Elements of the Philosophy of Right

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Title page of the 1821 original work.
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Elements of the Philosophy of Right (

ochlocracist
.

Summary

The Philosophy of Right (as it is usually called) begins with a discussion of the concept of the

property rights and relations, contracts, moral commitments, family life, the economy, the legal system, and the polity
. A person is not truly free, in other words, unless they are a participant in all of these different aspects of the life of the state.

The bulk of the book is devoted to discussing Hegel's three spheres or versions of 'right,' each one larger than the preceding ones and encompassing them. The first sphere is abstract right (Recht), in which Hegel discusses the idea of 'non-interference' as a way of respecting others. He deems this insufficient and moves onto the second sphere, morality (Moralität). Under this, Hegel proposes that humans reflect their own subjectivity of others in order to respect them. The third sphere, ethical life (Sittlichkeit), is Hegel's integration of individual subjective feelings and universal notions of right. Under ethical life, Hegel then launches into a lengthy discussion about family, civil society, and the state.

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.

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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".[2] 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.

The preface to the Philosophy of Right contains considerable criticism of the philosophy of

T.M. Knox argued that, while clearly designed to curry favour with the censors and written well after completion of the work proper, the Preface's condemnation of Fries was "nothing new", that there was no betrayal of his support for the Wartburg Festival principles, rather a mere denunciation of method, while condemnation of Karl Ludwig von Haller (whose work had been burned at Wartburg) remained undisturbed in the body of the work.[4] Stephen Houlgate wrote in The Hegel Reader, which he edited, that the work is now "recognized as one of the greatest works of social and political philosophy ever written."[5]

References

  1. ^ Christian Topp, Philosophie als Wissenschaft (in German), Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982, p. xx.
  2. ^ Muller, Jerry Z. (2002). The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought. New York: A. Knopf. p. 430.
  3. ISBN 0415165784
    .
  4. ISBN 978-0-8101-1301-5
    .
  5. ISBN 0-631-20347-8
    .

External links
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