Akademik

Hegel, spirit, and politics

Hegel, spirit, and politics Leo Rauch Hegel’s impact on political thought has been immense—giving shape to the major political movements of the modern world. Yet the person of average education is hardly familiar with the name, which is usually identified with a small number of simplistic statements, to the effect that Hegel argued for the supremacy of state power over all else; or that Hegel says individuals must subject themselves completely to the will of the state, and so on. Moreover, Hegel was seen (until recently) as the prophet of German totalitarianism—and the alleged evidence for this is in his characterization of the state as “the divine idea as it exists on earth,” “the march of God in the world,” etc. In our century, such views have ominous echoes, especially when we have seen states override the rights of individuals; when state power has more often crushed personal freedom than it has preserved it; when individuals have all too often been forced to cooperate in their own enslavement by the state; and when the areas of state power have been expanding irreversibly. In the light of all this it surely seems that any endorsement of state supremacy is suspect and ought to be rejected out of hand. Moreover, we may well wonder if there is anything in Hegel’s political philosophy that merits our attention. The affirmative answer comes from the fact that so much of what he wrote has been reflected in other political streams, even if these involve distortions of Hegel’s thinking. World communism, for example, adopted the dialectical logic of Hegel’s worldview, although that dialectic was linked (in communism) to a materialism Hegel had rejected utterly. There is no question about Hegel’s power to fascinate readers with his views of state and history. To understand his views, we must understand his reaction to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. In an age that placed great emphasis on the concept of a static and unchanging human nature, Hegel chose to emphasize the dynamism of the political theater. He sees the political reality as being historical through and through. But that dynamism also characterizes culture in all its aspects. And if we now regard the law, medicine, science, and the arts as fundamentally dynamic—so that it is by now basic for us to study these in their histories—this perspective is due in no small part to Hegel. But in regard to the dynamism of politics we must ask: If politics presents a scene of change, what is it changing from? what is it changing to? DYNAMISM AND HISTORY The dynamic emphasis was not always the norm. Thinkers associated with the Enlightenment believed that there is a fixed human nature, making all historical change unreal. As Voltaire is often thought to have said, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”1 And Hume, in his Enquiry (VIII:i), tells us that if we wish to know the ancient Greeks and Romans we need merely study the French and English, since humanity stays much the same, and history “informs us of nothing new or strange.” Hegel’s approach makes a sharp contrast to all this. Instead of arguing for the unchanging character of human nature, Hegel emphasizes the evolutionary perspective in history: the state, and all else that is human, is seen to be in process and to derive its significance from the process. The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset said: “Man has no nature, only a history.” The very concept of an unchanging human nature seems to have been mocked by history’s spectacle of mindless chaos and blind change. Hegel rejects the characterization of history as mindless and blind: History does have an aim, and that aim is rational. If so, what is all this change aimed at? If the fundamental characterization of humanity involves its volatility in the dimension of time, in what direction does time take us: to development or decline? And how inevitable is the historical process anyway? Hegel’s way of addressing this complex issue is to make it even more complex. If we agree to see human life as historical in its very essence, the historical dimension must be seen in a global perspective—even in a cosmic perspective whereby human history is regarded as a continuation of the development of the cosmos as a whole. In the terminology of our own time, we may see the cosmos beginning as simple matter composed of undifferentiated particles, but ending as mind and culture subsumed under the heading of what Hegel calls Spirit: i.e. all that has been created by humans using their minds, language, culture, and society. Geist has also been seen as a “general consciousness, a single mind common to all men.”2 It is this metaphor that makes it possible for Hegel to look at history as though it were the report of the world’s own coming to self-consciousness, like a mind growing up and achieving maturity and freedom. What about matter and spirit? How did we get from the one pole to the other? In the temporal “distance” between these two poles (matter and spirit), we see an emerging process: it all has tended in the direction of the highly complex and self-conscious beings we are—beings capable of understanding themselves in rational terms and giving shape to their lives accordingly; beings capable of grasping their own history, and of seeing reason at work in it. Hegel must have been struck by the sheer wonder of it all. But if so, he did more than wonder at it: he organized his wonderment into a comprehensive system of metaphysical speculation. In his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817), Hegel undertook to demonstrate a very remarkable doctrine (among other remarkable ones): namely that the mere concept of Being must eventuate in an existing world, an Ontological Argument for the world’s existence. Being—a purely abstract and formal concept in metaphysics—must somehow lead to an eventual materialization of itself as reality, so that the self-enclosed concept must produce a version of itself outside itself, as nature! From there, Hegel went on to show how the world of inorganic nature must produce an organic version of itself, as life. And from there he showed how life as such must lead to consciousness and then to self-consciousness. Moreover, he showed how these separate stages must follow from one another, not merely as a haphazard biological/ evolutionary progression but as a matter of logical necessity. The final goal of the process—that is, our rational self-consciousness made real in the world—must be seen as somehow embedded in its very beginning. The omega is entailed in the alpha—so that our modern cultural life, in all its wealth of complexity and detail, is implicitly there in the simple first moments of the life of the universe. (Needless to say, Hegel does not use such a term as “the Big Bang.”) If we are now so highly evolved as to be capable of understanding ourselves rationally, this selfconsciousness of ours must be the final goal of the entire process, the purpose that gives the cosmos its ultimate meaning. Accordingly, it is Spirit—fully evolved and fully self-conscious—that is the goal of history. And the entire process of cosmic evolution culminates in freedom (for in being fully self-conscious we are in a position to act freely, according to our own will, and to shape our lives to meet the standards of our own rationality). Hegel undertakes to show how such freedom has emerged in time. History is the account of the emergence of freedom (in the fullest sense of that term). Not all cultures have attained such self-directing freedom, and they are therefore in the early or intermediary stages in the evolutionary process of history. Obviously, an authoritarian culture, in which only one person is “free,” does not provide the setting wherein the individual participants can regard themselves as fully self-motivating, since they are not in a position to shape their lives according to their own rational precepts. Thus Hegel sees history as the gradual fulfillment of our rational potential, in freedom. All this must change our view of the violent history of Hegel’s time— and ours. History is not a chaotic succession of meaningless and disconnected events. There is a meaning that unites it all, Hegel says, a meaning we can see if we approach history with a rational attitude. In his view, then, the unifying meaning is implicit in the omega of history: the fully explicit and self-conscious rationality manifested in a public life of full freedom. Yet we might ask: Assuming that this genuine goal of full rationality could be realized, would it justify the necessary sacrifices? In our century (perhaps the most horrific of them all), the question of a sacrificial calculus is inescapable. Every point on the horizon has its pile of corpses heaped up in the name of so-called “historical” aims: there are the vast multitudes who died in the prolonged trench warfare of the First World War; the millions who were victims of Stalin’s collectivization; the millions who perished in Hitler’s “final solution,” not to mention the further millions, on all sides, who died in the Second World War as its victims or combatants; then think of Hiroshima; of Mao’s “cultural revolution”; of Cambodia and Vietnam; and on and on. Can all this misery be said to have contributed to the developing freedom and rationality of history? And even if such a contribution could be proven, in the long range, could the remote goal justify all the immediate suffering? Hegel has no illusions about history’s violence and its short-range irrationality. He does not see history as filled with sweetness and light. Indeed, he speaks of history as a “slaughter-bench.” He lived through the Napoleonic Wars; and although he admired Napoleon when he saw him on horseback, riding through the conquered city of Jena in 1806, Hegel knew that he must come to terms with the destructive side in what Napoleon had done, and keep both eyes open to history’s murderous aspect. How, then, could anyone argue for the intrinsic rationality of history, in view of its so obvious irrationality? For Hegel, the irrational element in history is necessary for the fulfillment of the ultimate aims of cosmic reason. He argues for this view on two levels: He begins by saying that “world-historical individuals” such as Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon (i.e. the “movers” of history) are merely the unwitting instruments of a higher Spirit working through them, a Spirit which is mysteriously exploiting their very irrationality for the sake of Spirit’s rational goals, and achieving (through these individuals) ends they never intended, but which were the implicit goals of history all along. This is the “Cunning of Reason” in history. Then he extends this concept to human action in general. Human actions stem from human passions, needs, and interests; and however irrational these may be, they too are the means whereby the World Spirit fulfills its rational goals. Thus the aims of Spirit are made real through the actions of the human will, revolving around its irrational passions, etc. And thus the rational Idea (i.e. cosmic reason) and the irrational passions of the individual are interwoven as the “warp and woof” of history, Hegel says. THE DIALECTIC We have seen that human beings can act irrationally, yet serve the rational goals of cosmic Spirit in so doing. Despite all appearances, therefore, there is an implicit rationality at work in history and in states. Does this entail a contradiction? Could this be a positive feature of states and their history? Here we must say a few words about the topic of Hegel’s dialectic. The term “dialectic” means (in Greek) discourse, debate, logical reasoning. Hegel adopted it as a technical term, to mean “logic” in a special sense. Aristotle’s logic avoids contradiction—so that if a conclusion contradicts its premises, you know that the argument is invalid. Hegel incorporates the element of contradiction into his discourse, and makes it play a constructive role there. Here is how it works: An idea or proposition (thesis) will readily suggest its opposite (antithesis), and the one will enter into the very definition of the other. (Think of the idea of slavery, and how the idea of freedom enters into its very meaning. Think of Rousseau’s ringing sentence: “Man is born free, and yet everywhere he is in chains.”) For Aristotle, a thesis and its antithesis cannot both be true; you must give up one or the other. Hegel says that two opposed statements can be true if each is only a partial truth. Indeed, each leads to its opposite because it is true in only a partial manner. When we see the partial nature of such truths, we are led to think of a higher truth which is more comprehensive and includes them both, as partial, so that the partial nature of these lower truths is overcome. (Thus we could respond to Rousseau by saying: “Yes, man is by nature free, but he himself freely creates the chains of his enslavement.”) This higher truth, bringing thesis and antithesis together, is a synthesis. The synthesis, in turn, will generate a further opposite. (“If man is free to create his chains, then he is free to break them. Why, then, does he remain unfree?”) Let us take note of the productivity of thought as it arises out of the clash of its implicit opposites. (It, too, is creating its chains, then breaking them.) The Danish physicist Niels Bohr said: “There are two sorts of truth, small truth and great truth; the opposite of a small truth is a falsehood; the opposite of a great truth is a further truth.” This remark is straight out of Hegel, except that Hegel was not content to let such a contradiction remain a contradiction; rather, he would take it to a higher synthesis. He might say: “The great truths and their opposites are in opposition only by virture of their compatibility.” From this, Hegel goes on to the remarkable view that this dialectical logic works in two separate but parallel areas, i.e. in thought and in history. Thus our thinking process is dialectical in character, creating its own counter-questions and their solutions, leading to further questions, etc. But Hegel goes on to say that history, too, is dialectical in the way it unfolds—for it is marked by conflicts and solutions, then further conflicts, and so on. Thus the process of history has the same implicit logic to it, the dialectic. Thus the main feature of the dialectic is that it is said to work in two spheres—the formal and the factual, i.e. logic and history. This means that if some events are linked logically, that is also the way they are linked in reality—with the same rigorous necessity characterizing both. But here we may want to ask: Is there not an antithesis between logic and history, as there is between pure theory and concrete reality? (This antithesis, as well, cries out to be resolved in a higher synthesis.) Thus in the field of pure theory we are confronted by an embarrassing series of dichotomies (e.g. freedom vs determinism, facts vs values, individual rights vs collective expectations, etc.)—and the only way these antitheses can begin to be resolved is by showing that their component “truths” are not final, that they are mere abstractions or merely piecemeal truths, and that they can be brought to unifying syntheses if we see them from a “higher” (unifying) perspective. From that perspective, both thesis and antithesis are “negated” at the same time that they are “lifted up” (as we shall see in the forthcoming example of the classless society). At all events we must grasp the parallelism of logic and history—an isomorphism that becomes feasible when we realize that the way our minds think things through (when we think in a thorough manner) is actually the way things do and must happen—again, because the same necessity is to be found in both spheres. It is this feature that enables us to declare, about any series of connected events, that whatever has happened had to happen. We can thereby presume to demonstrate the inevitability of (say) the Communist Revolution of 1917 by showing that it occurred with a logical necessity, both in its initial causes and its ultimate aims: Thus the opposed interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (as thesis vs antithesis) erupted into open conflict wherein class differences were eventually to be eliminated through the creation of a supposedly classless society (synthesis). So, if Marx and Engels are correct, and all history is the record of class conflict, then the synthesis that is the classless society negates social classes entirely at the same time that it elevates them into a higher synthesis—wherein the individual would see him- or herself as belonging to a higher entity, altogether outside class. It is an ironic fact about the dialectic process that a synthesis need not be final either, but that it too may create a further opposition in another antithesis, to be followed by yet another synthesis, and on and on. If, however, any historical synthesis is final, then it becomes the “end” of history—in the combined sense of its completion and its ultimate purpose (and, indeed, that is how the “classless society” was seen by Marxist theoreticians). We may conclude, therefore, that what drives history is its internal (i.e. formal) conflicts brought about by the one-sided “partiality” and inconclusiveness of its theses and antitheses, and that all this will come to an end in an all-embracing synthesis wherein the imperfections inherent in the one-sidednesses are altogether overcome. We must leave to the judgment of history the question as to whether this dialectical vision is for the most part correct. However that may be, the fact that so many historical events do involve conflict of some sort tends to make the dialectical explanation a useful model, though probably a reductive and simplistic one. Moreover, since the dialectical model is most often applied after the events, not predictively, its power to explain is limited because it is so arbitrary. Hegel never uses the dialectical model in this formal and puerile manner, but only for the purpose of arguing in support of the link between logic and history—a link that is somewhat reflected in the powerful statement in the Preface of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: “What is rational is actual; what is actual is rational” (p. 10). HISTORY AND THE COSMIC SPIRIT With the foregoing statement—important enough for Hegel to utter it in his Preface—the parallelism of thought and reality comes into full view. That link is possible because both belong to the realm of Spirit. The concept of “Spirit” (Geist) is so central to Hegel’s entire doctrine that if that concept falls, then his entire system falls with it. What can be said for it, or against it? To begin with, the concept of a World Spirit (Weltgeist) is the paradigm case of a “metaphysical” concept if ever there was one. And if we adopt the anti-metaphysical stance so typical of our age, we would have to say that any sentence with the word “Spirit” in it (as Hegel uses the term) cannot be verified, and so it must be rejected as a sentence devoid of meaning. Thus if I say, “Spirit acts through the world-historical individuals,” I cannot describe just how the connection works, or how Spirit makes them act as they do. Further, I cannot specify what observable conditions would make that sentence true or make it false. In the absence of such verifying or falsifying conditions, the sentence must be judged to be literally without meaning! (This is the general criticism leveled by Logical Positivists against all metaphysical utterances.) Moreover, if we were to adopt the Marxian standpoint, we would have to say that Hegel’s doctrine of Spirit (as a doctrine) is nothing but theology in disguise. Like the God of the Bible, Hegel’s “Spirit” acts in history, chooses certain nations to bring its (Spirit’s) message to the world, acts through certain individuals to manifest its will—and all the while keeps its (i.e. His) ultimate intentions hidden. (“God works in mysterious ways…” The sentence has the same meaning if its subject is “Spirit.”) And if Hegel is really talking theology in this metaphysical doctrine of his (as Marxist criticism alleges), and religion is the opium of the people (an opium employed for the purpose of keeping the lower classes in their place), then Hegel’s doctrine is on very shaky ground indeed. Yet there is no denying some important points in favor of Hegel’s doctrine of Spirit: (a) In view of history’s dynamic nature, it does seem to be moving toward a goal. Hegel speaks of the process of history as though it were an individual mind growing up and becoming aware of itself, a process of maturation in the world’s “mind.” We therefore need the concept of a “mind” or “Spirit” to give meaning to the process. Consider the probable mentality of (say) Neanderthals or other paleolithic primitives who might have come only as far as domesticating fire and the dog, and who might have had only the most rudimentary ideas about their surrounding world. They must have had only the vaguest reasonings regarding their own social organization. Their ability to function in the world, to explain it successfully and make use of its opportunities for providing food, clothing, shelter, health, social order, and security—all these would have been severely limited. Now contrast the picture (admittedly fanciful) of that crude mentality to that of a Freud, Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and it is obvious that we have come a long way in our mental evolution. Our capacity for handling abstract concepts has grown exponentially. Our ability to think our way through a complex series of issues in a sustained way, then to communicate and record the process—all this has far exceeded anything of which the primitive was capable. In what does the difference consist? If we say it is a difference in “culture”—what does that term amount to in its comparative/ explanatory power? Frued, Einstein, and Russell were the “products” of their culture— and they would hardly have survived in the Neanderthal world. The Neanderthals, in turn, no doubt had their characteristic ways of relating to the world, of using it and explaining it, etc. But this relativistic approach of ours (placing all “cultures” on an equal footing) gives us little; in and of itself, it does not tell us what the differences amount to. The difference between “us” and “them” is not simply in what we might call civilization. To account for the contrast, we must observe that the intervening process has been thrusting its way toward the goal of a more articulate level of self-consciousness—i.e. a more complex mentality or spirituality active in the world. The historical process makes sense only in the light of that increasing complexity in the mentalization or spiritualization of humanity. Thus we become human to the degree that we can think of ourselves as human. With this, the concept of a developing Spirit is indispensable if we are to understand the process as a whole. Otherwise the process itself (along with the contrast between ourselves and the primitives) remains an unexplored mystery. (b) Moreover, without that concept there would be an unexplained mystery in connection with cultural boundaries which some civilizations have marked out for themselves: Why do the Elizabethans have such sublime theater, but so little painting? Why do the Florentines produce such magnificent painting, but such negligible theater in comparison to the Elizabethans? How is is that the ancient Hebrews develop such an exalted conception of deity, at a level of thought calling for the most profound wisdom and insight—yet have nothing to say in regard to art as such, or democracy, or science? How could the ancient Greeks, that miraculous people, have had so much to contribute in art, science, and mathematics— and even have invented tragic drama, democracy, and philosophy—yet not have gone so far as the most elementary form of monotheism? Here, the concept of Spirit has considerable explanatory power. Hegel says that the characteristic differences between cultures can be explained by what he calls the “Spirit of a people” (Volksgeist). As he sees it, each people has a distinct contribution to make to the great stream of cultural history. A people will step up upon the stage of world history just once, will say its “lines,” and then step down. The Hebraic contribution of ethical monotheism is entirely distinctive in the Hebrews; no other people could have made that contribution to world culture, and that world culture is the richer for it. The Greek contribution of theater, democracy, science, and philosophy is (in its totality) similarly distinctive. Again, no other people could have made that combined contribution, and without it the world would be a bleak place indeed—with no civilization at all but only some form of stunted cultural existence. These contributions—the “lines” spoken by each of these peoples on the world stage—are not arbitrary or accidental, but are rather the necessary steps in the maturation of the world’s “mind.” At certain definite moments in time, this or that contribution had to be made—and the world’s “mind” chose one people or another to make it. This is precisely what demarcates one people or another. It is the Hebraic Volksgeist and the Greek Volksgeist that explain what these peoples are, thereby dispelling the mystery about their different capacities and characteristic achievements. At this level we are no longer dealing with a mysterious cosmic Spirit or world mind, but with Spirit in a more limited scope, the mind of a people or nation—and perhaps the concept’s explanatory force is all the greater for being limited. (c) There is a further argument to support the concept of Spirit, perhaps the most convincing of all: An inventory of the world’s “contents” must include not only all material objects and material particles; it must also include all thoughts, all actions, relations, concepts, meanings, etc. All these latter things must be differentiated from material objects, since their descriptions cannot be equated with material descriptions. They must therefore be consigned to a nonmaterial category, and this is Spirit. (We could just as well call it “Mind,” or the “mental,” and Hegel would accept these terms as equivalent, since Geist includes them all.) Spirit embraces the totality of human significations. And if we are to see that totality in dynamic terms, as evolving in history and historical time, then we must have a dynamic conception of Spirit itself, to comprehend all that is cultural and distinctly human. We ought to respond to the Marxian objection made earlier—to the effect that Hegel’s metaphysical doctrine or history is theology in disguise, that his philosophy is merely a version of religion. Thus Hegel’s statements about history should (in the view of Marx) be translatable into theological statements, and these translations should then reflect the true meaning of what Hegel has to say. Hegel, however, maintains the converse: rather than philosophy being religion in another form, religion is actually philosophy in another form. That is to say, religious assertions are trying to say what philosophy says, but they say it crudely, by means of imagery (human figures representing abstract concepts, and so on). Thus religious statements are inadequate expressions of deeper philosophic truth; and it is the philosophic truth (not the religious) which is ultimate—since philosophy is fully articulate and self-critical, while religion must express its insights in nothing better than imperfect verbalizations which must wait to get their truth by way of philosophy. Marx respected Hegel for his dialectical logic—the logic of conflict and its overcoming. He accepted Hegel’s view that history works dialectically (the Marxian class struggle being the best example of dialectical conflict in history). But Marx felt that Hegel was wrong about Spirit being the moving force in history; he believed he had cleared up one of Hegel’s errors, replacing Hegel’s “idealistic” doctrine with a “materialistic” view of history. (This occasioned Marx’s famous remark about his finding Hegel standing on his head, and setting him back on his feet.) It was Plekhanov who in 1891 coined the phrase “dialectical materialism” to characterize Marx’s view of history. Yet Marx’s “materialistic conception of history” involves a false materialism: the “material forces” which he believes move history are the economic factors embedded in human society; they are the products of human effort, not the effects of physical matter. Hegel calls them Objective Spirit—and they are the work of Spirit, after all, not of matter. Despite Marx’s never-ending attack on Hegel, the Marxian conception of history is Hegelian through and through. Thus, if there is any doubt about Hegel’s view that “ideas” move history, such doubt is readily dispelled by Marx’s own case, since the “material forces” he adduces are themselves the work of the “mental,” i.e. people’s ideas about history—and few “ideas” have moved history more decisively than have Marx’s doctrines. REASON IN THE WORLD We saw Hegel say, “What is rational is actual; what is actual is rational.” Here, again, we see the implicit parallelism of thought and history, united by a parallel dialectic. Elsewhere he says that when we approach the world with our own rationality, the world responds by showing us its rationality in return. (This is from his Introduction to the Philosophy of History, p. 14.) The rational aspect he shows us is the world’s dialectical structure— which we can comprehend because it parallels the dialectical structure of our thinking. Here, then, we may see a further side to the puzzling theme of Spirit in history: Instead of seeing “Spirit” as a mysterious metaphysical agency (and most critics of Hegel see him thinking in just this way), we might take “Spirit” to refer merely to the element of active reason in the world, the rational in the actual. Once we have this in full view, Hegel’s “metaphysical” utterances are tamed and demystified. In every way he can, he is trying to account for the existence of reason in the world. After we have acknowledged the obvious truism that the world and the mind are mutually reflective, mutually consistent, we can either marvel at the fact or shrug our shoulders at it. Hegel sees the consistency between world and mind, between the actual and the rational, as the most deeply problematic of truths. Einstein said: “The one incomprehensible fact about the world is that it is comprehensible.” For Hegel, that fact is not incomprehensible, and his aim is to show this to be so. He approaches the problem at a number of levels: Not only does he make it a metaphysical issue requiring some very complex lines of argument (as in the grand structure of his Encyclopaedia); he also examines the actual workings of reason in such different areas as art, religion, culture in general, history—and political life. Here, then (as I suggest), we see a less-than-metaphysical approach being taken by him. And as soon as we realize that this is so—namely, that not all his explanations are intended as metaphysical assertions but rather as statements closer to the world’s everyday ontology—then many of his “metaphysical” utterances (so called) become less daunting. In the Introduction to the Philosophy of History (p. 75), there is the oft-quoted statement: “World history in general is…the unfolding of Spirit in time, as nature is the unfolding of the Idea in space.” This statement is far less metaphysical-sounding when we realize that Hegel is merely contrasting the realm of mind and culture with that of physical nature. Each has its source in a rational process, Hegel is saying. HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT Much of the tradition of political thought rests on two tenets that are sometimes made explicit, but are more often left tacit. These are: The human being is by nature a social animal. The human being is by nature a rational animal. Political theory, throughout its variegated course, has tried to prove the mutual compatibility of these two statements—although there have been thinkers, such as Nietzsche, who have sought to demonstrate how incompatible these are, so that our social inclination is by no means a rational one. If they are compatible, then we may expect human society to exhibit the same rationality that typifies all other human contrivances and constructions; if they are not compatible, then there is no basis for expecting society (or anything else that is human) to display anything like a rational aspect. The problem goes back to a wider controversy in ancient Greek philosophy, as to whether the laws are the product of nature or of convention: Are social values entirely random, arbitrary—and irrational? For Nietzsche, there is nothing in social life or custom that can be given a fully rational and intellectually satisfying justification. (In one of his examples, he speaks of a culture in which the act of scraping ice off one’s boots with a knife is punishable by death— and he seems to be saying that there is no socially sanctioned act anywhere that does any better in its justification.) On the other hand, we have had a host of thinkers who regard the state as a rational device specifically created (by rational and naturally social creatures) to serve one or more of our basic social purposes: to promote peace and social order; to protect life and property; to determine and secure natural rights; to insure that a people will have a unifying voice; to make possible the transmission of inherited values from one generation to the next; to make it possible for the wisest to rule, etc. Whatever these various theories argue for, they share an emphasis on the purposiveness and rationality of societal life. Is it at all rational and sensible for individuals to enter into social ties with others? Presumably, we enter into contractual arrangements with one another for one rational end or another. Having done so, is it rational and sensible for us to try to give further order to our societal interrelations through the application of reason? Or is all this speculation about the social interactions of ourselves as primordial humans merely an idle exercise? Of course, like Nietzsche, we may express no confidence at all in the reasonableness of human institutions and arrangements. Where Nietzsche is at the nadir of trust in regard to such institutions, Hegel is at the zenith—as reflected in the motto we have been citing about the rational and the actual. Society, as Aristotle says, begins with the process of satisfying the needs of life, although its ultimate aim is the pursuit of the good life. Again, how rational are these as goals, and how rational is the aim of achieving them? We might go so far as to conceive of certain rights, to which all humans may lay claim; we may even speak of such rights as parts of self-evident truths, i.e. as standing to reason. But it is no secret that the theoretical foundations of these rights have been roundly attacked over the centuries. (Can an attack on what is “self-evident” avoid self-contradiction?) Accordingly, we may state one of the challenges confronting Hegel as follows: to decline the use of “natural rights” as a basis for a theory of statehood; yet to maintain the emphasis on the rationality of the state. There are further challenges: Throughout his Preface, Hegel argues against the uncritical acceptance of social convention and entrenched values. What is to be decisive is not convention but truth. We may or may not wish to go along with him in his search for a basis in objectivity for such truth. As for its other criteria we must reiterate his motto, since it tells us that only what is fully rational is actualized in the world, and only the fully actual is transparently rational. All this reminds us that we must avoid convention as a basis for argument, along with the intellectual fashion of the moment, and especially the individual conscience. All these are now seen as impediments in the search for truth, its objectivity and rationality. All this may well be a sensible goal in, say, logic or mathematics. In political theory, moored as it is in the concrete life of society and its values, we can hardly avoid our individual feelings and points of view. Can we be altogether free of perspectives that have become historically ingrained? Hegel insists that we must somehow put these things behind us if we are to have any hope of attaining truth and rationality. Hegel goes so far as to suggest that Plato drew his Republic from the values implicit in Greek ethical life. What is the status of that “actuality”? In Hegel’s motto, the German word that is translated as “actual” is wirklich. With this, he does not mean that just any actuality is rational— and certainly not the false and ephemeral “actuality” we encounter in political life. Rather, wirklich refers to the union of existence and essence—as when we speak of a “real” athlete, one who fulfills the essence of what it means to be an athlete. Accordingly, wirklich means “real” (or actual), “true,” “genuine,” etc. And therefore Hegel’s “science of the state” (i.e. of the rational/ actual state) is not a study of this or that example of statehood, but of the state that perfectly fulfills the functioning ideal. Up to this point we can hardly have been enlightened as to what all this means. Yet when we do grasp this, the challenge that faces us is “to apprehend in the show of the temporal and transient the substance which is immanent and the eternal which is present” (p. 10). The state’s rationality and its actualization as such emerge together. Thus, a further challenge confronting Hegel is “to apprehend and portray the state as something inherently rational” (p. 11). This sounds as though he is trying to set up an ideal of the state as it ought to be (à la Plato). But no, it is the state as it is which is to be united with its essence, as the actuality. As he tells us: “To comprehend what is, this is the task of philosophy, because what is, is reason.” To apprehend the eternal in what is transitory. But most emphatically, this does not involve setting up a standard of perfection with the purpose of getting us to live up to it. Instead, there is a hint of resignation when Hegel admits that the aim of philosophy is not to change the world, but only to apprehend our own time by way of thought (again, the synthesis of the rational and the actual). As for changing the world, wisdom makes its appearance only at the end of an era, when things can no longer be changed but only understood. As he famously says: “The owl of Minerva takes to flight only in the oncoming dusk.” HEGEL’S INTRODUCTION3 We have been speaking of history as an evolutionary process. That process, however, is not entirely value-neutral. Instead, Hegel sees it as involving (a) the concept of right, and (b) its actualization through time, in a transition from merely “abstract” right to “concrete” right, fully realized. Consider, for example, such concepts as these: “selfhood,” “humanity,” “property,” “obligation,” and so on. In some societies these could be mere concepts, with an application that is nothing more than a matter of form or ritual; in other societies, these concepts might be more fully articulated, with a content that can be given words as well as a concrete expression in societal life. On a broader scale, we may contrast an arid ideology (powerful though it may be) against a set of political tenets whose meaning is made fully verbal and rational. This transition, then, is what occurs (or should occur) in any society in the course of time. It is a transition to a stage of cultural life wherein mind is consciously applied, a transition to something more fully rational and actual in regard to the element of right. We must not identify this with the values held by any particular society (whose existence is in any case contingent and variable). Nor ought we to link “reason” to any social values expressed as positive law in this or that place. Rather, we must think of a universal, or norm, applied to particular cases in law, but reflecting the essential Geist of a people (par. 3). Above all else, it is the essence of right that we are seeking: its basis is Spirit which is given expression as the will of a people. Since the will is free, as Hegel explains, freedom is both the substance of right and its goal. Indeed, “the system of right is the realm of freedom made actual, the world of mind brought forth out of itself like a second nature” (par. 4). Yet although the process is free, it is in search of determination. This is provided by its dialectical counterpart. The free will, taken to an extreme in politics, ignores all restraints. As a result it rises to pure destructiveness, to eliminate all individuals who might pose some sort of a threat to it, and thus turning to destroy the social order itself. Hegel is obviously thinking of the French Revolution in this regard; but these words of his are ominous for our own time as well— with all the abundant examples of murderous autocracies operating destructively in the name of “freedom,” equality, or whatever (as abstract ideas). This is one of the most penetrating insights Hegel offers: namely, that the abstract idea is not merely one-sided and empty of content; but that it is necessarily destructive, in that its partiality and one-sidedness— mistaken as the whole truth—must become destructive of society as a whole, as a result of the violence inhering in the dialectic itself. There are numerous ways whereby this may occur: The will, being free, is indeterminate; it is the ego that seeks to give itself some determinate content. In so doing, it turns back into itself; it becomes the reflection of itself, by reflecting on its own reflection—and this is its universality, its infinity, its self-determination, and also its absoluteness (par. 7). Above all, its self-relatedness is its freedom. And in that freedom from external factors, it may well become politically autistic and violent; or it may become rational. We might wonder whether Hegel is thinking here in terms of the will of the individual or the will of a people. Most likely, he is deliberately conflating the two levels of discourse, so that the individual will can be taken as a metaphor for the social will. Once he has engaged that metaphor, he can come to analogous conclusions about a social “mind”— attaining its freedom, self-determination, and maturity on the basis of how an individual undergoes the same process. From here it is an easy step to conclude that just as the individual ego is autonomous, so the social “mind” can claim a similar degree of autonomy, even an absolute authority over its own “selfhood.” Hegel often decried the use of analogy in philosophical argument; he preferred direct (non-analogical) discourse, whereby we say exactly what we mean, and nothing else. Yet the fact is that he himself employs analogies—and he does so in support of his most crucial points (the twofold “mind” being one such analogy, among others), and this must cast much of what he says into doubt, since this “double-speak” is deliberately ambiguous on this score. Thus, while leaving the question open as to whether he is speaking of the will of an individual person or the will of a people, he can say: “It is not until it has itself as its object that the will is for itself what it is in itself” (par. 10). Only in its self-awareness does the will, or ego, attain its essence. But just whose will is this—that of the individual person or that of society? This question is not addressed, since Hegel prefers to leave the ambiguity in place. Shortly thereafter (par. 13), he speaks of the individual will coming to its resolutions; but as individual it is a will only in form, and is therefore abstract. It is in the individual will that we see the dialectic of choice and resolution combining to form contradictions in the ego, an ego therefore divided against itself. This is surely a destabilizing factor when it occurs in the social “mind,” which sees these differences of will as arbitrary, subjective, and threatening; they are therefore uprooted as much as possible. With this remark, Hegel seems to damn all dissent in society, as well as all diversity (par. 19). We get the same result by extending his metaphor: a psyche divided is unhealthy in the individual, and is made healthy by its integration; in the social “psyche” integration is wholesome, a people speaking with one voice, in a unity of social purpose. Such integration ought therefore to be fostered as the primary social goal. What is most important is to get the will away from its abstractness, so that it becomes self-relating and self-determining, thereby achieving its freedom, universality, and infinitude (as we have seen). This, then, is its truth (pars 21–3). By turning back into itself, the will is able (in its resulting indeterminacy) to turn outward and project itself into the world, which it shapes according to that will. This defines the progression in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right-proceeding from the abstractness of its concepts to their external embodiment, thence back into the will and its freedom, it is then turned outward once more, but now energized by its freedom. Having turned outward, the will is made objective in a shared system of morals, to be followed by what he calls “Ethical Life” (par. 33). This will undergo a dialectic of its own. The book is therefore divided into three main sections: “Abstract Right,” “Morality,” and “Ethical Life.” ABSTRACT RIGHT John Locke, in his Second Treatise of Government, explains how rights evolve, and he uses the right of property as the paradigm of all other rights: Thus, a man in the “state of nature,” wherein no one owns anything, mixes his bodily labor with nature (say, by picking fruit off a tree). The resulting product of this mixture is rightfully his. A similar argument holds for all other rights: they, too, are extensions of one’s bodily self, expressions of one’s will. In this way, the rights to “life, liberty, and estate” are established. Governments are specifically set up for the purpose of safeguarding those rights. Here we can think of a variety of philosophic approaches describing the basic formation of the state as a primordial instrument for securing property and personal safety. Obviously, we do not leave it at that—as though, with security achieved, the state has completed its task. Rather, the state persists beyond that task; there are further purposes for it. Moreover, the right which is secured by the primordial state is merely an “abstract” right—namely, a formal, less-than-real right. This is because there can be no “right” to property prior to the establishing of a government and a system of ownership, and therefore no rights which a government is subsequently meant to protect. What Hegel must do, therefore, is to show that the “abstract” right is an inadequate and incomplete picture of rights and their justifications. The essence of what it is to be a person involves the notion of self271 relatedness. Selfhood is a relation in which a self relates itself to itself. This powerful paradox is derived from Schelling. (It is a paradox because a relation relates one term to another that is pre-existing; and yet, in Schelling’s terms, the self does not pre-exist for a self to relate to, but only begins to exist as a result of the relation itself.) Hegel reiterates this point by saying: “I am simply and solely self-relation” (par. 35). Only by virtue of my relation to my self, which logically should already exist, do I then begin to exist as a self. Hegel needs this paradox, this antithesis, as a basis for his subsequent dialectic. On the other hand, Locke’s exposition is straightforward, involving a progression from a state of nature, to labor, to property, to ownership, to a civil state which protects property, etc. Hegel goes much deeper, to the ego which originates labor and which owns; yet that ego is paradoxical, since it is not the originator but the result of its acts of will. Locke’s picture is that of the rational primitive who discovers that there are things to be gotten through labor, and that these things must be protected by some human invention; the state is that invention. There is nothing problematic about the insight of this primitive individual. Hegel’s dialectic, however, is not driven by anything so straightforward. Rather, Hegel’s dialectic is driven by paradoxicality: it is the ego itself, in its selfrelatedness, that is the engine of the dialectic. My self-relatedness is what gives me my sense of self, my sense of being complete in myself. It is a loop by means of which I have turned inward; that turn has a dimension of universality, for in turning back into myself I see what all human beings are. I am, therefore, an individual and at the same time a universal. I am, so to say, one of a kind—and one and a kind, a unit-class, solo yet complete. Yet that very sense of self is incomplete, since my self begins to emerge only from my relation to the self which is also the product of my selfrelation. Thus I would have an abstract right if I were a Lockean manager of my external world. But then my selfhood would still be far from established. My act of establishing it, now, is what propels my thoughts and rights in their paradoxicality. Let us examine the dialectics of this. Social contract theorists—such as Hobbes and Locke—have portrayed a “state of nature” with human occupants. Each of these is a fully formed ego, with a will which has all of the attributes of the humans we know. Such a primordial ego has a will which is free and universal (universal in the sense of representing all humanity). Hobbes and Locke regard their protagonist as psychologically complete, endowed with the various personal characteristics shared by the rest of us (although Hobbes and Locke differ diametrically in regard to what those “common” characteristics are). Hegel, on the other hand, regards that picture of the primal human as incomplete: Rousseau introduced the notion of that human as but half-human; Hobbes’s and Locke’s man is someone we would readily recognize; Hegel sees this creature as incomplete since he will only begin to define himself through his encounter(s) with others. Prior to such encounter(s), therefore, the self is not yet in the process of self-formation, let alone the fully formed and recognizable product of that process. That self is abstract, so far. As Hegel says: “The universality of this consciously free will is abstract universality, the self-conscious but otherwise contentless and simple relation of itself to itself” (par. 35). Thus this is not a fully formed individual, but a case of bare self-relatedness, a purely formal narcissism—an abstraction. From this perspective, it follows that such “rights” as are based on such an abstraction must be merely abstract rights as well. It may be that “in my finitude I know myself as something infinite, universal, and free,” but these are still a “contentless” infinitude, universality, and freedom—i.e. not concretely real, but entirely abstract. On the other hand, it is the very abstractness of these features that enables me to connect myself to others: for in acknowledging my personhood as the basis of my rights (however abstract that personhood and those rights), I grasp my link to others on the same basis. Thus, Hobbes and Locke see my need for personal security as my reason for entering into social relations; Hegel sees those relations emerging from a recognition of others as beings similar to myself. For this purpose he enunciates something like a Kantian imperative: “Be a person and respect others as persons” (par. 36). That is the basis of universality, to be sure. Yet that personhood is incomplete as long as it does not include my recognition of whatever it is that makes me a particular individual and unique. Over against the background of the universal, therefore, I become particularized. Over against the objectivity of the others who are there, I emerge as subjective (although this contradicts my own universality). Out of this struggle between the universal and the individual, and between the objective and the subjective, my own personality evolves (par. 39). There are rights which I attach to myself on a subjective (i.e. infantile) basis: The world is my world, as Wittgenstein says. When I emerge out of my infantile solipsism, my rights take on an objective character, recognized by me as inherent in my very personhood. When I enter into a contract with another person, I implicitly recognize him or her qua person, and I am thus recognized in turn. The transfer of property from one to another serves as the medium of personhood. Let us note how far we have come: i.e. from the rather primitive picture offered by Hobbes and Locke, of self-interested individuals desirous of securing what they have wrested from nature, to a far more ephemeral image of human beings engaged in the far more subtle activity of self-recognition, and from that recognition giving form to selfhood and ego, both in personal and societal terms. The ego must turn its attention outward, by externalizing the self in some property. But the paradoxical feature of such a thing is that it is both an extension of the self, yet is separable from the self, both different from the self, yet the same. Moreover, a piece of property may be material and inert, and yet the very vehicle of selfhood. “A person has as this substantive end the right of putting his will into any and every thing…thereby making it his,” Hegel says (par. 44). We may go even further and say that not only does a piece of property become his, it becomes him. Man puts himself, his will, into a thing -but, in turn, the thing may come to encompass his very self. Property is thus the embodiment of personality, involving not only my possession of property but also the recognition of it, as mine, by others (par. 51). This entails their recognition of my will in it. This is so fundamental a feature of ownership that we may say that the fact that a thing is recognized as mine makes the thing take on a character that is external to it. There are dialectical elements in all this as well, and these elements, in their very contradictoriness, actually propel the dialectic into creating a social fabric. Thus the fact that a thing is mine (dependent on me) and also it (an object that is independent of me) can be said to raise difficulties which only a society can be called upon to resolve. This piece of earth is mine, although it exists as something on its own; but the opposite is also true, that its being mine becomes an external feature of the object. (Thus slavery, the ownership of a “living chattel,” had to be sanctified by society; but when the time came for the abolition of slavery as an institution, only society could be expected to undertake that task.) Similar contradictions obtain with regard to my body as both mine and it; and the social fabric both sustains and dissolves this contradiction. Such contradictions account for the manysided ambiguity in the use of terms such as “my body,” “my person,” “my self.” In general, the ambiguities arise in the dialectics of those terms as reflecting the selfhood of the user. (Do I warm my “self” at the fire?) With property, then, a fabric of recognitions emerges. That is to say, we may see society evolving around the mutual recognition of the property right. We might even say that Hegel regards property as the first step away from “abstract right” and into the creation of a social fabric, with “rights” moving in the direction of concreteness. In discussing the alienation of property, i.e. giving it into the hands of another person, I can also alienate my time, my creativity or ability, etc. But Hegel points out—as Marx does in the section on alienated labor in his Paris Manuscripts of 1844—that with this I am also alienating “the substance of my being…my personality” (par. 67). My product may cease to be strictly mine if someone copies what I have made, and uses it to express their own personality. We may also wonder whether, having put my will or ego into a thing, I must devalue myself when my product drops in value. Since property involves a tacit agreement between the owner and all others (i.e. to respect the right of the owner), we may regard that relation as implicitly contractual. Now, whether I hold on to my property (and others respect it as such) or I do alienate it by transferring it to someone else, there is a conjunction of wills (for example, in regard to the sale price). Thus we have a conjunction of wills, but also a separation of wills, since each of us is out to serve our own interest by means of the transaction. Once again, we see property and the property relation leading both to a social configuration and to selfhood. Although we have made mention of Hobbes and Locke, we are by no means proposing to consider Hegel as another social-contract theorist. Hegel does not speak of a social contract as anything like the formative nexus of society, the way they do. For him, society is based on a fabric of mutual recognition—and this is psychological and self-relating, rather than overtly contractual. A contract is therefore a reflection of such recognition, not the genesis of it. When Hegel does discuss the meaning of a contract, he is speaking quite literally of the way contractual relations actually function in a social setting; he is decidedly not speaking in a metaphorical sense of a social “contract” arranged prior to the formation of society and therefore the instrument of its formation. His primary aim is to examine the working of the wills of contracting parties. Thus, in the case of a contract for a sale or exchange, he says, value passes in both directions: the seller alienates their property, while the buyer appropriates it and (say) exchanges value for it. Value, therefore, remains as a constant throughout—always provided that there is a concurrence of wills: the seller asking a certain sum, the buyer agreeing to pay that sum (pars 76, 77). The agreement of the two parties, the legality of their contract, the very notion of right—all these things are negated when the contract is broken or is fraudulent. Thus there is the appearance of legality and formal Tightness—and obviously there could be no appearance of right without the implied background-of Tightness, legality, etc. This Tightness is reasserted if the fraud is challenged as fraud, etc. (pars 82, 83). What we see here is a further stage in Hegel’s dialectic of society: a contract requires the concurrence of wills; one of those wills is now challenged, and the challenger asserts a claim on the basis of implicit right—which now becomes explicit—and thus may lead to a clash of rights. This clash is adjudicated on the basis of right, i.e. in the question as to who has the right to the property at issue. When the right is challenged, even when it is negated altogether, the right is in some way asserted, implicitly or explicitly. This being so, the criminal must be regarded as acting inside the fabric of right, even when he or she violates the right of another (indeed, especially so). Here, Hegel brings out a strange result of this dialectic: namely, that the penalty which is meted out to the criminal is implicitly his will, an embodiment of his freedom, his right, even a right established with the criminal himself, Hegel says, so that the criminal’s punishment is his act: “his action is the action of a rational being…[thus] the criminal has laid down a law which he explicitly recognized in his action and under which he should be brought as under his right” (par. 100). In crime, there is a conflict between a universal law (or universal will) which is implicit and a single will (that of the offender) which is explicitly independent. With punishment, the injury done is negated, the law is asserted, and the offender’s freedom is secured (that is, in their having determined the law which asks for their punishment). MORALITY We have offered some observations about consciousness becoming selfconscious, turning back into itself. This self-consciousness is the key to a society’s freedom and autonomy; and it is therefore the key to its morality as well. We might wish to say, superficially, that morality is the product of a society setting up rules for the behavior of its members. This need not necessarily be a self-conscious process. Indeed, we might compare societies for the degree of self-consciousness involved in their choice of values: some societies have managed to develop a set of mores without involving much thought in the process; others more so. But at its best—when a society is entirely conscious of what it is doing, so that it becomes selfreflecting, and examines its values in the light of other values, deeper ones, in an effort at making such values consistent and coherent—then such a society is closest to being fully in control of itself and of its destiny as it exercises its freedom in choosing the values by which it will live. Let us recall Hegel saying that the self-consciousness of a culture is the goal of history, and this is its freedom. Thus the maturity associated with such freedom is the product of the will which has turned back into itself. In the individual person, such self-reflection is what makes that person the subject of their own will; the same holds true for a culture when it becomes the subject of its will (par. 105). It is a striking metaphor— whereby social change is presented as a maturation of the individual—yet it is but a metaphor, and thus it has its characteristic weaknesses. Hegel persists in using it—as when, in his Philosophy of History, he speaks of a society as though it were an individual growing up, becoming responsible, and so on. The metaphor is used to its strongest effect in regard to morality. Now, we are not considering the growth of morality from primitive society to complex ones; nor is Hegel giving us a picture of primitive humans in action (as Hobbes and Locke do). Yet Hegel does concern himself with the intrinsic nature of moral values as such; and therefore he must concern himself with the question of how moral values as such; and therefore he must concern himself with the question of how moral values come into being (as though there were human beings engaged in creating values, à la Hobbes and Locke). The point may be clarified methodologically: The analysis of moral values exposes their component elements; with these elements in view we may see how they fit together—as though someone had actually put them together, actually synthesized them. This returns us to the metaphor of the maturing individual, standing for the social mind in its development. It is a metaphor that prevails throughout Hegel’s writing, even if he does not make that metaphor explicit at all points. Thus we can regard Hegel’s account of morality as genetic, i.e. concerned with the origin of values in society (and in this respect he does resemble Hobbes and Locke, though only in an abstract and formal sense). A further extension of the metaphor is reflected in Hegel’s way of regarding morality as the creation of will: he addresses this concept as though it were the will of an individual person, although it is something like an abstract social will that is meant. This adds a further dimension to the dialectic of all this: namely, in that the will is something subjective, within the mentality of the individual, and yet its product is objective, in that it is given expression in the outer world of social values. Hegel can speak of the “self-determination of the will” in its subjective character (par. 107), yet he can pit against it the objectivity of the social will (par. 109). It is the characteristic strategy of Hegel’s, after setting up a dichotomy, to show the two sides to be identical. In the case of the subjectivity/objectivity dichotomy, this is precisely what he does when he speaks of the objectification of subjectivity. Each of us absorbs social values in our individual process of enculturation, and each of us makes those values private ones, as though each of us had created them for ourselves. It is in this light that we may say that there is therefore a private and a public will at work; it is my will at work, yet it is identical to the will of others (par. 112). Further dichotomies are reflected in the fact that the subjectivity/ objectivity stand-off is externalized (and thus is resolved) in activity, as well as in the fact that the values of the individual are those of the universal, i.e. the intention behind the action (par. 119). In transactions between individuals, it is the shared meaning of the universal that makes mutual understanding possible. The aim of all action is to produce good, or benefit—again, understood in universal terms. There can be benefit without right, or right without benefit—but neither of these is good (par. 130). Only in their combination is good realized. The subjective will sees its object(s) as good, and this is its prerogative, i.e. to judge its object(s) as being right or wrong, good or ill, legal or illegal, etc. (par. 132). But in all this the process of judging is still rather abstract, as Hegel suggests. All this has the Kantian caste of universalizability—down to the element of duty (and it would be more Kantian still, if not for the genetic dimension of Hegel’s account). Thus the objective side is eventually united with subjective knowing, so that the subjective is given expression in ethical life, where the abstractness of mere contentless morality is overcome (par. 137). At this stage, morality subsists in good intentions alone, and the good heart is taken to justify all (p. 99). Yet the objective good is lacking here. As for the identity of the two terms of the dichotomy, it is the identity of objective good with the subjective will that makes for concreteness. Hegel says that the identity of the two is the “truth” of each, and as such it constitutes the Ethical Life. ETHICAL LIFE From what we have seen of the Morality discussion, the component values were not yet complete. True, there was the element of universality, i.e. the humanity to which we all belong and which we share as humans. But this was still abstract as a value-element and had not yet been given concreteness in a social form. The thrust of Hegel’s discussion, hereafter, will be to show that our moral values are a function of our societal arrangement, and of the way(s) our societal life is actually run. Hegel will turn his attention to the most rudimentary form of societal life—the family—to show what values are implicit in it and, further, what values can be expected to emerge from it. Then he will go on to discuss civil society, to show some of the workings of the law and its management of justice. And finally, there will be an extended discussion of the state—as the highest (i.e. the most moral) operation of our shared life. With Ethical Life, we enter into the institutional aspect of societal life. This may suggest the unconscious organic side; yet in Hegel’s view it is that part of societal life reflecting self-conscious knowing and willing— i.e. freedom. There are values made concrete as an “objective ethical order”—with such objectivity transcending both the subjectivity of the individual and the mutability of social mores (par. 144). Indeed, the objectivity of these values exceeds (for the individual) the “authority” of nature. From the very outset, the individual is in a secondary position vis-à-vis these life-regulating values, “as accidents to a substance” (par. 145). And yet, this ethical “substance” is not something external or alien to us, since it is the very element of our spirituality, amounting to a “second nature.” As he says: “It is mind living and present as a world, and the substance of mind thus exists now for the first time as mind” (par. 151). This is objectified in institutions such as the family and the nation. It is here that rights and duties become reciprocal, so that having the one entails having the other. The family is held together by bonds of love, despite the fact that (as a proto-state) its characteristic function is the exercise of power. In this light, the individual exists not as a totally independent entity but as a member (par. 158). This is why we may see the family as a state in embryonic form. History is a process of the growth of freedom, the story of freedom (as we have seen). Hegel can therefore see each stage as mirroring the whole: just as marriage begins with the physical aspect and proceeds to the affirmation of love, so the cosmic process as a whole involves the transition from nature to Spirit. For Hegel, then, we may say that any and every segment of the historical process is the emblem for the entirety: at first, in the opposition between nature and Spirit; then in the transition from the individuality of the two persons to their unity as one (and in the process overcoming the transiency of love). Monogamy is the essence of marriage, Hegel says, since it entails the total absorption of the individuals in the ethical bond. Thus the family itself becomes an “individual”—one whose personality is constituted by property (par. 169). This is also the basis for setting up further families in the newer generations. Just as the offspring become independent individuals, so do the new families, making their own transition from particularity to universality (par. 181). This transition culminates in civil society, wherein the ethical life of the family is absorbed in a broader context. We may wish to find that broader context in the state, and to regard the state in terms of some of its services, such as water supply, the post, etc. For Hegel, all these necessary functions come under the heading of civil society. This is a subordinate classification, which allows Hegel to reserve the state for higher purposes: to serve as the vehicle of history, the medium of Spirit, etc. In the most basic terms, civil society is a communal arrangement for the mutual satisfaction of our fundamental needs. An interesting question, therefore, asks what social values are implicitly attached to that arrangement: Does it lead us to give conscious acknowledgment to our interdependence, so that we actually come to regard society in that way? If so, then the mere understanding is at work: i.e. we grasp the meaning of civil society in its particularity, whereby individuals are concerned with their private interests alone. On the other hand, to grasp the essence of the state, we must appeal to reason, which is in touch with universality. In regard to the personal needs satisfied by civil society, mere understanding will suffice, with its focus on subjectivity and particularity. Civil society can therefore be regarded as a system of needs; the state, as we shall see, goes far beyond this. To illuminate the system of needs (and their satisfaction) Hegel speaks of class organization in civil society: \there is the agricultural class, the business class, and the universal class (i.e. the civil servants concerned with the needs of society at large). Through some measure of self-identification with the interests of the community, a morality is built up wherein one’s wider responsibility is expressed, but where the closest one comes to a universality of interests is in the right to property. The abstract right becomes objectified when we become conscious of its objectification. It becomes binding in our recognition of it as law. Obviously this cannot be enough: there are the ties established by positive law in regard to property in civil society; but there also are the ethical ties of the heart, of love and trust (par. 213). Since these ties touch us at the most private level, morals cannot be a matter of legislation. Laws do comprise a system—and, ideally, we ought to be able to expect such a system to fulfill the requirements of any system, namely, that the totality ought to exhibit consistency, coherence, and completeness. All this would come to a test when the universal principles are applied to particular individuals and cases. Here, too, law becomes objectified in our recognition of its objectification—primarily in regard to property and the infringement of the rights connected to it (par. 218). When a crime is committed, it is the universal that is being injured, and when the law exacts its vengeance it goes beyond vengeance in the personal sense which is subjective and contingent. In punishment, an offense is annulled, the law is reconciled with itself. Accordingly, we may see in this an elevation of values to an objective and universal sense—a further reflection of the historical evolution of Spirit (par. 220). The fact that the parties to a legal case have certain express rights, and that every legal case is established on the basis of argument and proof, also reflects the evolution of spirituality by way of the introduction of reason into public life. In this way, that public life is increasingly moralized—notwithstanding the fact that the legal process can turn into lethal formalities. Above all, the fact that a judge applies a universal standard to a single case reflects the process of the rational moralization of society as a whole (par. 225). (Thus we may say that the development of positive law is what enables us, by its example, to think in universal terms and thus to apply the thinking appropriate to, say, the categorical imperative.) From all this, we might hastily conclude that all social progress is a moralizing process. We have pointed to some clear examples in this regard. Thus, in pointing to some rudimentary forms of social existence, Hegel speaks of the family as the “first ethical root of the state” (par. 255). The continuity is fundamentally ethical. Civil society can be seen as largely efficacious in providing for society’s basic needs. But Hegel also points to some inevitable weaknesses associated with civil society; and he is not far from Marx in this criticism—except for the difference that Hegel does not trace these weaknesses to capitalist production but to civil society itself. Thus there is poverty, massive unemployment, illiteracy, a disparate distribution of wealth, economic imperialism and the search for foreign markets, colonialism, etc. (pars 244–8)—ills which he includes under the rubric of “this inner dialectic of civil society” (par. 246). Where Marx, however, would condemn the source (capitalism) for its results, Hegel merely sees them as by-products of the larger framework which is civil society. But where Marx sees that source as dissolvable in revolution—so that an industrial society would be made more moral by the removal of capitalism’s antisocial and destructive effects on human beings—Hegel goes back to civil society and its broader perspective of the role of power. The primary purpose of public authority, he says, is “to actualize and maintain the universal contained within the particularity of civil society” (par. 249). A further difference, therefore, is that Marx sees true morality emerging in the negating of capitalism’s effects, while Hegel sees morality emerging from the social and legal functioning of civil society itself—in its lawlike effect of universalizing human judgment within a framework of law. THE STATE All of Hegel’s prior discussion has been leading up to his treatment of the state; and indeed, this is the culmination of his Philosophy of Right. But here a caution must be noted: the state is the continuation of civil society, yet it is different from it. (This tactic is consistent with his dialectic, where two adjacent areas form a continuum or identity by virtue of their difference from one another, and differ by virtue of their being identical.) Thus civil society is a collection of atomic individuals, each motivated by a private interest that excludes the interests of others; the state, on the other hand, is a collective entity wherein individuals fulfill their separate interests by merging them into the interests of the whole (much like the ideal of the Greek polis). The libertarian tradition of Anglo-American thinking sees the individual as the most fundamental political entity; with this in mind, the state is seen as a device for serving the interests of individuals—and therefore the main stress is placed on the limits to be imposed on state power. Hegel, on the other hand, comes from a holistic tradition wherein state power is irreducible to the interests of individuals. The state is a higher entity—even something approaching the mystical—into which the goals of individual persons are to be dissolved. Let us recall Rousseau, who gives emphasis to a volonté générale, a consensus wherein all voices share; the libertarian tradition, on the other hand, must allow for a dissensus among its individual citizens. As for the continuity between civil society and the state, this is to be seen in the different moral purposes to be served by each: i.e. the purposes of the individual as against those of the collective. Both are systems of value, existing tacitly in custom, and explicitly in the ideal of a rational self-consciousness. As Hegel says: The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea. It is ethical mind qua the substantial will manifested and revealed to itself, knowing and thinking itself, accomplishing what it knows and in so far as it knows it. The state exists immediately in custom, mediately in individual self-consciousness, knowledge, and activity, while selfconsciousness— in virtue of its sentiment towards the state—finds in the state, as its essence and the end and product of its activity, its substantive freedom. (par. 257) Presumably, since all this is reflective of a process toward rationality, such rational self-consciousness is not in the state’s present, but only in its idealized future. And only when its implicit aim is fully realized—i.e. as “the actuality of the substantial will which it possesses in the particular self-consciousness once that consciousness has been raised to consciousness of its universality”—only then does the state exercise a supreme right over the individual. In other words, the fully realized aim is the right of the state qua Plato’s Republic (nothing less), i.e. the state as “mind objectified” (par. 258). It is also freedom objectified in selflegislating consciousness, and thus closer to Kant’s ethic. At this point, the question that must present itself is this: How can a Platonic universal or a Kantian imperative, although fully rationalized, necessarily entail any socio-political modes common to a perfect state as such? In an Addition to par. 258, Hegel declares: The state in and by itself is the ethical whole, the actualization of freedom; and it is an absolute end of reason that freedom should be actual. The state is mind on earth…consciously realizing itself there…. Only when it is present in consciousness, when it knows itself as a really existent object, is it the state…. The march of God in the world, that is what the state is. The basis of the state is the power of reason actualizing itself as will…. In considering the Idea of the state, we must not have our eyes on particular states…. Instead we must consider the Idea, this actual God, by itself…. The state is no ideal work of art, it stands on earth and so in the sphere of caprice, chance and error, and bad behaviour may disfigure it in many respects. But the ugliest of men, or a criminal…is still always a living man. The affirmative, life, subsists despite his defects. (Addition, p. 279) With this, we ought to stress the point that Hegel’s Platonic/Kantian dimension is no piece of idle metaphysical theorizing; rather, it calls for a fully concrete realization of the essence of political life. Up to now, what Hegel has said in regard to the state and its supremacy over all other interests has not seemed to contradict the widespread prejudice concerning his supposed sympathy for the totalitarian state. The point is, however, that Hegel does not leave it at that; instead, he clearly argues in favor of (a) the rule of law, (b) the fulfillment of the individual’s goals through the political freedom that is guaranteed to the individual by means of a constitution, and (c) the absorption of particular interests into the universal. Accordingly, it is in this light—i.e. in the light of an existing constitutional system—that Hegel says: “The state is the actuality of concrete freedom” (par. 260). Indeed, it is only by means of particular interests and actions that the universal is achieved. In civil society, the society stands opposed to the individual (who is usually seen in an adversarial position vis-à-vis society); with the state, we see the completion of the individual, and the fulfillment of their most private concerns in and through the social. Nothing less than this can be regarded as a proper state in Hegel’s sense. We may ask, therefore: How is the individual to find a personal fulfillment in a state? Only in the union of the individual with the universal can this be achieved—a union of public and private interests, such that the public interest is that which is closest to the individual’s heart. The polis alone provided the framework that made such an identity possible, and thinkers such as Rousseau and Hegel have been searching ever since for ways to make it real. Accordingly, the two polar elements—namely, the public interest and the private interest—comprise an antithesis that demands resolution in a higher synthesis. It is the state that provides such a synthesis—i.e. by offering the individual their personal fufillment in the state, as well as that very concern as embodied in the words of Hegel’s Preface: “What is rational is actual; what is actual is rational.” We can now see this for the tautology that it is: When the term wirklich is translated as “real,” we have some suggestion of the Platonic realism to which Hegel is sometimes prone, though not fully committed; but when we translate wirklich as “actual,” we have the Aristotelian entelechy to which Hegel is fully committed in his notion of development. Thus Plato seeks the perfect form of the state in its pure and unchanging permanence; Aristotle’s emphasis, on the contrary, is on the dynamism of the historical state in its becoming. The state is not a finished entity but a process: its telos is its arche, its end is in its beginning. If we can see duty and right as a dualism of reciprocal entailment (so that where there is one there is the other), we will have grasped Hegel’s concept in a nutshell. He stresses this point as being of vital importance, as the source of the state’s “inner strength” (par. 261, p. 162). In civil society the antithesis (of public vs private) is of a limited nature. But when these are resolved (i.e. absorbed) in a higher synthesis, they become “the firm foundation not only of the state but also of the citizen’s trust in it” (par. 265). This involves, further, the unification of the opposed realms of freedom and necessity. Thus my personal interest is both preserved and negated (aufgehoben) in the state, and this organic unity is, as Hegel says, “the constitution of the state” (par. 269). It should be pointed out that the term “constitution,” here, does not refer to a document, or a set of laws (written or unwritten), but is to be taken as the organizing principle(s) of a state, that by which it is constituted. This organizing principle, then, is the nascent reason inhering in the state. It is in this special light, therefore, that Hegel can say: “The state is the divine will, in the sense that it is mind present on earth, unfolding itself to be the actual shape and organization of a world” (par. 270, p. 166). The task of civilization, over the centuries, has been the transfer of the inner into the outer, “the building of reason into the real world” (par. 270, p. 167). In the modern world, this manifestation of reason in the political has involved “the development of the state to constitutional monarchy” (par. 273, p. 176). Since all this is happening to reason, the diremption of that process has occurred to the universal, the particular, and the individual—not as abstract and empty categories, but as the actual legislature, the executive, and the monarch, respectively. Hegel points to the development of the state to constitutional monarchy as “the achievement of the modern world,” and the “inner deepening of the world mind.” There is a greater complexity here, whether in the mind of the individual or even in that of the cosmos. This has the consequence of producing diremption, polarization, conflict, and dialectic. Indeed, it is the developing complexity of mental and political life that actually fuels the engines of change and progress. Without such conflict, nothing much would be happening, and certainly no historical advance. Hegel suggests that the constitution of the state (i.e. its actual organization) is not to be regarded as “made” by humans, but as sui generis or (as he likes to put it) “divine” (par. 273, p. 178). His reasoning is peculiarly Feuerbachian (although Feuerbach published his work two decades after Hegel published his Philosophy of Right): Anything regarded as having been made by humans can as easily be regarded as capable of being unmade by humans; only by being seen as “divine” does it retain its measure of authority over humans and beyond change. This must surely introduce a measure of schizophrenia into the body politic (or the mental equivalent of that metaphor): i.e. the difference between the process of opening our political life to increased rationality and the closing of that rationality for the sake of myth. Political maturity (whether in the individual or in the state) involves a coming-to-selfconsciousness; and in the light of this, the deliberate self-delusion that prompts us to see the state as “divine” is a piece of counter-rationality that cannot be expected to thrive. Why is this? One thinks here of Marx’s Feuerbachian Paris Manuscripts: With regard to the institution of monarchy (or, equally, the capitalist system), can one actually “tell” oneself that this is not an institution made by humans—and believe it? Rather, to take that step in the direction of demythologization, and to regard any institution as man-made, is to start on the road to dismantling it, denying its superhuman authority. Yet the Crown embodies the element of subjectivity, although this is condensed into the individual human being. To say, “The state decides,” is as much as to say “The Crown decides”—but for the fact that in Hegel the crown has the limited authority of a constitutional monarch. Implicitly, the Crown combines its three component elements: the legislative power embracing the universality of the constitution and its laws; the adjudication which subsumes single cases under the universal through the power of the executive; and the power of ultimate decision by way of the self-determination in which the subjectivity of just such determinations are made (pars 273, 275). Nevertheless, the element of self-delusion (as when we say, with the ritualism of the law court, “The state versus…” or “The Crown versus…”) is all too easily dispelled, once seen—and once this is grasped we can hardly resist the inclination to demythologize all our social myths, everywhere and on all sides. This leads us into the most troubling—and controversial—part of Hegel’s entire political edifice, that of the monarch. There is hardly a philosopher who is more of a rationalist; but while this entails the dissipation of myths, we ought not to overlook Hegel’s profound respect for myths and their social purpose. In this respect Hegel is the tool of his own myth-making, and this is reflected in his theorizing on kingship. One might wonder why a monarch should be needed at all in Hegel’s state, given Hegel’s emphasis on constitutionalism and the rule of law. Further, one might ask why a monarch is needed, as Hegel says, to embody the element of subjectivity in the state, or why that subjectivity should need to be embodied at all. Perhaps this is a result of Hegel’s pervasive metaphor in all this: If history can be seen as a process wherein the state (as “mind”) comes to self-awareness, to maturity and freedom, then that so-called “mind” would certainly require a subjective dimension for its completion. But must we stay with that metaphor? (Since the main point of history is that it is to be compared to a mind “growing up,” we may call it Hegel’s “educational metaphor” of the state.) As a metaphor, it has its uses: the state, immersed in time, is necessarily dynamic in its process—just as human individuals are in their endless movement toward a telos. That telos holds out the hope of progress in history—i.e. human individuals learning from experience. (As Dewey says, experience doesn’t merely exist, it teaches.) The state, in its various efforts to reconcile its inner contradictions, is what produces this human thrust into the future. The state thereby fulfills the potentialities embodied in the perennial human condition. (Here is the educational metaphor once again.) In so doing, the state can be said to learn through time, to improve on its own enlargement, etc.—in effect, to provide the equivalent of a secular salvation. Yet the ubiquitous metaphor is hardly convincing when Hegel, as we saw, speaks of something as dubious as a World-Spirit (Weltgeist) coming to self-awareness. He is stuck with the metaphor; we are not. Here is where the monarch comes in: as a concept, the monarch serves to flesh out the metaphor, yet it does little more than leave it in its abstract form; in concrete, however, it provides the subjective aspect that a Geist (“mind” or “Spirit”) would need in order for us to understand it. The monarch, then, enables us to address the metaphor, to question it and to demand that it explain itself and account for itself. Clearly, the figure of the monarch can (in principle) be addressed in this way, while the state cannot (so that we cannot literally speak of the state’s “purposes,” etc.) because it is entirely impersonal. Yet the state, as something mental (i.e. spiritual, non material), is the bearer of a “soul,” an identity (Addition to par. 275, p. 287). As such it may be seen as “sovereign” over all its component elements, and containing all differences in itself. As the “soul” can be said to unify its disparate elements, so the sovereign performs a similar function by containing all differences itself. Indeed, without a monarch, Hegel says, a people is but a “formless mass” (par. 279, p. 183). As a totality, the state is an organic whole of which the monarch is the “personality.” But here a further contradiction enters, stemming from Hegel’s view of the state as the embodiment of reason—i.e. reason objectified: “The state is mind fully mature and it exhibits its moments in the daylight of consciousness” (p. 283). If so, then objectified reason must reflect the realm of the immutable and be unchanging; yet states do change. If it is “the way of God with the world” that there should be states, can the state be regarded as being the effect of temporal forces? To be sure, the person of the monarch is the effect of natural forces, as this individual; but the state itself is a nonnatural entity, designed to serve a higher-then-natural purpose. As such, the “immediate individuality” of the monarch must be irrelevant to the state’s inherent rationality. And if individuality is the synthesis of the universal and the particular, cannot the state itself be such an individual in its sovereignty, i.e. without a king? Hegel is one segment of the long tradition of visionary philosophers who (beginning with Plato) have sought to introduce reason into the concept of the political world. What we must realize, with Hegel, is that that vision is to be taken as a totality, in which its prismatic elements combine to form a unity wherein those elements are merely seen as individual but are actually unified. As he says: In the state, self-consciousness finds in an organic development the actuality of its substantive knowing and willing; in religion, it finds the feeling and the representation of this its own truth as an ideal essentiality; while in philosophic science, it finds the free comprehension and knowledge of this truth as one and the same in its mutually complementary manifestations, i.e. in the state, in nature, and in the ideal world. (par. 360)* NOTES 1 The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations ascribes the remark to a certain Alphonse Karr (1808–90) in Les Guêpes (Jan. 1849). 2 R.C.Solomon, “Hegel’s Concept of Geist,” Review of Metaphysics, 23 (1970): 647; see also R.C.Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 197. 3 Numbers refer to paragraphs in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Original language editions 8.1 Hegel, G.W.F. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, ed. E.Moldenhauer and K.M.Michel, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1970. 8.2 ——Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. J.Hoffmeister, Hamburg: Meiner, 1952. 8.3 ——Schriften zur Politik und Rechtsphilosophie, ed. G.Lasson, Leipzig: Meiner, 1923. 8.4 ——Gesammelte Werke, ed. Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Hamburg: Meiner, 1968–. 8.5 ——Sämtliche Werke, 20 vols, ed. H.Glockner, Juhiläumsausgahe, Stuttgart: Frommann, 1927–40. 8.6 ——Sämtliche Werke, ed. J.Hoffmeister, Hamburg: Meiner, 1952–60. English translations 8.7 Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M.Knox, Oxford and London: Oxford University Press, 1952, pbk 1967. 8.8 Hegel, G.W.F. The Philosophy of History, trans. J.Sibree, New York: Wiley, 1956. 8.9 ——Introduction to the Philosophy of History, trans. L.Rauch, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988. 8.10 ——The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V.Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. 8.11 ——Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Part III: Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, trans. W.Wallace and A.V.Miller, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. 8.12 ——Political Writings, trans. T.M.Knox, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962; see “The German constitution.” Bibliographies 8.13 Steinhauer, K. (ed.) Hegel: An International Bibliography, Munich: Verlag Dokumentation, 1978; contains 13,400 entries, from Hegel’s first work to publications on him in 1973. Extensive bibliographies are also to be found in: 8.14 Inwood, M.J. Hegel, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983. 8.15 Taylor, C. Hegel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Influences 8.16 Harris, H.S. Hegel’s Development, Vol. I: Towards the Sunlight, 1770–1801, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972; Vol. II: Night Thoughts, 1801–1806, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983. 8.17 Hook, S. From Hegel to Marx, New York: Humanities Press, 1950. 8.18 G.Lukács, The Young Hegel, trans. R.Livingstone, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, and London: Merlin Press, 1975. General surveys 8.19 Findlay, J.N. Hegel: A Re-Examination, London: Allen & Unwin, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1958. 8.20 Haym, R. Hegel und Seine Zeit, Hildesheim: Ohm, 1962. 8.21 Kaufmann, W. (ed.) Hegel’s Political Philosophy, New York: Atherton, 1970. 8.22 Löwith, K. From Hegel to Nietzsche, trans. D.E.Green, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964; London: Constable, 1965; Garden City: Doubleday Anchor, 1967. 8.23 Marcuse, H. Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, Boston: Beacon, 1960. 8.24 The Monist, 48, 1 (Jan. 1964): Hegel Today issue. 8.25 Mure, G.R.G. An Introduction to Hegel, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939. 8.26 Reyburn, H.A. The Ethical Theory of Hegel: A Study of the Philosophy of Right, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. 8.27 Stace, W.T. The Philosophy of Hegel, New York: Dover, 1955. Specific topics 8.28 Avineri, S. Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. 8.29 Foster, M.B. The Political Philosophies of Plato and Hegel, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935. 8.30 Hyppolite, J. Studies on Marx and Hegel, London: Heinemann, 1969. 8.31 Inwood, M.J. (ed.) Hegel, Oxford Readings in Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. 8.32 Kelly, G.A. Idealism, Politics and History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. 8.33 ——“Notes on Hegel’s ‘Lordship and Bondage’, ” Review of Metaphysics, XIX, (1966). 8.34 Kojéve, A. An Introduction to the Readings of Hegel, New York & London: Basic Books, 1969; a Marxist reading. 8.35 MacIntyre, A.C. (ed.) Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays, New York: Doubleday, 1972. 8.36 O’Brien, G.D. Hegel on Reason and History, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1975. 8.37 Pelczynski, Z.A. (ed.) Hegel’s Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971; see esp. K.Ilting, “The Structure of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” and Z.A.Pelczynski, “The Hegelian Conception of the State.” 8.38 —— The State and Civil Society: Studies in Hegel’s Political Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. 8.39 Plamenatz, J. Man and Society‘ Vol. 2,London: Longman, 1963. 8.40 Rauch, L. The Political Animal: Studies in Political Philosophy from Machiavelli to Marx, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981. 8.41 Ritter, J. Hegel and the French Revolution, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982. 8.42 Sabine, G.H. and Thorson, T.L. A History of Political Theory, Hinsdale, 111.: Dryden Press, 1973. 8.43 Solomon, R.C. In the Spirit of Hegel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. 8.44 Strauss, L. and Cropsey, J. (eds) History of Political Philosophy, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1963. 8.45 Taylor, C. Hegel and Modern Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. 8.46 Wilkins, B.T. Hegel’s Philosophy of History, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974.

Routledge History of Philosophy. Taylor & Francis e-Library. 2005.