Hegel´s social and political thought has been often been interpreted as a defense of authoritarian statism against modern individualism. In this paper I claim, on the contrary, that the value and dignity of the individual is the conclusion of Hegel´s philosophical anthropology and, thus, the principle and foundation of his entire political philosophy. The value and dignity of the individual rely, more precisely, on her freedom of selfdetermination. The different forms of personal interaction that Hegel develops in his philosophy of (...) Right are thus those that offer the condition of possibility for the exercise of the freedom of self-determination of each individual. Freedom as the capacity to determine oneself does not imply, however, that the goal of human action should be that each individual does whatever she wants. Common good is not the necessary result of the sum of all the actions of the individuals in order to obtain their private well-being; precisely because that is not the case, the common good must be a goal in itself and there must exist a specific organization that takes it as its own goal, namely the State. Indeed, the whole meaning of the State is for Hegel to guarantee that all individuals in society become effectively autonomous agents and can exert their capacity of selfdetermination. (shrink)

This lecture presents the text of the speech about the genealogy of the modern state delivered by the author at the 2008 British Academy Lecture. It explains that to investigate the genealogy of the state is to discover that there has never been any agreed concept to which the word state has answered. The lecture suggests that any moral or political term that has become so deeply enmeshed in so many ideological disputes over such a long period of time is (...) bound to resist any efforts at definition. (shrink)

Offers a renovated form of Confucian liberalism that forges a reconciliation between the two extremes of anti-Confucian liberalism and anti-liberal Confucianism.

This article argues that, despite its reputation as a homogenising and authoritarian system, the political thought of Bernard Bosanquet contains resources with which to develop a robust and culturally sensitive model of liberal multiculturalism. Throughout the discussion, Bosanquet's thought is located within contemporary theoretical debates. The first section rehearses the critique of Millian liberalism developed by Bhikhu Parekh and others, which alleges that the considerations of individuality and autonomy underlying such a political order preclude it from showing adequate respect for (...) cultures which do not conceive of personal identity in essentially individualistic terms. The next section sketches Bosanquet's social theory, as a preclude to the rebuttal of allegedly insurmountable barriers to the theory's accommodation of cultural diversity. Specifically, section three counters the objection that Bosanquet sanctions the imposition of internal restrictions on personal dissent. The final section rebuts the claim that a General Will cannot exist within a culturally diverse society, showing that in reality Bosanquet's theory leads us to endorse the ‘fundamental beliefs’ of a multi-ethnic society outlined recently in the Parekh Report. It is concluded that, when drawing on Bosanquet's thought, a liberal multicultural society can take different forms and yet still show proper respect for cultural diversity. (shrink)

The place of British idealism in the history of political thought has been the subject of much debate. Some have maintained that it represented "a complete change" from the liberal tradition of Mill and Bentham. We re-examine here some features of Bosanquet's political philosophy, arguing that evidence for its alleged "conservative" or "illiberal" character is far from conclusive. Still, while there are a number of key liberal values to be found in Bosanquet's thought, in several important respects he breaks with (...) the earlier liberal tradition in Britain. This will allow us to draw some conclusions about the place of idealism in the history of 19th century British liberalism. (shrink)

(1996). Socialism after communism: Liberalism? The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 538-544.