In this paper, I will attempt to show how in its reinforcement of relations of subordination, Hegel's conception of the Ethical reveals structural parallels with Antonio Gramsci's notion of hegemony. First, I will analyze Gramsci's notion of hegemony. In his notebooks written in prison between 1929 and 1935, Gramsci employs the term 'hegemony' to focus attention on the determinate role of socio-cultural formations in sustaining relations of domination. In his eyes, a group maintains its supremacy not simply through the direct (...) domination of the coercive state apparatus but also through the organized consent of the governed in civil society. The dominant group thus needs to resort to legal constraint only as a last line of defense, when in times of a crisis of authority the effective self-identification of the governed with the hegemonic formations breaks down. Second, I will attempt to highlight how in Hegel's Philosophy of Right, ethical mediating institutions in civil society, including education, public authorities, and corporations, function in a way similar to Gramsci's notion of hegemony by creating what Hegel himself terms 'a fundamental sense of order' rooted in the 'habit of the Ethical' that promises to organize the more 'spontaneous', 'unhesitating' consent of the collective. Through the formation of this fundamental ethical sense of order, Hegel believes that coercive law may be rendered increasingly 'superfluous'; that is, precisely the role Gramsci sees 'ethical-political hegemony' play in the transition from the 'nightwatchman' to the 'ethical' state. Yet in contrast to Hegel's normative claims, I will try to show how at the level of civil society these ethical mediating institutions in fact fall short of their intended goal. Rather than 'reconcile' individual interest with public utility, they serve to strengthen asymmetrical distributions of power that inhibit the resolution of social conflicts in a mutually beneficial manner. Hegel's conception of the Ethical therefore functions here in a way similar to hegemony to the extent that it molds a sense of order that solidifies relations of subordination. (shrink)

The “Cartesian” model of the rational subject is central to the political philosophy of Hobbes and Locke and is “transcendentally” affirmed in Kant's account of ethics and legality. An influential body of Hegelian inspired critique has suggested, however, that the dialectical deficiencies of the dominant models of Liberalism in late modernity inhere in this “atomistic” or “self-supporting” characterisation of the individual. The “atomistic” perspective appears as an obstacle not only to the coherent articulation of the compatibility of liberty and equality, (...) but also to the attempt to express the mutuality of recognition between agents that might offer a genuinely communal conception of constitution and subject. Employing as a frame of reference Alan Brudner's analysis of these issues in his comprehensive Constitutional Goods it is argued that legal and political theory might usefully adopt an understanding of Hegel's notion of “recognition” in this regard without drastic phenomenological reconstruction of the Cartesian or Kantian subject. (shrink)

La trayectoria intelectual de Marcuse está acompañada de un compromiso constante con las formas de la crítica filosófica heredadas de la tradición occidental, desde la forma en la cual aparece la negación de lo dado a través del diálogo socrático hasta la manera en que se configura la crítica del sistema capitalista en el siglo XX. Esto no quiere decir que Marcuse haya sido un erudito que absorbió y comprendió a cabalidad todos los sistemas e ideas filosóficas y que las (...) utilizó al servicio de su propia consideración crítica del mundo; más bien resalta que entre sus elaboraciones han estado presentes algunos de los contextos e ideas más potentes del pensamiento que ha entendido de manera crítica la estructura de las sociedades humanas. (shrink)

Both G.F.W. Hegel and Carl Schmitt took seriously the problem of political sovereignty entailed by liberal political theories. In Dictatorship (1919) and Political Theology (1922), Schmitt rejects liberal political theories that argue for the immediate unity of democracy and legality i.e., popular sovereignty, because he thinks they cannot secure political sovereignty. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel denounces popular sovereignty for similar reasons. Yet given Schmitt’s negative assessment of Hegel their positions are seldom related to one another. I argue in (...) this paper that Schmitt’s analysis of liberal political theories is similar to Hegel’s analysis of Rousseau’s liberal ideas. I contend, however, that Schmitt’s solution, which collapses the distinction between the executive and the legislative power in favor of the former, fails to secure political sovereignty. Contrary to Schmitt, Hegel conceives of the liberal predicament as a basic determination of any political state that rests on the division of the legislative and executive power. Hegel argues that the constitutional monarchy is a genuine instantiation of political sovereignty that can maintain not only the division of these powers, but also their unity. In this regard, I argue that Hegel’s conception of the division of powers provides a more convincing theory of the problem afflicting modern states than Schmitt’s and at least deserves to be taken more seriously by critics of Schmitt’s solution such as Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, Jurgen Habermas, Andreas Kalyvas and Chantal Mouffe. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Right presents us with a vision of bureaucratic paternalism that is designed to check the excesses of free markets set in motion by the triumph of natural-law thinking, which abstracted the principles of private property and subjective freedom from the institutions that had tamed them and situated them in a stable context. Against these excesses Hegel pits the agricultural estate, which has not succumbed to natural-law thinking; and a “universal estate” of bureaucrats who are educated in Hegel’s (...) philosophy itself, freeing them of the natural-law conflation of human needs with arbitrary and endlessly expanding preferences. Taught by Hegel to look after the needs of the organic whole that is society rather than the gratification of their own preferences, the task of the bureaucrats of the universal estate is to curb the tendency of free markets to produce the social preconditions for an alienated “rabble” to bring down the system. (shrink)

Nearly every major philosophy, from Plato to Hegel and beyond, has argued that democracy is an inferior form of government, at best. Yet, virtually every contemporary political philosophy working today endorses democracy in one variety or another. Should we conclude then that the traditional canon is meaningless for helping us theorise about a just state? In this paper, I will take up the criticisms and positive proposals of two such canonical figures in political philosophy: Plato and Hegel. At first glance, (...) each is rather disdainful, if not outright hostile, to democracy. This is also how both have been represented traditionally. However, if we look behind the reasons for their rejection of (Athenian) democracy and the reasons behind their alternatives to democracy, I believe we can uncover a new theory of government that does two things. First, it maps onto the so-called Schumpeterian tradition of elite theories of democracy quite well. Second, perhaps surprisingly, it actually provides an improved justification for democratic government as we practice it today than rival theories of democracy. Thus, not only are Plato and Hegel not enemies of modern democratic thought after all, but each is actually quite useful for helping us develop democratic theory in a positive, not negative, manner. (shrink)

Ha llegado a ser un lugar común aseverar la influencia de Kant en la obra de Rawls; sin embargo, el constructivismo político significó un rechazo del universalismo que es imposible explicar en términos kantianos. Lo que sigue es un intento de evaluar la tesis del consenso superpuesto a la luz de la concepción general de la filosofía política y la razón práctica en Hegel.

In this paper, I investigate the relations between the notion of the I and the conception of World history in Hegel’s philosophy. First, I address Hegel’s account of the I by reconstructing its phenomenological and logical development from consciousness to self-consciousness through recognition with the other and arguing that the project of the Philosophy of Right is normative, as it provides an account of the logical process of affirmation of the I as the normative source of the realm of objective (...) spirit. I then argue for an account of World history as the self-conscious development and liberation of the I in time and objectivity, and I consider Hegel’s philosophy of history in light of the Philosophy of Right as the historical emergence of the I through the forms of objective spirit in history. Finally, I focus on two of the allegedly most problematic issues related to Hegel’s conception of World history: the nature and very possibility of an ‘intersubjective consciousness’ and the notion of ‘World spirit’. I conclude by outlining how the conception of World history, if reconstructed in light of Hegel’s conception of the I, can have previously unnoticed political implications. (shrink)

The goal of the left has been predominantly libertarian: the realization of equal individual freedom. But now, with the demise of leftist hope for radical change that has followed the collapse of ?really existing?; socialism, the world is converging on a compromise between capitalism and the leftist impulse. This compromise is the democratic, interventionist welfare state, which has gained new legitimacy by virtue of combining a ?realistic?; acceptance of the unfortunate need for the market with an attempt to libertarianize capitalism (...) as much as possible, by intervening in its operation and redistributing the wealth it produces. Since the neoliberal economic critique of socialism seems to have been borne out by the events of 1989, neoliberal economists might now be expected to provide a similar critique of the new interventionist consensus. Yet there are few signs of their interest in doing so. This might be due to their acceptance of an erroneous interpretation of liberty which equates it with capitalist property relations, and which, they believe, provides an overarching moral justification for their opposition to state intervention in the market. Acceptance of this moralistic, ?libertarian?; version of neoliberalism may obscure the need for a synthetic critique of the new consensus which would integrate the many extant consequentialist arguments against it. Before reviewing the libertarian motives behind both socialism and intervention?ism, criticisms of moralistic neoliberal ?libertarianism?; are offered. These are intended to clear the way for a consequentialist critique of the interventionist welfare state. Finally, it is suggested that the problems with such a critique point toward a different project: a critique of the culture that gives rise to interventionism. (shrink)

This essay seeks to develop and illustrate an approach to comparison based on "ad hoc" frames. A frame is defined by a question, to which dif- ferent thinkers can be seen as offering complementary and/or competing responses. Pursuing a middle ground between universalist conceptions of comparison and particularist rejections of comparison, this approach brings various positions into dialogue in a manner that is not inherently totalizing. The article draws extensively on Hegel's philosophy of religion to articulate this approach to comparison (...) and its presuppositions. The sec- ond section of the essay seeks to illustrate the value of this approach by using the question of how traditional practices are inherited to frame a comparison of Hegel on habit and the Confucian thinker Xunzi on ritual. This comparison functions principally to indicate the process of comparison and suggest the value of pursuing this comparison in greater depth. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the main contribution of Hegel's philosophy of right to the contemporary political debate is that it opens a window on the idea that liberalism and individual freedom are incompatible. My main thesis is that the liberal conception of the State and law, structured from a nonrelational account of singularity, ends up denying the individual freedom that it claims to defend. I begin by reconstructing the Hegelian concept of freedom from its most general lines, showing (...) that being free consists in wanting to become someone and not so much in wanting to do something. After showing that the purpose of becoming someone can only be fulfilled in a social medium, I focus on Hegel's critique of the liberal state (as expounded in the section on “civil society”). I argue that civil society structurally impedes individuals from realizing their purpose of becoming someone: the economical interactions of civil society give rise to impersonal and inscrutable mechanisms, which take the social conditions of people's individuation beyond their control. Finally, I claim that (rational) individual freedom consists in being able to thematize and democratically control the very social conditions of individuation through the State and law. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Hegel gave the bureaucracy a distinctively corporatist and collegiate structure and insulated it from legislative control. The close match between these features of the Philosophy or Right and the structure of the Prussian bureaucracy, which had been used by reformers to insulate progressive decisions from Junker resistance, suggests that Hegel, too, wanted the bureaucracy to spearhead reform within a hostile environment.

En el presente artículo se realiza un análisis de ciertas instituciones fundamentales para la mediación entre el Estado y la sociedad civil, según los Principios de la Filosofía del Derecho de Hegel. Dicho análisis se limita a la esfera privada de la sociedad civil, y por ello se explica especialmente el carácter mediador del sistema de las necesidades, de los estamentos sociales y de la corporación. Se aborda la sociedad civil hegeliana desde el punto de vista del interés privado y, (...) consecuentemente, se analiza, en primer lugar, el sistema de las necesidades y, en segundo lugar, la corporación. El análisis del sistema de las necesidades conduce a desarrollar la mediación del trabajo, de los estamentos sociales y del papel que cumplen en la sociedad civil la administración de justicia y la “policía”, de acuerdo con la Rechtsphilosophie hegeliana. Por su parte, la presentación de la corporación como mediación ética en la esfera privada, lleva a explicar el tipo de reconocimiento intersubjetivo que se produce en este ámbito, así como también la dimensión política intrínseca a la práctica corporativa. (shrink)

Examines Hegel’s unique understanding and assessment of capitalism as an economic, social, and cultural phenomenon.

ABSTRACT We can best understand Marx’s economic thought by seeing it as implicitly relying upon and reworking a Hegelian philosophy of history, which was deeply salvific and soteriological in its basic structure. Hegel’s philosophy of history reworked the Christian narrative of man’s fall, his redemption through Christ’s atonement, and his return to a state of reconciliation with God in the life of the Christian church. Thus, the loss of the organic form of community found in the Greek polis was a (...) fall that was atoned for in the religious alienation found in both Judaism and Christianity, where man is treated as separated from a transcendent God. The reconciliation between man and God is found, finally, in the reconciliation of the modern, rational state. Early on Marx adopted Hegel’s philosophy of history, but its basic structure remains even in his mature economic work. There he envisions the loss of the organic unity of primitive communism, and the alienation of individuals from the larger social totality of feudalism and capitalism. Under communism, however, individuals are reconciled with the larger social whole through the collective mastery of the products of labor. (shrink)

This essay reviews six different approaches to intellectual property. It and argues that none of these accounts provide an adequate justification of intellectual property laws and policies because (1) there are many different types of intellectual property, and (2) a variety of incommensurable values play a role in the justification of intellectual property. The best approach to intellectual property is to assess and balance competing moral values in light of the particular facts and circumstances.

This article argues that the citizens of Hegel's state cannot maintain themselves as politically free because they are susceptible to mutual enslavement. I demonstrate this by focusing on the Roman republican background of Hegel's constitution, the potential trajectory of its dissolution and the accompanying means of its cyclical fortification through courage. Hegel, by integrating aspects of the Roman mixed constitution also adopts the idea of decadence within his conception of civil society. After locating the source of decadence in the contractual (...) relations of peace and the bourgeois inability to overcome the fear of death, I go on to argue that war for Hegel provides a theatre where freedom may be regenerated through courage. However, I also show that modern wars do not provide sufficient means of perpetuating Hegel's constitution. To demonstrate this, I distinguish three forms of war: colonial, limited and total war, arguing that only the latter offers a solution to decay of political disposition and loss of freedom, but that—by being itself susceptible to decadence—it cannot salvage Hegel's state from dissolution and reduction to contractual relations. (shrink)

Argues that love plays an essential—if often implicit—role in Hegel's mature theory of moral subjectivity and political community.

Edmund Burke characterizes the state as consecrated, or sacred. There is a sense in which Hegel, too, consecrates the state: Hegel says the state is based on religion and that to preserve the state, religion “must be carried into it, in buckets and bushels.” This paper discusses the sense in which Hegel’s state is consecrated by juxtaposing his views with Burke’s. Both Burke and Hegel reject the theory of the divine right of kings, while recognizing religion’s ability to connect people (...) to a totality transcending their particular lives. But the similarities nearly end there. Burke sees religion as a tie that binds people and helps create an ethical community, at least in England; for Hegel religion does not have that function in a modern state. Where Burke thinks commitment to religion is a stabilizing influence, Hegel worries that religion can lead to fanaticism and destroy a state. Consequently, where Burke supports an establishment of religion, Hegel thinks church and state must remain separate. Both Burke and Hegel think the state must tolerate the free exercise of different religions, but Burke is unwilling for the state to tolerate atheists, who he regards as outlaws of the human race. But as Hegel sees the function of religion in a modern state as providing an answer to the existential question of how one’s existence has meaning given that it is inevitably extinguished, and if philosophy can also provide an answer to that question, Hegel’s consecrated state could be a home for atheists. The paper draws on, among other works, Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of History, early theological writings, and for Hegel’s views on state-sponsored religious education, the Nürnberg School Addresses and letters to Niethammer. (shrink)

Hallelujah! God Bless America! No one has these prices—Only Daniela High Fashion Dresses. High class merchandise at low low prices. 649 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022. Business card of a Manhattan dress shop. By associating welfare provisions and other (selected) government interventions with socialism/communism and conversely the free enterprise system with loyalty, patriotism, the American Dream, the American way of life, the propagandists are doing no more than manipulating the appropriate Satanic and Sacred symbols. A. Carey,Taking the Risk Out (...) of Democracy. (shrink)

Indigenous cultural possessions constitute a diverse global issue. This issue includes some culturally important, intangible tribal objects. This is evident in the Australian copyright cases viewed in this study, which provide examples of disputes over traditional Indigenous visual art. A proposal for the legal recognition of Indigenous cultural possessions in Australia is also reviewed, in terms of a new category of law. When such cultural objects are in an artistic form they constitute the tribe's self-presentation and its mechanism of cultural (...) continuity. Philosophical arguments for the legal recognition of Indigenous intellectual `property' tend to assume that the value of Indigenous intellectual property is determinable on external criteria. (shrink)

В межах запропонованого дослідження авторка виклала та проаналізувала низку ідей, що стосуються становлення марксистського «рецепційного» поля як провідного напряму еволюції інтерпретаційного корпусу епохи «після Геґеля». Наочно підкреслюючи залежність марксової теорії від теорії Геґеля, нарис оголює геґелівський матеріал, що був долучений К. Марксом та його послідовниками до формування матеріалістичного погляду на розвиток людської історії, а також підготував тотальне розповсюдження гіпотези про непотрібність концепту Абсолюта в якості головного елемента філософування нового типу.

Aun cuando Hegel constata graves problemas y conflictos del Estado moderno y los analiza y critica de manera sutil, no los resuelve de forma que se pueda considerar adecuada, satisfactoria y completa. Uno de estos grandes problemas es el de la pobreza y la miseria generadas por el sistema económico del Estado moderno. El texto se ocupa de este problema en la Filosofía del Derecho de Hegel. Primero, presenta elementos irrenunciables de la teoría hegeliana. En seguida se expone y analizan (...) elementos centrales de la sociedad civil estrechamente vinculados con la pobreza. Por último, se llevan a cabo reflexiones críticas de la propuesta de Hegel, principalmente en el sentido de que es necesaria otra forma de sociedad civil, en específico, del “sistema de las necesidades”, es decir, el sistema económico de producción, distribución y consumo de la riqueza generada en y por la comunidad política, para poder aspirar a solucionar el problema de la pobreza y la injusticia social. (shrink)

_Critical essays on Hegel's views concerning the relationship between religion and politics._.

Chris Sdabarra's Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical offers a novel view of the founder of Objectivism. Sciabarra contends that Rand was influenced by Hegelian and Marxist themes that dominated Russian thought during its Silver Age, particularly the doctrine of internal relations. Yet while it is true that key Hegelian and Marxist concepts, such as the dialectics of work and the master‐slave relationship, are features of Rand's radical outlook, Sciabarra fails in his major argument that Rand's dialectical method presents an alternative (...) to that of Marx and Hegel. (shrink)

Hegel betrachtet in seinem philosophischen System die verschiedenenBestimmungen der Freiheit; er unterscheidet die subjektive, objektiveund absolute Freiheit. In dieser Arbeit wird mich primär die Dialektik derobjektiven Freiheit interessieren, die Hegel am Niveau der Staats- undGeschichtsphilosophie einführt, um danach die Problematik derGeschichtlichkeit der objektiven Freiheit auszulegen, und schließlich zubehaupten, dass der Freiheitsbegriff erst am Niveau des absoluten Geistesdie Qualität der wahren Geschichtlichkeit bekommt. Damit wird imDenken ein Raum geöffnet um eine These von der dialektischen Spannung,die in der Hegelschen Auffassung der erfüllenden (...) Freiheit in beidenNiveaus seines Systems anwesend ist, aufzustellen: Nämlich, im Staatals Erreichung der konkreten Freiheit innerhalb der Objektivität desGeistes, als auch im scheinbaren a-politischen Freiheitsbegriff in derSphäre des absoluten Geistes, bzw. (shrink)

It is widely known that Hegel is a proponent and defender of the market economy. But why exactly does Hegel think that the market economy is superior to other economic systems? In this paper, I argue that Hegel's answer to this question has not been sufficiently understood. Commentators, or so I want to claim, have only identified one part of Hegel's argument—but have left out the most original and surprising dimension of his view: namely, Hegel's conviction that we should embrace (...) the market economy for its educational impact. Indeed, Hegel thinks that the market, by creating a sphere of life apart from traditional norms and expectations, teaches us something about ourselves, about others, and about the world we inhabit together—something that we could not learn anywhere else, but that we inevitably need to live well as individuals. (shrink)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was one of the philosophic giants of the nineteenth century. Well versed in both ancient and more recent philosophical tracts, he rejected the individualism of Hobbes and Locke, as well as their notion that the state was an agency set up in the first place to protect life and property, and, drawing inspiration from Aristotle, outlined a vision of the state as an agency bound, in the first place, to protect the weak and the powerless. Hegel (...) further rejected Kant’s individualistic ethics and counseled that ethical behavior had to be understood as taking place in a social context, with real duties toward other people. For Hegel, an individual had rights and duties within the context of the family, in the community, and, as a citizen, vis-à-vis the state. He emphasized the network of duties in which each individual finds himself, urging political moderation and concern for the good of the entire community. He has been condemned as a proto-totalitarian, lauded as a democrat of sorts, and described variously as liberal, anti-liberal, authoritarian, conservative-monarchist, and constitutionalist. This essay will argue that Hegel came to champion a constitutional-legal order under an autocratic monarch, with protection for liberal values. The absolute authority of the monarch, thus, was limited to those powers which he needed in order to advance and protect the interests of the citizens of the realm. (shrink)

O presente artigo discute a teoria hegeliana da sociedade civil dentro de um quadro atual, tendo em vista principalmente a tensão entre paixões e interesses encontrada no modelo econômico-político do capitalismo. Esse argumento será desenvolvido em dois momentos. Primeiramente, apresento a contribuição teórica de Hegel a esse debate a partir da concepção de que as paixões se ligam a um conteúdo “particular”, que somente são concebidas como “racionais” através de um processo de formação específico. Eu procuro mostrar que Hegel liga (...) essa expressão individual de preferências e o preenchimento de interesses pessoais através de uma formação da vontade institucionalmente mediada, através da qual os padrões de ação e de fins individuais são compreendidos enquanto formas inclusivas. Em um segundo momento, proponho que um quadro institucional deve promover as garantias de uma satisfação recíproca de interesses individuais, que, ao mesmo tempo, não sejam concebidos externamente aos participantes no mercado e no trabalho, mas que sejam fundamentadas a partir de uma legítimo sentimento de pertencimento social. Concluo com a proposta de uma “solidariedade institucionalizada”, que deve ser complementar à contingência do sentimento individual: essas esferas só são legitimadas normativamente quando elas – segundo o padrão da vontade livre – expressa, por um lado, o reconhecimento recíproco e a satisfação de preferências individuais, e, por outro, interesses descentrados em vista das relações sociais. (shrink)

The paper begins by discussing the normative principles of the two main theoretical currents in public administration in our days: NewPublicManagement and NeoWeberianism. Both orientations are very influential, not only froma theoretical point of view, but also as blueprints for administrative reforms. The paper focuses on the differences between the two currents regarding normative principles: rational self-interest, in the case of New Public Management, and civic duty or altruism, in the case of NeoWeberianism. The paper discusses such normative principles or (...) normativemotivationswith some references to the history of political thought, particularly to Hegel’s criticism of Kant regarding the concept of the state and its relationships to the market. In a final section, the paper develops some proposals for institutional designs that could promote desinterested (altruistic) motivations among civil servants. The institutional designs materialize thus the idea of a positive ethics for public administration. (shrink)