Elements of the Philosophy of Right

Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts) is a work by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel published in 1820, though the book's original title page dates it to 1821. Hegel's most mature statement of his legal, moral, social and political philosophy, it is an expansion upon concepts only briefly dealt with in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, published in 1817 (and again in 1827 and 1830). Law provides for Hegel the cornerstone of the modern state. As such, he criticized Karl Ludwig von Haller's The Restoration of the Science of the State, in which the latter claimed that law was superficial, because natural law and the "right of the most powerful" was sufficient. The absence of law characterized for Hegel despotism, whether absolutist or ochlocracist. The Philosophy of Right (as it is usually called) begins with a discussion of the concept of the free will and argues that the free will can only realize itself in the complicated social context of property rights and relations, contracts, moral commitments, family life, the economy, the legal system, and the polity. A person is not truly free, in other words, unless they are a participant in all of these different aspects of the life of the state. The bulk of the book is devoted to discussing Hegel's three spheres or versions of 'right,' each one larger than the preceding ones and encompassing them. The first sphere is abstract right (Recht), in which Hegel discusses the idea of 'non-interference' as a way of respecting others. He deems this insufficient and moves onto the second sphere, morality (Moralität). Under this, Hegel proposes that humans reflect their own subjectivity of others in order to respect them. The third sphere, ethical life (Sittlichkeit), is Hegel's integration of individual subjective feelings and universal notions of right. Under ethical life, Hegel then launches into a lengthy discussion about family, civil society, and the state.