Grab Your Edition Philosophy Of Right Created By Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Disseminated As Volume

was only really interested in the Husserlian undertones in sectionfive for comparing women to plants With Outlines of a Philosophy of RightGerman philosopher Hegel published a book that was to be used as the backbone of a series of lectures.
In the book, he deals with the foundations of Recht hard to translate in English since it comprises subjects like Right, Government, and Law.
And as Hegel already developed his philosophical system of Absolute Knowledge i, e. the foundation of and the method to truth, he tries to fit social aspects, such as Law, Government and Religion, into his metaphysical worldview.
Not that he has to work hard to accomplish this in his first book Phänomenologie des Geisteshe already explained how the social world of Man comprised the final stages of Geist becoming SelfConscious of Absolute Knowledge.


So, in that sense, Outlines of a Philosophy of Right is just a specific elucidation of his earlier ideas.
It is also the second and last book that Hegel published in his life all later works are posthumously published and suffer from the flaws typical of such works.
It is hence much better both in quality and quantity than, for example, his Philosophy of History,

As with all his works, Hegel sets out from the most basic ideas and then tries to build up a system of knowledge through the use of his own logical apparatus.
This means, in effect, that he takes very simple notions and analyzes in minute detail how they relate both to our own consciousness and to the external world.
In this process he finds continuous contradictions, mostly having to do with the interplay between abstractness and concreteness of ideas.
To resolve these contradictions requires Hegel to find out how the concrete idea is a particular manifestation of the abstract idea, and how the abstract idea emerges out of particular phenomena and subsumes these phenomena under it.


This, in general, is called Hegels dialectic, and it is much more fruitful to view his logic asan analysis of concepts andas a resolution of contradictions arising out of metaphysical distinctions subjectobject and universalparticular.
Hegel operates on Aristotelean logic, uses Kants metaphysics principles of existence and epistemology theory of knowledge, and builds his own logical apparatus to answer question of Being, Truth and Knowledge.
Usually people explain this method with the terms thesis, antithesis and synthesis, but these concepts were never uttered by Hegel himself and although helpful to explain the general movement of his developing process of Knowledge, it is also highly ineffective to illustrate the exact meaning of Hegels system.


Anyways, the above is the foundation and cornerstone of all of Hegels works and I think it is the key to unlock his otherwise ungraspable ideas.


What has all this to do with Right, you might ask To explain how a State should function ideally, and, given time, will function inevitably Hegel starts with analysing the most basal concepts that underlie all of this.


He thus starts with the most abstract principles underlying law and right and his startingpoint is the concept of property.
This is the most basic idea and it is a necessary idea, for all of our social life is based on the fact that what we do in the world, is appropriating objects.
Not allowing subjects to appropriate objects is a nonstarter, This then brings Hegel to the question of how to manoeuvre through this situation: we have multiple subject appropriating all kinds of objects, and this is bound to lead to strife and struggle.
Here the notion of a contract develops, and it is, again, a necessary condition for social life, But again, something new follows from this: when people willingly enter into contracts with other people, there is both a possibility that they lie their way into a contract that they werent bound to stick to anyways and a possibility that one or more of the contractors break their promise.
So we stumble onto the notion injustice,

And injustice is the point where abstract right transforms into morality, Although here a linguistic remark is necessary, In his philosophy, and in this book, Hegel is talking about two types of morality, The first type is morality in the subjective sense, which Hegel names Moralität and refers to the personal sphere of acting in the world.
The second type is morality in the objective sense, which Hegel names Sittligkeit and refers to the cultural, societal sphere of acting in the world.
Both types have to be translated into the English Morality which then loses an important distinction,

Anyway, Hegel explains how injustice transforms into subjective morality and how this personal sphere of acting has three dialectical distinctions.
And here again English seems to be problematic, since Hegel dinstinguishes Vornemen from Meinen but which in English both fall under Intention.
In the first case, the intention has to do with meaning to do something, planning, In the second case, the intention has to do with setting a purposeful goal for oneself and acting on it.


Hegels analysis of subjective morality starts with the intention of planning to do something and its antithesis Schuld which, again, is problematic in English, since the German word captures both the English guilt and blame.
With the notion of meaning to do something, intentionality in the juridical sense enters the scene, And this distinguishes us according to Hegel not according to modern day biologists from animals, With the intention to do something comes the concept of being responsible for ones actions, hence the question of guilt and blame.
We only reserve exceptions for children and people who are mentally diseased,

Second, this acting of people in the personal sphere falls under a higher notion, that of the second type of intention the setting of a goal and the acting on this goal, intentionality in the philosophical sense.
This means, basically, that human beings feel desires and urges which motivate us to act and the overarching goal of these desires and urges is wellbeing.
We want to be healthy and happy and so we want to fulfil our desires, This is Hegels breakingpoint with Kant: Kants ethics was basically a secular monkish life suppressing all desires and urges and only act on what Reason tells us are acts that are compatible with a metaphysical universal moral Law.
For Kant, freedom is discipline, being an autonomous individual that is guided by reason, But Hegel rejects this outright for Hegel, freedom is not suppressing your desires and urges, since the existence of these is a sign that they are worth something, worth acting on.


But this doesnt mean that Hegel is an Epicurean, in the sense that we a good life is a life in which we just act on all our urges.
No, the dualism between intentionality and wellbeing leads to a new step in the process, a new dualism: that between the notion of the good a notion that arose from the former dualism intentionality and wellbeing and conscience.
To see why this is so, one has to understand that the dualism the goodconscience is the stepping stone to the third and final sphere of Right, that of morality in the sense of social/cultural morality.


We want to live a good life, to literally be good, and our instincts point us the way to this.
But we also form part of social groups and a broader general culture, which confronts us with other human subjects who basically have the same intentionality.
And the presence of others gives rise to a strife between our own instincts and living a peaceful life.
So there is metaphorically some sort of inner voice, a consciousness, that criticizes our intentions and desires,

For Hegel, the resolution of this antinomy between the good and conscience, is the starting point of Right in the social and cultural sphere.
And the fundamental unit here is the family, The family constitutes two people a man and a woman who wilfully give up their own being and create, through marriage, a new life a unit of social life.
Within this social unit there are clear rules and distinctions: the man acts externally he works and earns income, he interacts with the world while the woman acts internally she does the household and raises the children.
The family thus is the building block of social life and is a manifestation of the resolution of the conflict between being good pursuing personal wellbeing and conscience accounting for different needs and perspectives.


The family is a unit, since it possesses shared property wealth and common goals raising children, And this second point, the existence of children, is the transformation from the family life into social life proper.
Hegel claims that children are the manifestation of families falling apart: children are raised and then enter families of their own, breaking up the original family and creating new ones.


Add to this the mans task of interacting with the objective world i, e. other people, and here we have a civil society, in which people of all walks of life deal with each other in order to accomplish personal goals and aims.
For Hegel, this sphere of life consists ofeconomics the system of desires leading to the manifestation of labourjurisdiction justice as law culminating in the court andthe police and corporations.


The police which meant something different from what it means to us is basically the system of education, poverty assistance, health care, guardianship of people who fail in life, and international trade needed because wealth accumulates and poverty ensues.
For Hegel this is all private, not public more in the trend of caritas than the modern social welfare state.
Besides the police, civil society consists of corporations again, meaning something else for Hegel than for us groups of people gathering around common interests, offering protection to its members, building and defending professional honour and cultivating competence and skills i.
e. offering education and internship to prospective members, Hegel sees these corporations basically guilds as the second moral root besides the family, since they basically act as mediators and middling force between different interests within society.
In short: the corporations are crucial for economic development and social peace,

But now we stumble unto a new dualism, that between the family representing the country where morality is cultivated and civil society representing the town where labour and capital are produced, kickstarting a new dialectic process.
Civil society is a manifold, while the family is a single unit the family is a subjective existence, while society consists of objective entities.
This has to be resolved,

And this is the final stage in Hegels analysis and development of Right: here the State emerges as true and actual foundation wahrer Grund of town and country.
It is this final part in Hegels book his description of the State and its various functions that forms the startingpoint for Marx later critique of Hegel.
To see why Marx felt so alienated pun intended by Hegels description, one has to understand that what Hegel describes as the ideal State is a close approximation of the Prussian state.
This led many people, contemporary Arthur Schopenhauer being the first and Karl Popper one of the most prominent, to claim that Hegel was a sellout.
Their claim is that Hegel fitted his conception of the ideal State to the Prussian state in order to please the authorities and allow him his professorship in Berlin.
I think there is a different reason, much less basal, than this for the similarities between the Prussian state and Hegels ideal State, but first lets see what Hegels ideal State is.


Hegel distinguishes three components:internal constitutional law,external constitutional law, andWorldHistory,

Internal constitutional law is the goal of the state, i, e. the general interest as such as manifested in the State and its reconciliation with particular interests which form the substance of the State.
These laws are the abstract reality of the State and are necessary as fixed determinations of State powers, In other words: the State is a knowing and willing entity it knows what it wants in general known purposes, guiding principles and laws and it knows the specific circumstances and relations in which its subjects act.
In short: the State is an entity in itself and for itself, it is a Spirit Geist,

The way that the State operates is as follows: it has the power to determine the general i.
e. it is lawgiver, it has the power to subsume the specific under the general i, e. it governs and it has the power of subjectivity as determination of will i, e. it has a monarch who decides, wills, Hegels ideal State consequently consists oftwo chambers one of landed nobility and one of businessmen that legislatea government people by intelligentsia and jurists anda monarch who agrees on all governmental actions and only steps in as decisive power in case of conflict or inaction.


But the monarch has another function within the State as well, The State as single subject finds out that the world consists of a manifold of other States, Here we see again the single breaking apart into the many when the subject sees itself as a mere object among many and here we see again the resolution of the problem laying in the subject being reflected on itself as object i.
e. the unification of subject and object of the single and the many of the universal and the particular,
In normal language, we would say that the State finds itself on the geopolitical stage and has to deal with other states.
These states relate to one another and hence have to communicate, It is here that Hegel sees the monarch as mouthpiece of the State quite literally, since Hegel sees the State as an organism in itself very Hobbesian.
It is the monarch that decides on the interaction between his State and other states and he can use diplomacy, war, peace and treaties as means to navigate these waters.


And this stage is at the same time the transformation from the internal workings of the State the State as subject to the external workings of the State the State as object.
A State wants to be recognized as such by other States, and in its relations with other states of which the major modes are war and peace it builds relations on the principles of social morality Sittligkeit.
I. e. it protects the institutions and the rights of private persons of both itself and other States even in war! and it protects the international peace.


In its geopolitical dealings the State completes itself it becomes one both subject and object and as such is an elemental part of history.
It is here, at the final state of the development of the State, that Hegel brings up his theory of WorldHistory.
For Hegel, history is not just a series of historical facts, there is an underlying principle that guides historical development and this principle is the realization of Freedom by the WorldSpirit, the Absolute i.
e. God. Throughout history societies come and go, but each plays a particular role on the world stage the idea of Freedom develops itself both as Idea and as reality.
So we see a series of civilizations developing the notion

of subjective freedom, with Ancient Greece as starting point and the Roman world as formalizers of this concept.
With the spread of Christianity the subject gains infinite subjective value being a partaker in Gods creation, even being created in the image of God and through the rise and fall of feudalism and Luthers uprising, the notion of individual freedom becomes reality.
The Enlightenment and the French Revolution then objectify this freedom in the world and failing in this, the successive Prussian State unifies both the Christian idea of subjective freedom and the German practice of actual freedom through the laws, government, constitution and morality that Hegel sketches in this book.


So we see here how the fundamental principles underlying the State form both the endpoint of a dialectical process as sketched in the book and how this ideal State forms the basic entity, the culmination, of the WorldSpirit manifesting itself in WorldHistory.
So Right, History, Metaphysics and Logic are all interrelated and are all the same endpoint, viewed from different perspectives, of the same fundamental process of development of God.


And now we can immediately see how Schopenhauer and Popper succumbed to the fallacy of hasty generalization.
It is easy to claim that Hegel bent over backwards and took care that his ideal State would be approved of by the Prussian authorities.
And perhaps there is a kernel of truth in this Hegel wrote in the aftermath of the devastating Napoleonic Wars and the huge changes taking place all over Europe some revolutionary instigated a reactionary clampdown in the various European states.
So maybe Hegel was afraid of losing his job, being censured for a long time or simply afraid of retaliations.
Who knows

Other critics view Hegels perspective on civil society and family life as conservative, sometimes even reactionary, and in general undemocratic.
True, Hegel clearly states how democracy is the rule of the mob and how the political tradition of Rousseau was wrong in viewing representative democracy as the best form of government.
Hegel sees freedom lying in Building, personal education and cultivation, and not in personal freedom to do what one wants.
In other words, Hegel subjects the individual to the collective, both in politics and in morality, Culture is the manifestation of the Zeitgeist of a particular civilization and can or should neither be escaped from nor changed.
Only WorldHistorical figures can change the times and it is not up to human beings, but to God, to manifest himself through a handpicked individual.
Sounds familiar Read the New Testament,

So yeah, Hegel is nationalistic in seeing the Prussian State as the culmination of history and the closest approximation of the ideal State he cuts democracy from society, places the monarch on top of things, and sees both the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie as cultivators and educators of the plebs.


But this view is onesided and it overlooks some fundamental differences, between Hegels ideal State and Prussia, which are mostly never mentioned by people eager to project onto Hegel some sort of protototalitarian philosophy.
One difference between Prussia and Hegels state is that the Prussian state was very reliant on forceful suppression of the people and saw the bureaucracy and the army as its most important organs.
Hegels State regards all aspects of social life and Hegel sees the State as an emergent sphere from both family and business, country and town.
Second, the Prussian state clearly saw its subjects as mere subjects, while Hegel continuously emphasizes in all of his works how individual freedom in spirit and in practice is the foundation of the world.
This means that, e. g. , laws have to reflect this personal freedom and cannot be totalitarian by definition, It also means that any suppression of human desires and needs goes against the idea of freedom something that Kant clearly didnt see.
And third, Hegel criticizes contemporary intellectuals who proclaimed that the law is justified by the strongest persons/class he calls this fanaticism and flabbymindedness.


The remaining three paragraphs can be found in my comment on this review, .