Hegel never died. Corporatism, socialism and political liberalism still exist, as Hegel foresaw. Being unaware of the foundations of modern thought is a formula for self-defeat. And great philosophy is a philosophy that moves - intellectually and emotionally - in the subterranean caverns of modern society, hidden behind the empty facade of public opinion. That is the dance of the dialectic.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I cannot say that I fully agree with his views on Religion and the State... just look at the nutty things that religious folk believe these days? I do think that his sections on democracy could be construed as somewhat implicitly fascistic. Here we see the birth of the Continental Tradition in many ways. It was not Descartes, or Kant, but Hegel who first truly understood the promise of constructing a World Philosophy from the Enlightened Light on the Hill that was Modern Europe. So many contemporary post-modern philosophers have discredited his work, notably Derrida in Margins of Philosophy turns to one appalling footnote on "History moves progressively from East to West, the further West one goes the closer you get to Absolute Mind...etc." something like that.... come off it already you pinheads. How can you discredit something as beautiful and brilliant as the age-old question of understanding all of human existence. Hegel was really the last philosopher to attempt and possibly succeed at a universal metaphysical project. Bravo! Once more into the breech dear sir. Fight the good fight.

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update (07/2024): we are so back baby

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When this was the first and only Hegel I had read, I thought it was fantastic. Now, it seems to me that this is perhaps the worst of his major works, and the one in which his shortcomings with regards to his successors (specifically Marx) are most perspicacious.

There is much to be gained in thinking of his contrast with Kant in the first half of the book (I am not yet sure if he supersedes him), but in the second half of the book he relies far too heavily on classical political economy (Smith, to a lesser extent Malthus) and there are failings that are, with a Marxian hindsight, rather predictable.

[Warren Fournier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps I am misguided in my assumption that true philosophy leads to God, but at least I have some distinguished company, like Hegel, in my camp. Yes, Hegel can be a bit of slog to get through, but don't be intimidated. I must admit to getting a pleasant chill up my spine and being quite entertained reading Hegel's "Philosophy of Mind," which got me thinking about God in new ways. But it is also in that book that he scratched the surface of what he concludes about statehood, ethics, and law based on his phenomenology of spirit. I wasn't sure I got the gist (see what I did there?). So I decided to go further down the rabbit hole in his "Philosophy of Right".

Here, Hegel sets out to show that the State is inherently rational. He is not necessarily trying to dictate what a state should be, but he sure spells out in detail how it should be UNDERSTOOD. For the most part, I found his work here quite interesting, but some of Hegel's line of thinking I just can't understand.

Hegel is quick to acknowledge that no state has been perfect. But though things like force and tyranny may exist in states, these are accidental, not part of Idea of the State. And some laws may be perfectly consistent with the circumstances of the time period, but be wrong and irrational. For example, Roman law did not assign slaves or children personhood, and thus fell under the jurisdiction of property, and widows were not allowed to inherit the family capital that THEY helped found. Laws are not persistent and unchangeable. They are supposed to meet the demands of the challenges of the day. These are what Hegel calls positive laws, which are transitory.

Sometimes there can be good reasons for very bad laws, but sometimes there are bad reasons too. The bad reasons stem from the Will as only the individual understands it. Here Hegel shares common ground with Schopenhauer (whether they admit it or not), who sees egoism as the cause of suffering in the world. What is "bad" is when one particular person's will does not recognize the will in others. When the will is not sublimated or denied in both religion and politics alike, we get fanaticism, a phenomenon of the consequence of a lack of compassion, as Schopenhauer would call it, which is the "Will of the void," blind and destructive. It creates a social order only as a result of the limited Understanding, which must then tear down the pre-existing society that came before, eliminate individuals perceived as a threat to social order, and preserve this individual's power necessitated by the will-to-live. Such individuals believe they are doing good, fighting for social justice and universal equality, but these are only abstract ideas because the particularized ego cannot see the whole Truth. Thus, to put these abstractions into effect must always be negative and destructive. In fact, the will of a person is by nature negative because it is the actualization of something finite from the infinite, through subtraction from the Universal while still being united with the Universal. My cells of my colon do their own thing, are determinate, but they are still me. In cancer, their individual disposition to multiply is also negative, because their will is unaware of the consequences to the whole.

Schopenhauer, who does not believe in free will, sees no way to a utopia through the state. We were not meant to be happy, and no human government or justice system will ever not be corrupted by the will. We only have a semblance of freedom--our choice is to either to deny or affirm the Will. If we deny the Will through the aescetics as taught in such beliefs as Christianity, Buddhism, or Hinduism and practice humility and compassion, life may be bearable, but it is still better that we not live at all. Hegel, on the other hand, unapologetically proposes a much more self-admitted optimistic solution.

For Hegel, the Will-in-itself is not blind and destructive. He does agree with Schopenhauer, to a certain extent, that what we as individuals think of "free will" is not really accurate. For Hegel, a person's free will really is arbitrariness. But it doesn't mean free will doesn't exist. True freedom is found in the Will-in-itself, in self-actualizing universality, not individuals. The ability to manage and decide between impulses is all that us humans can do. Certainly we can sharpen our skills in ethics, weighing consequences of our potential actions and so forth, which he feels is the value of education, but our will is always limited and thus not completely free. Now, there are multiple levels of the expression of the Will-in-itself, and thus Freedom, going all the way to the Absolute Mind or God. From the concrete individual, the next immediate level is the Family, then civil society. The State is the highest level, the manifestation of nature of Absolute Mind, which is free and rational. Certainly, if you look at all the complex workings of a state, it appears to be an organism or brain.

So far, I think I follow Hegel and find his arguments very compelling. The state has no personality per se, but through the course of history develops one through absorption of all particular and finite minds. How do all these conflicting wills harmonize? Through what is universally right. Hegel defines right with the imperative: "Be a person and respect other persons." Sounds similar to Schopenhauer's "compassion." So anything existing which embodies the free Will is right. Thus, the will of the State is right. And anything which infringes on "right as right" is crime.

But henceforth begins my disconnect with Hegel. If individual will is arbitrary and destructive, then how is anything that would closely resemble this rational Idea of State come out of these subjective wills? Democracy? Well, that seems to be out, since we can see what kind of egotists get elected by such a system. No, Hegel's ideal is a constitutional monarchy.

So let me get this straight... Individual people are arbitrary and destructive, but the monarch is not? This is the kind of blind obedience that in fact limits the Understanding that Hegel was warning about, because how would we ever see the whole truth by only seeing the side that the state wishes us to see?

Hegel's philosophy takes us to some dark places politically. He does believe in the checks and balances we get from separation of powers, but he says that unfortunately our limited human Understanding ends up placing the different branches at odds with each other. Well, I think we do see that in American politics today. And he says if the different branches are self-supporting and see each of themselves only as mutual limitations of the other branches, this leads to the sure downfall of any state. Public opinion is taken into consideration, as the monarch is supposed to provide for the needs of the people, but there is no direct election of the monarch by the majority. In fact, Hegel feels public opinion should be "despised," because only when free from the caprice of the public can a state truly be great and rational. Ethical behavior is that which is in line with the rational will of the state, so this means the media as well, as all members of the state are bound to it through a sense of duty. He flat out dismisses freedom of the press, saying it's an excuse for people to do as they please, and that in a truly rational government, the public would have any serious questions or concerns about what the government is doing in the first place. Hegel fails to take into account how the free press can also serve as a fourth means of checks and balances.

It's this kind of reasoning that has led to some seriously delusional ideas about governments. Yeah, I'm looking at you again, H.G Wells! It also makes me think about Catholicism, where the Pope, a human individual chosen by the College of Cardinals, serves as the infallible authority of God's Will. Well, we've seen how well that's worked out over the years. I also am reminded of places like North Korea. If the State is not only the mind of nations but that through which God's Will is carried out, well then it does stand that the State should be worshipped. This is particularly concerning in light of the fact that Hegel does not recognize the essential function of the state to protect life and property of its public. He even goes so far as to say that, as a higher entity, the state "lays claim to this very life and property and demands its sacrifice."

Again, Hegel reiterated that he's not pointing out the government of any nation as superior, but simply using philosophy to logically conclude the Idea. And I think some aspects of his outline of basic principles upon which an ideal State would base its laws sounds fairly good if it were possible. But could such a perfect State ever truly happen?

Yes, says Hegel. History will work things out. Because history is the mind of God coming to full Self-actualization.

Well, I am not so optimistic. But I do know that his philosophy has given intellectual fodder for many "particularized egos" over the last two centuries to muck about in their governments, hoping to bring about their own version of utopia. And failed. There will always be people who think THEY are on the right side of history, that THEY are the enlightened ones, THEY are the next step in the progression of a rational and free state, THEY have the key to social order, and OTHERS are not ethical or moral if they don't fall in line.

But if Hegel is right, then as long as our leaders, corporate big shots, and activists make judgments more in line with their own immediate caprice rather than with the Universal, nothing will change. So I'll not contribute to my suffering by holding my breath. Schopenhauer would be proud.

SCORE: 2.5 constitutional monarchies out of 5, rounded to 3/5.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book for David Schweickart's course on Social and Political Philosophy during the second semester of 1980/1 at Loyola University Chicago. Previously, I'd read Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind and his Logic only. Like the former, unlike the latter, Philosophy of Right is a relatively easy read. Unlike the Phenomenology, it is neither very profound nor challenging, intellectually speaking. It is, however, an important book as regards how it applies the very intriguing thought-forms of the Phenomenology to practical purposes in the real world.

I had appropriated the Phenomenology as a challenge. Kaufmann, in his Hegel, emphasizes how, in Hegel's time, it was possible to be on top of all the disciplines. Thus, a real dialectic of material facts to conceptual models was, at that time, at least plausible. One could appropriate world history personally as if it were a course of study leading ultimately to...the omega point of the Absolute Spirit. Certainly, the prospect of this was alluring in a mystical sort of way, the argument and its exposition pointing like an arrow ahead. Hegel's vision filled me with a sense of rapture.

Philosophy of Right, however, takes the world historical progress of the spirit in one of its aspects to a definitive conclusion and shatters the vision, Hegel becoming an apologist for the status quo and revealing himself, in his later years at least, as a sycophantic toady of his paymaster, the Prussian state.

The applications of Hegelian thinking in actual world politics give one pause. In addition to Hegel's own pathetic, apologetic performance one may adduce both the corporativism of fascistic and Nazi ideologies as well as the millenarian certainties of some "scientific" socialists.

I am decrying neither the vision nor the challenge posed by Hegel's early work, just those persons who believe they have captured the vision and mastered the challenge.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Given Hegel's reputation, this is relatively easy to read and even enjoyable: the state as the absolute reason, laws as the objectification of reason, history as the development of state/reason through dialectic, and so on. I found funny Hegel's repudiation of any theory that approaches the state as a social contract or as a community of interests; or when he opposes the separations of powers in a state as anti-dialectical; or his glorification and obedience to the Prussian monarchy. While reading this book, one understands Hegel's influence on Marx: the theory and legitimacy of the state, the class interests, economics as a rational discipline concerning individual and diverse interests, the rational and inevitable development in the history of new state forms, the philosopher's insights into the laws of history, and so on.

[Xander · Rating 2 out of 5]

With Outlines of a Philosophy of Right (1821) German philosopher Hegel published a book that was to be used as the backbone of a series of lectures. In the book, he deals with the foundations of ‘Recht’ (hard to translate in English since it comprises subjects like Right, Government, and Law). And as Hegel already developed his philosophical system of Absolute Knowledge (i.e. the foundation of and the method to truth), he tries to fit social aspects, such as Law, Government and Religion, into his metaphysical worldview. Not that he has to work hard to accomplish this – in his first book Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) he already explained how the social world of Man comprised the final stages of ‘Geist’ becoming Self-Conscious of Absolute Knowledge.

So, in that sense, Outlines of a Philosophy of Right is just a specific elucidation of his earlier ideas. It is also the second and last book that Hegel published in his life – all later works are posthumously published and suffer from the flaws typical of such works. It is hence much better – both in quality and quantity – than, for example, his Philosophy of History (1832).

As with all his works, Hegel sets out from the most basic ideas and then tries to build up a system of knowledge through the use of his own logical apparatus. This means, in effect, that he takes very simple notions and analyzes (in minute detail) how they relate both to our own consciousness and to the external world. In this process he finds continuous contradictions, mostly having to do with the interplay between abstractness and concreteness of ideas. To resolve these contradictions requires Hegel to find out how the concrete idea is a particular manifestation of the abstract idea, and how the abstract idea emerges out of particular phenomena and ‘subsumes’ these phenomena under it.

This, in general, is called Hegel’s dialectic, and it is much more fruitful to view his logic as (1) an analysis of concepts and (2) as a resolution of contradictions arising out of metaphysical distinctions (subject-object and universal-particular). Hegel operates on Aristotelean logic, uses Kant’s metaphysics (principles of existence) and epistemology (theory of knowledge), and builds his own logical apparatus to answer question of Being, Truth and Knowledge. Usually people explain this method with the terms thesis, antithesis and synthesis, but these concepts were never uttered by Hegel himself and although helpful to explain the general movement of his developing process of Knowledge, it is also highly ineffective to illustrate the exact meaning of Hegel’s system.

Anyways, the above is the foundation and cornerstone of all of Hegel’s works and I think it is the key to unlock his otherwise ungraspable ideas.

What has all this to do with Right, you might ask? To explain how a State should function ideally, - and, given time, will function inevitably – Hegel starts with analysing the most basal concepts that underlie all of this.

He thus starts with the most abstract principles underlying law and right and his starting-point is the concept of property. This is the most basic idea and it is a necessary idea, for all of our social life is based on the fact that what we do in the world, is appropriating objects. Not allowing subjects to appropriate objects is a non-starter. This then brings Hegel to the question of how to manoeuvre through this situation: we have multiple subject appropriating all kinds of objects, and this is bound to lead to strife and struggle. Here the notion of a ‘contract’ develops, and it is, again, a necessary condition for social life. But again, something new follows from this: when people willingly enter into contracts with other people, there is both a possibility that they lie their way into a contract that they weren’t bound to stick to anyways and a possibility that one or more of the contractors break their promise. So we stumble onto the notion ‘injustice’.

And injustice is the point where abstract right transforms into morality. Although here a linguistic remark is necessary. In his philosophy, and in this book, Hegel is talking about two types of morality. The first type is morality in the subjective sense, which Hegel names ‘Moralität’ and refers to the personal sphere of acting in the world. The second type is morality in the objective sense, which Hegel names ‘Sittligkeit’ and refers to the cultural, societal sphere of acting in the world. Both types have to be translated into the English ‘Morality’ which then loses an important distinction.

Anyway, Hegel explains how injustice transforms into subjective morality and how this personal sphere of acting has three dialectical distinctions. And here again English seems to be problematic, since Hegel dinstinguishes ‘Vornemen’ from ‘Meinen’ but which in English both fall under ‘Intention’. In the first case, the intention has to do with meaning to do something, planning. In the second case, the intention has to do with setting a purposeful goal for oneself and acting on it.

Hegel’s analysis of subjective morality starts with the intention of planning to do something and it’s antithesis ‘Schuld’ (which, again, is problematic in English, since the German word captures both the English ‘guilt’ and ‘blame’). With the notion of meaning to do something, intentionality (in the juridical sense) enters the scene. And this distinguishes us – according to Hegel; not according to modern day biologists – from animals. With the intention to do something comes the concept of being responsible for one’s actions, hence the question of guilt and blame. We only reserve exceptions for children and people who are mentally diseased.

Second, this acting of people in the personal sphere falls under a higher notion, that of the second type of intention – the setting of a goal and the acting on this goal, intentionality in the philosophical sense. This means, basically, that human beings feel desires and urges which motivate us to act and the overarching goal of these desires and urges is well-being. We want to be healthy and happy and so we want to fulfil our desires. This is Hegel’s breaking-point with Kant: Kant’s ethics was basically a secular monkish life – suppressing all desires and urges and only act on what Reason tells us are acts that are compatible with a metaphysical universal moral Law. For Kant, freedom is discipline, being an autonomous individual that is guided by reason. But Hegel rejects this outright; for Hegel, freedom is not suppressing your desires and urges, since the existence of these is a sign that they are worth something, worth acting on.

But this doesn’t mean that Hegel is an Epicurean, in the sense that we a good life is a life in which we just act on all our urges. No, the dualism between intentionality and well-being leads to a new step in the process, a new dualism: that between the notion of ‘the good’ (a notion that arose from the former dualism intentionality and well-being) and conscience. To see why this is so, one has to understand that the dualism the good-conscience is the stepping stone to the third and final sphere of Right, that of morality in the sense of social/cultural morality.

We want to live a good life, to (literally) be good, and our instincts point us the way to this. But we also form part of social groups and a broader general culture, which confronts us with other human subjects who basically have the same intentionality. And the presence of others gives rise to a strife between our own instincts and living a peaceful life. So there is (metaphorically) some sort of inner voice, a consciousness, that criticizes our intentions and desires.

For Hegel, the resolution of this antinomy between the good and conscience, is the starting point of Right in the social and cultural sphere. And the fundamental unit here is the family. The family constitutes two people – a man and a woman – who wilfully give up their own being and create, through marriage, a new life – a unit of social life. Within this social unit there are clear rules and distinctions: the man acts externally (he works and earns income, he interacts with the world) while the woman acts internally (she does the household and raises the children). The family thus is the building block of social life and is a manifestation of the resolution of the conflict between being good (pursuing personal well-being) and conscience (accounting for different needs and perspectives).

The family is a unit, since it possesses shared property (wealth) and common goals (raising children). And this second point, the existence of children, is the transformation from the family life into social life proper. Hegel claims that children are the manifestation of families falling apart: children are raised and then enter families of their own, breaking up the original family and creating new ones.

Add to this the man’s task of interacting with the objective world (i.e. other people), and here we have a civil society, in which people of all walks of life deal with each other in order to accomplish personal goals and aims. For Hegel, this sphere of life consists of (1) economics (‘the system of desires’ leading to the manifestation of ‘labour’); (2) jurisdiction (‘justice as law’ culminating in the court); and (3) the police and corporations.

The police (which meant something different from what it means to us) is basically the system of education, poverty assistance, health care, guardianship of people who fail in life, and international trade (needed because wealth accumulates and poverty ensues). For Hegel this is all private, not public; more in the trend of ‘caritas’ than the modern social welfare state. Besides the police, civil society consists of corporations (again, meaning something else for Hegel than for us) – groups of people gathering around common interests, offering protection to its members, building and defending professional honour and cultivating competence and skills (i.e. offering education and internship to prospective members). Hegel sees these corporations (basically guilds) as the ‘second moral root’ besides the family, since they basically act as mediators and middling force between different interests within society. In short: the corporations are crucial for economic development and social peace.

But now we stumble unto a new dualism, that between the family (representing the country where morality is cultivated) and civil society (representing the town where labour and capital are produced), kick-starting a new dialectic process. Civil society is a manifold, while the family is a single unit; the family is a subjective existence, while society consists of objective entities. This has to be resolved.

And this is the final stage in Hegel’s analysis and development of Right: here the State emerges as ‘true and actual foundation’ (‘wahrer Grund’) of town and country. It is this final part in Hegel’s book – his description of the State and its various functions – that forms the starting-point for Marx’ later critique of Hegel. To see why Marx felt so alienated (pun intended) by Hegel’s description, one has to understand that what Hegel describes as the ideal State is a close approximation of the Prussian state. This led many people, contemporary Arthur Schopenhauer being the first and Karl Popper one of the most prominent, to claim that Hegel was a sell-out. Their claim is that Hegel fitted his conception of the ideal State to the Prussian state in order to please the authorities and allow him his professorship in Berlin. I think there is a different reason, much less basal, than this for the similarities between the Prussian state and Hegel’s ideal State, but first lets see what Hegel’s ideal State is.

Hegel distinguishes three components: (1) internal constitutional law, (2) external constitutional law, and (3) World-History.

Internal constitutional law is the goal of the state, i.e. the general interest as such (as manifested in the State) and its reconciliation with particular interests which form the substance of the State. These laws are the abstract reality of the State and are necessary as fixed determinations of State powers. In other words: the State is a knowing and willing entity – it knows what it wants in general (known purposes, guiding principles and laws) and it knows the specific circumstances and relations in which its subjects act. In short: the State is an entity in itself and for itself, it is a Spirit (‘Geist’).

The way that the State operates is as follows: it has the power to determine the general (i.e. it is lawgiver), it has the power to subsume the specific under the general (i.e. it governs) and it has the power of subjectivity as determination of will (i.e. it has a monarch who decides, wills). Hegel’s ideal State consequently consists of (1) two chambers (one of landed nobility and one of businessmen) that legislate; (2) a government (people by intelligentsia and jurists); and (3) a monarch who agrees on all governmental actions and only steps in as decisive power in case of conflict or inaction.

But the monarch has another function within the State as well. The State as single subject finds out that the world consists of a manifold of other States. Here we see again the single breaking apart into the many when the subject sees itself as a mere object among many; and here we see again the resolution of the problem laying in the subject being reflected on itself as object (i.e. the unification of subject and object; of the single and the many; of the universal and the particular).
In normal language, we would say that the State finds itself on the geopolitical stage and has to deal with other states. These states relate to one another and hence have to communicate. It is here that Hegel sees the monarch as mouthpiece of the State – quite literally, since Hegel sees the State as an organism in itself (very Hobbesian). It is the monarch that decides on the interaction between his State and other states and he can use diplomacy, war, peace and treaties as means to navigate these waters.

And this stage is at the same time the transformation from the internal workings of the State (the State as subject) to the external workings of the State (the State as object). A State wants to be recognized as such by other States, and in its relations with other states – of which the major modes are war and peace – it builds relations on the principles of social morality (‘Sittligkeit’). I.e. it protects the institutions and the rights of private persons of both itself and other States (even in war!) and it protects the international peace.

In its geopolitical dealings the State completes itself – it becomes one (both subject and object) and as such is an elemental part of history. It is here, at the final state of the development of the State, that Hegel brings up his theory of World-History. For Hegel, history is not just a series of historical facts, there is an underlying principle that guides historical development and this principle is the realization of Freedom by the World-Spirit, the Absolute (i.e. God). Throughout history societies come and go, but each plays a particular role on the world stage – the idea of Freedom develops itself both as Idea and as reality. So we see a series of civilizations developing the notion of subjective freedom, with Ancient Greece as starting point and the Roman world as formalizers of this concept. With the spread of Christianity the subject gains infinite subjective value (being a partaker in God’s creation, even being created in the image of God) and through the rise and fall of feudalism and Luther’s uprising, the notion of individual freedom becomes reality. The Enlightenment and the French Revolution then objectify this ‘freedom’ in the world and failing in this, the successive Prussian State unifies both the Christian idea of subjective freedom and the German practice of actual freedom (through the laws, government, constitution and morality that Hegel sketches in this book).

So we see here how the fundamental principles underlying the State form both the end-point of a dialectical process (as sketched in the book) and how this ideal State forms the basic entity, the culmination, of the World-Spirit manifesting itself in World-History. So Right, History, Metaphysics and Logic are all interrelated and are all the same end-point, viewed from different perspectives, of the same fundamental process of development of God.

And now we can immediately see how Schopenhauer and Popper succumbed to the fallacy of hasty generalization. It is easy to claim that Hegel bent over backwards and took care that his ideal State would be approved of by the Prussian authorities. And perhaps there is a kernel of truth in this – Hegel wrote in the aftermath of the devastating Napoleonic Wars and the huge changes taking place all over Europe (some revolutionary) instigated a reactionary clampdown in the various European states. So maybe Hegel was afraid of losing his job, being censured for a long time or simply afraid of retaliations. Who knows?

Other critics view Hegel’s perspective on civil society and family life as conservative, sometimes even reactionary, and in general undemocratic. True, Hegel clearly states how democracy is the rule of the mob and how the political tradition of Rousseau was wrong in viewing representative democracy as the best form of government. Hegel sees freedom lying in ‘Building’, personal education and cultivation, and not in personal freedom to do what one wants. In other words, Hegel subjects the individual to the collective, both in politics and in morality. Culture is the manifestation of the ‘Zeitgeist’ of a particular civilization and can (or should) neither be escaped from nor changed. Only World-Historical figures can change the times and it is not up to human beings, but to God, to manifest himself through a hand-picked individual. (Sounds familiar? Read the New Testament.)

So yeah, Hegel is nationalistic in seeing the Prussian State as the culmination of history and the closest approximation of the ideal State; he cuts democracy from society, places the monarch on top of things, and sees both the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie as cultivators and educators of the ‘plebs’.

But this view is one-sided and it overlooks some fundamental differences, between Hegel’s ideal State and Prussia, which are mostly never mentioned by people eager to project onto Hegel some sort of proto-totalitarian philosophy. One difference between Prussia and Hegel’s state is that the Prussian state was very reliant on forceful suppression of the people and saw the bureaucracy and the army as its most important organs. Hegel’s State regards all aspects of social life and Hegel sees the State as an emergent sphere from both family and business, country and town. Second, the Prussian state clearly saw its subjects as mere subjects, while Hegel continuously emphasizes in all of his works how individual freedom – in spirit and in practice – is the foundation of the world. This means that, e.g., laws have to reflect this personal freedom and cannot be totalitarian by definition. It also means that any suppression of human desires and needs goes against the idea of freedom – something that Kant clearly didn’t see. And third, Hegel criticizes contemporary intellectuals who proclaimed that the law is justified by the strongest persons/class – he calls this fanaticism and flabby-mindedness.

The remaining three paragraphs can be found in my comment on this review.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hegel gives primacy to constitutional monarchy, but wants a government that allows civic participation. Citizens should participate in government as part of a subset of the whole–not as individuals. Hegel calls these subsets “corporations.” I don’t know to what extent corporations in the mid-19th century resemble corporations today. But we can view it another way by calling them “estates,” which is exactly how medieval many participated in the monarchical order.

Hegel wants a constitutional monarchy, to which I have grave misgivings. I understand why, though. At that time in Europe, the old liturgical tradition had largely been eradicated. Institutions tended to reflect raw power. Hegel likely says monarchies as absolute monarchies and wanted to mute that tendency.

Most interesting, he sees the monarch--properly understood--as the concrete embodiment of a culture's values. It's also important to point out that Hegel did not mean by "state" what we mean by it, simply the bureaucratic apparatus that takes away liberty. He meant the combined culture and volk.

The Foundations of the Modern State

Monarchy as the Representative Individual: consistent with his earlier points, Hegel notes that there must be some way for the individual to retain his subjective right, yet at the same time freely and fully identify with the community (Staat). This happens by way of monarchy. Beneath the monarchy are Estates, who mediate the King to the people. Nowhere does Hegel mean representation according to our usage today. The King does not "represent" the will of the people, but through his kingly majesty allows the people to identify.

The French Revolution: Political Terror

Hegel defines it as "absolute, unlimited freedom." Complete freedom means that outcome should be decided by me. Of course, since I am in society it is not decided by me alone. Therefore, complete freedom is decided by the strongest individual. This is the conclusion of indivdiualism ala Locke.

I think the reason is that if Hegel is right and one should view the Modern Narrative as a continuation of the French Revolution, then the only moral alternative is to reject said narrative. Hegel's challenge to modernity: the modern ideology of equality and of total participation leads to a homogenization of society. This shakes men loose from their traditional communities but cannot replace them as a focus of identity" .

Translation: all natural societies organically flow from a unified belief system/ethnos (cf. Augustine, City of God, 19.4). Modernity is the negation of this. Without this unified system of belief, men cannot "connect" to one another. Thus, no real community. Thus, no real unity and society is held together by force (ala Hegel on Rome) and terror (ala Hegel on France).

Hegel's conclusion, which Taylor rejects, is a rationalized monarchy. Hegel was a monarchist but he was not a traditionalist, and for that reason he was not a conservative. He agreed with the older conservatives that society must be founded on authority, estates, and a strong monarch; Hegel, however, based these spheres, not on divine right or tradition, but on reason. In this sense Hegel stands firmly in the Enlightenment.

According to Hegel France is utterly lost in terms of a political future. England is better, but she is not far behind in spiritual rot, for England (like America today) is run riot with an excess on particular rights. And in this chaos of individualism, special interest groups backed by powerful elites have taken control (like America today).

"The only force which could cure this would be a strong monarchy like those late medieval kings which forced through the barons the rights of the universal. But the English have crucially weakened their monarchy; it is powerless before Parliament which is the cockpit of private interests.

Charles Taylor continues to the conclusion,

Hence the vehicle by which rational constitution could best be introduced and made real was a powerful modernizing monarchy...Hegel had hopes for the future based on the climate of his times. Germany had been shocked into reform by the Napoleonic conquest. It consisted of societies founded on law in which principles of rational Enlightenment had already gone some way and seemed bound to go further. It had a Protestant political culture and hence could achieve a rational constitution unlike the benighted peoples of Latin Europe, and it was not too far gone in rot like England. It held to the monarchical principle and the monarchs retained some real power unlike England, and yet the societies were law societies (454-455).

Hegel wanted man to participate in civic life, and I think he was able to avoid the two extremes of absolute monarchy and oligarchic Republicanism. While Hegel wanted man to participate in the civitas, he knew that man as an individual among (often wealthier and more powerful) individuals, could not participate in civic life. For example, if all that matters is "individualism," then the strongest individual wins--and your claims are marginalized. This is more often a problem in Republics than in monarchies, for a monarch (or a Putin-like figure) can often block and shut down the "rich oligarchs."

What Hegel opted to do was posit the Guild (he calls it "corporation." I will not call it that because it connotes and denotes something different today). The Guild (or Guilds), which represents the workers and the individuals, can allow man to face "Big Business" and "Big Capital," not as a mere individual, but as a group of workers.

This raises the problem of Unions today. Admittedly, I don't like Unions. 9 times out of 10 they are merely fronts for the Democratic Party, agitators, etc. That is an unfortunate accident of the Guild System; I do not believe it is the essence of the Guild system. (For a perfect analysis of the above sentences, see the Simpsons Episode where Homer is elected "union president" and mistakenly thinks he is an organized crime boss).

[Davide]

Mettere cinque stelle a un testo di Hegel è come dare un voto al Giudizio Universale di Michelangelo.
[Presto o tardi recensirò, o meglio, cercherò di dare l'idea in sé e per sé dei Lineamenti di filosofia del diritto]

[Mitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of good stuff, lots of garbage

[Paul H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

§64
"The English have been much criticized for taking so many works of art out of Egypt and Greece; it has been said that these works belong to the spirit of Greek and Egyptian peoples. But this is no longer the case. Therefore, there is no robbery, no profanation; these are only external values, because the spirit, the soul of the people, is no longer invested in them."


§144
"In these early [patriarchal/Homeric Greek] periods, human beings did not say that it was their duty to defend the fatherland; instead, they sacrificed themselves on the basis of this publicly recognized conviction. Human beings who are immediately ethical have no consciousness of this ethicality, they simply find the ethicality before them, in what everyone does and what everyone honors."


§173
"Between husband and wife the relationship of love is not yet objective, because even if their feeling is their substantial union, this union still has no objectivity. Such an objectivity is first acquired by parents in their children . . . both have their love objectified for them in the child."


[Imagining a 22-year-old Karl Marx frantically taking notes:]

§§195-199: "In London, this immensely wealthy city, exigency, misery, and poverty are more horrifyingly intense than we can imagine. As wealth increases, it is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and once this capital is in a few hands, those who possess it can buy more cheaply than can those with lesser assets, so the distinction becomes ever greater. . . . The factory worker becomes dull, bound to the factory and dependent on it . . . but when factory labor has become so perfected, so simple, machines can take over the mechanical labor, and this is the usual development in factories. Through the completion of this mechanical progress, then, human beings become free once again. . . . An industrial people has a feeling of selfhood wholly different from that of the peoples who have no industries. . . . Mere capitalists consume only in ways that diminish, not in ways that increase, because they have no products of their labor . . ."

[Cain S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the heart of Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821) is a conception of reason as a normative social institution. The practical use of reason in dealing with daily life is the peculiar human game of acting in accordance with laws—even those only taken true by convention. This rule directed behaviour consists of giving and asking for reasons [a], judging their appropriateness [b], justifying acts, and assertions, one has committed to by them [c], and modifying one’s commitments to fall in line with judgements of appropriateness that we are bound to [d]. The essentially social character of the practical use of reason makes the rulishness of rules a somewhat loosely regulated matter. For, of course, we often find out we’ve committed to contradictory assertions, or judged someone’s actions incorrectly, or given offence to reasons from our ignorance. But, for the most part the game of reasons is the most stable one.

Read a fuller exposition of the first 130 arguments of the EPR here:

http://deonticscorekeeping.wordpress....

[Grant Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't read this. It will make your head crack open and your brains fall out. Especially if you read Heidegger at the same time.

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hegel’s progressive rationalism is far too optimistic. But this is fine moral philosophy, fusing conceptual analysis and social theory.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have avoided going into any detail about the philosophical content in this review so by my reckoning it doesn’t really contain any spoilers, there is one or two things about the general topics he covers and one or two of the positions Hegel holds, but in no place do I really talk about his reasons for holding these positions – basically I very much doubt it’s going to give the ending away.

Before I started reading this everything I’d heard about Hegel made me think he was the king of the silly men, and I was sure that I was going to be on a magical journey endlessly negating the negation through crazy contradiction land. I only really read it because I was in a Marx reading group and thought it would be good if I could cover the philosophical angle.
I thought I’d just read it casually, let the nonsense wash over me until I knew enough to report what he said without worrying too much about what he meant.
Smugly gliding through the preface and the introduction confirmed the rumours, but then about 30 pages through or so I was absolutely shocked when some of it actually started making sense to me. I ended up taking extensive notes and reading Dudley Knowles’ guidebook to it. It took me months but I came out thinking that this is one of the richest and most original books ever written on ethics.

Philosophy of Right is my first go at a book that uses the dialectical method, and don’t laugh but I found it really exciting: not so much because I think it unveils some deep underlying truth about the structure of things, and certainly not because it made things clear, I just loved the structure of the book; as a kind of abstract entity I just thought it was a beautiful thing. I also really appreciated the rigour that is necessary in starting from the absolute abstract fundamentals and going to the minutest contingent detail.
This going from the abstract to the particular and then the individual as part of the dialectical method is also the reason the preface is so heavy going, but also means that as the subject matter gets more and more tangible it gets easier to read – although section I on abstract right is probably a little easier going than all the stuff about subjectivity in section II. But Hegels’ metaphysics is really heavy and it doesn’t help that he writes in this Kant inspired – poor old Immanuel couldn’t help it – chewy difficult way. Once you get through this and it finally clicks with you, it’s amazing: the way it’s expressed at the end section on world history is a particularly beautiful awe inspiring conception, and it’s one that you’ll only get the full force of if you diligently follow his method from the ground up - or the mind/spirit outwards or whatever.

Hegel wasn’t a Nazi, there is some evidence that the Nazis may have read a bit of Hegel – of course the Nazis read him, he was German – he certainly wasn’t a big influence on them (read Allen Wood’s excellent introduction if you don’t believe me, or much better read section 5 of Walter Kauffman’s essay ‘The Hegel Myth and its Method’), they clearly didn’t read him very well because there’s little if any of his ideas reflected in the way they ran things, so can we please shut up about it. Admittedly Hegel is deeply conservative and relatively right wing with it: he is very misogynistic; is pro arranged marriage and is a monarchist. But he is also staunchly anti-slavery and deeply concerned with poverty, and the kind of constitutional monarchy he recommends is in a sense actually more democratic than our 2-parties-that-aren’t-going-to-listen-to-a-single-thing-you-say system.
Another thing to say about Hegel’s conservatism is that he was writing shortly after the French Revolution: as a young man Hegel was reportedly quite excited about the revolution but you would probably become conservative if you lived through revolutionaries massacring thousands of innocent people, even so, he still had some fairly positive things to say about Napoleon even in the Philosophy of Right itself. Not only did he have clear motives for being conservative from a personal perspective but he also had good reasons from a political point of view, at the time universities were seen as a kind of hot bed for political activism and many lecturers had been fired because of suspicions they were inflaming anti-authoritarian ideas in their teaching.

One theory I found particularly exciting in Hegel is his theory of drives. It struck me that Hegel and Nietzsche’s theories of drives are so similar that Hegel’s must be a precursor to Nietzsche’s theory, I won’t go into any detail but I will say that both theories are vastly more plausible and sophisticated than Freud’s tenuously reductive one.
Marx’s debt to Hegel is vast, and there is obviously a lot written on it, but the thing that strikes me is he was very eager to attack Hegel in his young age but it’s quite telling that in his later works he bends his words - particularly his metaphysics and his view of dialectics - to resemble something really not so far away from Hegel.

One of the really great things about Hegel is his consistent challenges to Kant, I take it here that this is Hegel’s way of paying his respect to Kant by honouring him with a dialectical response. I particularly like Hegel’s very sober intuitive challenge to Kant’s good shopkeeper, but probably the most overarching manifestation of Hegel’s antithesis is his commitment to contingency. Not only does this mean that Hegel is more committed to making sure his metaphysics fits with the real world it also means he actually goes into subjects as diverse as suicide, arranged marriage, constitutional monarchy, love, private property, industry. It’s in these details that he reveals himself to be a little inconsistent but the real world examples give you a much richer contingent grounding in which to test your own intuitions on as well understand Hegel’s thinking.
Similarly Hegel spells out much better than Kant how you should actually go about living your life, this makes it a practical book which whether you agree with him or not can have genuine everyday practical applications for you. The metaphysics of Hegel’s theory of how to live your life I agree with in a sense and a great deal of the conclusions I very definitely don’t, but because of the way the book goes from abstract to particular via the dialectical method means you can trace those inferences and find where you think the fault line is.
Another great benefit of this is that none of the more contingent matters remains mystical: as Dudley Knowles points out, Hegel and Nozick may have some fairly similar views on private property but in Nozick it remains completely mystical - however much you disagree with Hegel’s rationale, at least it’s there.
Basically this book is a great reminder of what modern philosophy really lacks: for all of its benefits in terms of specialisation one of the things that academic and particularly analytic philosophy suffers from is a lack of cohesion; too many topics are missed and there is too much duplication of labour throughout the various branches; Hegel’s rigorous system philosophy is original, comprehensive and relatively cohesive if a little contradictory here and there.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hegel also argues that the state itself is subsumed under the higher totality of world history, in which individual states arise, conflict with each other, and eventually fall.

The course of history is apparently toward the ever-increasing actualization of freedom; each successive historical epoch corrects certain failures of the earlier ones.

At the end of his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Hegel leaves open the possibility that history has yet to accomplish certain tasks related to the inner organization of the state.

......

Reception

There were a number of issues that arose during the translation of the text.

Most notably the phrase that is contained in the addition to §258, which was initially translated as "The state is the march of God through the world" as well as being translated thus:

"The existence of the state is the presence of God upon the earth."

From these early translations came the criticism that Hegel justifies authoritarian or even totalitarian forms of government:

Giovanni Gentile, whose thought had a strong influence on Mussolini, bases his Hegelian revival on this point.

However, Walter Kaufmann argues that the correct translation reads as follows:

"It is the way of God in the world, that there should be a state".

This suggests that the state, rather than being godly, is part of the divine strategy, not a mere product of human endeavor.

Kaufmann claims that Hegel's original meaning of the sentence is not a carte blanche for state dominance and brutality but merely a reference to the state's importance as part of the process of history.

[Differengenera · Rating 3 out of 5]

there's stuff here that would be deeply radical when compared with lot of people who get paid for their big thinks in our degraded age. hegel's primary aim here is to deconstruct the idea of individual, or abstract, right, for example the robinsonian myth that everyone in a society should seek to enrich themselves as individuals in order to ensure the enrichment of all. hegel knows that individual enrichment does not equate to communal enrichment and in order for a society to function, individual instances of them have to be equal to the broader ideal; i.e. desiring freedom as an individual, or subjectively, is not enough, the state that freedom tends towards has to be adequate to that desire

i guess this is where the idea that hegel's philosophy was far more radical than he was as an individual originates because his posited solution is not democracy or even a republic, but maybe something like proudhon would think up in terms of a series of civic institutions with electors from various social/guild/confessional settings

system is as impressive as ever, just not sure about the conclusions.

[vanessa]

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[Jacob Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

The mature epitome of Hegel's thought. If you aren't intimately familiar with Hegel's vocab (and the language of 19th century Idealism) then don't begin here. The first section begins with Hegel's discussion of modern rights, but one gets the feeling that by rights Hegel doesn't mean what we normally mean. It is not until one consults the "additions" at the end of the book does it become clearer.

Hegel's organization of civil society is nothing less than brilliant. The basic unit of social order (I am deliberately not using the terms "civil society" or "state" because they have specific Hegelian connotations) is the family, not the individual. However, the family will dissolve as its members marry off, move out, etc. They are then reabsorbed into the larger unity of the State.

Hegel isn't using the word "state" in the sense that we use it. By it he means 1) the mind of God on earth, (2) but more particularly he means the linguistic and cultural nexus of a people. He offers a number of trenchant criticisms of the chaos we call representative government and gives a balanced and profound, yet qualified defense of monarchy.

He defends monarchy on the grounds that Ideas have to be embodied. Societies have to have personal principles of unity. Sure, there are exceptions that have worked for a brief moment in time, but generally monarchy is to be preferred. In fact, that is the essence of Hegel's thought--the embodiment of Geist/idea. Hegel also responds to a number of criticisms of monarchy (what if the guy is incompetent, etc.? I always find it amusing that people are so eager to offer that criticism of monarchy after the last three American presidential administrations!).

Hegel believes in the market, but qualifies it by positing the Idea of the Corporation. By it he means what is usually referred to as "the guild." The guild protects the average man both from Big Capital and the State. Hegel makes an interesting point that perhaps for this reason the powers that be--which both in his time and ours are the Rothschild banking clan--outlawed the Guild.

The langauge is hard but consistent. If read slowly and with a number of secondary works, it will pay huge dividends.

[Leonardo]

En Philosophy of Right, Hegel argumentaba que el estado podía potencialmente resolver los intensos conflictos entre individuos, proporcionando, por un lado, un marco racional para la interacción en la sociedad civil y, por otro, una oportunidad de participar (a través de una forma limitada de representación) en la formación de «la voluntad política general».

Modelos de Democracia Pág.144

[Anne Bergsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Na het boek in m’n studententijd in het Duits te hebben gelezen - en niet begrepen, las ik het nu in de mooie vertaling van Willem Visser. Het blijkt een heel boeiende beschouwing te zijn die niet alleen gaat over het recht, maar ook over godsdienst, huwelijk, man-vrouwverhoudingen etc. In dit boek zet Hegel zich, in paragraaf 270 onder meer af tegen anti-semitische tendensen in het Pruissen van het eerste kwart van de negentiende eeuw.

[Charlotte · Rating 1 out of 5]

PLEASE, DO NOT DO THIS TO YOURSELF! YOU WILL BECOME ETERNALLY FRUSTRATED, PROBABLY THROW STUFF AROUND AND QUESTION YOUR INTELLIGENCE.
Nothing he says make sense and he says things in 100 pages what could be said in 1 simple sentence.

- a Philosophy major.

[Jason Williams]

All heil the State!

[Cassidy Brinn]

a crystal bowl - its cracks are noble

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me, what stands out is Hegel's powerful and provocative discussion of civil society and the limits of the market. The market must be tamed. Civil society as Hegel conceives it is the sphere in which particularity is allowed to develop and expand without limits. The bearer of this principle is the person of the abstract right individualized or made concrete by their own specific needs, inclinations and desires which it is able to set for itself. The fulfillment of these “subjective needs” is the foremost way in which freedom of individuals in civil society is made actual (S189). But these individuals find themselves already integrated into a system of producing and coordinating resources such that the former cannot acquire the means to satisfy their selfish needs except through helping others realize their own needs or acquire the means for this realization (S183). The principle of universality in civil society cunningly makes use of selfish behavior in order to implement the universal end beyond the enjoyment of solitary persons which is the enjoyment and fulfillment of needs of all (S184).

Thanks to the ingenious work of understanding and power of representation, human beings are able to either divide our needs and means of their satisfaction into multiple sub-needs or create wholly new needs and means of satisfying them (S190). This process of fragmentation is in principle infinite. As needs become ever more abstract and fragmented, individuals come to recognize that acquisition of the means of satisfying their own needs are becoming increasingly dependent on the needs of others--e.g. my need to drink booze is conditioned by others’ need to throw a fun party. Needs all across the board become socially mediated in being recognized as mutually conditioned by needs and desires of others (S192). This mediation means the ways of taking possession that the labor of acquiring things and means of satisfaction of one’s needs take on the character of what Hegel calls “work”.

Work penetrates all aspects of civil society. As a result of socially-induced endless differentiation of needs and means particular members of civil society are compelled to satisfy their own social needs by inserting themselves as functions in this machinic process of differentiation itself (S196) that take in particularized thing like raw silicon for example and spit out a different particularized means--i.e. processed silicon--that satisfies a particularized need--transistor and so on, etc. This division of labor in turn further complexifies the network of mutual dependence between a plethora of needs and means of satisfaction until at long last a totality of relations of production and exchange is established in which needs in a sense necessarily become the needs of the other.

The one resource that exemplifies the spirit of this system of needs is, of course, money. Although this is not what Hegel meant by “universal and permanent resources” (S199) it is tempting to conceive of money as the universal resource in the precise sense that its exchange value is precisely its use-value and vice versa--it is needed because others need it. Moreover, this is crucial--money is the immediate and primary determination in which members of civil society in the estate of industry and commerce come to acquire their share of the aforementioned resources in exchange for their abstract labor.

Yet as Hegel acknowledges, not all is well. The runaway complexity of the system of interdependence and the fact that this system is held together by a multitude of positive feedback loops means that its continual expansion and growth, rather than generating wealth and opportunities for social recognition (S207) actually results in generalized poverty, waste, corruption, and alienation.

When it is functioning smoothly, the vast intermeshed system of production and exchange that links a rural farmer to an urban socialite in a social continuum and which generates enormous amounts of surplus, is a marvelous thing to behold. But the market, is akin to an organism that does not comprehend its own limits and continually oversteps it in the form of crises of overproduction and speculative overreach (S245), dragging the rest of the civil society along with it.

Yet the engine of civil society is the market and the engine of the market is the principle of particularity, which as one of the moments of the Idea reserves itself the freedom to develop itself without the mediation from the universal until this development has reached its limits (S184). So, given that the system of interdependent needs and desires arose in a bottom-up fashion from particular personalities pursuing their own ends (S124), the former must also be given free reign to manufacture new use-values without hindrance and prove its actuality through the benefits it brings as well as the misery it breeds. But once the principle of particularity has sufficiently proven that it has failed to deliver on its own promises of wealth and social recognition through a lopsided system of freedom, the universal moment within civil society must step in and restore order (S184). One of the vehicles of this restoration is the corporation, whose universalizing activity targets the estate most acutely affected by the endless proliferation of needs--the estate of trade, commerce and industry (S250).

Hegel is acutely aware that, left to its own devices, the internal dynamics of the system of production and exchange predicated on generalized commodity-production, wage-labor and money continually tends towards limitless expansion (S243), driven by profit (S191H). This process is a source of alienation, and produces winners and losers. The losers are concentrated in that ‘sector’ of production dominated by particularized needs and means with scarcely any sense of telos beyond the limited horizon of one’s specialized type of work (S203b). But how does alienation affect members of civil society in this sector? The infinite proliferation of needs in general means an individual regardless of their occupation is free to fulfill their social needs, especially the need for recognition, in any contingent and arbitrary fashion (S185). In civil society there is only the formal injunction to enjoy. For example, as a bartender I can choose to live above my means by hanging out with my socialite friends at a gentrified hipster café and ordering overpriced artisanal drinks since this is how I seek to be recognized as somebody. But there is no guarantee that through such an ‘external manifestation of success’ (S253H) one would obtain the desired recognition. Secondly, as mentioned above, money is the main form of remuneration in the estate of trade and commerce which is uniquely characterized by the dominance of specialized work. Such particularized work is unlikely to bear traces of the individual person’s infinite personality. Neither does money as a universal medium of exchange. Therefore, accumulation of money is inadequate as a source and a means of social recognition. If so, how can individuals in the intermediate estate come to know the social value of their work, or of their own existence, and become somebody worthy of being recognized?

The process of boundless differentiation and multiplication of needs, socially corrosive as it may be, cannot simply be tampered with without denying the whole system of needs its justification of existence and without denying the principle of particularity its actual due (185H). Fortunately, there is enough unity in the seemingly unbridled proliferation of needs in all directions that these movements coalesce into more or less stable associations based on the commonality of particularized needs. One reading of section 251 is to take Hegel to suggest that these associations arise spontaneously, rather than introduced from the ‘outside’, as individuals who engage in more or less the same kind of work naturally seek each other’s company. In any case, once they emerge the corporations begin to undertake the laborious work of habituating their members to desire the right desires and the right means to realize these desires.

As the second family, the corporation brings the universal back to its ethical pole by providing the conditions under which individuals of civil society can cultivate the meritocratic virtues through which they can fulfill the desire for both self-recognition and recognition by others (S251). In this case, the “others” refer to one’s colleagues and peers, just as the “others” in family refer to immediate members of one’s family. The corporation thereby enables one to know one’s social value. For instance, in working alongside my colleagues I am afforded the opportunity to compare my own skill in and contribution to the type of work we do (and to the ends of the corporation itself, one of which is to cultivate precisely this type of reflection) with theirs and arrive at some kind of valuation. I cannot accomplish this valuation outside of the specific corporation I belong to since even in one and the same particularized system of needs only sufficiently similar kinds of specialized work is commensurable. Of course, this does not mean that I am always in competition with my peers and always compelled to prove my worth because the fact that I am admitted into the corporation is already proof enough (S252, 253). Members of the second estate first confront the system of needs as a system of necessity, not of freedom (S183) since the universal for it is out of immediate reach. But the corporation, at least according to Hegel gives them the lens to see not just the trees but the forest as well.

All of that being said, I don't think Hegel is too optimistic that corporations as an institutional bulwark against the socially corrosive effects of the market system can manage to stay above the vicissitudes of the latter. The tendency of the rate of complexity to accelerate will eventually win out in the end. The expansive movement of the market and the in-principle endless proliferations of bullshit needs and bullshit jobs will drag corporations along with it as the latter will have to themselves multiply and complexify in order to absorb more and more specialized and abstractified labor into its fold...

[Pierre-Olivier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hegel présente dans cet œuvre sa méthodologie et sa structure politique de la société civile bourgeoise. Hegel qui étais fasciné par Napoléon et la révolution française, décrit les principes de sa vision de la société allemande idéale encré dans cette modernité libérale. Principes de la philosophie du droit se veut la justification philosophique de cette société bourgeoise allemande à travers l’idéalisme absolu. Donc les lumières et la raison deviennent le plaidoyer pour le conformisme et le conservatisme promu par hegel. Propriété privé , état civil bourgeois, institution de la famille patriarcale, hiérarchie, démocratie représentative à travers une monarchie constitutionnelle, droits héréditaires , haine et peur de l’autonomie du peuple , état légal policier , etc, tout y est. Les fondements de la société bourgeoise moderne comme on la connais de nos jours y est présenté comme un contrat social collectif positif qui libère la morale humaine et l’être humain en général de l’état sauvage et naturel. Œuvre tellement importante à lire dans son contexte d’hégémonie politique et culturelle de la classe bourgeoise et de son emprise complète sur la société au niveau théorique autant que philosophique.l’idéalisme allemand comme idéologie bourgeoise : absolument.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In quest'opera Hegel si propone di offrire una trattazione del diritto in compendio, laddove il concetto di diritto è molto più slargato rispetto a quello contemporaneo: diritto è tutto ciò che la soggettiva produce sul terreno dell'oggettività. Il diritto è diritto contrattuale, è famiglia, è economia capitalistica di mercato, è un cosmo di istituti giuridici e di relazioni etiche. L'idea del diritto è bilaterale, da un lato c'è il concetto del diritto e dell'altro le necessari manifestazioni del concetto (che emergono dal concetto stesso).

Il metodo che Hegel usa è al solito quello dialettico: si passa da una scansione a quella superiore, mostrandone le contraddizioni e superandole; la prima scansione non è abbandonata completamente, ma è in tanto superata in quanto ricompresa nella superiore. Aufhebung: negazione, conservazione, elevazione.

Diritto astratto, moralità ed eticità sono le scansioni della filosofia del diritto. E ancora, l'eticità ha come suoi momenti famiglia, società civile, stato. Chiaramente l'ordine che Hegel segue non è quello storico, infatti nelle società solitamente prima sorge l'ordinamento politico e poi l'indagine morale, ma è logico. È l'andamento concettuale del concetto del diritto quello che si tenta di percorrere, nelle sue scansioni necessarie e in quelle contingenti, storicamente determinate.

Hegel come al solito si dimostra un autore brillante ed estremamente profetico,.