Table Of ContentHegel’s Philosophy of Right
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 free-
dom: 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 con-
tribution also pays homage to the work of Terry Pinkard, who, as a foremost
interpreter and scholar of Hegel’s thought, revived and reinvented the con-
temporary 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 phi-
losophy, moral and political philosophy, and the history of political thought.
Dean Moyar is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the
Department of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, USA.
Kate Padgett Walsh is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Iowa State
University, USA.
Sebastian Rand is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgia State
University in Atlanta, USA.
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Critical Perspectives on Freedom and
History
Edited by
Dean Moyar, Kate Padgett Walsh,
and Sebastian Rand
First published 2023
by Routledge
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Moyar, Dean, editor. | Padgett Walsh, Kate, editor. | Rand,
Sebastian, editor.
Title: Hegel’s philosophy of right: critical perspectives on freedom and
history / edited by Dean Moyar, Kate Padgett Walsh, and Sebastian Rand.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022025987 (print) | LCCN 2022025988 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367532321 (hbk) | ISBN 9780367532444 (pbk) | ISBN
9781003081036 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831. Grundlinien
der Philosophie des Rechts. | Law—Philosophy. | Natural law.
Classification: LCC K230.H43 A3116 2023 (print) | LCC K230.H43
(ebook) | DDC 320.01/1—dc23/eng/20220922
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022025987
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022025988
ISBN: 978-0-367-53232-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-53244-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-08103-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003081036
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
Contents
List of contributors ix
Editors’ Introduction 1
DEAN MOYAR, KATE PADGETT WALSH, AND SEBASTIAN RAND
PART 1
The Frame of Right 23
1 Mind Your Ps and Qs: Thinking through Hegel on
Provisionality and Qualification 25
LYDIA GOEHR
2 “This Is the Very Essence of the Reformation: Man
in His Very Nature Is Destined to be Free”: Hegel,
Luther, and Freedom 45
ROBERT STERN
3 Reading the Philosophy of Right in Light of the Logic:
Hegel on the Possibility of Multiple Modernities 66
ARASH ABAZARI
4 Objective Spirit and Nature 84
LUDWIG SIEP
PART 2
From Formal Right to the Idea of Life 103
5 The Value of a Right: Status and Equivalence in
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right 105
DEAN MOYAR
vi Contents
6 A Withering of the Rose in the Cross of the Present:
The Logical Structure of Liberal Capitalism’s
Destruction of Ethical Life 125
J.M. BERNSTEIN
7 True Right Against Formal Right: The Body of Right
and the Limits of Property 147
THOMAS KHURANA
PART 3
Ethical Life 169
8 The Institutions of Sittlichkeit 171
JEAN-FRANÇOIS KERVÉGAN
9 The Significance of Plato for a “Disenchanted
Aristotelian” Reading of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right 185
PAUL REDDING
10 No Utopia: Hegel on the Gendered Division of Labor 206
ANDREJA NOVAKOVIC
11 Debt and the Limits of Freedom in Market Society 233
KATE PADGETT WALSH
12 Hegel, Allegiance, and the Problem of Ethical Standing 249
ROBERT PIPPIN
13 Civil Society and Its Discontents: Hegel and the
Problem of Poverty 269
STEPHEN HOULGATE
14 The Organic Lives of States 289
ANTÓN BARBA-KAY
Contents vii
PART 4
Right and World History 309
15 Poetry and the Sense of History: Images, Narrative,
and Justice in the Philosophy of Right 311
LYDIA MOLAND
16 Synchronic and Diachronic Aspects of Historicity in
Hegel’s State 326
CHRISTOPHER YEOMANS
17 Alle sind frei. Hegel’s Philosophy of History as Liberal
Apologetics 342
MARK ALZNAUER
18 “Humanity Needed It, and It Appeared Forthwith”:
Hegel on World-Historical Technologies 358
SEBASTIAN RAND
Index 375
Contributors
Arash Abazari is Senior Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for
Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran, Iran. He received his
PhD in Philosophy from Johns Hopkins University, in 2017, and is the
Author of Hegel’s Ontology of Power: The Structure of Social Domination in
Capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Mark Alznauer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern Uni-
versity, USA. He is the Author of Hegel’s Theory of Responsibility (Cam-
bridge University Press, 2015), and is currently working on two book
projects: one on Hegel’s theory of truth and a second on the idea of art as
theodicy.
Antón Barba-Kay is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The Catholic
University of America, Washington, DC, USA.
J.M. Bernstein is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The
New School for Social Research, USA. He is now completing a book on
the failed and failing character of liberal capitalism to be entitled: Of Eco-
cide and Human Rights: Ethical Life in the Anthropocene.
Lydia Goehr is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, USA. Her
books include The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Phi-
losophy of Music; The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philos-
ophy; Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory; and
Red Sea-Red Square-Red Thread. A Philosophical Detective Story.
Stephen Houlgate is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick,
UK. He is the Author of Hegel, Nietzsche and the Criticism of Metaphysics
(1986), An Introduction to Hegel. Freedom, Truth and History (1991, 2nd ed.
2005), The Opening of Hegel’s Logic (2006), Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
(2013), and Hegel on Being, 2 vols. (2022). He served as Vice-president and
President of the Hegel Society of America and was editor of the Bulletin of
the Hegel Society of Great Britain from 1998 to 2006. He is currently Presi-
dent of the Hegel Society of Great Britain.
Jean-François Kervégan is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the Uni-
versity Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Honorary Senior Fellow of the
