8 - Natural Ethical Life and Civil Society: Hegel's Construction of the Family

Summary

The more recent literature on Hegel's philosophy of right has revealed something that almost had disappeared from view in German neo-Hegelianism in the period before the Second World War with its almost exclusive interest in Hegel's philosophy of the state in the narrower sense: namely, that Hegel's philosophy of right is a theory of civil society.

The placement of the section on civil society within the chapter on ethical life, and especially Hegel's own remarks in the preface to the work emphasizing that he was primarily concerned with comprehending the state, would seem to contradict this claim. From the perspective of the book's overall structure, the section that deals explicitly with civil society is indeed only one of several. For family and the state are institutions that are treated alongside and in addition to civil society. But it is the very way in which Hegel himself treats these institutions that seems particularly to contradict the claim that the philosophy of right is essentially a theory of civil society. From the perspective of historical development, and that of the concept, Hegel clearly ascribes a certain priority to the family and the state. For historically speaking, the practice of family life, based on agriculture (Rph, 280ff.; ET: p. 131ff.) as the essential foundation of its subsistence, already existed before the emergence of civil society that depends economically on a developed industrial base.