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Philosophy of Right GWF Hegel

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Philosophy of Right GWF Hegel Philosophy of Right G.W.F. Hegel Translated by S.W Dyde Batoche Books Kitchener 2001 Batoche Books Limited 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada email: [email protected] Contents Translator’s Preface. .......................................................................... 7 Author’s Preface. ............................................................................. 10 Introduction. ..................................................................................... 21 First Part: Abstract Right. ............................................................... 51 First Section. Property. ................................................................ 55 A. The Act of Possession. ........................................................ 63 B. Use of the Object. ................................................................ 67 C. Relinquishment of Property. ................................................ 71 Second Section: Contract. ............................................................ 77 Third Section: Wrong................................................................... 83 A. Unpremeditated Wrong. ...................................................... 85 B. Fraud. .................................................................................. 86 C. Violence and Crime. ............................................................ 86 Transition from Right to Morality.............................................. 95 Second Part: Morality. ..................................................................... 96 First Section: Purpose and Responsibility. ................................. 101 Second Section: Intention and Well-being. ................................. 104 Third Section: The Good and Conscience. ..................................110 Transition from Morality to Ethical System. ........................... 130 Third Part: The Ethical System...................................................... 132 First Section: The Family. .......................................................... 138 A. Marriage. .......................................................................... 140 B. The Family Means. ........................................................... 146 C. Education of the Children and Dissolution of the Family. 147 Transition of the Family into the Civic Community. ................ 153 Second Section: The Civic Community. ..................................... 154 4/G. W. F. Hegel A. The System of Wants. ....................................................... 159 B. Administration of Justice. .................................................. 169 C. Police and Corporation...................................................... 183 Third Section: The State. ........................................................... 194 A. Internal Polity. ................................................................... 198 B. International Law. ............................................................. 262 C. World-History.................................................................... 266 Notes .............................................................................................. 272 With the Name of Professor Watson, Who Gave Me My First Lessons, Not in Hegel Only, but in Philosophy, it Gives Me Pleasure to Connect this Translation. Translator’s Preface. In his preface, Hegel’s editor, Professor Eduard Gans, makes some in- teresting remarks upon the “Philosophy of Right,” and informs us as to the way in which the matter of the book had been put together. He dates his preface May 29th, 1833, thirteen years, lacking one month, later than Hegel’s date for the completion of his own preface, and eighteen months after the philosopher’s death. Hegel had, it would appear, lived to see the outbreak of unusual opposition to his political conceptions, and so Dr. Gans begins: “The wide-spread misunderstanding, which prevents the recognition of the real value of the present work, and stands in the way of its general acceptance, urges me, now that an enlarged edition of it has been prepared, to touch upon some things, which I would rather have left simply to increasing philosophic insight.” He goes on to give three reasons for placing great value upon this work of Hegel’s. 1. He thinks that the highest praise is due to the author for the way in which he does justice to every side of the subject, even investigating questions which have only a slight bearing upon the matter in hand, and thus erecting a marvellously complete structure. This fact is more strik- ing, thinks Dr. Gans, than the foundation of the work, which had been already in a measure laid by Kant and Rousseau. 2. A second achievement of the “Philosophy of Right” is the aboli- tion of the distinction, so prominent in the seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, between law and politics. Even in our own time, remarks the editor, many think of law as the skeleton, as it were, of the different forms of the state, as an abstract thing devoid of life and movement. Politics, again, they conceive to be more mobile and a function of a living thing. Law is thus said to stand to politics as anatomy to physiol- 8/G. W. F. Hegel ogy. This divergence, which was unknown to Plato and Aristotle, had its origin in the separatist character of the Middle Ages, and was brought to completion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Hegel, gath- ering up the experience of centuries, returns to the form of the ancient state, and counts law and politics as organic phases of one single whole. 3. The “Philosophy of Right” suggests a two-fold place for the prin- ciple of natural right. In its scientific treatment this principle precedes the philosophy of right, and it also comes at the close. That part of the “Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences,” which precedes the dis- cussion there given of right, morality, and the ethical system, is desig- nated the subjective mind or spirit, and from that ground natural right proceeds. Skipping over the region occupied by the “Philosophy of Right,” dealing with the objective spirit, natural right reappears in world- history. Dr. Grans means that the right of the world-spirit, transcending, as it does, the individual and the nation, is a return at a higher level to natural right. Nations are, as he says, so many streams discharging them- selves into the world-ocean of history. The three points of Professor Grans may be summarized thus: (1) Hegel is thorough and systematic; (2) He has so clear and penetrating a conception of his main idea that he is able to unify sciences, which had seemed to be mutually exclusive; (3.) A right of nature may be viewed as a phase of any stage of an expanding idea, and can be understood only by reference to the exact stage which the exposition has reached. Hence a right of nature, like sub-iectivity or objectivity, may mean quite different things at different points in the unfolding of the system. The single word here added is meant to accent what is implied in the third of these remarks. The “Philosophy of Right” is really only one part of a system. In the third part of his “Encyclopaedia,” when he reaches the subject of Right, Hegel says (note to §487) that he may deal briefly with this topic, since he has already gone exhaustively into it in his “Philosophy of Right.” Hence as this work treats of an essential stage in the evolution of spirit, whose whole nature is unfolded scene by scene in the “Encyclopaedia,” it is not accurate to speak of Hegel’s ethical principles as based upon his logic. The more concrete categories of the “Philosophy of Right” are related each to the next in the same way as are the more abstract categories treated of in the logic. But the relation of the ethics to the logic is not that of superstructure to founda- tion or of application to principle, but of the more concrete to the less concrete stage of evolution. One single life runs through the whole or- The Philosophy of Right/9 ganism of the work. Hence, Dr. Grans is not wrong in stating that this work is an essential part of Hegel’s philosophy, and adding that with the entire system it must stand or fall. Eather, correcting the dramatic tone of the remark, he says in effect that standing and falling are not the only possibilities in the case of a great philosophy. Nor, again, can the differ- ent works of a genuine philosopher be separated into those that are gold and those that are alloy. His work as a whole becomes a common pos- session, and in that way makes ready, as Dr. Grans say, for a higher thought. The unqualified rejection of any part of a philosopher’s work is a challenge to his claim to rank as a great thinker. But the only chal- lenge which he could himself accept as genuine, is the one which is prepared to call in question the basis of his entire system. Perhaps in the “Philosophy of Right” the average philosophical worker comes more quickly to understand something of Hegel than in his other writings. At least Hegel in this book is more likely to collide directly with the reader’s prepossessions, and therefore more speedily stimulates him to form his own view. No genuine philosopher will hesi- tate to show what form his principles assume in relation to tangible human interests. Hegel exhibits philosophic breadth by dressing up his ideas for the thoroughfare, w-here the every-day thinker finds it pos- sible to hob and nob with the master. Yet the student must be again cautioned not to fancy that, because he “feels sure” that Hegel’s concep- tion of the family, of the monarch, or
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