Hegel'sPhilosophy of Rightis more than a major work of political and legal philosophy; it is a battleground for two different interpretive approaches. MyHegel's Political Philosophy: A Systematic Reading of the Philosophy of Rightargues that these approaches are mistaken about their differences and that one approach offers a more compelling interpretation ofHegel's Philosophy of Rightthan the other. I will briefly outline my defence of the systematic reading of thePhilosophy of Rightbefore replying to the constructive criticisms raised by Redding, Rosen and Wood.There (...) are two different interpretative approaches to understanding Hegel'sPhilosophy of Right. These are the metaphysical and the non-metaphysical readings. The former often highlight Hegel's insistence that some political states may be considered more ‘true’ or ‘actual’ than others. This reading also often emphasises the special place of religion in Hegel's philosophical system, for example. In contrast, the non-metaphysical reading argues that such an interpretation is not only unattractive, but perhaps even unnecessary because Hegel's views on ‘actuality’ and ‘actualization’ are less controversial than traditional metaphysical readings of Hegel's philosophy have claimed. Commentators must choose between these competing camps and interpretations of Hegel's work are conceived within these approaches. Importantly, each reading claims that its approach best captures Hegel's philosophical importance. But would Hegel endorse either the metaphysical or non-metaphysical reading?The problem is that this debate rests on a central misconception about Hegel's philosophy. The debate is characterized as a disagreement about the role and perhaps the very existence of metaphysics in Hegel's philosophy. But this is a false impression. It is virtually nowhere in doubt that metaphysics is present in Hegel's philosophy, including hisPhilosophy of Right. Therefore, the debate between a ‘metaphysical’ and ‘non-metaphysical’ reading of Hegel's works is not a debate about whether these works contain metaphysics. The characterization of the debate invites a false impression about what is at stake. (shrink)

-/- Amongst contemporary theorists, the most widespread interpretation of Hegel's theory of punishment is that it is a retributivist theory of annulment, where punishments cancel the performance of crimes. The theory is retributivist insofar as the criminal punished must be demonstrated to be deserving of a punishment that is commensurable in value only to the nature of his crime, rather than to any consequentialist considerations. As Antony Duff says: -/- [retributivism] justifies punishment in terms not of its contingently beneficial effects (...) but of its intrinsic justice as a response to crime; the justificatory relationship holds between present punishment and past crime, not between present punishment and future effects. -/- Punishment is given only to persons responsible for committing crime. In addition, the degree of punishment is set in proportion to the relative badness of the precipitating crime. Thus, retributivism can be understood as an individualistic theory because the only relevant factors pertain solely to the individual criminal himself. -/- The general attraction of Hegel's version of retributivism is that the punishments his theory is thought to endorse are commensurable in value with precipitating crimes, in contrast to the strict equivalence required by Kant's theory of punishment. As a result, Hegel's theory is praised both for being more acceptable to modern readers than Kant's so-called ‘pure retributivism’, as well as for being an ‘emphatically anti-utilitarian’ theory. Despite widespread agreement on these general features, it is hotly contested how exactly we are to understand the way in which punishment cancels crimes, and Hegel's difficult style has only served to make the controversy deeper. For example, Ted Honderich says: ‘A punishment is an annulment, a cancellation or a return to a previous state of affairs … All this, of course, is obscure. It is by Hegel’. (shrink)

Volume 31, Issue 1, January 2023, Page 103-126.

When Hegel first addresses moral responsibility in the Philosophy of Right, he presupposes that agents are only responsible for what they intended to do, but appears to offer little, if any, justification for this assumption. In this essay, I claim that the first part of the Philosophy of Right, “Abstract Right”, contains an implicit argument that legal or external responsibility (blame for what we have done) is conceptually dependent on moral responsibility proper (blame for what we have intended). This overlooked (...) argument satisfies the first half of a thesis Hegel applies to action in the Encyclopaedia Logic, namely, that the outer must be inner, and thus provides a necessary complement for his more explicit treatment of the second half of that thesis, that the inner must be outer. The claim that agents are only responsible for what they intended to do might appear, at first, to risk conflating legal and moral responsibility and to lack the necessary means to deal with the phenomenon of moral luck, but I argue that if it is properly situated within the whole of Hegel's philosophy of action it can be saved from both of these consequences and so take its place as an essential component of Hegel's full theory of moral responsibility. (shrink)

In this article I argue that Jürgen Habermas’ notion of morality (moral norms) has more in common with Hegel’s notion of ‘ethical life’ as a ‘ sittlich ’ relation – understood as a socially integrative force – rather than Kant’s supreme principle of personal morality. I show that Habermas and Hegel, each in his own way, make a distinction between morality and ethics. However, I make the case that Habermas’ conception of ‘morality’ incorporates aspects of Hegel’s notion of ‘ethical life’, (...) while Habermas’ conception of ‘ethical’ – referring to individual and group conceptions of the good life – is a remedy to the shortcomings in Hegel’s overly unified ethical life. I offer an alternative reading of Habermas’ principle of morality, which I suggest should be read as his attempt to provide a binding process to set up the norms that ought to condition a modern political community understood as a civil association. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with two senses of disowning in the context of climate change and human modification of nature generally. In one of these senses disowning is something to be encouraged; but in the other sense discussed here, disowning is to be discouraged. Both raise problems for liberal theory. There is no space here to do little more than indicate some of these problems; consequently the paper is mainly negative and critical in tone. Although I focus mainly on the (...) other sense, I begin in the first part of the paper with the kind of disowning to be discouraged. This is the tendency to deny, or ignore, the responsibility we have for – and in that way ‘disown’ – the world we are in fact in the process of making including its climatic component. The other sense of disowning I go on to discuss mainly in relation to Hegel’s account of property. (shrink)

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)

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

This paper is concerned with organic conceptions of socio-political life and is concerned with the rehabilitation of organicism as a positive social ontology. It demonstrates that: organicism does not necessarily imply the negation of individuality by a monolithic society, and; that G. W. F. Hegel’s references to the state as organic do not imply social holism. With Hegel’s organicism, as with Idealist organicism generally, what is found is a relational rather than a holistic social ontology. This relational ontology is one (...) that addresses the tension between individualism and holism by theorizing the reciprocal or recursive nature of social relations; thus neither society nor the individuals within it can be seen as either purely determined or purely determining, each contributes to the constitution of the other. In making this case the paper provides both: a conceptual articulation of relational organicism which shows that it is an instructive and coherent positive social ontology, and; a historical account of its emergence into Idealist thought in the work of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel. Through developing this account of the organic relation this paper seeks to offer a conception of socio-political life that provides resources for thinking through both the tension between holism and atomism in social theory and the tension between liberal individualism and communitarian collectivism in political theory. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is Hegel's claim in the Philosophy of Right that, within the modern social world, human needs tend to be endlessly expanded. Unlike the role that the system of needs plays in the formation of its participants' psychological makeup and the problem of poverty and the rabble, the topic of the expansion of needs remains underdiscussed in the recent Hegel literature on the virtues and vices of civil society. My discussion of the topic aims to answer (...) the following two sets of questions: How does it come to pass that individuals' needs are endlessly expanded in this way? And is that expansion a phenomenon to be applauded or condemned? In particular, does the endless expansion of needs aid or obstruct the realization of social members' freedom? In answer to the first question, I argue that for Hegel the endless expansion of needs results from the level of specialization and division of labor distinctive of the modern market economy, the human capacity for a certain kind of abstraction, and the desire to be recognized by other participants in the market system. In answer to the second set of questions, and despite Hegel's own apparent ambivalence, I argue on his behalf that the endless expansion of needs represents an obstacle to the realization of freedom, and is on that ground a phenomenon to be condemned, for the following two reasons: First, the endless expansion of needs increases the influence or “pressure” of desire on the members of civil society that are subject to that expansion. Second, that expansion leads to widespread frustration, understood as the inability on the part of the members of civil society to ever fully realize their ends or satisfy their desires. I end by briefly considering two Hegelian solutions to the pernicious effects of the endless expansion of needs. (shrink)

In thePhilosophy of RightHegel argues that modern life has produced an individualized freedom that conflicts with the communal forms of life constitutive of Greek ethical life. This individualized freedom is fundamentally unsatisfactory, but it is in modernity seemingly resolved into a more adequate form of social freedom in the family, aspects of civil society, and ultimately the state. This article examines whether Hegel’s state can function as a community and by so doing satisfy the need for a substantial ethical life (...) that runs through Hegel’s social thought. The article also examines why Hegel does not provide a detailed analysis of community, as a distinct sphere between the private and the public political sphere in thePhilosophy of Right, and why it is not a key platform of his social freedom. (shrink)

This essay discusses Kant and Hegel’s philosophies of action and the place of action within the general structure of their practical philosophy. We begin by briefly noting a few things that both unite and distinguish the two philosophers. In the sections that follow, we consider these and their corollaries in more detail. In so doing, we map their differences against those suggested by more standard readings that treat their accounts of action as less central to their practical philosophy. Section 2 (...) discusses some central Kantian concepts. In Section 3, we take a closer look at the distinction between internal and external action, as found in Kant’s philosophy of morality and legality. In Section 4, we turn to Hegel and his distinctions between abstract right, morality, and ethical life, as well as the location of his account of action within his overall theory of morality. We discuss the distinction between Handlung and Tat, and non-imputable consequences. The overall aims of our essay are to shed light on some puzzles in Kant and Hegel’s conceptions and to examine where their exact disputes lie without taking a stand on which philosophy is ultimately the most satisfactory. (shrink)

This essay discusses Hegel’s theory of “abstract” respect for “abstract” personhood and its relation to the fuller, concrete account of human personhood. Hegel defines (abstract) personhood as an abstract, formal category with the help of his account of free will. For Hegel, personhood is defined in terms of powers, relations to self and to others. After analyzing what according to the first part of Philosophy of Right it is to (abstractly) respect someone as a person, the essay discusses the implications (...) for private property and market. Then the paper turns to discuss pathologies of ideologies that stress these aspects only. Finally, the essay discusses the way inwhich Hegel’s full social theory aims to overcome such pathological tendencies; most notably in his theory of Family and the State. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss Hegel's views on the determination of intentions. The main point is that it pays to distinguish sufficiently clearly four perspectives to human action: 1) The agent's "moral" perspective and the understanding and description under which the agent acted; from this perspective we can thematize the operative intention-in-action and distinguish "action" from "deed". 2) The agent's retrospective awareness and appropriation of the action: was what I did really justified and did it express my true goals? 3) (...) The retrospective takes of others concerning the action, from within relevant social practices and the prevailing Sittlichkeit. 4) The perspective of Reason or Idea as emerging in the world history. In this paper I use this differentiation of perspectives to discuss Hegel's views on action. I defend the primacy of the individual herself in the first aspect mentioned, in what Hegel calls the "moral" perspective. Robert Pippin's idea of "retrospective" determination of intentions is analyzed and (on some readings) criticized. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Hegel's complete and mature view of crime and punishment is more robust than many interpretations of the Unrecht passage in the ‘Abstract Right’ section of Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right suggest. First, I explain the value of revisiting the interpretation of Hegel as a simple retributionist in the contemporary debate. Then, I look at Hegel's treatment of crime and punishment in the section on abstract right to show the role of punishment in (...) Hegel's account. Next, I argue that this needs to be situated in Hegel's broader social philosophy and that we can accomplish this by looking at how the Unrecht passage fits in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right’s dialectical structure. I do so by building on the sections on civil society and state in the part of Elements of the Philosophy of Right dealing with ethical life (Sittlichkeit), which include considerations of prevention and rehabilitation. I contend that this analysis reveals an account of punishment as more complicated than simple retribution. (shrink)

This paper provides a critical interpretation of the theme, point, and methodological status of Adorno’s so-called negative dialectic. The theme at issue, ‘non-identity’, comes in several varieties; and the point of Adorno’s dialectic, namely reconciliation, is multifaceted. Exploration of those topics shows that negative dialectic seques into substantive doctrines, including a version of transcendentalism and a claim about deformation. The peculiar methodological status of negative dialectic explains that adumbration. In the appraisive register, my principal contentions include these: Adorno’s transcendentalism makes (...) some sense of the aforementioned deformation claim; and negative dialectic qua method avoids mystery and metaphysical excess. (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)

It is widely known that Hegel's Philosophy of Right recognizes poverty as one of the central problems of modern civil society. What is much less well known, however, is that Hegel sees yet another structural problem at the opposite side of the economic spectrum: a problem of affluence. Indeed, as I show in this essay, Hegel's text contains a detailed—yet sometimes overlooked—discussion of the detrimental psychological and sociological effects of great wealth and how to counter them. By bringing this discussion (...) to the fore, we get a more complete picture of Hegel's theory of civil society and shed light on an aspect of Hegel's social philosophy that speaks to problems we face today. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that Hegel holds the view that a rational social order needs to reconcile us to our status as natural beings, with bodily needs and desires. But while this general view is...

Na Introdução à Filosofia do Direito, Hegel procura delinear o que concebe por vontade livre ou autodeterminação. Em sua análise apresenta três momentos ou três concepções de vontade: a universalidade, a particularidade e a individualidade. A universalidade é a concepção de vontade como pensamento puro, isto é, a abstração de todo e qualquer conteúdo e a consideração somente da forma do pensamento. Na particularidade, a vontade é concebida como vontade de um sujeito determinado que tem um conteúdo determinado: um "eu" (...) desejante que quer um objeto determinado. A individualidade, por sua vez, é a concepção de vontade como unidade da universalidade e da particularidade e essa união _ através de um processo que passa pela "vontade natural", pelo "arbítrio" e pela "cultura" _ é aquilo que Hegel concebe por vontade livre ou autodeterminação. (shrink)

Like two heavyweight boxers exchanging punches, but neither landing the knock-out blow, Kantians and Hegelians seem to be in a stand-off on what in contemporary parlance is known as the Empty Formalism Objection. Kant's ethics is charged with being merely formal and thereby failing to provide the kind of specific guidance that any defensible ethical system should have the resources to provide. Hegel is often credited with having formulated this objection in its most incisive way, and a wealth of Kantian (...) responses has been deployed to answer it. In this paper, I take up the objection as it appears in §135R ofElements of the Philosophy of Rightin order to scrutinise the contemporary debate between the two camps. I propose that there are, in fact, three different, albeit connected objections and examine the best Kantian replies to them. I will not adjudicate which of these replies is the most accurate interpretation of Kant's texts, nor trace the particular historical context in which Hegel takes up Kant's ethics, nor the way the Empty Formalism Objection fits into Hegel's wider system. This is partly because of constraints of space, and partly because many of the contemporary Kantian replies — for better or for worse — treat the Empty Formalism Objection as a self-standing philosophical problem, irrespective of its historical context or systematic place in Hegel's theory. My limited aim here is to show that, even if one grants — for argument's sake — the legitimacy of such a non-contextual approach, significant difficulties remain. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to clarify the role wrong plays in Hegel ’s system of right, as both a form of freedom and the transition to morality. Two approaches will be examined to explore wrong in practical philosophical terms: First, one could take the transition to be descriptive in nature. The transition describes wrong as a realized fact of the human condition that one inherits from the outset. Second, one could see it as prescriptive. Actual wrongdoing would be (...) essential for the subject’s progression to becoming moral. Though both are most likely the case, emphasis is given to the latter since it represents the actualization of potential. Furthermore, it will be suggested that wrong plays a similar role as that which alienation does in the Phenomenology of Spirit; both bridge the will as abstract personality with the moral point of view. (shrink)

En este artículo realizo una comparación de las teorías del castigo legal en la filosofía del derecho de Kant y de Hegel. La tesis que busco defender es que, al menos en lo que concierne a este tópico, las posiciones de Kant y de Hegel no deberían leerse en franca oposición, sino como pertenecientes a una familia común de teorías penales retributivistas. El análisis comparativo que presento busca arrojar luz sobre ciertos aspectos estructurales de su filosofía del derecho como un (...) todo y sobre algunas estrategias habituales en ellos en su procedimiento de justificación jurídico-filosófica. La discusión que aquí se presenta mostrará, no obstante, algunas limitaciones de ambas teorías y esbozará a grandes rasgos, a modo de solución a dichas dificultades, una lectura en la cual las concepciones filosóficas de Kant y de Hegel en torno al castigo legal son más bien consideradas como complementarias. (shrink)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) developed a philosophy based on freedom within a wider philosophical system offering novel views on topics ranging from property and punishment to morality and the state. Hegel’s main work was the Elements of the Philosophy of Right (“PR”) first published in 1821. Many of his other major works include discussions or analyses connected to his social and political philosophy. He also wrote various political essays during his career, many of which have been translated (Hegel 1999). (...) His work has been a major influence on significant figures from Karl Marx to Charles Taylor and beyond. This entry provides an overview about how Hegel’s ideas have been debated and the core contributions from his PR followed by further readings. (shrink)

While Hegel’s political philosophy has been attacked on the left by republican democrats and on the right by feudalist reactionaries, his apologists see him as a liberal reformer, a moderate who theorized about the development of a free-market society within the bounds of a stabilizing constitutional state. This centrist view has gained ascendancy since the end of the Second World War, enshrining Hegel within the liberal tradition. In this book, Renato Cristi argues that, like the Prussian liberal reformers of his (...) time, Hegel was committed to expand the scope of a free economy and concurrently to ensure that the social practice of subjective freedom did not endanger political stability and order. Aware that a system of mutual advantage failed to integrate the members of civil society and that profound social disharmonies were ineradicable, Hegel adopted the views of the French liberal _doctrinaires_, who sought to realize the principles of the French Revolution by supporting Louis XVIII’s sovereign assertion of the monarchical principle. Not surprisingly, Hegel hailed the French _Charte_ of June 1814 as a beacon of freedom. Endorsement of the monarchical principle was meant to prevent the atomized individuals of civil society from gaining control of the state through appeals to popular sovereignty. This challenges most conventional interpretations of Hegel’s theory of the state and draws it closer to the conservative-authoritarian end of the political spectrum than is usual. (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)