ABSTRACT

Hegel's debt to Aristotle in the Philosophy of Spirit goes back to his early Jena years and remains an enduring presence in his mature system. This chapter shows that while historical and conceptual differences separate Aristotle's polis from Hegel's Ethical Life, Aristotle's Politics is indispensable for the systematic articulation of the succession Abstract Right-Morality-Ethical Life that structures Hegel's 1821 work. The chapter argues for two claims. The first concerns the much-debated problem of the status of Hegel's Objective Spirit with regard to the division of practical philosophy into a theory of morality or ethics and a political theory. The second claim connects Hegel's endorsement of Aristotle's thesis of the priority of the whole over the parts to the idea of freedom as (self-) actualization. The chapter suggests that Hegel uses Aristotle's Politics Book One in order to pitch this idea against both modern theories of natural right, and against Kant's moral philosophy.