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Elements of the Philosophy of
Tools Right(German: Grundlinien der Philosophie
What links here des Rechts) is a work by Georg Wilhelm
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Friedrich Hegelpublished in 1820,[1] though
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the book's original title page dates it to 1821.
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9/6/2018 Elements of the Philosophy of Right - Wikipedia

iedrich Hegel

nism
ners
etheFichteHölderlinSchelling

sors
èveAdornoHabermas

works
osophy of RightLectures on the Philosophy of ReligionLectures on the Philosophy of HistoryLectures on the History of Philosophy

ols
cs)British idealismGerman idealism

opics
ung Hegelians

his legal, moral, socialand politicalphilosophy, it is an expansion upon concepts only

briefly dealt with in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, published in 1817
(and again in 1827 and 1830). Law provides for Hegel the cornerstone of the modern
state. As such, he criticized Karl Ludwig von Haller's The Restoration of the Science
of the State, in which the latter claimed that law was superficial, because natural
law and the "right of the most powerful" was sufficient (§258). The absence of law
characterized for Hegel despotism, whether monarchist or ochlocracist (§278).

Contents
1 Summary
2 Reception
3 References
4 External links

Summary [ edit ]

The Philosophy of Right (as it is usually called) begins with a discussion of the
concept of the free will and argues that the free will can only realize itself in the
complicated social context of property rights and relations, contracts, moral

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9/6/2018 Elements of the Philosophy of Right - Wikipedia

commitments, family life, the economy, the legal system, and the polity. A person is
not truly free, in other words, unless he is a participant in all of these different aspects
of the life of the state.

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

Hegel also argues that the state itself is subsumed under the higher totality of world
history, in which individual states arise, conflict with each other, and eventually fall.
The course of history is apparently toward the ever-increasing actualization
of freedom; each successive historical epoch corrects certain failures of the earlier
ones. At the end of his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Hegel leaves open the
possibility that history has yet to accomplish certain tasks related to the inner
organization of the state.

Reception [ edit ]

There were a number of issues that arose during the translation of the text. Most
notably the phrase that is contained in the addition to §258, which was initially
translated as "The state is the march of God through the world" as well as being
translated thus: "The existence of the state is the presence of God upon the earth".
From these early translations came the criticism that Hegel justifies authoritarian or
even totalitarian forms of government: Giovanni Gentile, whose thought had a strong
influence on Mussolini, bases his Hegelian revival on this point. However, Walter
Kaufmann argues that the correct translation reads as follows: "It is the way of God in
the world, that there should be a state".[2] This suggests that the state, rather than
being godly, is part of the divine strategy, not a mere product of human endeavor.
Kaufmann claims that Hegel's original meaning of the sentence is not a carte
blanche for state dominance and brutality but merely a reference to the state's
importance as part of the process of history.

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

philosophy of Jakob Friedrich Fries, who had been a critic of Hegel's prior work.
Included in this is a suggestion that it is justifiable for the state to censor the writings
of philosophers like Fries and welcoming Fries' loss of his academic position following
Fries' participation in the Wartburg Festival. The inclusion of this passage has led to
scholarly debate as to the reason for Hegel's advocacy of the kind of censorship the
Prussian state had introduced following the murder of August von Kotzebue in the
form of the Carlsbad Decrees. Hegel scholars have suggested that the inclusion of
these passages was done to satisfy the censors.[3] T.M. Knoxargued that, while
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clearly designed to curry favour with the censors and written well after completion of
the work proper, the Preface's condemnation of Fries was "nothing new", that there
was no betrayal of his support for the Wartburg Festival principles, rather a mere
denunciation of method, while condemnation of Karl Ludwig von Haller (whose work
had been burned at Wartburg) remained undisturbed in the body of the
work.[4] Stephen Houlgate writes that Hegel's work is now recognized as "one of the
greatest works of social and political philosophy ever written."[5]

References [ edit ]

1. ^ Christian Topp, Philosophie als Wissenschaft, Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982, p. xx.

2. ^ Muller, Jerry Z. (2002). The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought.
New York: A. Knopf. p. 430.
3. ^ Knowles, Dudley (2002). Hegel and the philosophy of right (Transferred to digital print.
ed.). London: Routledge. pp. 7–9. ISBN 0415165784.
4. ^ T. M. Knox (1996). "Hegel and Prussianism". In Jon Stewart. Hegel Myths and
Legends . Northwestern University Press. pp. 70–81. ISBN 978-0-8101-1301-5.
5. ^ Houlgate, Stephen; Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1998). The Hegel Reader.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. p. 321. ISBN 0-631-20347-8.

External links [ edit ]

Works related to Elements of the Philosophy of Right at Wikisource

Quotations related to Elements of the Philosophy of Right at Wikiquote
Philosophy of Right – translation into English, 1896
Complete PDF of the Philosophy of Right(McMaster University)
Complete PDF of the Philosophy of Right(University of Warsaw)
Preface of the Philosophy of Right at Marxist Reference Archive
Redding, Paul, "Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy

Authority control BNF: cb119481137 (data) GND: 4122466-8

Categories: 1820 books Works by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Ethics books Philosophy of law Social philosophy literature

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