ABSTRACT
"Abstract Right" elaborates the moral perspective of persons, taking "person" to be a technical term denoting our first-shot (immediate) conception of ourselves as discrete, atomic individuals. "Abstract Right" therefore delineates the contours of a rights-based morality. Hegel's account of punishment is thus lodged in a theory of rights. The point of the discussion of punishment is to show what is entailed by our concept of the person and its attendant doctrine of personal rights. Mention of reconciliation calls to mind Michael Hardimon's recent discussion of Hegel's social theory. Reconciliation is achieved when those susceptible to the tensions of fulfilling both individual and social projects—tensions that may amount to alienation—find themselves at home in the world, and a world that is a home for its members is a world of freedom. Hegel tells us explicitly that punishment is the restoration of right.
