In the debate between the Historische Rechtschule (Hugo and Savigny) and Hegel about who is legitimately entitled to develop legal theory, the former considered philosophy of law to be inherent to systematic science of law, whereas the latter considered the concept of Law in a necessary transdisciplinary dialectic – there would then be a difference between ‘the jurists’ philosophy of law’ and ‘the philosophers’ philosophy of law’. I will demonstrate that such distinction cannot stand. A ‘jurists’ (...) class='Hi'>philosophy of law’ does not exist precisely because legal norms and their application are merely one of the law’s moments. The law’s attitude is one of inclusion: philosophy of law’s disciplinary autonomy occurs in the law’s interdisciplinary immanence. (shrink)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's 'Philosophy of Nature' has often been accused of promoting a view of nature fundamentally at odds with the modern scientific understanding of nature. I show this accusation to be false by pointing to two aspects of Hegel's treatment of nature: its rejection of the 'a priori/a posteriori' distinction, and its connection to Hegel's conception of autonomy as freedom from givenness. I give a reading of Hegel's treatment of the laws of motion along these lines, and (...) I close with some points connecting this reading of Hegel to contemporary philosophy (specifically John McDowell and Catherine Malabou). (shrink)

There are multiple and diverse voices of jurists who have expressed their fear of the unrestricted power of law enforcement and have announced the crisis of the formalist sense of Law. The widespread reaction against the abstract and formalist character of the positivist theory of law manifested itself as the Krausist philosophy of law and was backed by the philosophy of Krause, Schelling, Hegel and the most recent Natural Law theories that seek to establish substantial criteria for moral (...) action. This distrust was caused by the heteronomy of modest and obedient civil servants of the judicial order that rely on political balance of power in which nothing depends on the human bottom of institutions. Let us consider briefly the impressive analyses performed by different thinkers on this issue, which they considered characteristic of their era, but that continues to constitute a difficulty that challenges contemporary society. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel is widely considered to be one of the most important philosophers in the history of philosophy. This entry focuses on his contributions to political philosophy, with particular attention paid to his seminal work: the Philosophy of Right. A particular focus will be placed on Hegel’s theories of freedom, contract and property, punishment, morality, family, civil society, law, and the state.

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

'Hegel's Philosophy of Right' concerns ideas on justice, moral responsibility, family life, economic activity and the political structure of the state. He shows how human freedom involves living with others in accordance with publicly recognized rights and laws.

Hegel experienced several personal, political, and professional crises during his life. These crises impacted his dense theory about the importance of rational self-reflection in the organic character and evolution of law. The article argues that Hegel’s Preface to the Philosophy of Right manifests how one philosopher came to terms with the personal, social and political crises in which he found himself. In particular, the article outlines the central themes of the Preface and then explicates the important notion of Bildung (...) in Hegel’s theory – an Enlightenment notion that Hegel absorbed from his own formal education. After retrieving Hegel’s reading of the virtues and flaws in Kant’s theory of law, the article then explicates Hegel’s understanding of freedom. The article then reviews the local politics in which Hegel found himself before, during and after Napoleon’s defeat. The article then turns to his professional rivalries with Jacob Fries and Friedrich Savigny. The article argues that the personal animosities shaped parts of his Preface. These complex influences and concerns explain why Hegel waited 20 years to publish his theory of law. Hegel’s Preface comes to terms with the crises of his own times. (shrink)

Following the revival in the last decades of the concept of “organism”, scholarly literature in philosophy of science has shown growing historical interest in the theory of Immanuel Kant, one of the “fathers” of the concept of self-organisation. Yet some recent theoretical developments suggest that self-organisation alone cannot fully account for the all-important dimension of autonomy of the living. Autonomy appears to also have a genuine “interactive” dimension, which concerns the organism’s functional interactions with the environment and does not (...) simply derive from its internal organisation. Against this background, we focus on a family of natural philosophical approaches that historically have already strongly taken in account this aspect of autonomy, notably going beyond Kant’s perspective on self-organisation. We thus review Hegel, Plessner, and Jonas’ different perspectives on living beings, focussing in particular on four points: the distinction between organic and inorganic, the theory of biological organisation, the processuality of the living, and the “boundary” between inside and outside, through which the organism establishes its relationship to the environment. We, then, compare the three perspectives on these four points, and finally address the question of what advantages their contribution present—especially compared to Kant’s theory—with respect to the topic of organism’s autonomy. This could help—we hope—to better understand what is at the stake still today. (shrink)

Among the most influential parts of the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) were his ethics, his theory of the state, and his philosophy of history. The Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts) (1821), the last work published in Hegel's lifetime, is a combined system of moral and political philosophy, or a sociology dominated by the idea of the state. Here Hegel repudiates his earlier assessment of the French Revolution as a "a marvelous sunrise" in (...) the realization of liberty. Rejecting the republican form of government, he espouses an idealized form of a constitutional monarchy, whose ultimate power rests with the sovereign. (shrink)

This paper discusses in depth the critical thought of religion shown by young Marx in the Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law, which is not only an important part of Marx's early theoretical explorations, but also an important symbol of his transformation from idealism to materialism. In the Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law, Marx systematically expounded the nature, function, root of reality, and critical method of religion through the perspective of anthroposophical (...) materialism. He inherited Feuerbach's theory that ‘the essence of religion is the alienation of human nature and went beyond his abstract anthropocentrism to direct the focus of the critique of religion to real social relations. This study makes comprehensive use of various methods, such as documentary, comparative, and historical research, to sort out, summarize, and conclude Marx's early critical thought on religion on the basis of existing research results, with a view to providing valuable academic reference for domestic and foreign academics. Although this study is devoted to a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the critical thought of religion in the Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law, the argumentation of some viewpoints may be insufficient due to the constraints of my current level of academic research and the availability of materials. Future research can continue to expand the scope of research and enrich the research methodology with the development of practice, so as to better make up for the shortcomings of this study. (shrink)

A century after the publication of Evgeny Pashukanis's pivotal book General Theory of Law and Marxism, this collection presents a comprehensive account and analysis of his key concept of legal form. Evgeny Pashukanis's General Theory, born amidst the fervour of the first socialist revolution, remains still a crucial reference point in Marxist theories of the law and critical legal theory. Its theoretical depth paved the way for new understandings of the relationship between Marxism and the law. Its crucial virtue continues (...) to be, even after a century, the ability to articulate epochal concerns in the context of a socialist revolution that turned hitherto theoretical problems into dilemmas of practice. This book returns to Pashukanis's main concept: 'legal form'. Through this jurisprudential category Pashukanis aimed to grasp the dependence of the law on the economy, and at the same time, to enquire into the degree to which the law preserves its autonomy from economic relations. In other words, the legal form as a concept conveys both the law's dependence on the economic sphere of exchange and its greatest inherent specificity: the way it translates economic relations into its proper language and set of legal/ideological constructs. The contributions to this volume provide a range of perspectives on how the concept of legal form has been developed and reinterpreted. Including the first English translation of Pashukanis's essay, 'Hegel, State and Law', this collection will be of considerable interest to scholars and students of legal and political theory. (shrink)

This exploration of Hegel's critique of the individualistic ethos of modernity and the genesis of his alternative vision traces the conceptual schemes Hegel experimented with to show how he settled on the concepts of 'ethical life' (Sittlichkeit) and Spirit as the means for overcoming subjectivity and domination.

This paper analyzes how 'Jewishness' functions as a scapegoat for the apparently unbridgeable gap between spirit and matter in Hegel's social and aesthetic theory. If Hegel accuses 'the Jews' and 'Judaism' of inhabiting a radical divide between the empirical and the spiritual - a divide that coincides with the one between body and body politic - he follows the trajectory of Kant's opposition between autonomy and heteronomy. Kant's notion of freedom describes reason's transcendence of the material world, but this state (...) of autonomy paradoxically depends on the heteronomous force of legal power that enforces a 'Mine and Yours' ownership and property distinction. In Kant's account 'Jewishness' embodies a social way of life founded on superstition (Aberglaube) that enacts the opposite of autonomy and is heteronomously bound to objects of empirical reality, whereas the 'Mine and Yours' ownership and property distinction of a Kantian civil society teaches the foregoing of material goods, if contact with them violates positive law. Developing Kant's idealism, Hegel accuses 'the Jews' of making immediate being absolute. By conflating 'Jewishness' and materialism, Hegel excludes 'the Jews' from his idealist conception of the body politic. Key Words: anti-Semitism • autonomy • body • culture • dialectics • German idealism • Hegel • heteronomy • immutability • Kant. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 485 consent to suffer or die? Consent, contractual obligations, and free acts of commitment certainly have a place in a complete ethical theory. But do they have the only place? If Wolff has consigned certain of Kant's central theses to the deep, he also has managed to salvage and restore others. In The Right and the Good, for instance, Ross argues that it is logically absurd to (...) suppose that we ought to act from a sense of duty. But Wolff argues convincinglythat "what Kant actually says is that our acts have moral worth only insofar as they are done from a certain motive (namely, respect for the law). Their rightness is quite independent of their motive. We have, according to Kant, an obligation to do what is right. We do not have an obligation to perform morally meritorious acts" (p. 81). Wolff also manages to shed light on Kant's analysis of rational agency and the nature of will. He enables us to see more clearly than Kant himself does that "will" does not name a faculty but rather has a home in such phrases as "to have a will" which, in turn, "simply means to be capable of being moved by reason rather than by natural causes.... To be free is simply to be moved by reason" (p. 216). Despite its flaws as a commentary, The Autonomy of Reason contributes significantly to our understanding of Kant and the problems he addresses. Wolff's critique is especially valuable because it attempts to relate Kant's ethics to his metaphysics and epistemology in more than a superficial manner. If it does not always succeed, it never ceases to be provocative, imaginative, and well-argued. The Autonomy of Reason offers us a flesh opportunity not only to grapple with the central problems of Kantian ethics but to face the central issues of contemporary ethics as well. HANS OBERDIEK Swarthmore College Philosophic als System bei Fichte Schelling und Hegel. By Adolf Schurr. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann, 1974, Pp. 192. DM 58) Fichte and Schelling often seem to have existed merely to serve as a bridge between the genius of Kant and Hegel. Whether or not they deserve better can here be left unanswered, but in any case Schurr's study has supported this common conception. It begins with a "Kantian" Fichte, passes through a confused Schelling, and ends with a young and confident Hegel. The particular topic developed by Schurr is the attempts made by Fichte and Schelling to forge a unitary system from the brilliant yet fundamentally unresolved conceptions of the Kantian legacy. The study was initiallyprepared as Schurr's Habilitationschrift at Regensburg University, and it evidences all of the virtues and vices of these advanced forms of doctoral dissertations: it is orderly and firmly documented, virtues that when pressed pass into the vices of a deadening style and an uninspired recital of textual references. Perhaps the best single term encompassing these virtues and vices is "conscientiousness." The study should arouse neither speculative enthusiasm nor scholarly disdain, being principally a direct and uncomplicated exposition of some central principles found in the philosophy of Fichte, the thought of young Schelling, and a single text of Hegel. It covers the brief historical period from Fichte's review of Schulze's Aenesidemus in 1794 to the appearance of Hegel's 1801 study Differenz des Fichteschen und Sehellingsehen Systems der Philosophic. The work, then, is naturally divided into three chapters of uneven length. Were the reader to rely upon pagination alone to determine importance, Fichte leads by far, and Hegel is the least, being granted only nineteen pages. Insofar as each philosopher is confined to his chapter, the length allowed seems more than usually significant. In this regard, as the final chapter on Hegel can hardly be said to touch directly upon Hegel's own conception of a system, the title of Schurr's work could be misleading to anyone more closely interested in Hegel. 486 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The work lacks both a general introduction and a conclusion, not only as separate sections but in any form whatsoever. Certainly the reader is prepared, for whatever unspoken necessity, to surrender such amenities... (shrink)

This book is a translation of a classic work of modern social and political thought. Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel's last major published work, is an attempt to systematize ethical theory, natural right, the philosophy of law, political theory, and the sociology of the modern state into the framework of Hegel's philosophy of history. Hegel's work has been interpreted in radically different ways, influencing many political movements from far right to far left, and is widely (...) perceived as central to the communitarian tradition in modern ethical, social, and political thought. This edition includes extensive editorial material informing the reader of the historical background of Hegel's text, and explaining his allusions to Roman law and other sources, making use of lecture materials which have only recently become available. The new translation is literal, readable, and consistent, and will be informative and scholarly enough to serve the needs of students and specialists alike. (shrink)

Despite the abundance of works and debates concerning the concept of freedom, whether individual, collective or metaphysical, it is noted that the questions surrounding the topic are inexhaustible and subject to reflection. Mainly with regard to Hegel, since his philosophy does not address the concept of freedom and its consequences as isolated parts, as if there were several types of freedom. On the contrary, freedom in Hegel appears as the essence of the subjective spirit that expresses itself in the (...) world in the form of the objective spirit, that is, in history. This, in turn, appears as an action of the spirit itself through individuals. These are guided by reason progressively to the self-knowledge that freedom is an intrinsic condition for all men. Thus, the present article aims to clarify Hegel's concept of freedom from the Fundamental Lines of the Philosophy of Law (2022) and its relationship with the concept of history. (shrink)

Few if any of Kant’s critics were more trenchant than Hegel. Here I reconstruct some objections Hegel makes to Kant in a text that has received insufficient attention, the chapter titled ‘the Moral World View’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit. I show that Kant holds virtually all the tenets Hegel ascribes to ‘the moral world view’. I concentrate on five of Hegel’s main objections to Kant’s practical metaphysics. First, Kant’s problem of coordinating happiness with virtue (as worthiness to be happy) (...) is contrived. Kant denies that there is any inherent connection between acting rightly and being happy, but his denial depends on his defining happiness in terms of satisfying inclinations, rather than in terms of achieving ends in general. Second, Kant’s view of moral motivation is contrived; he ultimately admits that we cannot resolve to act without taking inclinations into account. (We cannot resolve to act apart from the matter of our maxim.) Third, Kant’s idea about perfecting our virtue in an infinite progress is incoherent. Kant defines virtue, and evidence of virtue, in terms of overcoming inclinations. Inclinations die with the body. Therefore there can be neither virtue nor evidence of virtue after death. Fourth, Kant’s view of the autonomy of moral agency is inconsistent with viewing the moral law as a divine command. Fifth, Kant’s moral principles cannot be put into practice in concrete circumstances because he supplies inadequate guidance for classifying acts. I conclude that Hegel’s objections to Kant’s practical metaphysics are sound, and I show that the problems Hegel raised against Kant’s account of autonomy and moral motivation are still current, since they have not been resolved, e.g., by Onora O’Neill’s Constructions of Reason. (shrink)

The contemporary secularism is found to be a philosophy of life “as if there were no God” or a kind of ideology, which demands an absolute autonomy of human being to shape his destination. In the philosophy of Descartes at least three sources of secularism could be found: his theory of cognition which resulted in developing other than the classical concept of truth and rationality; his metaphysics; his arguments for the existence of God and in his concept of (...) the nature of God. Karl Marx’s criticism of religion was a next powerful factor on the advance of secularism. Marx makes the charge against the religion that it acts to reinforce the break down the conscience of man living in the modern society, into a public and a private realm. The widest criticism of religion was made by Marx in: Acontribution to the Hegel’s criticism on the philosophy of law”. Especially its first seven paragraph, are particularly important in view of the advance of secularism. F. Nietzsche undermines metaphysics by showing that knowledge of a non-empirical world is cognitively superfluous. He makes clear that he has moved beyond the assumption that there might be a metaphysical world to a positing of the empirical world as the only one. Nietzsche considers that the notion of God is inimical to human nature and human life. Is this really so in reality? Is Nietzsche’s consideration about God and religion in any way applicable to our own age? (shrink)

Hegel’s Philosophy of Law deals in theLaw section of the categories: person, property and contract. Research critically reconstructs this theory from a Marxist perspective. In the concept of person, first of all, the singular will is reduced to a solipsist will unrelated to intersubjectivity. Then, the concept of Hegelian property bases the private appropriation of property as the externalization of the singular will. This legal property guarantees the maintenance and reproduction of private property, that is, it will guarantee the (...) private accumulation of capital, Marx will say. Anyway, the theory of the contract would link the autonomy of the contracting wills, however, it is a mere appearance, because, in fact, the owners’ wills are under the domination of the capitalist market, as it is explained in Marx’s Capital. The theoretical deficit of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law in general is that the legal concepts of person and property correspond to the abstract will. Hegel describes the juridical description of the legal system of the modern state as the development of free will that legitimizes the asymmetry of civil society in its socioeconomic inequalities. (shrink)

Hegel's early philosophical essay demonstrates the need for a pure empiricism and complete formalism in scientific endeavor.

Published in 1821, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right is considered the definitive articulation of the legal, moral, social, and political philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. However, shortly before its publication, Hegel delivered a series of lectures on the subject matter of the work at the University of Berlin. These lectures are unlike any others Hegel gave on the philosophy of Right in that they do not supplement a published text but rather give a full and independent presentation (...) of his mature political thought. Yet, they are also unlike Hegel's formal treatise in that they form a smooth and flowing discourse, much like Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and history of philosophy. Substantively, these lectures contain more extensive discussions of poverty and the proletariat than are found in Hegel's published text--discussions that carry out the retreat from optimism about the present age intimated in the preface to Outlines but nowhere evident in the text itself. Translated with an introduction and notes by Alan Brudner, Hegel's 1819/20 lectures on the philosophy of Right present his complete thoughts on law and the state in a manner that is more accessible and engaging than any other Hegelian text on these subjects. (shrink)

Among the most influential parts of the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) were his ethics, his theory of the state, and his philosophy of history. The Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts) (1821), the last work published in Hegel's lifetime, is a combined system of moral and political philosophy, or a sociology dominated by the idea of the state. Here Hegel repudiates his earlier assessment of the French Revolution as a "a marvelous sunrise" in (...) the realization of liberty. Rejecting the republican form of government, he espouses an idealized form of a constitutional monarchy, whose ultimate power rests with the sovereign. (shrink)

For various reasons, that will be recalled and analysed throughout this paper, interdisciplinarity has become the keyword for any debate on legal education reform. However, what is meant by interdisciplinarity and how it should be achieved is open for discussion. Paradigms of “scientificity” of the law vary dramatically among legal cultures. Whereas in the US the advent of a more ‘substantial’ legal thought after the New Deal went hand in hand with the rise of the interdisciplinary paradigm, in Europe the (...) traditional assumption of law’s autonomy has repeatedly been challenged, eroded and adapted, but it still represents the bulwark of the orthodox approach to law and legal scholarship. In the Continent, mainstream legal scholarship does not take as its object the social reality, but only the gamut of rules recognized as binding norms. Coherent with this approach is a model of legal education built around certain axioms, such as the statist and nationalist attitude, the extreme compartmentalization among the various branches of law, and the blindness to its surroundings. Comparative law is one of the few disciplines that provide a different role model for a legal scholar who is apt to confront the challenges of complex societies. Keeping at a reasonable distance the authority paradigm, embodying the spirit of enquiry and cherishing the values of pluralism (both in terms of legal pluralism and cognitive openness), comparativists may give specific content to the paradigm of the jurist as a social engineer. Comparative law may therefore offer an invaluable contribution to the debate on legal education reform. (shrink)

This article has two purposes. First, it aims to present a detailed analysis of the argument of “recognition” or even of the “fight for recognition”, which Hegel uses in his fragments from Jena treating of the system of philosophy, especially of the philosophy of spirit. It will be necessary to determine precedently by means of an exact interpretation the content of that expressions, in order to criticize and to compare, his original significance in Hegel with the theoretical application (...) made by Honneth. The special aim hereby is to correct and to explain the function of the “fight for recognition”, even in its sharpening significance as a “fight for life and death”, with relation to the genesis of the state of right. Second, the figure of “recognition” is related to Hegel’s Philosophy of right in the version of 1820. In this work, recognition participates in the theory of “institutions” which is analyzed by Honneth as well. Apart from the merits gained through the endeavour to introduce a classic philosophical theory into a conception of justice in society, we feel obliged to state an error in Honneth‘s interpretation in so far as he understands an institution as a simple social community of communication. For that reason, a conclusion based on a critical commentary can only include a negative recommendation, that means, not to follow those traces of interpretation but rather to defend and to consult the texts originally composed by Hegel. (shrink)

Hegel's Philosophy of Right presents a collection of new essays by leading international philosophers and Hegel scholars that analyze and explore Hegel's key contributions in the areas of ethics, politics, and the law. The most comprehensive collection on Hegel's Philosophy of Right available Features new essays by leading international Hegel interpreters divided in sections of ethics, politics, and law Presents significant new research on Hegel's Philosophy of Right that will set a new standard for future work on (...) the topic Introduction (Pages: 1-6) Thom Brooks Summary PDF References Request permissions Part I : Ethics CHAPTER 1 Consequentialism and Deontology in the Philosophy of Right (Pages: 7-42) Dean Moyar Summary PDF References Request permissions CHAPTER 2 The Empty Formalism Objection Revisited: §135R and Recent Kantian Responses (Pages: 43-72) Fabian Freyenhagen Summary PDF References Request permissions CHAPTER 3 On Hegel's Critique of Kant's Ethics: Beyond the Empty Formalism Objection (Pages: 73-99) Robert Stern Summary PDF References Request permissions Part II : Politics CHAPTER 4 Hegel and the Unified Theory of Punishment (Pages: 101-123) Thom Brooks Summary PDF References Request permissions CHAPTER 5 Hard Work: Hegel and the Meaning of the State in his Philosophy of Right (Pages: 124-142) Kimberly Hutchings Summary PDF References Request permissions Part II : Politics CHAPTER 6 Gender, the Family, and the Organic State in Hegel's Political Thought (Pages: 143-164) Alison Stone Summary PDF References Request permissions Part III : Law CHAPTER 7 Natural Law Internalism (Pages: 165-179) Thom Brooks Summary PDF References Request permissions CHAPTER 8 Hegel on the Relation between Law and Justice (Pages: 180-208) Alan Brudner Summary PDF References Request permissions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy by J. B. SchneewindFrederick RauscherJ. B. Schneewind. The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xxii + 624. Cloth $69.95.For most of the twentieth century ethics has been relegated to the status of a hanger-on to other pursuits in philosophy. Only in the past three decades has (...) ethics re-emerged as a significant independent subject in the discipline. J.B. Schneewind has taken this development a step further by examining the history of ethics as a distinct branch of philosophy. He argues that modern ethics responded to a separate set of concerns from the surrounding scientific revolution’s epistemological and metaphysical subjects, and while his analysis does not prove this in every case, his treatment certainly shows that ethics does have a vital role in the history of philosophy. The Invention of Autonomy offers the most comprehensive and informative review of moral philosophy in the modern era yet published. But Schneewind supplies more than just the best historical review; he also assesses theories and arguments within the context of the great political, social, religious, and moral debates of their time and shows how those debates brought us to our present conception of moral philosophy. The Invention of Autonomy is a superb example of how to do philosophical history of philosophy.Three interrelated themes thread their way through the narrative. The first concerns the gradual replacement of an ethic of obedience with the concept of self-governance, culminating in Kant’s idea of the dignity of all autonomous rational agents. The second involves the debate between voluntarists, who hold that God imposed morality on us by an arbitrary act of will, and intellectualists, who hold that morality stems from eternal standards in God’s intellect. The third conveys the debates about human moral psychology, in particular our awareness of morality and our motivations to act, and their relation to metaphysical and epistemological claims.These themes cut across the four main, roughly chronological groupings into which Schneewind divides his theorists. Here I can only generalize their characteristic tenets and must omit one of the best features of this book: the detailed analysis of the debates and differences even among theorists who are commonly taken to share the same views. The natural law theorists’ most influential voice is Hugo Grotius. Schneewind identifies a “Grotian problematic”—the existence of conflict stemming from self-interest amid our desire to form a society together—which is taken up by other natural lawyers and eventually by Kant [Hobbes’ theory is “Grotianism at the limit” (82)]. Most but not all natural lawyers gave no substantial role to God in ethics because disagreement about religion is one of the causes of conflict in society. Only by finding rules for behavior, backed by self-interested concerns and threats of punishment, could harmony [End Page 627] reign. The chief shortcoming of natural law theory was its inability to explain the ground of moral duty which concerned only the self.The perfectionists—primarily rationalists—put more emphasis on conforming our-selves to what we know of our place in God’s plans for the universe. The complete human being will not only treat others in decent ways but also adopt a virtuous character which seeks the good. Our motivation to take our proper place in the universe stems not from fear of punishment but from a desire to realize our own happiness and from obligation to the God who created us. Perfectionism’s faults lie with its strong ties to religious belief.The third set of philosophers includes mostly the eighteenth-century empiricists. They went further than the natural lawyers in seeking to divorce morality from dependence upon God by grounding it in human nature. A moral sense or sentiment generates moral normativity and indirectly motivates behavior. This dependence on human nature opens these theorists to the charge of voluntarism or worse, since there appears to be no truly objective foundation for morality.Finally come the theorists who develop autonomy, culminating in Kant. Some writers of the German and French Enlightenment, particularly Rousseau, sought to show that morality... (shrink)

이 논문은 헤겔 철학에서 행복과 국가 그리고 정치의 연관성을 검토하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 헤겔에게 행복이란 상호인정의 실현, 즉 삶이 만들어 내는 분열과 대립을 지양하여 그 속에서 편안함을 느끼는 상태를 지시하며 그리고 국가란 인륜성의 완성태를 의미한다. 이에 따르면 행복은 국가에서 완성된다는 도식이 가능해 진다.BR그런데 『법철학』의 국가론에는 헤겔 자신의 행복관에 부합한다고 보기 어려운 내용들이 포함되어 있다. 본 연구는 바로 이 지점에서 출발한다. 본론에서 구체적으로 논하겠지만, 『법철학』에 등장하는 국가는 결과적으로 시민 혹은 각 개인의 정치적 역할을 축소시키는 방식으로 유지된다. 그런데 정치는 상호인정에 도달하는 주요한 (...) 과정이다. 따라서 정치에서 배제된 개인은 상호인정에 도달할 수 없게 되며, 결국 행복할 수 없다. 이에 본 연구는 헤겔의 국가론은 행복의 실현과 관련하여 일정한 보완이 필요하다고 주장하고자 한다. (shrink)

: This paper explicates and defends the thesis that individual rational judgment, of the kind required for justification, whether in cognition or in morals, is fundamentally socially and historically conditioned. This puts paid to the traditional distinction, still influential today, between ‘rational’ and ‘historical’ knowledge. The present analysis highlights and defends key themes from Kant’s and Hegel’s accounts of rational judgment and justification, including four fundamental features of the ‘autonomy’ of rational judgment and one key point of Hegel’s account of (...) ‘mutual recognition’. These themes are linked to Kant’s and Hegel’s transformation of the modern natural law tradition. The results explain why Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophy are indeed the origins of the properly pragmatic account of rationality, why the pragmatic account of rationality provides genuine rational justification and why this pragmatic account of rational justification is consistent with realism about the objects of empirical knowledge and with strict objectivity about moral norms. > Russian translation : Nelly Motroshilova, ed., К 200-летию выхода в свет «Феноменологии духа» Гегеля, 195–219. > Turkish translation : ‘Hegel’in Tinin Görüngübilimi’nde Karşihkh Onanma ve Ussal Gerekçelendirme’. MonoKL 4–5 :212–231. (shrink)

"Reproduced from an original in the Libraries of Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.

Ever since Kant and Hegel, the notion of autonomy—the idea that we are beholden to no law except one we impose upon ourselves—has been considered the truest philosophical expression of human freedom. But could our commitment to autonomy, as Theodor Adorno asked, be related to the extreme evils that we have witnessed in modernity? In Autonomy after Auschwitz, Martin Shuster explores this difficult question with astonishing theoretical acumen, examining the precise ways autonomy can lead us down a path of evil (...) and how it might be prevented from doing so. Shuster uncovers dangers in the notion of autonomy as it was originally conceived by Kant. Putting Adorno into dialogue with a range of European philosophers, notably Kant, Hegel, Horkheimer, and Habermas—as well as with a variety of contemporary Anglo-American thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, and Robert Pippin—he illuminates Adorno’s important revisions to this fraught concept and how his different understanding of autonomous agency, fully articulated, might open up new and positive social and political possibilities. Altogether, Autonomy after Auschwitz is a meditation on modern evil and human agency, one that demonstrates the tremendous ethical stakes at the heart of philosophy. (shrink)

It is well known that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right initiated, when it first appeared, a dispute about his philosophy in general that has not abated to the present day. The initial grounds for this dispute included: Hegel’s often virulent attacks, in the Philosophy of Right, on contemporaries such as Fries, Hugo, and von Haller; the question of his political stance within Prussia, which was then rapidly developing into a reactionary, authoritarian state; in other words, the question of (...) Hegel’s political accommodation, the question of his attitude to natural law, and so on. For a long time, therefore, the philosophical dispute was shaped by the political interests of the day. The struggle against Hegel’s philosophical system as a whole even resorted to personal defamation of the philosopher, so that, by revealing personal weakness, his system and the influential school of followers he had attracted could be discredited. Likewise, the diverse attempts at an adequate assessment of the historical influence of Hegel’s philosophy have come to a head. The two main questions, also deriving their inspiration from differing interpretations of the Philosophy of Right, are: How legitimate are the various Marxist references to Hegel as either the forerunner of Marxism or its principal opponent? How legitimate is the accusation that Hegel, by developing a totalitarian theory of the state, prepared the ground for twentieth century fascism, especially National Socialism? As previous research has pointed out, an adequate assessment of such relations will have to deal very carefully with Hegel’s position in his own day. For example, apart from his attitude to the situation in Prussia, his attitude to the most important event of the age, the French Revolution, must be examined. Furthermore, comparative perspectives must be established, so that the distinctive shape of Hegel’s philosophy of right can be seen clearly, against the background of the European constitutional debates of the day. In the last analysis, however, the essence of the disagreement still stems from the problem of the proper political classification of Hegel’s philosophy of right. (shrink)

Georg Lukács wrote that "there is autonomy and 'autonomy.' The one is a moment of life itself, the elevation of its richness and contradictory unity; the other is a rigidification, a barren self-seclusion, a self-imposed banishment from the dynamic overall connection." Though Lukács' concern was with the conditions for the possibility of art, his distinction also serves as an apt description of the way that Hegel and Hegelians have contrasted their own interpretations of self-determination with that of Kant. But it (...) has always been difficult to see how elevation is possible without seclusion, or how rigidification can be avoided without making the boundaries of the self so malleable that its autonomy looks like a mere cover for the power of external forces. Yeomans explores Hegel's own attempts to grapple with this problem against the background of Kant's attempts, in his theory of virtue, to understand the way that morally autonomous agents can be robust individuals with qualitatively different projects, personal relations, and commitments that are nonetheless infused with a value that demands respect. In a reading that disentangles a number of different threads in Kant's approach, Yeomans shows how Hegel reweaves these threads around the central notions of talent and interest to produce a tapestry of self-determination. Yeomans argues that the result is a striking pluralism that identifies three qualitatively distinct forms of agency or accountability and sees each of these forms of agency as being embodied in different social groups in different ways. But there is nonetheless a dynamic unity to the forms because they can all be understood as practical attempts to solve the problem of autonomy, and each is thus worthy of respect even from the perspective of other solutions."Everyone recognizes the importance of Hegel's critique of Kantian morality as empty, but until now there has not been a fully worked out presentation of how Hegel's views in his discussion of Sittlichkeit actually provide the missing content. Yeomans has finally provided us with a reconstruction of Hegel's mature position that makes good on all the promissory notes that Hegel gives in his famous descriptions of his alternative to Kantian ethics. Yeomans offers a compelling account of Hegel's view of individuality, societal differentiation and its roots in Kantian and Fichtean moral theory. The book will be a major contribution to the scholarship on Hegel's practical philosophy." - Dean Moyar, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University -/- "Yeomans' book is a subtle, detailed and original explication of some key ideas having to do with how Hegel's general philosophy of action relates to his social and political philosophy. It is attentive to Hegel's texts, and it ties its discussions into all the relevant contemporary themes in philosophy. It is very ambitious in its attempt to make Hegel's theory into a real competitor to other views that are currently in wide play in the philosophical world. It will very likely become one of the key texts in the secondary literature on Hegel." - Terry Pinkard, University Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University. (shrink)

헤겔은 『법철학』에서 의회와 공론장을 “국가”의 핵심적인 제도로서 다룬다. 헤겔의 논의가 통상적인 자유주의적인 논의와 상당한 차이를 보이는 까닭에, 그 이론적인 근거를 규명하려는 노력이 다각도로 이루어져 왔다. 본 논문은 이 주제와 관련해 반성과 매개의 개념에 주목한다. 의회와 공론장을 사회와 국가 사이의 반성적인 매개기관으로서 규정하는 것은 일반적이나, 헤겔의 사유는 반성과 매개에 대한 그의 독특한 관점을 통해서 고유성을 드러낸다. 헤겔에서 이 개념들은 사회의 합리성 및 국가의 정당성 문제와의 관련성에서가 아니라, 국가가 사회의 국가로서 존립하고 기능할 수 있어야 한다는 문제와 관련해서 그 의미를 얻는다. 본 논문은 (...) 이러한 독해를 헤겔의 『법철학』을 참조하여 상론하되, 특히 악셀 호네트의 독해를 비판적으로 검토함으로써 그 논지를 뚜렷하게 할 것이다. (shrink)

_Philosophy of Right_ remains among the most influential works in Western political theory. It introduces a notion of civil society that has proven of inestimable importance to diverse philosophical and social agendas. In this transcription of the lectures that formed the initial version of Hegel's text, the philosopher presents his thought with a clarity and directness seldom matched in his later writings. Nowhere does Hegel make clearer the difference between his concept of objective spirit and traditional concepts of natural law. (...) Nowhere does he offer a more prominent treatment of the key notion of recognition. The long-awaited appearance of this first English-language translation of these lectures is a major event for Hegel scholars, philosophers, and political theorists. (shrink)

Hegel's Philosophy of right concerns ideas on justice, moral responsibility, family life, economic activity and the political structure of the state. He shows how human freedom involves living with others in accordance with publicly recognized rights and laws.

An examination and evaluation of Hegel's most important works including The Philosophy of History, The Philosophy of Right and Law, and The Science of Logic.

The freedom of spirit, Hegel claims, consists in “the emancipation of spirit from all those forms of being that do not conform to its concepts.” That is, freedom must be understood as “liberation [Befreiung].” The paper explores this claim by starting with Hegel’s critique of the (Kantian) understanding of freedom as autonomy. In this critique Hegel shows that norms or “laws” have to be thought of as “being”—not as “posited.” This is convincing, but it leaves open the question of the (...) relation between law and freedom (i.e., the very question that the concept of autonomy was meant to solve). In its second part the paper claims that Hegel’s solution to this problem consists in the analysis of freedom as the “historical” process of “social” transformation. While social norms ordinarily or habitually exist in the form of a second nature—according to Hegel, this is the form they necessarily take on in their social reality—, the act of liberation radically changes their mode of being: liberation is the momentary and transitory act of the ontological transformation of social norms from nature into freedom. (shrink)