Elements of the Philosophy of Right

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right is a systematic treatise in political philosophy, jurisprudence, and ethics. The book expands on the treatment of "objective spirit," Hegel's term for the sphere of law, morality, and ethical institutions, from his earlier Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817) and was designed to accompany his university lectures. Hegel argues that the modern state, properly understood, is the actualization of human freedom, and he develops this argument through a progression from the abstract rights of individual persons, through the moral life of subjective agents, to the concrete institutions of family, civil society, and the state.

In a lengthy Preface, Hegel insists that philosophy's task is to comprehend what already exists as rational rather than to prescribe how the world ought to be, declaring that "What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational" (44). He attacks rival philosophers, above all his longtime antagonist J. F. Fries, for basing ethics on feeling and subjective enthusiasm rather than on disciplined conceptual thought. He concludes with the famous metaphor that "the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk" (47): Philosophy comprehends a form of life only after it has matured.

The Introduction (§§ 1–33) defines the work's subject matter as the "Idea of right," the concept of freedom together with its actualization. Hegel distinguishes his philosophical approach from positive jurisprudence, which concerns itself with what the law happens to be in a given jurisdiction. He develops the concept of the free will through three moments: the will's capacity for pure abstraction; its transition into determinacy, whereby it commits itself to specific ends; and the unity of these two, in which the will remains with itself even as it determines itself, constituting genuine freedom. True freedom, Hegel contends, consists not in arbitrary choice but in willing what is rational. He outlines the work's three major divisions: Abstract Right, Morality, and Ethical Life.

Part One, "Abstract Right" (§§ 34–104), treats the person as an abstract bearer of rights whose fundamental commandment is: "be a person and respect others as persons" (69). The person realizes freedom by acquiring property, whose rational significance lies not in satisfying needs but in overcoming mere subjectivity. Hegel insists on private property as necessary, rejecting the ancient philosopher Plato's prohibition of private property for the guardian class in the Republic. He argues that slavery is contrary to the concept of the human being as free spirit, and that certain goods, including personality, freedom of will, and religion, are inalienable. Property leads to contract, defined as the mediation of property through the common will of two persons. When the particular will diverges from what is objectively right, wrong results in three forms: unintentional wrong, deception, and crime. Punishment is the restoration of right through the negation of the criminal's negation; the criminal, as a rational being, has established a law he recognizes for himself, so punishment honors him as rational. Revenge, as the subjective act of a particular will, generates an infinite cycle of retaliation, necessitating a transition to public justice and, beyond it, to morality.

Part Two, "Morality" (§§ 105–141), concerns the will's reflection into itself. The person becomes a subject whose right consists in recognizing as valid only what one knows and wills. Hegel develops this through purpose and responsibility (one is accountable only for what was known and intended), intention and welfare (the subject claims the right that an action's universal quality shall have been present in the will), and the good and conscience. He identifies the right of the subject's particularity to find satisfaction as the distinguishing principle of the modern age. Hegel credits Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy with emphasizing duty for its own sake but criticizes Kant for leaving duty empty of determinate content. Conscience can become either true conscience, which recognizes objective duties, or formal conscience, which claims sovereignty over good and evil. Hegel catalogs the forms of evil: hypocrisy, probabilism (where any plausible moral opinion suffices), the doctrine of good intentions, the ethics of subjective conviction, and irony. The transition to ethical life occurs when the abstract good and abstract conscience are recognized as already united in rational institutions.

Part Three, "Ethical Life" (§§ 142–360), constitutes the bulk of the work. Hegel defines ethical life (Sittlichkeit) as the Idea of freedom realized as a living good in which duty and right coincide: A human being has rights insofar as he has duties. The ethical appears as custom, a "second nature" pervading individual existence. The first subdivision is the family (§§ 158–181), the immediate ethical relationship based on love. Marriage is essentially an ethical bond, not merely a contract or an expression of passion, and Hegel insists it is monogamous. Children possess the right to upbringing and education. The family dissolves naturally through the emancipation of grown children, transitioning into civil society.

Civil society (§§ 182–256) is the distinctively modern sphere in which individuals pursue private ends mediated through the needs and work of all others. Needs multiply and refine themselves socially, and the division of labor makes work more productive but increasingly mechanical. Civil society differentiates itself into three estates: the agricultural, the business, and the universal estate of civil servants. Hegel develops the administration of justice as the sphere where abstract right acquires universal recognition, advocates for trial by jury and the codification of law, and treats the regulatory and welfare functions he calls "police" (Polizei). Poverty, he argues, is a systematic product of civil society for which civil society has no adequate remedy. The corporation, a professional association recognized by the state, provides its members with social identity and ethical activity beyond self-interest.

The state (§§ 257–360) is "the actuality of the ethical Idea" (275) and "the actuality of concrete freedom" (282), in which personal individuality and particular interests develop fully while being brought back to substantial unity. Hegel criticizes social contract theory and credits the political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau with making the will the principle of the state but faults Rousseau for conceiving the will only in its individual form. He attacks the conservative theorist Karl Ludwig von Haller for reducing political order to the rule of the more powerful. Constitutional monarchy, Hegel argues, is the rational form of the modern state, with three powers: the sovereign (embodying ultimate decision), the executive (a civil service qualified by education), and the legislative (a bicameral Estates assembly representing social groups rather than atomistic individuals). Church and state must remain distinct in form even while united in the truth of their content.

Hegel argues that states exist in a state of nature relative to one another, with no power above them to enforce treaties. War is not an absolute evil but preserves the ethical health of nations by reminding them of the transience of finite things. The work concludes with world history as the arena in which the "world spirit" realizes itself through the dialectic of finite national spirits. Hegel identifies four successive world-historical realms: the Oriental (where individual personality disappears into substantial unity), the Greek (where ethical life achieves beautiful individuality but personal freedom is not yet autonomous), the Roman (where private self-consciousness and abstract universality reach extreme opposition), and the Germanic (where spirit grasps the unity of divine and human nature). In the final reconciliation, the state is recognized as "the image and actuality of reason" (380).