ABSTRACT

Hegel’s Philosophy of Right was his last systematic work and the most complete statement of his mature views on ethical and political philosophy. The text explores the relationships between three distinct conceptions of human freedom: persons as possessing contract rights, subjects as reflective moral agents, and individuals as members of an ethical community. It strongly influenced the early Marx and debates over liberalism and communitarianism that arose in the latter half of the twentieth century.

In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the publication of the Philosophy of Right, the 18 essays in this volume by contemporary scholars examine the nature and impact of Hegel's text. They examine a diverse array of topics, ranging from Hegel's account of rights, religious freedom, gender, the state, history, and naturalism to some hitherto relatively overlooked topics such as Hegel and Luther, art and nationality, and Hegel and the market. Each contribution also pays homage to the work of Terry Pinkard, who, as a foremost interpreter and scholar of Hegel’s thought, revived and reinvented the contemporary field of Hegel studies.

Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Critical Perspectives on Freedom and History will be valuable reading for scholars of Hegel, nineteenth-century German philosophy, moral and political philosophy, and the history of political thought.

part 1|80 pages

The Frame of Right

chapter 1|20 pages

Mind Your Ps and Qs

Thinking through Hegel on Provisionality and Qualification

chapter 3|18 pages

Reading the Philosophy of Right in Light of the Logic

Hegel on the Possibility of Multiple Modernities

chapter 4|19 pages

Objective Spirit and Nature

part 2|66 pages

From Formal Right to the Idea of Life

chapter 5|20 pages

The Value of a Right

Status and Equivalence in Hegel's Philosophy of Right

chapter 6|22 pages

A Withering of the Rose in the Cross of the Present

The Logical Structure of Liberal Capitalism's Destruction of Ethical Life

chapter 7|22 pages

True Right Against Formal Right

The Body of Right and the Limits of Property

part 3|139 pages

Ethical Life

chapter 10|27 pages

No Utopia

Hegel on the Gendered Division of Labor 1

chapter 13|20 pages

Civil Society and Its Discontents

Hegel and the Problem of Poverty

chapter 14|19 pages

The Organic Lives of States

part 4|66 pages

Right and World History

chapter 15|15 pages

Poetry and the Sense of History

Images, Narrative, and Justice in the Philosophy of Right

chapter 18|17 pages

“Humanity Needed It, and It Appeared Forthwith”

Hegel on World-Historical Technologies