Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel (1770-1831) is one of the greatest systematic thinkers in the history of
Western philosophy. In addition to epitomizing German idealist philosophy,
Hegel boldly claimed that his own system of philosophy represented an historical
culmination of all previous philosophical thought. Hegel’s overall encyclopedic
system is divided into the science of Logic, the philosophy of Nature, and the
philosophy of Spirit. Of most enduring interest are his views on history,
society, and the state, which fall within the realm of Objective Spirit. Some
have considered Hegel to be a nationalistic apologist for the Prussian State of
the early 19th century, but his significance has been much broader, and there
is no doubt that Hegel himself considered his work to be an expression of the
self-consciousness of the World Spirit of his time. At the core of Hegel’s
social and political thought are the concepts of freedom, reason,
self-consciousness, and recognition. There are important connections between the
metaphysical or speculative articulation of these ideas and their application
to social and political reality, and one could say that the full meaning of
these ideas can be grasped only with a comprehension of their social and
historical embodiment. The work that explicates this concretizing of ideas, and
which has perhaps stimulated as much controversy as interest, is the Philosophy
of Right (Philosophie des Rechts), which will be a main focus of this article
1.
Biography
G.W.F. Hegel was born in
Stuttgart in 1770, the son of an official in the government of the Duke of
Württemberg. He was educated at the Royal Highschool in Stuttgart from 1777-88
and steeped in both the classics and the literature of the European
Enlightenment. In October, 1788 Hegel began studies at a theological seminary
in Tübingen, the Tüberger Stift, where he became friends with the poet
Hölderlin and philosopher Friedrich Schelling, both of whom would later become
famous. In 1790 Hegel received an M.A. degree, one year after the fall of the
Bastille in France, an event welcomed by these young idealistic students.
Shortly after graduation, Hegel took a post as tutor to a wealthy Swiss family
in Berne from 1793-96. In 1797, with the help of his friend Hölderlin, Hegel
moved to Frankfurt to take on another tutorship. During this time he wrote
unpublished essays on religion which display a certain radical tendency of
thought in his critique of orthodox religion.
In January 1801, two years
after the death of his father, Hegel finished with tutoring and went to Jena
where he took a position as Privatdozent (unsalaried lecturer) at the
University of Jena, where Hegel’s friend Schelling had already held a
university professorship for three years. There Hegel collaborated with
Schelling on a Critical Journal of Philosophy (Kritisches Journal der
Philosophie) and he also published a piece on the differences between the
philosophies of Fichte and Schelling (Differenz des Fichte’schen und
Schelling’schen Systems der Philosophie) in which preference was consistently
expressed for the latter thinker. After having attained a professorship in
1805, Hegel published his first major work, the Phenomenology of Spirit
(Phänomenologie des Geistes, 1807) which was delivered to the publisher just at
the time of the occupation of Jena by Napoleon’s armies. With the closing of
the University, due to the victory of the French in Prussia, Hegel had to seek
employment elsewhere and so he took a job as editor of a newspaper in Bamberg,
Bavaria in 1807 (Die Bamberger Zeitung) followed by a move to Nuremberg in 1808
where Hegel became headmaster of a preparatory school (Gymnasium), roughly
equivalent to a high school, and also taught philosophy to the students there
until 1816. During this time Hegel married, had children, and published his
Science of Logic (Wissenschaft der Logik) in three volumes.
One year following the
defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo (1815), Hegel took the position of Professor of
Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg where he published his first edition
of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (Encyklopädie der
philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, 1817). In 1818 he became
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Berlin, through the invitation of
the Prussion minister von Altenstein (who had introduced many liberal reforms
in Prussia until the fall of Napoleon), and Hegel taught there until he died in
1831. Hegel lectured on various topics in philosophy, most notably on history,
art, religion, and the history of philosophy and he became quite famous and
influential. He held public positions as a member of the Royal Examination
Commission of the Province of Brandenberg and also as a councellor in the
Ministry of Education. In 1821 he published the Philosophy of Right
(Philosophie des Rechts) and in 1830 was given the honor of being elected Rector
of the University. On November 14, 1831 Hegel died of cholera in Berlin, four
months after having been decorated by Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia.
2.
Political Writings
Apart from his philosophical
works on history, society, and the state, Hegel wrote several political tracts
most of which were not published in his lifetime but which are significant
enough in connection to the theoretical writings to deserve some mention.
(These are published in English translation in Hegel’s Political Writings and Political
Writings, listed in the bibliography of works by Hegel below.)
Hegel’s very first political
work was on “On the Recent Domestic Affairs of Wurtemberg” (Über die neuesten
innern Verhältnisse Württembergs…, 1798) which was neither completed nor published.
In it Hegel expresses the view that the constitutional structure of Wurtemberg
requires fundamental reform. He condemns the absolutist rule of Duke Ferdinand
along with the narrow traditionalism and legal positivism of his officials and
welcomes the convening of the Estates Assembly, while disagreeing with the
method of election in the Diet. In contrast to the existing system of
oligarchic privilege, Hegel argues that the Diet needs to be based on popular
election through local town councils, although this should not be done by
granting suffrage to an uneducated multitude. The essay ends inconclusively on
the appropriate method of political representation.
A quite long piece of about
100 pages, The German Constitution (Die Verfassung Deutchlands) was written and
revised by Hegel between 1799 and 1802 and was not published until after his
death in 1893. This piece provides an analysis and critique of the constitution
of the German Empire with the main theme being that the Empire is a thing of
the past and that appeals for a unified German state are anachronistic. Hegel
finds a certain hypocrisy in German thinking about the Empire and a gap between
theory and practice in the German constitution. Germany was no longer a state
governed by law but rather a plurality of independent political entities with
disparate practices. Hegel stresses the need to recognize that the realities of
the modern state necessitate a strong public authority along with a populace
that is free and unregimented. The principle of government in the modern world
is constitutional monarchy, the potentialities of which can be seen in Austria
and Prussia. Hegel ends the essay on an uncertain note with the idea that
Germany as a whole could be saved only by some Machiavellian genius.
The essay “Proceedings of
the Estates Assembly in the Kingdom of Württemberg, 1815-1816” was published in
1817 in the Heidelbergische Jahrbücher. In it Hegel commented on sections of
the official report of the Diet of Württemberg, focusing on the opposition by
the Estates to the King’s request for ratification of a new constitutional
charter that recognized recent liberalizing changes and reforms. Hegel sided
with King Frederick and criticized the Estates as being reactionary in their
appeal to old customary laws and feudal property rights. There has been
controversy over whether Hegel here was trying to gain favor with the King in
order to attain a government position. However, Hegel’s favoring a sovereign
kingdom of Wurtemberg over the German Empire and the need for a constitutional
charter that is more rational than the previous are quite continuous with the
previous essays. A genuine state needs a strong and effective central public
authority, and in resisting the Estates are trying to live in the feudal past.
Moreover, Hegel is not uncritical of the King’s constitutional provisions and
finds deficiencies in the exclusion of members of professions from the Estates
Assembly as well as in the proposal for direct suffrage in representation,
which treats citizens like unintegrated atomic units rather than as members of
a political community.
The last of Hegel’s
political tracts, “The English Reform Bill,” was written in installments in
1831 for the ministerial newspaper, the Preussische Staatszeitung, but was interrupted
due to censure by the Prussian King because of the perception of its being
overly critical and anti-English. As a result, the remainder of the work was
printed independently and distributed discretely. Hegel’s main line of
criticism is that the proposed English reforms of suffrage will not make much
of a difference in the distribution of political power and may only create a
power struggle between the rising group of politicians and the traditional
ruling class. Moreover, there are deep problems in English society that cannot
be addressed by the proposed electoral reforms, including political corruption
in the English burroughs, the selling of seats in parliament, and the general
oligarchic nature of social reality including the wide disparities between
wealth and poverty, Ecclesiastical patronage, and conditions in Ireland. While
Hegel supports the idea of reform with its appeal to rational change as against
the “positivity” of customary law, traditionalism and privilege, he thinks that
universalizing suffrage with a property qualification without a thorough reform
of the system of Common Law and the existing social conditions will only be
perceived as token measures leading to greater disenchantment among the newly
enfranchised and possibly inclinations to violent revolution. Hegel claims that
national pride keeps the English from studying and following the reforms of the
European Continent or seriously reflecting upon and grasping the nature of
government and legislation.
There are several overall
themes that reoccur in these political writings and that connect with some of
the main lines of thought in Hegel’s theoretical works. First, there is the
contrast between the attitude of legal positivism and the appeal to the law of
reason. Hegel consistently displays a “political rationalism” which attacks old
concepts and attitudes that no longer apply to the modern world. Old
constitutions stemming from the Feudal era are a confused mixture of customary
laws and special privileges that must give way to the constitutional reforms of
the new social and political world that has arrived in the aftermath of the
French Revolution. Second, reforms of old constitutions must be thorough and
radical, but also cautious and gradual. This might sound somewhat inconsistent,
but for Hegel a reform is radical due to a fundamental change in direction, not
the speed of such change. Hegel suggests that customary institutions not be
abolished too quickly for there must be some congruence and continuity with the
existing social conditions. Hegel rejects violent popular action and sees the
principal force for reform in governments and the estates assemblies, and he
thinks reforms should always stress legal equality and the public welfare.
Third, Hegel emphasizes the need for a strong central government, albeit
without complete centralized control of public administration and social
relations. Hegel here anticipates his later conception of civil society
(bürgerliche Gesellschaft), the social realm of individual autonomy where there
is significant local self-governance. The task of government is not to
thoroughly bureaucratize civil society but rather to provide oversight,
regulation, and when necessary intervention. Fourth, Hegel claims that
representation of the people must be popular but not atomistic. The democratic
element in a state is not its sole feature and it must be institutionalized in
a rational manner. Hegel rejects universal suffrage as irrational because it
provides no means of mediation between the individual and the state as a whole.
Hegel believed that the masses lacked the experience and political education to
be directly involved in national elections and policy matters and that direct
suffrage leads to electoral indifference and apathy. Fifth, while acknowledging
the importance of a division of powers in the public authority, Hegel does not
appeal to a conception of separation and balance of powers. He views the
estates assemblies, which safeguard freedom, as essentially related to the monarch
and also stresses the role of civil servants and members of the professions,
both in ministerial positions and in the assemblies. The monarchy, however, is
the central supporting element in the constitutional structure because the
monarch is invested with the sovereignty of the state. However, the power of
the monarch is not despotical for he exercises authority through universal laws
and statutes and is advised and assisted by a ministry and civil service, all
members of which must meet educational requirements.
3.
The Jena Writings (1802-06)
Hegel wrote several pieces
while at the University of Jena that point in the direction of some of the main
theses of the Philosophy of Right. The first was entitled “On the Scientific
Modes of Treatment of Natural Law–Its Place in Practical Philosophy and Its
Relationship to the Positive Science of Law” (Über die wissenschaftlichen
Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts…), published originally in the Kritisches
Journal der Philosophie in 1802, edited jointly by Hegel and Schelling. In this
piece, usually referred to as the essay on Natural Law, Hegel criticizes both
the empirical and formal approaches to natural law, as exemplified in British
and Kantian philosophy respectively. Empiricism reaches conclusions that are limited
by the particularities of its contexts and materials and thus cannot provide
universally valid propositions regarding the concepts of various social and
political institutions or of the relation of reflective consciousness to social
and political experience. Formalist conclusions, on the other hand, are too
insubstantial and abstract in failing to properly link human reason concretely
to human experience. Traditional natural law theories are based on an abstract
rationalism and the attempts of Rousseau, Kant, and Fichte to remedy this
through their various ethical conceptions fail to overcome abstractness. For
Hegel, the proper method of philosophical science must link concretely the
development of the human mind and its rational powers to actual experience.
Moreover, the concept of a social and political community must transcend the
instrumentalizing of the state.
Hegel’s work entitled “The
System of Ethical Life” (System der Sittlichkeit) was written in 1802-03 and
first published in its entirety by Georg Lasson in 1913 in a volume entitled
Schriften zur Politik und Rechtsphilosophie. In this work, Hegel develops a
philosophical theory of social and political development that correlates with
the self-development of essential human powers. Historically, humans begin in
an immediate relation to nature and their social existence takes the form of
natürliche Sittlichkeit, i.e., a non-selfconscious relation to nature and to
others. However, the satisfaction of human desires leads to their reproduction
and multiplication and leads to the necessity for labor, which induces
transformation in the human world and people’s connections to it. This process
leads to a self-realization that undermines the original naïve unity with
nature and others and to the formation of overtly cooperative endeavors, e.g.,
in the making and use of tools. Another result of labor is the emergence of
private property as an embodiment of human personality as well as of sets of
legal relationships that institutionalize property ownership, exchange, etc.,
and deal with crimes against property. Furthermore, disparities in property and
power lead to relationships of subordination and the use of the labor of others
to satisfy one’s increasingly complex and expanded desires. Gradually, a system
of mutual dependence, a “system of needs,” develops, and along with the
increasing division of labor there also develops class differentiations
reflecting the types of labor or activity taken up by members of each class,
which Hegel classifies into the agricultural, acquisitive, and administerial
classes. However, despite relations of interdependence and cooperation the
members of society experience social connections as a sort of blind fate
without some larger system of control which is provided by the state which
regulates the economic life of society. The details of the structure of the
state are unclear in this essay, but what is clear is that for Hegel the state
provides an increased rationality to social practices, much in the sense that
the later German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) would articulate how social
practices become more rational by being codified and made more predictable.
The manuscripts entitled
Realphilosophie are based on lectures Hegel delivered at Jena University in
1803-04 (Realphilosophie I) and 1805-06 (Realphilosophie II), and were
originally published by Johannes Hoffmeister in 1932. These writings cover much
of the same ground as the System der Sittlichkeit in explicating a philosophy
of mind and human experience in relation to human social and political
development. Some of the noteworthy ideas in these writings are the role and
significance of language for social consciousness, for giving expression to a
people (Volk) and for the comprehending of and mastery of the world, and the
necessity and consequences of the fragmentation of primordial social
relationships and patterns as part of the process of human development. Also,
there is a reiteration of the importance of property relations as crucial to
social recognition and how there would be no security of property or
recognition of property rights if society were to remain a mere multitude of
families. Such security requires a system of control over the “struggle for
recognition” through interpersonal norms, rules, and juridical authority
provided by the nation state. Moreover, Hegel repeats the need for strong state
regulation of the economy, which if left to its own workings is blind to the
needs of the social community. The economy, especially through the division of
labor, produces fragmentation and diminishment of human life (compare Marx on
alienation) and the state must not only address this phenomenon but also
provide the means for the people’s political participation to further the
development of social self-consciousness. In all of this Hegel appears to be
providing a philosophical account of modern developments both in terms of the
tensions and conflicts that are new to modernity as well as in the progressive
movements of reform found under the influence of Napoleon.
Finally, Hegel also
discusses the forms of government, the three main types being tyranny,
democracy, and hereditary monarchy. Tyranny is found typically in primitive or
undeveloped states, democracy exists in states where there is the realization
of individual identity but no split between the public and private person, and
hereditary monarchy is the appropriate form of political authority in the
modern world in providing strong central government along with a system of
indirect representation through Estates. The relation of religion to the state
is undeveloped in these writings, but Hegel is clear about the supereminent
role of the state that stands above all else in giving expression to the Spirit
(Geist) of a society in a sort of earthly kingdom of God, the realization of
God in the world. True religion complements and supports this realization and
thus cannot properly have supremacy over or be opposed to the state.
5.
Logic and Political Theory
The Logic constitutes the
first part of Hegel’s philosophical system as presented in his Encyclopedia. It
was preceded by his larger work, The Science of Logic (Wissenschaft der Logik),
published in 1812-16 in two volumes. The “Encyclopedia Logic” is a shorter
version intended to function as part of an “outline,” but it became longer in
the course of the three published versions of 1817, 1827, and 1830. Also, the
English translation by William Wallace contains additions from the notes of
students who heard Hegel’s lectures on this subject. (Reference to the
paragraphs of the Encyclopedia will be made with the “¶” character.)
The structure of the Logic
is triadic, reflecting the organization of the larger system of philosophy as
well as a variety of other motifs, both internal and external to the Logic
proper. The Logic has three divisions: the Doctrine of Being, the Doctrine of
Essence, and the Doctrine of the Notion (or Concept). There are a number of
logical categories in this work that are directly relevant to social and
political theorizing. In the Doctrine of Being, for example, Hegel explains the
concept of “being-for-self” as the function of self-relatedness in the
resolving of opposition between self and other in the “ideality of the finite”
(¶ 95-96). He claims that the task of philosophy is to bring out the ideality
of the finite, and as will be seen later Hegel’s philosophy of the state is
intended to articulate the ideality of the state, i.e., its affirmative and
infinite or rational features. In the Doctrine of Essence, Hegel explains the
categories of actuality and freedom. He says that actuality is the unity of
“essence and existence” (¶ 142) and argues that this does not rule out the
actuality of ideas for they become actual by being realized in external
existence. Hegel will have related points to make about the actuality of the
idea of the state in society and history. Also, he defines freedom not in terms
of contingency or lack of determination, as is popular, but rather as the
“truth of necessity,” i.e., freedom presupposes necessity in the sense that
reciprocal action and reaction provide a structure for free action, e.g., a
necessary relation between crime and punishment.
The Doctrine of the Notion
(Begriff) is perhaps the most relevant section of the Logic to social and
political theory due to its focus on the various dynamics of development. This
section is subdivided into three parts: the subjective notion, the objective
notion, and the idea which articulates the unity of subjective and objective.
The first part, the subjective notion, contains three “moments” or functional
parts: universality, particularity, and individuality (¶ 163ff). These are
particularly important as Hegel will show how the functional parts of the state
operate according to a progressive “dialectical” movement from the first to the
third moments and how the state as a whole, as a functioning and integrated
totality, gives expression to the concept of individuality (in ¶198 Hegel
refers to the state as “a system of three syllogisms”). Hegel treats these
relationships as logical judgments and syllogisms but they do not merely
articulate how the mind must operate (subjectivity) but also explain actual
relationships in reality (objectivity). In objective reality we find these
logical/dialectical relationships in mechanism, chemism, and teleology.
Finally, in the Idea, the correspondence of the notion or concept with
objective reality, we have the truth of objects or objects as they ought to be,
i.e., as they correspond to their proper concepts. The logical articulation of
the Idea is very important to Hegel’s explanation of the Idea of the state in
modern history, for this provides the principles of rationality that guide the
development of Spirit in the world and that become manifested in various ways
in social and political life.
6.
The Philosophy of Right
In 1821, Hegel’s Philosophy
of Right orginally appeared under the double title Naturrecht und
Staatswissenschaften in Grundrisse; Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts
(Natural Law and the Science of the State; Elements of the Philosophy of
Right). The work was republished by Eduard Gans in 1833 and 1854 as part of
Hegel’s Werke, vol. viii and included additions from notes taken by students at
Hegel’s lectures. The English language translation of this work by T. M. Knox refers
to these later editions as well as to an edition published in 1923 by Georg
Lasson, which included corrections from previous editions.
The Philosophy of Right
constitutes, along with Hegel’s Philosophy of History, the penultimate section
of his Encyclopedia, the section on Objective Spirit, which deals with the
human world and its array of social rules and institutions, including the
moral, legal, religious, economic, and political as well as marriage, the
family, social classes, and other forms of human organization. The German word
Recht is often translated as ‘law’, however, Hegel clearly intends the term to
have a broader meaning that captures what we might call the good or just
society, one that is “rightful” in its structure, composition, and practices.
In the Introduction to this
work Hegel explains the concept of his philosophical undertaking along with the
specific key concepts of will, freedom, and right. At the very beginning, Hegel
states that the Idea of right, the concept together with its actualization, is
the proper subject of the philosophical science of right (¶ 1). Hegel is
emphatic that the study is scientific in that it deals in a systematic way with
something essentially rational. He further remarks that the basis of scientific
procedure in a philosophy of right is explicated in philosophical logic and
presupposed by the former (¶ 2). Furthermore, Hegel is at pains to distinguish
the historical or legal approach to “positive law” (Gesetz) and the
philosophical approach to the Idea of right (Recht), the former involving mere
description and compilation of laws as legal facts while the latter probes into
the inner meaning and necessary determinations of law or right. For Hegel the
justification of something, the finding of its inherent rationality, is not a
matter of seeking its origins or longstanding features but rather of studying
it conceptually.
However, there is one sense
in which the origin of right is relevant to philosophical science and this is
the free will. The free will is the basis and origin of right in the sense that
mind or spirit (Geist) generally objectifies itself in a system of right (human
social and political institutions) that gives expression to freedom, which
Hegel says is both the substance and goal of right (¶ 4). This ethical life in
the state consists in the unity of the universal and the subjective will. The
universal will is contained in the Idea of freedom as its essence, but when
considered apart from the subjective will can be thought of only abstractly or
indeterminately. Considered apart from the subjective or particular will, the
universal will is “the element of pure indeterminacy or that pure reflection of
the ego into itself which involves the dissipation of every restriction and
every content either immediately presented by nature, by needs, desires, and
impulses, or given and determined by any means whatever” (¶ 5). In other words,
the universal will is that moment in the Idea of freedom where willing is
thought of as state of absolutely unrestrained volition, unfettered by any
particular circumstances or limitations whatsoever–the pure form of willing.
This is expressed in the modern libertarian view of completely uncoerced
choice, the absence of restraint (or “negative liberty” as understood by Thomas
Hobbes). The subjective will, on the other hand, is the principle of activity
and realization that involves “differentiation, determination, and positing of
a determinacy as a content and object” (¶ 6). This means that the will is not
merely unrestrained in acting but that it actually can give expression to the
doing or accomplishing of certain things, e.g., through talent or expertise
(sometimes called “positive freedom”). The unity of both the moments of
abstract universality (the will in-itself) and subjectivity or particularity
(the will for-itself) is the concrete universal or true individuality (the will
in-and-for-itself). According to Hegel, preservation of the distinction of
these two moments in the unity (identity-in-difference) between universal and
particular will is what produces rational self-determination of an ego, as well
as the self-consciousness of the state as a whole. Hegel’s conception of
freedom as self-determination is just this unity in difference of the universal
and subjective will, be it in the willing by individual persons or in the
expressions of will by groups of individuals or collectivities. The “negative
self-relation” of this freedom involves the subordination of the natural
instincts, impulses, and desires to conscious reflection and to goals and
purposes that are consciously chosen and that require commitment to rational
principles in order to properly guide action.
The overall structure of the
Philosophy of Right is quite remarkable in its “syllogistic” organization. The
main division of the work corresponds to what Hegel calls the stages in the
development of “the Idea of the absolutely free will,” and these are Abstract
Right, Morality, and Ethical Life. Each of these divisions is further
subdivided triadically: under Abstract Right there is Property, Contract, and
Wrong; under Morality falls Purpose and Responsibility, Intention and Welfare,
and Good and Conscience; finally, under Ethical Life comes the Family, Civil
Society, and the State. These last subdivisions are further subdivided into
triads, with fourth level subdivisions occurring under Civil Society and the
State. This triadic system of rubrics is no mere description of a static model
of social and political life. Hegel claims that it gives expression to the
conceptual development of Spirit in human society based upon the purely logical
development of rationality provided in his Logic. Thus, it is speculatively
based and not derivable from empirical survey, although the particularities of
the system do indeed correspond to our experience and what we know about
ourselves anthropologically, culturally, etc.
The transition in the Logic
from universality to particularity to individuality (or concrete universality)
is expressed in the social and political context in the conceptual transition
from Abstract Right to Morality to Ethical Life. In the realm of Abstract
Right, the will remains in its immediacy as an abstract universal that is
expressed in personality and in the universal right to possession of external
things in property. In the realm of Morality, the will is no longer merely
“in-itself,” or restricted to the specific characteristics of legal personality,
but becomes free “for-itself,” i.e., it is will reflected into itself so as to
produce a self-consciousness of the will’s infinity. The will is expressed,
initially, in inner conviction and subsequently in purpose, intention, and
conviction. As opposed to the merely juridical person, the moral agent places
primary value on subjective recognition of principles or ideals that stand
higher than positive law. At this stage, universality of a higher moral law is
viewed as something inherently different from subjectivity, from the will’s
inward convictions and actions, and so in its isolation from a system of
objectively recognized legal rules the willing subject remains “abstract,
restricted, and formal” (¶ 108). Because the subject is intrinsically a social
being who needs association with others in order to institutionalize the
universal maxims of morality, maxims that cover all people, it is only in the
realm of Ethical Life that the universal and the subjective will come into a
unity through the objectification of the will in the institutions of the
Family, Civil Society, and the State.
In what follows, we trace
through Hegel’s systematic development of the “stages of the will,”
highlighting only the most important points as necessary to get an overall view
of this work.
a.
Abstract Right
The subject of Abstract
Right (Recht) is the person as the bearer or holder of individual rights. Hegel
claims that this focus on the right of personality, while significant in
distinguishing persons from mere things, is abstract and without content, a
simple relation of the will to itself. The imperative of right is: “Be a person
and respect others as persons” (¶ 36). In this formal conception of right,
there is no question of particular interests, advantages, motives or intentions,
but only the mere idea of the possibility of choosing based on the having of
permission, as long as one does not infringe on the right of other persons.
Because of the possibilities of infringement, the positive form of commands in
this sphere are prohibitions.
(1)
Property (the universality of will as embodied in things)
A person must translate his
or her freedom into the external world “in order to exist as Idea” (¶ 41), thus
abstract right manifests itself in the absolute right of appropriation over all
things. Property is the category through which one becomes an object to oneself
in that one actualizes the will through possession of something external.
Property is the embodiment of personality and of freedom. Not only can a person
put his or her will into something external through the taking possession of it
and of using it, but one can also alienate property or yield it to the will of
another, including the ability to labor for a restricted period of time. One’s
personality is inalienable and one’s right to personality imprescriptible. This
means one cannot alienate all of one’s labor time without becoming the property
of another.
(2)
Contract (the positing of explicit universality of will)
In this sphere, we have a
relation of will to will, i.e., one holds property not merely by means of the
subjective will externalized in a thing, but by means of another’s person’s
will, and implicitly by virtue of one’s participation in a common will. The
status of being an independent owner of something from which one excludes the
will of another is thus mediated in the identification of one’s will with the
other in the contractual relation, which presupposes that the contracting
parties “recognize each other as persons and property owners” (¶ 71). (Note the
significant development here beyond the dialectic of lord and bondsman.)
Moreover, when contract involves the alienation or giving up of property, the
external thing is now an explicit embodiment of the unity of wills. In
contractual relations of exchange, what remains identical as the property of
the individuals is its value, in respect to which the parties to the contract
are on an equal footing, regardless of the qualitative external differences
between the things exchanged. “Value is the universal in which the subjects of
the contract participate” (¶ 77).
(3)
Wrong (the particular will opposing itself to the universal)
In immediate relations of
persons to one another it is possible for a particular will to be at variance
with the universal through arbitrariness of decision and contingency of
circumstance, and so the appearance (Erscheinung) of right takes on the
character of a show (Schein), which is the inessential, arbitrary, posing as
the essential. If the “show” is only implicit and not explicit also, i.e., if
the wrong passes in the doer’s eyes as right, the wrong is non-malicious. In
fraud a show is made to deceive the other party and so in the doer’s eyes the
right asserted is only a show. Crime is wrong both in itself and from the
doer’s point of view, such that wrong is willed without even the pretense or
show of right. Here the form of acting does not imply a recognition of right
but rather is an act of coercion through exercise of force. It is a “negatively
infinite judgement” in that it asserts a denial of rights to the victim, which
is not only incompatible with the fact of the matter but also self-negating in
denying its own capacity for rights in principle.
The penalty that falls on
the criminal is not merely just but is “a right established within the criminal
himself, i.e., in his objectively embodied will, in his action,” because the
crime as the action of a rational being implies appeal to a universal standard
recognized by the criminal (¶ 100). The annulling of crime in this sphere of
immediate right occurs first as revenge, which as retributive is just in its
content, but in its form it is an act of a subjective will and does not
correspond with its universal content and hence as a new transgression is
defective and contradictory (¶ 102). All crimes are comparable in their
universal property of being injuries, thus, in a sense it is not something
personal but the concept itself which carries out retribution.
Crime, as the will which is
implicitly null, contains its negation in itself, which is its punishment.
The nullity of crime is that
it has set aside right as such, but since right is absolute it cannot be set
aside. Thus, the act of crime is not something positive, not a first thing, but
is something negative, and punishment is the negation of crime’s negation.
b.
Morality
The demand for justice as
punishment rather than as revenge, with regard to wrong, implies the demand for
a will which, though particular and subjective, also wills the universal as
such. In wrong the will has become aware of itself as particular and has
opposed itself to and contradicted the universal embodied in rights. At this
stage the universally right is abstract and one-sided and thus requires a move
to a higher level of self-consciousness where the universally right is mediated
by the particular convictions of the willing subject. We go beyond the
criminal’s defiance of the universal by substituting for the abstract
conception of personality the more concrete conception of subjectivity. The
criminal is now viewed as breaking his own law, and his crime is a
self-contradiction and not only a contradiction of a right outside him. This
recognition brings us to the level of morality (Moralität) where the will is
free both in itself and for itself, i.e., the will is self-conscious of its
subjective freedom.
At the level of morality the
right of the subjective will is embodied in immediate wills (as opposed to
immediate things like property). The defect of this level, however, is that the
subject is only for itself, i.e., one is conscious of one’s subjectivity and
independence but is conscious of universality only as something different from
this subjectivity. Therefore, the identity of the particular will and the
universal will is only implicit and the moral point of view is that of a
relation of “ought-to-be,” or the demand for what is right. While the moral
will externalizes itself in action, its self-determination is a pure
“restlessness” of activity that never arrives at actualization.
The right of the moral will
has three aspects. First, there is the right of the will to act in its external
environment, to recognize as its actions only those that it has consciously
willed in light of an aim or purpose (purpose and responsibility). Second, in
my intention I ought to be aware not simply of my particular action but also of
the universal which is conjoined with it. The universal is what I have willed
and is my intention. The right of intention is that the universal quality of
the action is not merely implied but is known by the agent, and so it lies from
the start in one’s subjective will. Moreover, the content of such a will is not
only the right of the particular subject to be satisfied but is elevated to a
universal end, the end of welfare or happiness (intention and welfare). The
welfare of many unspecified persons is thus also an essential end and right of
subjectivity. However, right as an abstract universal and welfare as abstract
particularity, may collide, since both are contingent on circumstances for
their satisfaction, e.g., in cases where claims of right or welfare by someone
may endanger the life of another there can be a counter-claim to a right of
distress. “This distress reveals the finitude and therefore the contingency of
both right and welfare” (¶ 128). This “contradiction” between right and welfare
is overcome in the third aspect of the moral will, the good which is “the Idea
as the unity of the concept of the will with the particular will” (¶ 129).
In addition to the right of
the subjective will that whatever it recognizes as valid shall be seen by it as
good, and that an action shall be imputed to it as good or evil in accordance
with its knowledge of the worth which the action has in its external
objectivity (¶ 132), which together constitute a “right of insight,” the will
also must recognize the good as its duty, which is, to begin with, duty for
duty’s sake, or duty formally and without content (e.g., as expressed in the
Kantian “categorical imperative”). Because of this lack of content, the
subjective will in its abstract reflection into itself is “absolute inward
certainty (Gewißheit) of self,” or conscience (Gewissen). While true or
authentic conscience is the disposition to will what is absolutely good, and
thus correspond with what is objectively right, purely formal conscience lacks an
objective system of principles and duties. Although conscience is ideally
supposed to mean the identity of subjective knowing and willing with the truly
good, when it remains the subjective inner reflection of self-consciousness
into itself its claim to this identity is deficient and one-sided. Moreover,
when the determinate character of right and duty reduces to subjectivity, the
mere inwardness of the will, there is the potentiality of elevating the
self-will of particular individuals above the universal itself, i.e., of
“slipping into evil” (¶ 139). What makes a person evil is the choosing of
natural desires in opposition to the good, i.e., to the concept of the will.
When an individual attempts to pass off his or her action as good, and thus
imposing it on others, while being aware of the discrepancy between its
negative character and the objective universal good, the person falls into
hypocrisy. This is one of several forms of perverse moral subjectivity that
Hegel discusses at length in his remarks (¶ 140).
c.
Ethical Life
Hegel’s analysis of the
moral implications of “good and conscience” leads to the conclusion that a
concrete unity of the objective good with the subjectivity of the will cannot
be achieved at the level of personal morality since all attempts at this are
problematic. The concrete identity of the good with the subjective will occurs
only in moving to the level of ethical life (Sittlichkeit), which Hegel says is
“the Idea of freedom…the concept of freedom developed into the existing world
and the nature of self-consciousness” (¶ 142). Thus, ethical life is permeated
with both objectivity and subjectivity: regarded objectively it is the state
and its institutions, whose force (unlike abstract right) depends entirely on
the self-consciousness of citizens, on their subjective freedom; regarded
subjectively it is the ethical will of the individual which (unlike the moral
will) is aware of objective duties that express one’s inner sense of
universality. The rationality of the ethical order of society is thus
constituted in the synthesis of the concept of the will, both as universal and
as particular, with its embodiment in institutional life.
The synthesis of ethical
life means that individuals not only act in conformity with the ethical good but
that they recognize the authority of ethical laws. This authority is not
something alien to individuals since they are linked to the ethical order
through a strong identification which Hegel says “is more like an identity than
even the relation of faith or trust” (¶ 147). The knowledge of how the laws and
institutions of society are binding on the will of individuals entails a
“doctrine of duties.” In duty the individual finds liberation both from
dependence on mere natural impulse, which may or may not motivate ethical
actions, and from indeterminate subjectivity which cannot produce a clear view
of proper action. “In duty the individual acquires his substantive freedom” (¶
149). In the performance of duty the individual exhibits virtue when the ethical
order is reflected in his or her character, and when this is done by simple
conformity with one’s duties it is rectitude. When individuals are simply
identified with the actual ethical order such that their ethical practices are
habitual and second nature, ethical life appears in their general mode of
conduct as custom (Sitten). Thus, the ethical order manifests its right and
validity vis-à-vis individuals. In duty “the self-will of the individual
vanishes together with his private conscience which had claimed independence
and opposed itself to the ethical substance. For when his character is ethical,
he recognizes as the end which moves him to act the universal which is itself
unmoved but is disclosed in its specific determinations as rationality actualized.
He knows that his own dignity and the whole stability of his particular ends
are grounded in this same universal, and it is therein that he actually attains
these” (¶ 152). However, this does not deny the right of subjectivity, i.e.,
the right of individuals to be satisfied in their particular pursuits and free
activity; but this right is realized only in belonging to an objective ethical
order. The “bond of duty” will be seen as a restriction on the particular
individual only if the self-will of subjective freedom is considered in the
abstract, apart from an ethical order (as is the case for both Abstract Right
and Morality). “Hence, in this identity of the universal will with the
particular will, right and duty coalesce, and by being in the ethical order a
man has rights in so far as he has duties, and duties in so far as he has
rights” (¶ 155).
In the realm of ethical life
the logical syllogism of self-determination of the Idea is most clearly
applied. The moments of universality, particularity, and individuality
initially are represented respectively in the institutions of the family, civil
society, and the state. The family is “ethical mind in its natural or immediate
phase” and is characterized by love or the feeling of unity in which one is not
conscious of oneself as an independent person but only as a member of the
family unit to which one is bound. Civil society, on the other hand, comprises
an association of individuals considered as self-subsistent and who have no
conscious sense of unity of membership but only pursue self-interest, e.g., in
satisfying needs, acquiring and protecting property, and in joining
organizations for mutual advantage. Finally, the constitution of the political
state brings together in a unity the sense of the importance of the whole or
universal good along with the freedom of particularity of individual pursuits
and thus is “the end and actuality of both the substantial order and the public
life devoted thereto” (¶ 157).
i.
The Family
The family is characterized
by love which is “mind’s feeling of its own unity,” where one’s sense of
individuality is within this unity, not as an independent individual but as a
member essentially related to the other family members. Thus, familial love
implies a contradiction between, on the one hand, not wanting to be a
self-subsistent and independent person if that means feeling incomplete and, on
the other hand, wanting to be recognized in another person. Familial love is
truly an ethical unity, but because it is nonetheless a subjective feeling it
is limited in sustaining unity (pars. 158-59, and additions).
(A)
Marriage
The union of man and woman
in marriage is both natural and spiritual, i.e., is a physical relationship and
one that is also self-conscious, and it is entered into on the basis of the
free consent of the persons. Since this consent involves bringing two persons
into a union, there is the mutual surrender of their natural individuality for
the sake of union, which is both a self-restriction and also a liberation
because in this way individuals attain a higher self-consciousness.
(B)
Family Capital
The family as a unit has its
external existence in property, specifically capital (Vermögen) which
constitutes permanent and secured possessions that allow for endurance of the family
as “person” (¶ 170). This capital is the common property of all the family
members, none of whom possess property of their own, but it is administered by
the head of the family, the husband.
(C)
Education of Children & Dissolution of the Family
Children provide the
external and objective basis for the unity of marriage. The love of the parents
for their children is the explicit expression of their love for each other,
while their immediate feelings of love for each other are only subjective. Children
have the right to maintenance and education, and in this regard a claim upon
the family capital, but parents have the right to provide this service to the
children and to instill discipline over the wishes of their children. The
education of children has a twofold purpose: the positive aim of instilling
ethical principles in them in the form of immediate feeling and the negative
one of raising them out of the instinctive physical level. Marriage can be
dissolved not by whim but by duly constituted authority when there is total
estrangement of husband and wife. The ethical dissolution of the family results
when the children have been educated to be free and responsible persons and
they are of mature age under the law. The natural dissolution of the family occurs
with the death of the parents, the result of which is the passing of
inheritance of property to the surviving family members. The disintegration of
the family exhibits its immediacy and contingency as an expression of the
ethical Idea (pars. 173-80).
ii.
Civil Society
With civil society
(bürgerliche Gesellschaft) we move from the family or “the ethical idea still
in its concept,” where consciousness of the whole or totality is focal, to the
“determination of particularity,” where the satisfaction of subjective needs and
desires is given free reign (pars. 181-182). However, despite the pursuit of
private or selfish ends in relatively unrestricted social and economic
activity, universality is implicit in the differentiation of particular needs
insofar as the welfare of an individual in society is intrinsically bound up
with that of others, since each requires another in some way to effectively
engage in reciprocal activities like commerce, trade, etc. Because this system
of interdependence is not self-conscious but exists only in abstraction from
the individual pursuit of need satisfaction, here particularity and
universality are only externally related. Hegel says that “this system may be
prima facie regarded as the external state, the state based on need, the state
as the Understanding (Verstand) envisages it” (¶ 183). However, civil society
is also a realm of mediation of particular wills through social interaction and
a means whereby individuals are educated (Bildung) through their efforts and
struggles toward a higher universal consciousness.
(A)
The System of Needs
This dimension of civil
society involves the pursuit of need satisfaction. Humans are different from
animals in their ability to multiply needs and differentiate them in various
ways, which leads to their refinement and luxury. Political economy discovers
the necessary interconnections in the social and universalistic side of need.
Work is the mode of acquisition and transformation of the means for satisfying
needs as well as a mode of practical education in abilities and understanding.
Work also reveals the way in which people are dependent upon one another in
their self-seeking and how each individual contributes to the need satisfaction
of all others. Society generates a “universal permanent capital” (¶ 199) that
everyone in principle can draw upon, but the natural inequalities between
individuals will translate into social inequalities. Furthermore, labor
undergoes a division according to the complexities of the system of production,
which is reflected in social class divisions: the agricultural (substantial or
immediate); the business (reflecting or formal); and the civil servants
(universal). Membership in a class is important for gaining status and
recognition in a civil society. Hegel says that “A man actualizes himself only
in becoming something definite, i.e., something specifically particularized;
this means restricting himself exclusively to one of the particular spheres of
need. In this class-system, the ethical frame of mind therefore is rectitude and
esprit de corps, i.e., the disposition to make oneself a member of one of the
moments of civil society by one’s own act … in this way gaining recognition
both in one’s own eyes and in the eyes of others” (¶ 207).
The “substantial”
agricultural class is based upon family relationships whose capital is in the
products of nature, such as the land, and tends to be patriarchial,
unreflective, and oriented toward dependence rather than free activity. In
contrast to this focus on “immediacy,” the business class is oriented toward
work and reflection, e.g., in transforming raw materials for use and exchange,
which is a form of mediation of humans to one another. The main activities of
the business class are craftsmanship, manufacture, and trade. The third class is
the class of civil servants, which Hegel calls the “universal class” because it
has the universal interests of society as its concern. Members of this class
are relieved from having to labor to support themselves and maintain their
livelihood either from private resources such as inheritance or are paid a
salary by the state as members of the bureaucracy. These individuals tend to be
highly educated and must qualify for appointment to government positions on the
basis of merit.
(B)
Administration of Justice
The principle of rightness
becomes civil law (Gesetz) when it is posited, and in order to have binding
force it must be given determinate objective existence. To be determinately
existent, laws must be made universally known through a public legal code.
Through a rational legal system, private property and personality are given
legal recognition and validity in civil society, and wrongdoing now becomes an
infringement, not merely of the subjective right of individuals but also of the
larger universal will that exists in ethical life. The court of justice is the
means whereby right is vindicated as something universal by addressing
particular cases of violation or conflict without mere subjective feeling or
private bias. “Instead of the injured party, the injured universal now comes on
the scene, and … this pursuit consequently ceases to be the subjective and
contingent retribution of revenge and is transformed into the genuine
reconciliation of right with itself, i.e, into punishment” (¶ 220). Moreover,
court proceedings and legal processes must take place according to rights and
rules of evidence; judicial proceedings as well as the laws themselves must be
made public; trial should be by jury; and punishment should fit the crime.
Finally, in the administration of justice, “civil society returns to its
concept, to the unity of the implicit universal with the subjective particular,
although here the latter is only that present in single cases and the
universality in question is that of abstract right” (¶ 229).
(C)
The Police and the Corporation
The Police (Polizei) for
Hegel is understood broadly as the public authorities in civil society. In
addition to crime fighting organizations, it includes agencies that provide
oversight over public utilities as well as regulation of and, when necessary,
intervention into activities related to the production, distribution, and sale
of goods and services, or with any of the contingencies that can affect the
rights and welfare of individuals and society generally (e.g., defense of the
public’s right not to be defrauded, and also the management of goods
inspection). Also, the public authority superintends education and organizes
the relief of poverty. Poverty must be addressed both through private charity
and public assistance since in civil society it constitutes a social wrong when
poverty results in the creation of a class of “penurious rabble” (¶ 245).
Society looks to colonization to increase its wealth but poverty remains a
problem with no apparent solution.
The corporation
(Korporation) applies especially to the business class, since this class is
concentrated on the particularities of social existence and the corporation has
the function of bringing implicit similarities between various private
interests into explicit existence in forms of association. This is not the same
as our contemporary business corporation but rather is a voluntary association
of persons based on occupational or various social interests (such as
professional and trade guilds, educational clubs, religious societies,
townships, etc.) Because of the integrating function of the corporation,
especially in regard to the social and economic division of labor, what appear
as selfish purposes in civil society are shown to be at the same time universal
through the formation of concretely recognized commonalities. Hegel says that
“a Corporation has the right, under the surveillance of the public authority,
(a) to look after its own interests within its own sphere, (b) to co-opt
members, qualified objectively by requisite skill and rectitude, to a number
fixed by the general structure of society, (c) to protect its members against
particular contingencies, (d) to provide the education requisite to fit other
to become members. In short, the right is to come on the scene like a second
family for its members …” (¶ 252). Furthermore, the family is assured greater
stability of livelihood insofar as its providers are corporation members who
command the respect due to them in their social positions. “Unless he is a
member of an authorized Corporation (and it is only by being authorized that an
association becomes a Corporation), an individual is without rank or dignity,
his isolation reduces his business to mere self-seeking, and his livelihood and
satisfaction become insecure” (¶ 253). Because individual self-seeking is
raised to a higher level of common pursuits, albeit restricted to the interest
of a sectional group, individual self-consciousness is raised to relative
universality. Hence, “As the family was the first, so the Corporation is the
second ethical root of the state, the one planted in civil society” (¶ 255).
iii.
The State
The political State, as the
third moment of Ethical Life, provides a synthesis between the principles
governing the Family and those governing Civil Society. The rationality of the
state is located in the realization of the universal substantial will in the
self-consciousness of particular individuals elevated to consciousness of
universality. Freedom becomes explicit and objective in this sphere. “Since the
state is mind objectified, it is only as one of its members that the individual
has objectivity, genuine individuality, and an ethical life … and the
individual’s destiny is the living of a universal life” (¶ 258). Rationality is
concrete in the state in so far as its content is comprised in the unity of
objective freedom (freedom of the universal or substantial will) and subjective
freedom (freedom of everyone in knowing and willing of particular ends); and in
its form rationality is in self-determining action or laws and principles which
are logical universal thoughts (as in the logical syllogism).
The Idea of the State is
itself divided into three moments: (a) the immediate actuality of the state as
a self-dependent organism, or Constitutional Law; (b) the relation of states to
other states in International Law; (c) the universal Idea as Mind or Spirit
which gives itself actuality in the process of World-History.
1)
Constitutional Law
(1)
The Constitution (internally)
Only through the political
constitution of the State can universality and particularity be welded together
into a real unity. The self-consciousness of this unity is expressed in the
recognition on the part of each citizen that the full meaning of one’s actual
freedom is found in the objective laws and institutions provided by the State.
The aspect of identity comes to the fore in the recognition that individual
citizens give to the ethical laws such that they “do not live as private
persons for their own ends alone, but in the very act of willing these they
will the universal in the light of the universal, and their activity is
consciously aimed at none but the universal end” (¶ 260). The aspect of
differentiation, on the other hand, is found in “the right of individuals to
their particular satisfaction,” the right of subjective freedom which is
maintained in Civil Society. Thus, according to Hegel, “the universal must be
furthered, but subjectivity on the other hand must attain its full and living
development. It is only when both these moments subsist in their strength that
the state can be regarded as articulated and genuinely organized” (¶ 260,
addition).
As was indicated in the
introduction to the concept of Ethical Life above, the higher authority of the
laws and institutions of society requires a doctrine of duties. From the
vantage point of the political State, this means that there must be a correlation
between rights and duties. “In the state, as something ethical, as the
inter-penetration of the substantive and the particular, my obligation to what
is substantive is at the same time the embodiment of my particular freedom.
This means that in the state duty and right are united in one and the same
relation” (¶ 261). In fulfilling one’s duties one is also satisfying particular
interests, and the conviction that this is so Hegel calls “political sentiment”
(politische Gesinnung) or patriotism. “This sentiment is, in general, trust
(which may pass over into a greater or lesser degree of educated insight), or
the consciousness that my interest, both substantive and particular, is
contained and preserved in another’s (that is, the state’s) interest and end, i.e.,
in the other’s relation to me as an individual” (¶ 268).
Thus, the “bond of duty”
cannot involve being coerced into obeying the laws of the State. “Commonplace
thinking often has the impression that force holds the state together, but in
fact its only bond is the sense of order which everybody possesses” (¶ 268,
addition).
According to Hegel, the
political state is rational in so far as it inwardly differentiates itself
according to the nature of the Concept (Begriff). The principle of the division
of powers expresses inner differentiation, but while these powers are
distinguished they must also be built into an organic whole such that each
contains in itself the other moments so that the political constitution is a
concrete unity in difference. Constitutional Law is accordingly divided into
three moments: (a) the Legislature which establishes the universal through
lawmaking; (b) the Executive which subsumes the particular under the universal
through administering the laws; (c) the Crown which is the power of
subjectivity of the state in the providing of the act of “ultimate decision”
and thus forming into unity the other two powers. Despite the syllogistic
sequence of universality, particularity, and individuality in these three
constitutional powers, Hegel discusses the Crown first followed by the
Executive and the Legislature respectively. Hegel understands the concept of
the Crown in terms of constitutional monarchy.
(a)
The Crown
“The power of the crown
contains in itself the three moments of the whole, namely, (a) the universality
of the constitution and the laws; (b) counsel, which refers the particular to
the universal; and (g) the moment of ultimate decision, as the
self-determination to which everything else reverts and from which everything else
derives the beginning of its actuality” (¶ 275). The third moment is what gives
expression to the sovereignty of the state, i.e., that the various activities,
agencies, functions and powers of the state are not self-subsistent but rather
have their basis ultimately in the unity of the state as a single self or
self-organized organic whole. The monarch is the bearer of the individuality of
the state and its sovereignty is the ideality in unity in which the particular
functions and powers of the state subsist. “It is only as a person, the
monarch, that the personality of the state is actual. Personality expresses the
concept as such; but the person enshrines the actuality of the concept, and
only when the concept is determined as a person is it the Idea or truth” (¶
279).
The monarch is not a despot
but rather a constitutional monarch, and he does not act in a capricious manner
but is bound by a decision-making process, in particular to the recommendations
and decisions of his cabinet (supreme advisory council). The monarch functions
solely to give agency to the state, and so his personal traits are irrelevant
and his ascending to the throne is based on hereditary succession, and thus on
the accident of birth. “In a completely organized state, it is only a question
of the culminating point of formal decision … he has only to say ‘yes’ and dot
the ‘i’ …. In a well organized monarchy, the objective aspect belongs to law
alone, and the monarch’s part is merely to set to the law the subjective ‘I
will'” (¶ 280, addition). The “majesty of the monarch” lies in the free
asserting of ‘I will’ as an expression of the unity of the state and the final
step in establishing law.
(b)
The Executive
The executive has the task
of executing and applying the decisions formally made by the monarch. “This
task of merely subsuming the particular under the universal is comprised in the
executive power, which also includes the powers of the judiciary and the
police” (¶ 287). Also, the executive is the higher authority that oversees the
filling of positions of responsibilities in corporations. The executive is
comprised of the civil servants proper and the higher advisory officials
organized into committees, both of which are connected to the monarch through
their supreme departmental heads. Overall, government has its division of labor
into various centers of administration managed by special officials.
Individuals are appointed to executive functions on the basis of their
knowledgibility and proof of ability and tenure is conditional on the
fulfillment of duties, with the offices in the civil service being open to all
citizens.
The executive is not an
unchecked bureaucratic authority. “The security of the state and its subjects
against the misuse of power by ministers and their officials lies directly in
their hierarchical organization and their answerability; but it lies too in the
authority given to societies and corporations …” (¶ 295). However, civil
servants will tend to be dispassionate, upright, and polite in part as “a result
of direct education in thought and ethical conduct” (¶ 296). Civil servants and
the members of the executive make up the largest section of the middle class,
the class with a highly developed intelligence and consciousness of right.
Moreover, “The sovereign working on the middle class at the top, and
Corporation-rights working on it at the bottom, are the institutions which
effectively prevent it from acquiring the isolated position of an aristocracy
and using its education and skill as a means to an arbitrary tyranny” (¶ 297).
(c)
The Legislature
For Hegel, “The legislature
is concerned (a) with the laws as such in so far as they require fresh and
extended determination; and (b) with the content of home affairs affecting the
entire state” (¶ 298). Legislative activity focuses on both providing
well-being and happiness for citizens as well as exacting services from them
(largely in the form of monetary taxes). The proper function of legislation is
distinguished from the function of administration and state regulation in that
the content of the former are determinate laws that are wholly universal
whereas in administration it is application of the law to particulars, along
with enforcing the law. Hegel also says that the other two moments of the
political constitution, the monarchy and the executive, are the first two
moments of the legislature, i.e., are reflected in the legislature respectively
through the ultimate decision regarding proposed laws and an advising function
in their formation. Hegel rejects the idea of independence or separation of
powers for the sake of checks and balances, which he holds destroys the unity
of the state (¶ 300, addition). The third moment in the legislature is the
estates (Stände), which are the classes of society given political recognition
in the legislature.
In the legislature, the
estates “have the function of bringing public affairs into existence not only
implicitly, but also actually, i.e., of bringing into existence the moment of
subjective formal freedom, the public consciousness as an empirical universal,
of which the thoughts and opinions of the Many are particulars” (¶ 301). Not
only do the estates guarantee the general welfare and public freedom, but they
are also the means by which the state as a whole enters the subjective
consciousness of the people through their participation in the state. Thus, the
estates incorporate the private judgment and will of individuals in civil
society and give it political significance.
The estates have an
important integrating function in the state overall. “Regarded as a mediating
organ, the Estates stand between the government in general on the one hand, and
the nation broken up into particulars (people and associations) on the other. …
[I]n common with the organized executive, they are a middle term preventing
both the extreme isolation of the power of the crown … and also the isolation
of the particular interests of persons, societies and Corporations” (¶ 302).
Also, the organizing function of the estates prevents groups in society from
becoming formless masses that could form anti-government feelings and rise up
in blocs in opposition to the state.
The three classes of civil
society, the agricultural, the business, and the universal class of civil
servants, are each given political voice in the Estates Assembly in accordance
with their distinctiveness in the lower spheres of civil life. The legislature
is divided into two houses, an upper and lower. The upper house comprises the
agricultural estate (including the peasant farmers and landed aristocracy), a
class “whose ethical life is natural, whose basis is family life, and, so far
as its livelihood is concerned, the possession of land. Its particular members
attain their position by birth, just as the monarch does, and, in common with
him, they possess a will which rests on itself alone” (¶ 305). Landed gentry
inherit their estates and so owe their position to birth (primogeniture) and
thus are free from the exigencies and uncertainties of the life of business and
state interference. The relative independence of this class makes it
particularly suited for public office as well as a mediating element between
the crown and civil society.
The second section of the
estates, the business class, comprises the “fluctuating and changeable element
in civil society” which can enter politics only through its deputies or
representatives (unlike the agricultural estate from which members can present
themselves to the Estates Assembly in person). The appointment of deputies is
“made by society as a society” both because of the multiplicity of members but
also because representation must reflect the organization of civil society into
associations, communities, and corporations. It is only as a member of such
groups that an individual is a member of the state, and hence rational
representation implies that consent to legislation is to be given not directly
by all but only by “plenipotentiaries” who are chosen on the basis of their
understanding of public affairs as well as managerial and political acumen,
character, insight, etc. Moreover, their charge is to further the general
interest of society and not the interest of a particular association or
corporation instead (¶ 308-10).
The deputies of civil
society are selected by the various corporations, not on the basis of universal
direct suffrage which Hegel believed inevitably leads to electoral
indifference, and they adopt the point of view of society. “Deputies are
sometimes regarded as ‘representatives’; but they are representatives in an
organic, rational sense only if they are representatives not of individuals or
a conglomeration of them, but of one of the essential spheres of society and
its large-scale interests. Hence, representation cannot now be taken to mean
simply the substitution of one man for another; the point is that the interest
itself is actually present in its representative, while he himself is there to
represent the objective element of his own being” (¶ 311).
The debates that take place
in the Estates Assembly are to be open to the public, whereby citizens can
become politically educated both about national affairs and the true character
of their own interests. “The formal subjective freedom of individuals consists
in their having and expressing their own private judgements, opinions, and
recommendations as affairs of state. This freedom is collectively manifested as
what is called ‘public opinion’, in which what is absolutely universal, the
substantive and the true, is linked with its opposite, the purely particular
and private opinions of the Many” (¶ 316). Public opinion is a “standing
self-contradiction” because, on the one hand, it gives expression to genuine
needs and proper tendencies of common life along with common sense views about
important matters and, on the other, is infected with accidental opinion,
ignorance, and faulty judgment. “Public opinion therefore deserves to be as
much respected as despised — despised for its concrete expression and for the
concrete consciousness it expresses, respected for its essential basis, a basis
which only glimmers more or less dimly in that concrete expression” (¶ 318).
Moreover, while there is freedom of public communication, freedom of the press
is not totally unrestricted as freedom does not mean absence of all
restriction, either in word or deed.
Hegel calls the class of
civil servants the “universal class” not only because as members of the
executive their function is to “subsume the particular under the universal” in
the administration of law, but also because they reflect a disposition of mind
(due perhaps largely from their education) that transcends concerns with
selfish ends in the devotion to the discharge of public functions and to the
public universal good. As one of the classes of the estates, civil servants
also participate in the legislature as an “unofficial class,” which seems to
mean that as members of the executive they will attend legislative assemblies
in an advisory capacity, but this is not entirely clear from Hegel’s text.
Also, given that the monarch and the classes of civil society when conceived in
abstraction are opposed to each other as “the one and the many,” they must
become “fused into a unity” or mediated together through the civil servant
class. From the point of view of the crown the executive is such a middle term,
because it carries out the final decisions of the crown and makes it
“particularized” in civil society. On the other hand, in order for the classes
of civil society to actually sense this unity with the crown a mediation must
occur from the other direction, so to speak, where the upper house of the
estates, in virtue of certain likenesses to the Crown (e.g., role of birth for
one’s position) is able to mediate between the Crown and civil society as a
whole.
(2)
Sovereignty vis-à-vis foreign States
The interpenetration of the
universal with the particular will through a complex system of social and
political mediations is what produces the self-consciousness of the nation-state
considered as an organic (internally differentiated and interrelated) totality
or concrete individual. In this system, particular individuals consciously
pursue the universal ends of the State, not out of external or mechanical
conformity to law, but in the free development of personal individuality and
the expression of the unique subjectivity of each. However, individuality is
not something possessed by particular persons alone, or even primarily by such
persons. The state as a whole, i.e., the nation-state as distinct from the
political state as one of its moments, constitutes a higher form of
individuality. In principle, Mind or Spirit possesses a singleness in its
“negative self-relation,” i.e., in the sense that unity in a being is a
function of setting itself off from other beings. “Individuality is awareness
of one’s existence as a unit in sharp distinction from others. It manifests
itself here in the state as a relation to other states, each of which is
autonomous vis-à-vis the others. This autonomy embodies mind’s actual awareness
of itself as a unit and hence it is the most fundamental freedom which a people
possesses as well as its highest dignity” (¶ 322). For any being to have
self-conscious independence requires distinguishing the self from any of its
contingent characteristics (inner self-negation), which externally is a
distinction from another being. This consciousness of what one is not is for
the nation-state its negative relation to itself embodied externally in the
world as the relation of one state to another. However, this is not a mere
externality, “But in fact this negative relation is that moment in the state
which is most supremely its own, the state’s actual infinity as the ideality of
everything finite within it” (¶ 323).
According to Hegel, war is
an “ethical moment” in the life of a nation-state and hence is neither purely
accidental nor an inherent evil. Because there is no higher earthly power
ruling over nation-states, and because these entities are oriented to preserving
their existence and sovereignty, conflicts leading to war are inevitable. Also,
defense of one’s nation is an ethical duty and the ultimate test of one’s
patriotism is war. “Sacrifice on behalf of the individuality of the state is
the substantial tie between the state and all its members and so is a universal
duty” (¶ 325). In making a sacrifice for the sake of the state individuals
prove their courage, which involves a transcendence of concern with egoistic
interests and mere material existence. “The intrinsic worth of courage as a
disposition of mind is to be found in the genuine absolute, final end, the
sovereignty of the state. The work of courage is to actualize this final end,
and the means to this end is the sacrifice of personal actuality” (¶ 328). Moreover,
war, along with catastrophy, disease, etc, highlights the finitude, insecurity,
and ultimate transitoriness of human existence and puts the health of a state
to a test. Hegel does not consider the ideal of “perpetual peace,” as advocated
by Kant, a realistic goal towards which humanity can strive. Not only is the
sovereignty of each state imprescriptible, but any alliance or league of states
will be established in opposition to others.
2)
International Law
“International law springs
from the relations between autonomous states. It is for this reason that what
is absolute in it retains the form of an ought-to-be, since its actuality
depends on different wills each of which is sovereign” (¶ 330). States are not
private persons in civil society who pursue their self-interest in the context
of universal interdependence but rather are completely autonomous entities with
no relations of private right or morality. However, since a state cannot escape
having relations with other states, there must be at least some sort of
recognition of each by the other. International law prescribes that treaties
between states ought to be kept, but this universal proviso remains abstract
because the sovereignty of a state is its guiding principle, hence states are
to that extent in a state of nature in relation to each other (in the Hobbesian
sense of there being natural rights to one’s survival with no natural duties to
others). “Their rights are actualized only in their particular wills and not in
a universal will with constitutional powers over them. This universal proviso
of international law therefore does not go beyond an ought-to-be, and what
really happens is that international relations in accordance with treaty
alternate with the severance of these relations” (¶ 333). Obviously, if states
come to disagree about the nature of their treaties, etc., and there is no
acceptable compromise for each party, then matters will ultimately be settled
by war.
States recognize their own
welfare as the highest law governing their relations to one another, however,
the claim by a state to recognition of this welfare is quite different from
claims to welfare by individual person in civil society. “The ethical
substance, the state, has its determinate being, i.e., its right, directly
embodied in something existent … and the principle of its conduct and behavior
can only be this concrete existent and not one of many universal thoughts
supposed to be moral commands” (¶ 337). States recognize each other as states,
and even in war there is awareness of the possibility that peace can be
restored and that therefore war ought to come to an end, as well as
understandings about the proper limitations on the waging of war. However, at
most this translates into the jus gentium, the law of nations understood as
customary relationships, which remains a “maelstrom of external contingency.”
The principles of the mind or spirit (Volksgeist) of a nation-state are wholly
restricted because its particularity is already that of realized individuality,
possessing objective actuality and self-consciousness. Hence, the reciprocal
relations of states to one another partake of a “dialectic of finitude” out of
which arises the universal mind, “the mind of the world, free from all
restriction, producing itself as that which exercises its right–and its right
is the highest right of all–over these finite minds in the ‘history of the
world which is the world’s court of judgment'” (¶ 340).
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