ABSTRACT

In his Phenomenology of the Spirit, Hegel responded to Rousseau’s philosophical anthropology with his own account of how human nature developed in a historical process, also focusing on the emergence of civil society out of some form of subhuman existence (the state of nature). In his talk of masters and slaves, Hegel agrees with Rousseau’s Second Discourse that civil society is characterized by inequality. For Rousseau, the division of labour in civil society creates conflict, pitting one human being against another. Although Hegel recognizes the alienating effects of the division of labour, he accepts Adam Smith’s idea of the Invisible Hand, and in his Philosophy of Right, he analyzes the division of labour as a force for cooperation among human beings and thus a means of economic progress. Hegel shows how influential Rousseau was on nineteenth-century thinking, but also how later thinkers sought to revise Rousseau’s account of human history and destiny.