Reviews for Elements of the philosophy of right

The average rating for Elements of the philosophy of right based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-09-04 00:00:00 John Giacobbi Among the pantheon of philosophers, Hegel is one of the most intimidating. His very name evokes fear: the towering behemoth of obscure German prose, looming in the distance, spinning out sentences that can trip up the most astute and careful readers. Yet, after reading two of his books, I feel that his reputation for obscurity is'like Kant's'significantly exaggerated. It's a certain style of writing, sure; and several sentences are, as far as I'm concerned, gobbledygook. But like any academic worthy of the title, Hegel takes care to repeat his points again and again; so the reader at least comes away with the gist of what Hegel wishes to say. What's more, Hegel's particular oracular style of writing can be alluring, even powerful. Prose aside, Hegel is worth reading because his ideas are both extraordinary and extraordinarily influential. To understand either Marxism or much of continental philosophy, Hegel must be grappled with. So what is he trying to get across in this book? What are Hegel's views on politics? On the state? And why are they so controversial? I'll do my best to summarize what I understand (or, more accurately, what I think I understand), to help any wayfarers that are battling their way through this German sage. But, to be clear, I'm no Hegel scholar. I'm just a man with a Goodreads account. Hegel, to me, is Spinoza with a twist. Let's start with what the two thinkers have in common. For both, the kind of freedom prized by liberals'religious freedom, economic freedom, even free will itself'is, in a sense, illusory. This 'freedom' is really a misunderstanding. To think of people as being 'free' requires that you think of them as individuals distinct from their surroundings and the laws of the universe. But humans are products as much shapers of the universe, and obey the same fundamental laws; so humans cannot be adequately understood as free beings. Consequently, for Spinoza and Hegel, to think yourself 'free' is merely to fail to understand the reasons why you are doing something. Both thinkers also consider the universe to be some kind of absolute. Every part of reality fits together into a perfect whole'a whole that can only be improperly understood when subdivided into its constituent parts. Therefore logic, not empirical science, is more effective at coming to grips with the nature of things, since logical categories are not bound by space and time. Furthermore, this reality is, for them, not something wholly material. For Spinoza, mind and matter are two aspects of the underlying substance of Nature; for Hegel, externality and internality are two aspects of Geist. But now for their important differences. Spinoza thought that Nature went on its course indifferent to human survival: "Nature does not work with an end in view. For the eternal and infinite Being, which we call God or Nature, acts by the same necessity as that whereby it exists." Hegel couldn't disagree more. Hegel views history are the unfolding of the World Spirit. This leads him to making all sorts of teleological claims (claims about the purpose of things). When Hegel looks at human history, he does not see the chance machinations of politicians, princes, and priests, but the necessary and fated development of the World Spirit as manifest in human affairs. The Chinese, Indians, Greeks, and Romans become merely different aspects of this Spirit'rungs on the ladder in its climb towards perfection. So what is the final stage of the World Spirit for Hegel? It is the realization that everything that is, is mind (or spirit; Geist is a difficult word to translate). Therefore, humans become sort of like Aristotle's prime-mover: thought thinking about thought. For mind to understand itself as everything is to understand everything in itself. All contradictions disappear. Objective and subjective turn into mere illusions. This is Hegel's jumping-off point into the world of political thought. In this book, Hegel is trying to figure out what the end of history would be like, what form would the perfect state would take. He makes several twists and turns in his argument as he approaches this picture, all following his famous dialectic method. And he arrives at a state that many have found to be totalitarian. Several passages in this book are striking for the amount of power and authority Hegel thinks the perfect state should wield. Why did Hegel think that totalitarianism was a swell thing? At times like this it is important to remember that you cannot understand Hegel through traditional categories, since these are the very things he is trying to leave behind. Something more is going on here; Hegel doesn't merely wish to set up a fascist tyranny. What separates his idea and a repressive regime hinges on his conception of freedom. Consider this: if you were omniscient'if you knew everything'would you have free will? It seems to me that, to know everything would require knowing what will happen in the future; and to know what will happen in the future would mean that you aren't really choosing. It's like the Tralfalmadores in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. They see all things, past and future, and so the idea of choosing never even occurs to them: "I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will." Just so, at the final stage in Hegel's historic process, the idea of choice will disappear. That's because choice requires that you think of yourself as distinct from the external world. But at the end of history, mind understands itself as mind, and humanity understands itself as one with the world. "The gaily coloured world is before me; I stand opposed to it, and in this relation I cancel and transcend the opposition, and make the content my own. The I is at home in the world, when it knows it, and still more when it has conceived it." Therefore, the kind of freedom that liberals prize'"negative freedom" as it is normally termed'disappears: "Negative freedom is actuated by a mere solitary abstract idea, whose realization is nothing but the fury of desolation." As in the great mystic texts, all oppositions and contradictions disappear in this state of total knowledge. The distinction between slavery and freedom disappears because the citizens make no choices, and yet are not compelled by outward force to do anything, since all of reality is understood to be mind and, therefore, a part of them. The opposition between citizens and the state also disappears. If you think about it, in order for the state to think of it as being opposed to the people, it has to think of itself as distinct from the people. But, of course, to understand the situation fully and completely is to understand that, in the perfect state, the interests of the people and the state exactly coincide. Therefore the ruler/ruled distinction also melts away in Hegel's utopia. The monarch, the legislature, the executive, and the people all become necessary and self-conscious aspects of a complete whole. This all strikes me as (more or less) theoretically unimpeachable. But the reason it raises eyebrows and attracts condemnation is'as I'm sure many of you have thought by now'because this sort of perfect harmony is practically impossible. Almost 200 years after this treatise was written, the state and the people's 'superficial' differences in perspectives have not melted away; and too many examples from history since Hegel's time have shown the danger in trusting too much in the state. So how could Hegel suggest something so totally impracticable? This is where the religious side of Hegel comes into play. It seems to me that Hegel's philosophy does not depend on logic alone'not even the idiosyncratic logic he liked to employ. Rather, to be a Hegelian (and to be a Marxist or a Freudian) requires a certain kind of faith. It is obviously not logically necessary that a World Spirit exist, and that it manifest itself in the few thousand years of human history'a mere blink of the eye in comparison with the history of the universe. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, it is bizarre to think that a development of cosmic importance took place in a few hundred years in the vicinity of the Mediterranean. I'll cut short my attempted summary and criticism here; I fear it has been banal and superficial enough. I will only add that students of this book should keep in the back (and front) of their minds Hegel's dialectical method. Look out for his tripartite divisions, and try and figure out how they're related. Also try and spot points where Hegel shifts from logical criticism to a kind of dogmatic insistence on his worldview. Or, if the feeling takes you, just let yourself get swept away in the torrent of gnomic prose, and enjoy the mad contortions of a mind both strange and profound.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-09-16 00:00:00 Robert Huckleberry THIS BOOK IS BORING I READ 3 PAGES THEN I SAID IM TIRED OF THIS