Critique of Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right

Before anything else I think people (particularly Bertrand Russel in his History of Western Philosophy) miss a lot of Hegel has to offer as they don’t understand the most important epistemological qualification of Hegel thought. This is that for Hegel knowledge is a process, when he makes a seemingly ridiculous claim it is contingent upon the conditions of the time. The Philosophy Right was released three year after the Carlsbad Decrees, liberal ideas and figures in university incredibly dangerous. The book had to be approved by government censors, a potentially deadly process. Hegel’s prose is not just confusing but political, his dense technical jargon hides an underlying revolutionary metaphysics. In this sense the Philosophy of Right is a puzzle, where the reader has to figure out if a statement is actually align with the underlying metaphysic — for Hegel this is logicthrough the true/good infinity of the self-referential dialectic — or is it to appease the censors.

The PoR as strictly explanatory of society and not a cerebral exercise, as it is for Kant. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism posits an unknowable quality of ”things-in-themself” meaning unknowable in their totality only by what we can perceive. This unknowable is the noumenal realm for which we only see its appearance to us as phenomena. As Kant wants to construct a essential idea of ideas, in the platonic sense, his conceptions of right— will, freedom, morality, politics, international relations etc. — are derived through the epistemic chain of pure reason via a priori principles. This is a “scientific” (used very loosely here to mean rigorous) approach to philosophy, but does not deal with knowledge as it exists.

When philosophy paints its grey in grey, a shape of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognised, by the grey in grey of philosophy; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk. (Preface) (The owl of Minerva is a symbol of wisdom, knowledge, and erudition, originating from the Roman goddess Minerva - Brave AI)

Hegel thinks Kant doesn’t go far enough in his rejection of the phenomenal realm. If the thing-in-itself is unknowable we don’t know it through its appearance (knowledge of appearance/phenomena) because we just don’t Know it at all. It is pointless to talk about or make any absolute claim to knowledge; it is impossible. Knowledge is conditioned by spirit, through the universals (“I”, “Grey”, “Here”, “Germany”) that we use to converse. Knowledge is contingent or necessitated (meaning contingent forces which knowledge notices) by the space and time (to use Kantian terms) it is discussed.

A further word on the subject of issuing instructions on how the world ought to be: philosophy, at any rate, always comes too late to perform this function. As the thought of the world, it appears only at a time when actuality has gone through its formative process and attained its completed state. The lesson of the concept is necessarily also apparent from history, namely that it is only when actuality has reached maturity that the ideal appears opposite the real and reconstructs this real world, which is has grasped in its substance in the shape on an intellectual realm. (Preface)

So Hegel’s concern is exploring the ration order: “what is actual is rational, and what is rational is actual.” The rational in this sense is not what we would conventionally understand as reason, but what actually is the reality of the State it exists in. In his strictly practical rational for the state he conveys it with complexity and confidence which give the appearance that he is advocating for these things, he is not he is just saying they exist and attempting to give metaphysical explanations to them. Any claim that does not align with a dialectical movement can generally be considered to be false.

This happens a lot in the additions to passages for example in 195 when justifying the family Hegel says “The right of the family properly consists in the fact that its substantiality should have existence.” This is almost a non-justification, it follows no logic apart from the placation of should. This specific claim is very interesting as in 255 he says “the family is the first ethical root of the state”, if the family is emergent and not a dialectical consequence does the State have any metaphysical grounding? Hegel’s assertion that the state is rational, still makes sense as it is actual, but is it what it ought to be, that is for Marx and as it regards the Family in relation to the state Engels (in The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State) to examine.

Another instance is Hegel’s elaboration of Monogamy. §168 seems to give the justification that non-monogamous and incestuous relationships stem from “the common notion of a state of nature and of the naturalness of right, and in the absence of the concept of rationality and freedom”. These shapes of sexual relationships are not conditioned by the state but something reckless and barbaric, nature. They are enacted without regard to welfare or the unity of individuals in Spirit. These uncivilised relationships would be purely hedonistic and selfish unmediated in relation to others, they “runs counter even to the feeling of shame”. The TLDR for this is just don’t be fucking weird man, don’t be a freak, we just aren’t ready for it yet. This could be the subtitle for the entire PoR.

The underlying metaphysical statement he seems to be making here is a veneration of Love. Love is Force, it is the uneasy solution to the lord and bondsman dialectic. It is the unifier, that which dissolves individuals into the wider system of Spirit. Love creates the bond which forms a new Subject, it is a contradiction as the individuals within this new individual (those unity of those connected by a Love) are constantly negating their own selfhood for the sake of this new Subject, it is shaky but it brings humanity closer to the absolute substance of everything. It is important to mention at this point that Hegel is a Spinozist, in a time where uttering his name was dangerous.

“To be a philosopher, one must first be a Spinozist—but one must not remain one.” (Lectures on the History of Philosophy)

Spinoza argued for Monism commonly encapsulated in the phrase deus sive natura G_d or Nature. G_d is not an actor or an individual it is everything, it is all part of the same substance. This Notion is expressed in Hegel as Spirit. Hegel also rejected that humans were the origin of knowledge, although he use very speciesist rhetoric, reality does not unfolded from us as Descartes argued and it not finite or limited by subjective cognition as in Kant.

Hegel departs for Spinoza because it strangles/“swallows” knowledge. Spinoza argues “Freedom is the recognition of necessity.” (Ethics) To this I, as with many others, can only throw my hands in the air and take an embody a passive Stotic essence. It is quite reassuring as everything had to happen, one just has to let it be and rest upon Leibniz’s assertion that “this is the best of all possible worlds” and internalise Paul McCartney soothing whispers of “Let it Be.” Hegel is a fair bit smarter than me and found a way to negate this claim “this necessity is not yet freedom, for freedom consists in self-determination.” (Lectures on the History of Philosophy) Hegel’s main critique is that Spinoza’s all encompassing substance lacks subject “Substance must be conceived not only as Substance but also as Subject.” (Phenomenology of Spirit) By positing Substance (and it’s endless modalities) as a Subject, we can actually start to conceive a system. “Substance in Spinoza does not develop itself into a system; it remains rigid and unmoving.” Hegel’s dialectic vitalises Spinoza’s necessitarianism, and develops an entire system of necessary thought around it. Hegel gives Spinoza meaning.

To summarise Hegel in Hegelian terms he is the synthesis of Kant, through the language of Fichte (subjectivity, objectivity, universality, particularity) and Spinoza mediated by the historical conditions of the French Revolution, Napoleon and the Industrial Revolution.

I will be continuing to read Hegel probably till I die, I know really understand why Žižek says he is a Hegelian not a Marxist as it all begins here Feuerbach, Stirner, Kropotkin, Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, Heidegger, Adorno, Horkheimer, Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, D&G, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Debord, Zizek, Judith Butler, Nick Land, Fisher and for that most constitutions and Western governments as we currently understand (particularly the US and the UK) start here. From one man German arrogance to mumble about Kant and Spinoza (and really shit on John Locke and Thomas Hobbes).