Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1820) articulated a startling new vision of modern society as an integrated whole governed by the principle of freedom—a vision that profoundly altered political theory and, through Hegel’s influence on Marx, deeply changed the world in which we live. Yet Hegel’s thought is so notoriously obscure that it is difficult to pull together its many complex threads in order to understand what he accomplished and how he managed to do it.
In this volume, leading political theorists and philosophers attempt to illuminate the impact of Hegel by looking back on the Philosophy of Right after two centuries, shedding light on some of its most controversial elements. Among the topics discussed are Hegel’s theory of bureaucracy, Marx’s critique of that theory, Hegel’s alternative to nationalism, his political cosmology, his critique of natural law, his organic idea of the good, and his view of totality. The contributors are Frederick Beiser, Shterna Friedman, Darren Nah, Frederick Neuhouser, Angelica Nuzzo, Alan Patten, Terry Pinkard, Paul Rosenberg, and Jacob Roundtree.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Review.
Introduction: Three Pictures of Hegel’s Holism: Mystical, Instrumentalist, Intrinsicist
Shterna Friedman
1. A Mayfly for Prof. Hegel: Herbart’s Forgotten Review of Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie
Frederick Beiser
2. Hegel, Weber, and Bureaucracy
Darren Nah
3. Hegel on “the Living Good”
Frederick Neuhouser
4. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and the Idea of the World: Dialectic’s “Political Cosmology”
Angelica Nuzzo
5. Hegel’s Alternative to Nationalism
Alan Patten
6. Hegel’s Own Time Grasped in Our Thoughts after Two Hundred Years
Terry Pinkard
7. Hegel’s Political Philosophy
Paul Rosenberg
8. Marx’s Democratization of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Jacob Roundtree
Biography
Shterna Friedman, the Managing Editor of Critical Review, is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, USA; an exchange scholar in the Department of Government at Harvard University, USA; and Visiting Lecturer in Political Theory at Tufts University, USA.
