Normative rationality: Hegelian drives (2017)

Hegel Bulletin, 2015

G. W. F. Hegel, ed. Knowles, D. , 2010

there is at present, amongst Hegel scholars and in the interpretative discussions of Hegel's social and political theories, the flavour of old-style 'apology' for his liberal credentials, as though there exists a real need to prove he holds basic liberal views palatable to the hegemonic, contemporary political worldview. such an approach is no doubt motivated by the need to reconstruct what is left of the modern moral conscience when Hegel has finished discussing the flaws and contradictions of the Kantian model of moral judgement. the main claim made in the following pages is that the critique of 'subjective' moralities is neither the sole nor even the main reason for the adoption of an immanent doctrine of ethics. this paper will look to Hegel's mature theory of action as motivating the critique of transcendentalism rather than merely filling in the hole left when one rejects Kant and it will discuss what the consequences of this approach are for the role of the moral conscience within the political sphere, arguing that Hegel's own conditions of free action would not be met unless the subjective moral conscience was operative in the rational state.

This paper argues that Hegel’s Philosophical Outlines of Justice (‘Rph’) develops an incisive natural law theory by providing a comprehensive moral theory of a modern republic. Hegel’s Outlines adopt and augment a neglected species of moral constructivism which is altogether neutral about moral realism, moral motivation, and whether reasons for action are linked ‘internally’ or ‘externally’ to motives. Hegel shows that, even if basic moral norms and institutions are our artefacts, they are strictly objectively valid because for our very finite form of semi-rational embodied agency they are necessary and because sufficient justifying grounds for these norms and institutions can be addressed to all persons. Hegel’s moral constructivism identifies and justifies the core content of a natural law theory, without invoking metaphysical issues of moral realism, anti-realism, irrealism or ‘truth makers’ (of moral propositions), etc. I begin with Socrates’ question to Euthyphro to distinguish between moral realism and moral irrealism (§2). I then summarise basic points of constructivist method (§3) and how Hume’s theory of justice inaugurates this distinctive species of natural law constructivism (§4). How this approach addresses issues of political legitimacy is highlighted by Rousseau’s juridical innovation (§5). How this approach is better articulated and justified by Kant’s specifically Critical method is briefly considered in connection with his justification of rights to possession (§6), so that we can then recognise Hegel’s natural law constructivism in his Outlines (§7). Hegel’s account of rights to possession corresponds closely to Kant’s (§8), and his account of juridical relations as human interrelations accords with natural law constructivism (§9). This finding is corroborated by some central features of Hegel’s account of Sittlichkeit, including how Hegel adopts, undergirds and augments Rousseau’s and Kant’s Independence Requirement for political legitimacy (§10). (7.02.2017)

Hegel Bulletin, 2018

The leading question of Tatjana Sheplyakova's book is the connection between public freedom and individuality in Hegel's philosophy. This question is for the most part addressed with regard to Hegel's 1802-3 essay On the Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Right (Naturrechtsaufsatz), a generally overlooked but in fact fundamental juvenile Hegelian work. However, the second half of the last chapter of the book broadens the focus by including the 1821 Outlines of the Philosophy of Right. The book is divided into three long and dense chapters preceded by a clear programmatic Introduction. Chapter 1 is dedicated to Hegel's diagnosis of his own time, Chapter 2 to his critique of the (Kantian) moral-juristic understanding of freedom, while Chapter 3 deals with the Hegelian pars construens. The inquiry begins with Hegel's early assessment of the condition of dissociation (Entzweiung) and depoliticization (Entpolitisierung) of modern society and modern human beings. Sheplyakova highlights very well the critical, even 'revolutionary' (67) tone of Hegel's diagnosis of modernity in the Naturrechtsaufsatz. On the one hand, Hegel questions the distinction of legality and morality, rooted already in Roman law and culminating in bourgeois society, because he takes it to lead to a 'privatisation of freedom' (51) and to the idea that the state is but an instrumental extension of individual right. On the other hand, Hegel does not only wish for a return of the classical model of the polis, which constitutes the counterparadigm to modernity. Both paradigms of freedom are, in fact, deficient, so that the diagnosis points out a 'double lack of true relationships' (114). In the Naturrechtsaufsatz, unlike Hegel's later thought, modernity is not conceived as the highest point in history but rather as a 'period of transition' (108). Briefly: in the classical model of the polis, individuals were not free as such, but only in so far as they belonged to a certain estate, which implied that ancient 'substantial' freedom was a 'freedom through inequality' (109). Modernity, conversely, realizes freedom as equality at the cost of a juristic-formalistic levelling of relationships and the disentanglement of individual rights and public sphere (121). As Sheplyakova effectively states, the problem for Hegel is not 'modern' individual autonomy as such but rather its merely juristic actualization, based on which individuals do not

Hegel's Philosophy of Right: A Critical Guide, 2017

In this essay I analyze two of the major conceptions of justifi cation in the Philosophy of Right and unpack the relation between them. I argue that we should link Hegel's conception of conscience to the account of refl ective equilibrium introduced by John Rawls because Hegel's view of conscience contains the holism, as well as the back and forth between universal principles and individual judgments, that are central to the refl ective equilibrium account. In the transition from 'Morality' to ' Sittlichkeit ', Hegel switches the locus of justifi cation from the moral individual to the whole ensemble of social institutions of modern life. Th is system of institutions is justifi ed because of its organic, living structure characterized by the productive interplay of universal and particular ends. In contrasting these two models, my goal is to fi gure out just what Hegel thinks is wrong with the refl ective model and what is gained in the move to organic justifi cation. Th e main diff erence hinges on Hegel's orientation by action rather than by judgement , where the action-based organicism proves superior because it includes a public feedback process that supports a dynamic, self-correcting model of political justifi cation.

Hegel-Studien, 2020

Hegel's "Philosophy of Spirit" applies two different notions of 'social practice'-one as a condition of possibility for intentional action and another one as the living actuality within which an action is initiated and takes place. Both notions go hand in hand with their own logically distinct form of normativity-social normativity and the normativity of right. Whereas the first one can already be understood from the standpoint of subjective spirit, the second notion is at home in objective spirit or Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie. Stressing this distinction has consequences not only for a more differentiated account on Hegel's philosophy of action, but also for an interpretation of ethical life-which should not be equated with the first notion of social practice. In order to mark the importance of ethical life for Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie, the relevance of objectivity for objective spirit needs to be highlighted, which according to Hegel cannot be derived from a process of inner transformation of changing attitudes of the acting subject towards the norms of her action. Hegel-Studien 53/54 (2020), S. 117-134

Unravelling Hegel's Ethical Life in 'Philosophy of Right', 2017

This paper attempts to deconstruct the idea of freedom and ethical life, and will look parts of the introduction and the first sixteen paragraphs (§ 142-157) of Part III of the Philosophy of Right. Guided by the following research question: to what extent does Hegel’s conception of ethical life (sittlichkeit) in his Philosophy of Right allow for subjective freedom?, this paper aims to analyse the extent to which ethical life leaves room for subjective freedom. In order to understand ethical life, we must first understand the concept of freedom in terms of positive and negative freedom, and objective and subjective will. This will be discussed in depth using the first and second part of Philosophy of Right, as well as how Part III is the dialectical synthesis of the former two parts and concretises the actuality of freedom in ethical life. Next, the paper will look into the influences of this concretisation of freedom, and how this contributes to an ethical life. Lastly, I will critically evaluate ethical life with the objective formulations of freedom as described by Hegel in order to see whether his normative project is idealistic.

REASON AND STATE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL (Atena Editora), 2024

With this article we intend to demonstrate the relationship between the State and Reason in the view of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. To do this, we will address the Hegelian conception of the State and the interaction of this institution with the individual and civil society. Added to this, we will try to observe how the State, interpreted by Hegel, adjusts to the particular aspects of each nation and, especially, to the rationality that it incorporates. We will deal with Hegel's conception of the individual and his existence within a rational State and how individual freedoms are recognized and manifested (that is, the role of the individual in this institution, including the rights and duties of the citizen). This study is essentially bibliographic and, for this, we focus on his relevant Hegelian works Philosophy of History (1999) and Hegel's Principles of the Philosophy of Law (1997).

2012

The introduction ( § §1-33) to Hegel's Philosophy of Right is the key to the work's structure, its argumentative strategy and it functions as a foundation for Hegel's practical philosophy in general. Its explanatory potential is best realised by situating it within the systematic context of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences and the Science of Logic. This interpretative strategy reveals that for Hegel, the true site of agency is 'the concept' and that particular individuals and their arbitrary activity are at best the concept's 'appearance'. This does not render their activity 'false' but describes how willing and freedom are 'for us' as self-conscious subjects that confront an external world. For Hegel, 'true' freedom in the sense of 'self-determination to itself' resides with the universal and singular concept that negatively unites itself with its objectivity to form what he calls the 'Idea of the will' or 'right'. This interpretation contradicts the mainstream of contemporary Hegel scholarship since its proponents either deny the reality of the universal concept as agent or absolutely differentiate between the concept's activity (subjective action) and its objective reality (norms, institutions). This prevents the interpreter from appreciating that it is Hegel's concept that is manifest in form of particular willing subjects and their socio-political context. Since most commentators associate 'activity' or 'freedom' primarily with particular subjects, their notions of freedom are, by Hegel's standards, either empty and fail to describe actual willing or they fall short of the standard of 'true freedom', viz. 'self-determination to itself' because their agents' freedom depends on something that differs from the agents. 1 The present commentary argues that such a dilemma can be avoided by an interpretation that attributes agency to Hegel's concept. By determining itself to be Idea, the universal concept determines itself (as subject) to itself (as object) and rational agency and rational institutions are grasped as aspects of the same entity. This is what Hegel calls the unconditioned Idea of right or 'objective freedom'.