This article attempts to show, first, that for Hegel the role of property is to enable persons both to objectify their freedom and to properly express their recognition of each other as free, and second, that the Marx of 1844 uses fundamentally similar ideas in his exposition of communist society. For him the role of ‘true property’ is to enable individuals both to objectify their essential human powers and their individuality, and to express their recognition of each other as fellow (...) human beings with needs, or their ‘human recognition’. Marx further uses these ideas to condemn the society of private property and market exchange as characterised by ‘estranged’ forms of property and recognition. He therefore uses a structure of ideas which Hegel had used to justify the institutions of private property and market exchange, in order to condemn those same institutions. (shrink)

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

This paper investigates the compatibility of Hegel’s analyses of the mechanization of work in industrial society with Hegel’s notion of freedom as rational self-determination. Work as such is for Hegel a crucial moment on the way to a more complete realization of human freedom, but, as I maintain with Adorno, the technological developments of the last two centuries raise the question of whether the nature of work itself has changed since the industrial revolution. In his Jena lectures, Hegel recognized significant (...) problems that the mechanization of work poses for human freedom that—on my assessment—his later, mature thought does not sufficiently address. One finds, however, a more comprehensive depiction of the same worries that Hegel mentioned in his Jena lectures in Adorno’s critique of the dominant forms of labor in contemporary society and his understanding of technological rationality, which according to Adorno, dominates the contemporary world. I suggest, furthermore, that juxtaposing Hegel’s and Adorno’s thoughts on technology and the mechanization of work reveals Adorno’s philosophy of technology to be an extension, rather than a critique, of the spirit of Hegel’s own philosophical project as immanent critique of the necessary entailments of any given concept. (shrink)

Picking up on Marx’s and Hegel’s analyses of human beings as social and individual, the article shows that what is at stake is not merely the possibility of individuality, but also the correct conception of the universal good. Both Marx and Hegel suppose that individuals must be social or political as individuals, which means, at least in Hegel’s case, that particular interests must form part of the universal good. The good and the rational is not something that requires sacrificing one’s (...) interests for the community or denying one’s particular character so as to become an equal rational agent. Very much to the contrary, the rational or the common good is nothing but the harmonious structuring of particular interests. While Section I introduces Marx’s and Hegel’s conceptions of individual and social beings, Sections II and III discuss their respective views of individuality, and Sections IV and V discuss the notion of a universal good containing individual interests. (shrink)

The rapid recent expansion of copyright law worldwide has sparked efforts to defend the ‘public domain’ of non-propertized information, often on the ground that an expansive public domain is a condition of a ‘free culture’. Yet questions remain about why the public domain is worth defending, what exactly a free culture is, and what role (if any) authors’ rights might play in relation to it. From the standard liberal perspective shared by many critics of copyright expansionism, the protection of individual (...) expression by means of marketable property rights in authors’ works serves as an engine of progress towards a fully competitive ‘marketplace of ideas’ – though only if balanced by an extensive public domain from which users may draw in the exercise of their own expressivity. This article shows that a significantly different, and arguably richer, conception of what a free culture is and how authors’ rights underpin it emerges from a direct engagement with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. For Kant, progress towards a fully emancipated (i.e. a ‘mature’ or ‘enlightened’) culture can only be achieved through the critical intellectual activity that public communication demands: individual expressive freedom is only a condition, not constitutive, of this ‘freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters’. The main thesis defended in this article is that when Kant’s writings on publicity (critical public debate) are read in relation to his writings on the legal organization of publishing, a necessary connection emerges between authors’ rights – as distinct from copyrights – and what Jürgen Habermas and others have named the public sphere. I conclude that it is the public sphere, and not the public domain as such, that should serve as the key reference point in any evaluation of copyright law’s role in relation to the possibility of a free culture. (shrink)

Patriotism is not commonly associated with freedom. Even less so when Hegel is evoked. By reading Hegel’s concept of patriotism through the lens of revolutionary France, I present a notion of patriotism that is tied to the realization of freedom. This paper demonstrates what happens when Hegel’s philosophy of law is re-read through the political philosophy of the French Revolution itself. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and its lectures are marked by tensions. The legacy it leaves traces it leaves behind can (...) be re-appropriated to explore the inconclusive hints left by the philosopher. The idea of patriotism is one of them, simply defined as an intersubjective link between the concrete individual and the state or as particular and general interests coinciding. This paper expands this analysis by introducing two elements: Hegel’s discussion on the character of the law and how it comes to be law; and the revolutionary phenomenon itself. The revolutionaries’ views on patriotism and its functions within a revolutionary moment can help us transform the mere traces left by Hegel into a wider vision that incorporates and promotes freedom. (shrink)

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)

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)

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)

What is 'positive freedom'? Whereas negative freedom may be characterised as an absence of coercion or physical prevention, and republican freedom as an absence of interpersonal domination, positive freedom resists such pithy treatment. The term is widely taken to refer to a variety of seemingly distinct goods, including but not limited to actually exercisable options or capabilities, collective self-determination, psychological self-government, and self-realisation or flourishing. In this paper I aim to bring the positive conception into better focus by tracing the (...) positive tradition through some of its twists and turns, and considering in what ways it might qualify as a single tradition. Drawing on the lessons of this survey, I then suggest a way of thinking about the nature of positive freedom that’s both principled and historically informed. (shrink)

La tesis central de este trabajo es que la tradicional tensión entre substancia y procedimiento socava las estabilidad de la justificación de la concepción liberal más extendida de la legitimidad (la Democracia Deliberativa). Dicha concepciones enfrentan problemas serios a la hora de articular de manera consistente dos dimensiones que parecen ir naturalmente asociadas a la idea de legitimidad: la dimensión procedimental, vinculada a la equidad del procedimiento, y la dimensión epistémica, asociada a la corrección de los resultados. En este trabajo (...) sostengo que a) esa tensión surge de la adopción de una concepción epistemológica social de tipo "veritativo-consecuencialista; b) es posible manejar dicha tensión mediante el remplazo de la epistemología subyacente por una concepción epistemológica social de tipo procedimentalista de orientación pragmatista y c) dicha operación orienta el diseño institucional en una dirección experimentalista. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to piece together the elements of G. A. Cohen's thought on the theory of socialism during his long intellectual voyage from Marxism to political philosophy. It begins from his theory of the maldistribution of freedom under capitalism, moves onto his critique of libertarian property rights, to his diagnosis of the “deep inegalitarian” structure of John Rawls' theory and concludes with his rejection of the “cheap” fraternity promulgated by liberal egalitarianism. The paper's exegetical contention is that (...) Cohen's work in political philosophy is best understood in the background of lifelong commitment to a form of democratic, non-market, socialism realizing the values of freedom, equality and community, as he conceived them. The first part of the essay is therefore an attempt to retrieve core socialism-related arguments by chronologically examining the development of Cohen's views, using his books as thematic signposts. The second part brings these arguments together with an eye to reconstructing his vision of socialism. It turns out that Cohen's political philosophy offers a rich conception of objective and subjective freedom, an original understanding of justice as satisfaction of genuine need, and a substantive ideal of fraternity as justificatory community with others. If properly united, these values can suggest a full-bloodied account of the just polity, and give us a glimpse into what it means, for Cohen, to treat people as equals. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to piece together the elements of G. A. Cohen’s thought on the theory of socialism during his long intellectual voyage from Marxism to political philosophy. It begins from his theory of the maldistribution of freedom under capitalism, moves onto his critique of libertarian property rights, to his diagnosis of the “deep inegalitarian” structure of John Rawls’ theory and concludes with his rejection of the “cheap” fraternity promulgated by liberal egalitarianism. The paper’s exegetical contention is that (...) Cohen’s work in political philosophy is best understood in the background of lifelong commitment to a form of democratic, non-market, socialism realizing the values of freedom, equality and community, as he conceived them. The first part of the essay is therefore an attempt to retrieve core socialism-related arguments by chronologically examining the development of Cohen’s views, using his books as thematic signposts. The second part brings these arguments together with an eye to reconstructing his vision of socialism. It turns out that Cohen’s political philosophy offers a rich conception of objective and subjective freedom, an original understanding of justice as satisfaction of genuine need, and a substantive ideal of fraternity as justificatory community with others. If properly united, these values can suggest a full-bloodied account of the just polity, and give us a glimpse into what it means, for Cohen, to treat people as equals. (shrink)

There are many historical concerns about freedom that have come to be deemphasized in the free will literature itself—for instance, worries around the tyranny of government or the alienation of capitalism. It is hard to see how the current free will literature respects these, or indeed how they could even find expression. This paper seeks to show how these and other concerns can be reintegrated into the debate by appealing to a levels ontology. Recently, Christian List and others have considered (...) how the notion of levels could be relevant to the free will debate. Invariably, however, the focus is on the significance of facts at lower levels. The threats come from below, from fundamental physics or neuroscience. Here, I aim to show how we can frame many interesting concerns about free will in terms of threats from above. After arguing that determination from above is no less threatening, I catalogue such concerns that might constitute threats to our freedom. Doing this not only allows us to show how these concerns relate to those standardly discussed, but it pushes us to expand our conception of freedom. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to show that Hegel's concept of personal respect is of great interest to contemporary Critical Theory. The author first analyzes this notion as it appears in the Philosophy of Right and then offers a new interpretation of the conceptual relation between personal respect and the institutions of property and markets. In doing so, he shows why Hegel's concept of personal respect allows us to understand markets as possible institutionalizations of this kind of recognition, (...) and why it is compatible with a critique of neoliberal capitalism. He argues that due to these features Hegel's notion of personal respect is of great interest to theoreticians within the tradition of critical theory. (shrink)

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)

In this article I present an original interpretation of Roy Bhaskar’s project in Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom. His major move is to separate an ontological dialectic from a critical dialectic, which in Hegel are laminated together. The ontological dialectic, which in Hegel is the self-unfolding of spirit, becomes a realist and relational philosophical anthropology. The critical dialectic, which in Hegel is confined to retracing the steps of spirit, now becomes an active force, dialectical critique, which interposes into the ontological (...) dialectic at the ‘fourth dimension’ of a naturalistically reconfigured account of relational human nature, agency. This account allows Bhaskar to explain and vindicate the crucial role social criticism must play in any realistic project of self-emancipation, and to create a space that didn’t exist in Hegel for an open-ended concrete utopianism. Freedom is thus the actualization of human nature, but is not automatic: the relation of human nature to freedom is mediated historically through dialectical critique, which, informed by concrete utopianism, can have emancipatory power. Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 13-44 Authors Craig Reeves, Brunel University Journal Journal of Critical Realism Online ISSN 1572-5138 Print ISSN 1476-7430 Journal Volume Volume 12 Journal Issue Volume 12, Number 1 / 2013. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates what it identifies as ‘the institutional theory of freedom’ developed within recent neo-Hegelian philosophy. While acknowledging the gains made against the Kantian theory of autonomy as detachment it is argued that the institutional theory ultimately undermines the very meaning of practical agency. By tying agency to institutionally sustained recognition it effectively excludes the exercise of practical reason geared toward emancipation from a settled normative order. Adorno's notion of autonomy as resistance is enlisted to develop an account (...) of practical reason that is neither institutionally constrained nor without appropriate consideration of the historical location of the practical agent. (shrink)

Hegel’s theory of freedom is complex and sweeping, and while most interpreters of Hegel will readily agree that it is the centerpiece of his political philosophy, perhaps also of his social philosophy and philosophy of history, they will just as readily disagree about what exactly the theory claims. Such interpretive disagreements have fueled, in large part, the resurgence of interest in Hegelian philosophy over the last few decades.

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)

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)

Desde los propios tiempos de su constitución y en no poca medida todavía hasta el presente, el paradigma general del idealismo poskantiano ha sido objeto de numerosos malentendidos. La historia estándar de la Filosofía Moderna dominante sobre todo en los países de habla inglesa tiende a ver a la filosofía de Kant como el límite máximo de idealismo capaz de ser asimilado de forma consistente por la reflexión filosófica. A partir de Kant, la radicalización del motivo idealista en las filosofías (...) de Fichte, Schelling y Hegel ha sido así considerada a menudo como un abandono de los patrones viables de racionalidad. En la base de esta visión no es en modo alguno inusual encontrar la confusión del idealismo poskantiano con una forma desorbitada y excéntrica del idealismo de Berkeley. Sin embargo, el proyecto teórico de radicalización del idealismo trascendental de Kant poco tiene que ver con esta interpretación. Una de las claves principales para poder entender correctamente ese proyecto es comprender su particular teoría sobre la relación entre conocimiento sensible y conocimiento intelectual, entre intuición y concepto. En el marco teórico de un idealismo absoluto se abandona la diferenciación radical entre intuición y concepto y con ello se excluye por principio la posibilidad de resolver el problema de la referencia de la mente humana al mundo mediante una concepción empirista del conocimiento sensible. En este nuevo contexto, el problema del vínculo de lo mental y lo real debe ser resuelto en el propio plano inmanente de los conceptos. El objetivo de nuestra ponencia será justamente analizar, con ocasión de la teoría de Hegel sobre la relación entre intuición y concepto, los presupuestos teóricos que hacen plausible una concepción de la relación entre la mente y el mundo que no apela para justificar esa relación a categorías como la de receptividad y causalidad. (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 objetivo deste trabalho é traduzir e apresentar os fragmentos 19 e 20 dos Esboços de Sistema de Jena, escritos por Hegel entre 1803 e 1804. Primeiramente, farei uma rápida consideração do significado filosófico desses fragmentos, os quais tratam, desde a peculiar concepção hegeliana da consciência como espírito, da razão teórica e da razão prática como equivalentes, respectivamente, à linguagem e ao trabalho. Procuro sublinhar essa relevância filosófica a partir da interpretação habermasiana dos fragmentos, a qual lhes conferiu notoriedade como (...) tentativa de reconstrução do materialismo histórico. A partir desta breve contextualização, apresenta-se, a seguir, uma tradução para o português dos mencionados fragmentos. (shrink)