- Hegel's Philosophy of Right
- Source:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/prconten.htm
- [Reading selections that follow are marked in blue]
- Analytical Table of Contents
- Preface
- p. 15 The work covers the same ground in a more detailed and
systematic way than the Encyclopaedia (1817).
- p. 16 The philosophic way of advancing from one matter to
another is essentially different from every other.
- p. 17 Free thought cannot be satisfied with what is given to
it.
- p. 18 The ethical world or the state, is in fact reason
potently and permanently actualised in self-consciousness.
- p. 19 There are two kinds of laws, laws of nature and laws of
right.
- p. 20 The spiritual universe is looked upon as abandoned by
God.
- p. 21 Mr. Fries, one of the leaders of this shallow-minded
host of philosophers.
- p. 22 It is no surprise that the view just criticised should
appear in the form of piety.
- p. 23 The actual world of right and ethical life are
apprehended in thought, and this reasoned right finds expression
in law.
- p. 24 Philosophy should therefore be employed only in the
service of the state.
- p. 25 Philosophising has reduced all matter of thought to the
same level, resembling the despotism of the Roman Empire.
- p. 26 Philosophy is an inquisition into the rational, and
therefore the apprehension of the real and present.
- p. 27 What is rational is real and what is real is rational.
- p. 28 To apprehend what is is the task of philosophy, because
what is is reason.
- p. 29 A half philosophy leads away from God, while a true
philosophy leads to God.
- p. 30
The
owl of Minerva, takes its flight only when the shades of night are
gathering.
- ………
- SECTION THREE: Ethical Life
- i: The Family
- § 158 The family, as the immediate substantiality of
mind, is specifically characterised by love.
- § 159 The right which the individual enjoys takes on the
form of right only when the family begins to dissolve.
- § 160 Marriage, Family Property & Children and the
Dissolution of the Family.
- ………..
- ii: Civil Society
- § 182 The concrete person finds satisfaction by means of
others, and at the same time by means of universality.
- § 183 The livelihood, happiness, and rights of one is
interwoven with the livelihood, happiness, and rights of all.
- § 184 The system of the ethical order constitutes the
Idea's abstract moment, its moment of reality.
- § 185 Particularity destroys itself and its substantive
concept in this process of gratification.
- § 186 Particularity passes over into universality, and
attains its truth not as freedom but as necessity.
- § 187 Private ends are mediated through the universal
which thus appears as a means.
- §
188
The System of Needs, the Administration of Justice and the Public
Authority & the Corporation.
- A.
The System of Needs
- § 189 Need is satisfied in the product of others, and
labour, the middle term between subjective & objective.
- (a) The Kind of Need and Satisfaction
- § 190 The multiplication of needs and means of satisfying
them.
- § 191 The means to particularised needs and the ways of
satisfying these are divided and multiplied.
- § 192 Universality makes concrete, i.e. social, the
isolated and abstract needs and their ways of satisfaction.
- § 193 The need for equality and for emulation becomes a
fruitful source of the multiplication of needs.
- § 194 The strict natural necessity of need is obscured.
- § 195 Luxury.
- (b) The Kind of Labour
- § 196 Labour confers value on means and gives them their
utility.
- § 197 Theoretical education develops, and practical
education is acquired through working.
- § 198 Division of labour makes men dependent on one
another, labour more & more mechanical, until machines take
their place.
- (c) Capital and Class Divisions
- § 199 Subjective self-seeking turns into a contribution
to the satisfaction of the needs of everyone else.
- § 200 Differences in wealth are conspicuous and their
inevitable consequence is disparities of resources & ability.
- § 201 The entire complex is built up into particular
systems of needs, means, and types of work, into class-divisions.
- § 202 [a] The substantial or immediate class, [b] the
reflecting or formal class; & [c] the universal class.
- § 203 [a] The Agricultural Class.
- § 204 [b] The Business Class.
- § 205 [c] The Universal Class [the civil service].
- § 206 The class to which an individual is to belong
depends on natural capacity, birth, and other circumstances.
- § 207 In this class system, the ethical frame of mind
therefore is rectitude and esprit de corps.
- § 208 Right has attained its recognised actuality as the
protection of property through the administration of justice.
- B. The Administration of Justice
- § 209 Education makes abstract right something
universally recognised and having an objective validity.
- § 210 The objective actuality of the right consists in
its being known & in its possessing the power of the actual.
- (a) Right as Law
- § 211 The principle of rightness becomes the law when
thinking makes it known as what is right and valid.
- § 212 There may be a discrepancy between the content of
the law and the principle of rightness.
- § 213 The endlessly growing complexity and subdivision of
social ties and the different species of property and contract.
- § 214 In the interest of getting something done, there is
a place within that limit for contingent and arbitrary decisions.
- (b) Law as Determinately Existing
- § 215 If laws are to have a binding force, then they must
be made universally known.
- § 216 Simple laws are required, but the nature of the
material leads to the further determining of laws ad infinitum.
- § 217 My individual right now becomes embodied in the
existent will and knowledge of everyone.
- § 218 The fact that society has become strong and sure of
itself leads to a mitigation of its punishment.
- (c) The Court of Justice
- § 219 Law is something on its own account, and something
universal, the business of a public authority.
- § 220 No act of revenge is justified.
- § 221 A member of civil society must acknowledge the
jurisdiction of the court and accept its decision as final.
- § 222 In court the specific character which rightness
acquires is that it must be demonstrable.
- § 223 The long course of formalities is a right of the
parties at law.
- § 224 The publicity of judicial proceedings.
- § 225 Whether a trespass has been committed and if so by
whom, and the restoration of right.
- § 226 The judge.
- § 227 Judgment on the facts lies in the last resort with
subjective conviction and conscience.
- § 228 The confidence which the parties feel in the judge
is based on the similarity between their social position.
- § 229 The actualisation of the unity of the implicit
universal with the subjective particular.
- C. The Police & the Public Authority
- § 230 The safety of person and property and every
person's livelihood and welfare must be actualised as a right.
- (a) Police or Public Authority
- § 231 The universal authority by which security is
ensured is an external organisation.
- § 232 Private actions may escape the agent's control and
may injure others and wrong them.
- § 233 The actions of individuals may be wrongful, and
this is the ultimate reason for police & penal justice.
- § 234 There is no inherent line of distinction between
what is and what is not injurious.
- § 235 Activities and organisations of general utility
call for the oversight of the public authority.
- § 236 The differing interests of producers and consumers
may come into collision and requires control.
- § 237 While the possibility of sharing in the general
wealth is open to individuals it is subject to contingencies.
- § 238 Civil society tears the individual from his family
ties.
- § 239 Civil society has the right and duty of
superintending and influencing education.
- § 240 Society has the duty of acting as trustee to those
whose extravagance destroys their subsistence or their families'.
- § 241 The public authority takes the place of the family
where the poor are concerned.
- § 242 Society struggles to make charity less necessary,
by discovering the causes of penury and means of its relief.
- § 243 The amassing of wealth and the dependence and
distress of the class tied to work.
- § 244 When the standard of living falls below a
subsistence level, the result is the creation of a rabble of
paupers.
- §
245
Wealth & Poverty.
- §
246 The inner dialectic of civil society drives it to push beyond
its own limits and seek markets in other lands.
- §
247 Trade by sea is the most potent instrument of culture.
- §
248 This far-flung connecting link affords the means for the
colonising activity.
- §
249 Ethical principles circle back and. appear in civil society
and constitute the specific character of the Corporation.
- (b)
The Corporation
- §
250 The business class is concentrated on the particular, and
hence the Corporations are specially appropriate.
- §
251 A member of civil society is in virtue of his own particular
skill a member of a Corporation,.
- §
252 The Corporation comes on to the scene like a second
family.
- §
253 The Corporation member commands the respect due to one in his
social position.
- §
254 The right of exercising one's skill is made rational in the
Corporation..
- §
255 As the family was the first, so the Corporation is the second
ethical root of the state.
- §
256 The Public Authority and the Corporation find their truth in
the absolutely universal end and its absolute actuality.
- iii:
The State
- §
257 The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea.
- §
258 The state is absolutely rational once the particular has been
raised to consciousness of its universality.
- §
259 Constitutional Law, International Law & World-History.
-
-
June 10, 2010
Department
of Government,
College of
Liberal Arts, University of
Texas at Austin.
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