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Hegel's Critique of Liberal Theories of Rights*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Peter G. Stillman
Peter G. Stillman
Affiliation:
Vassar College
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Abstract

In “Abstract Right,” the first part of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel criticizes the usual content and formulations of liberal theories of rights. In terms of content, Hegel argues that the subject of rights is only a narrow abstraction from the full human being; that he has limited self-determination and limited political freedom; and that, when he acts on his rights, he produces terror and destruction. In terms of formulations, Hegel argues that the pervasiveness of contract relations is inaccurate and undesirable; that the state cannot be derived from the natural man's alienating his right to punish; and that it is inaccurate to conceptualize civil society as only limiting natural man's freedoms. By transforming natural to abstract rights, Hegel retains much of the substance of rights, while concurrently preparing for the later sections of his text which try to overcome the inadequacies of a political theory based only on rights.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 68 , Issue 3 , September 1974 , pp. 1086 - 1092
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1974

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References

1 The best discussion of the part “Abstract Right” is Ritter, Joachim, “Person und Eigentum,” in his Metaphysik und Politik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969)Google Scholar and (in French) as “Personne et Propriété selon Hegel,” in Archives de Philosophic, 31, no. 2 (Apr.-June, 1967), 179–201Google Scholar. Ritter does not deal with the section on wrong and its annulment, for which see my “Hegel's Idea of Punishment,” Journal of the History of Philosophy (forthcoming, 1975).

2 Hegel, G. W. F., The Philosophy of Right, trans. Knox, T. M. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942Google Scholar; corrected ed., 1945), secs. 105–140. In citations to the Philosophy of Right, where the material cited is from the main text of the section, the section number alone is given; where it is from the “remarks” Hegel added to the text, the section number is followed by “R”; where it is from the “additions” which later editors appended to posthumous editions by collating student lecture notes, the section number is followed by “A.”

3 Ibid., secs. 158–181.

4 Ibid., secs. 182–256.

5 Ibid., secs. 260–329.

6 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, revised edition, ed. Laslett, Peter (New York: Mentor Books, 1963)Google Scholar, Second Treatise, secs. 4–22. (Hereafter cited as Second Treatise.) See also Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, intro. Peters, Richard S. (New York: Collier Books, 1962), Part I, esp. chap. 14 and Part II, esp. chap. 17Google Scholar.

7 Locke, Second Treatise, sec. 22. Interpretations of Locke on the question of freedom are numerous; the interpretation given is a literal—some would say superficial—one, in which the only “development” that the individual's freedom undergoes as the individual matures is to become sophisticated arbitrary freedom—for Locke's rationality is that of the “Industrious and Rational” (sec. 34) in the sense of economic rationality, where the arbitrary free will is calculating enough to postpone an immediate satisfaction in order to obtain a larger future satisfaction. See also Adam Smith's praise of “natural liberty” in The Wealth of Nations, ed. Cannan, Edwin (London: University Paperbacks, Methuen, 1904Google Scholar; reprint ed., 1961), I, 157, 344; II, 37–38, 208.

8 The case is similar for Hobbes, who excludes education from the text proper of Leviathan, relegating it to the “Review, and Conclusion,” pp. 503–511.

9 See esp. Hegel, G. W. F., Philosophy of Mind, trans. Wallace, William (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894)Google Scholar, sec. 502R, and, specifically in reference to Hobbes, G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans. Haldane, E. S. and Simson, Frances H. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1896Google Scholar; reprint ed., 1955), III, 317–319.

10 Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty (New York: Library of Liberal Arts, 1956), chap. I, p. 14Google Scholar. In fairness to Mill and in the interests of accuracy, it must be noted that his other works consider morality, the family, the economic order, and the state (the topics of the Philosophy of Right); only by abstracting On Liberty from Mill's total work can he be considered a pure defender of arbitrary freedom or “freedom from.” This illegitimate abstraction has been made by some contemporary defenders of “freedom from”; for an effective, indeed devastating criticism of their position, see the excellent but overlooked article by Berki, R. N., “Political Freedom and Hegelian Metaphysics,” Political Studies, 16, no. 3 (Sept., 1968), 365–383CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, secs. 255 and 255R.

12 Ibid., secs. 35–59.

13 Hegel's handwritten marginal note [Randbemerkung] to sec. 126 in his own copy of Hegel, G. W. F., Grundlinien der Philosophic des Rechts, fourth edition, ed. Hoffmeister, Johannes (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1955), p. 393Google Scholar.

14 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, sec. 37A.

15 Thus, most legitimate human relations not based on passions (like the “concord of natural lust”) are contract relations in Hobbes's Leviathan and Locke's Second Treatise. Even the relation of parent and child is a contract; see Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 20, p. 152.

16 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, sec. 75.

17 Ibid., sec. 40; Ritter, “Person und Eigentum,” sec. 7; and, among others, Marx, Karl, The Manifesto of the Communist Party (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968), Part I, pp. 5–6Google Scholar, and Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France (New York: Library of Liberal Arts, 1955), p. 86Google Scholar.

18 See Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

19 Hegel's distinction here, between contractual areas of life (like civil society [die bürgerliche Gesellschaft]) and noncontractual or communal areas of life, is the precursor of, among others, Tönnies, Ferdinand, Community and Society [Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft], trans, and ed. Loomis, Charles P. (New York: Harper & Row, 1957)Google Scholar.

20 See Mure, G. R. G., “Foreword,” in Weiss, Frederick G., Hegel's Critique of Aristotle's Philosophy of Mind (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), pp. xiii–xivGoogle Scholar.

21 Thus, J. S. Mill warns, “that so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time” (Mill, On Liberty, chap. III, p. 82).

22 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, sec. 15A.

23 Among others, James Mill agrees with Hobbes and Locke; see Mill, John Stuart, Autobiography (London: Oxford University Press, 1924), p. 91Google Scholar. J. S. Mill poses the dichotomy that allows for the coexistence of political (or social) freedom and philosophical determinism at the beginning of On Liberty; see Mill, On Liberty, chap. I, p. 3.

24 Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 21, p. 160; see also Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (New York: Dover, 1894; reprint ed., 1959)Google Scholar, Book II, chap. 21, esp. secs. 14, 27, and 29.

25 Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 21, pp. 159–160; see also Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, chaps. 21 and 27.

26 Hegel here agrees with Aristotle; see Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 3.

27 Of himself Hobbes wrote, “Fear and I were born twins” (quoted in Peters, “Introduction,” in Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 7).

28 See Locke, Second Treatise, secs. 73, 98, 117, and 119; Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 18, p. 136.

29 See, e.g., Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 17, p. 192; Halévy, Elie, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), esp. pp. 487–488Google Scholar.

30 Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 30, pp. 255–256; Locke, Second Treatise, secs. 22 and 57.

31 For education in such characteristics and traits as virtue, liberality, and steadfastness is, in a sense, external to the essential and logical structure of the Leviathan, and therefore is described, not in the text proper of the Leviathan, but in the appended dedicatory and concluding material; see Hobbes, Leviathan, “Dedicatory Epistle,” p. 5, and “Review, and Conclusion,” pp. 503–511; see also Locke, Second Treatise, esp. secs. 34 and 64.

32 The denigration of consent and obligation, and the limiting of the scope of political freedom, form two basic elements of the depoliticization inherent in much liberalism; see Wolin, Sheldon S., Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), chaps. 9 and 10Google Scholar.

33 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, sec. 5R.

34 Ibid., sec. 5R.

35 Hegel, G. W. F., Phenomenology of Mind, trans. Baillie, J. B. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, Harper & Row, 1910; reprint ed., 1967), pp. 601–602Google Scholar.

36 Ibid., pp. 605–606, and Hegel, Philosophy of Right, secs. 5R and 5A.

37 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, sec. 5A and Hegel, , Phenomenology of Mind, pp. 605–606Google Scholar.

38 Hegel, , Phenomenology of Mind, p. 603Google Scholar.

39 Ibid., p. 604; see also Hegel, Philosophy of Right, sec. 5R. Many current interpretations follow Hegel's; see, e.g., Cobban, Alfred, In Search of Humanity (New York: George Braziller, 1960), esp. p. 210Google Scholar.

40 Hegel's critique of the conceptualizations of natural rights is equally applicable as a critique of some liberals' equivalent of natural rights, the free and autonomous prepolitical man.

41 Implications like the Versachlichung of human relations, possessive individualism, and the impermanence and easy dissolubility implied in contractual marriage and state; see note 17, above; note 18, above; Hegel, Philosophy of Right, sees. 75A, 161A, and 258A; and Durkheim, Emile, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Macmillan, 1933), pp. 203–204Google Scholar.

42 Locke, Second Treatise, sec. 223.

43 Ibid., sec. 225.

44 Ibid., sec. 226.

45 Ibid., sec. 78.

46 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, secs. 75, 75R, and 75A. J. S. Mill denies only implicitly that the state is a contract; see Mill, , Considerations on Representative Government (New York: Library of Liberal Arts, 1958), chap. 1, pp. 6–11Google Scholar.

47 As in, e.g., Locke, Second Treatise, secs. 13 and 88.

48 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, secs. 102–103. This is a not uncommon distinction: see Armstrong, K. G., “The Retributivist Hits Back,” Mind, 70, No. 280 (Oct. 1961), 487–488Google Scholar; and Green, T. H., Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1967), sec. 178Google Scholar.

49 As in Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 28.

50 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, secs. 102, 102A, and 220; Stillman, “Hegel's Idea of Punishment,” sec. I.

51 It might be inferred that Hobbes and Locke, by seeing the right of punishment as a prepolitical right, do not regard as theoretically central the distinctions between an interested and a disinterested judge and between a consenting and a disaffected criminal. For T. H. Green (sec. 178), they also fail to understand rights correctly.

52 Green (sec. 178) makes similar and related (and Hegelian) arguments along this line.

53 Descartes, René, Meditations on First Philosophy, in Descartes: Philosophical Writings, trans. Smith, Norman Kemp (New York: The Modern Library, 1958)Google Scholar, esp. “Meditation II,” pp. 182–187; Hobbes, Leviathan, Part I.

54 Aris, Reinhold, History of Political Thought in Germany (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1936), pp. 125–135Google Scholar; Dewey, John, Liberalism and Social Action (New York: Capricorn Books, 1935; reprint ed., 1963)Google Scholar.

55 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The First and Second Discourses, ed. Masters, Roger D. (New York: St. Martin's, 1964)Google Scholar, Second Discourse, “Preface,” pp. 91–93.

56 Ibid., “Preface,” p. 97.

57 Hegel's abstract man, the person, is abstracted from his social contexts but not from his historical development; the person lacks socialized characteristics but is nonetheless an abstraction from contemporary man, and thus the person claims for himself the rights that a contemporary man claims. In contrast, Rousseau's primitive man in the Second Discourse, when logically isolated from society, loses all his socialized and historically-developed characteristics (“Preface,” pp. 91–97); Hobbes's natural man, when logically isolated from society, retains all his socialized and historically-developed characteristics (Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 13).

58 The shift is desirable, of course, because the enforcement of rights is uncertain, that of laws fairly sure. Locke and Hegel agree here; see Locke, Second Treatise, secs. 13 and 22–23, and Hegel, Philosophy of Right, secs. 103 and 217.

59 Hegel's argument is similar to Hobbes's here; see Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 17, and Hegel, Philosophy of Right, secs. 142 and 260. For Hobbes, however, rights exist in the state of nature and war (Leviathan, chap. 14, pp. 103–104), whereas for Hegel rights are brought into existence only after centuries of civilization's cultural, social, spiritual, and political development (Philosophy of Right, secs. 341–360).

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