Hegel’s project of reconciliation is central to his Philosophy of Right. This article argues that scholars have understood this project in one of two ways, as a form of rational reconciliation or a kind of endorsement. Each is incomplete and their inability to capture the kind of reconciliation Hegel has in mind is made apparent when we consider the kind of problem that the rabble creates for modern society, which reconciliation is meant to address. The article concludes that more than mutual recognition is required and we should recognise the crucial role played by stakeholding, whereby citizens share a principled conviction about oneself and others.

For a long time, the sections of the Philosophy of Right dedicated to the relations among states have been neglected by contemporary International Relations theories. However, especially since the end of the Cold War, this discipline has finally reconsidered Hegel’s theory, in particular by stressing two aspects: the thesis of an ”end of history” implied in it; and, more generally, the primacy of the state in international politics. This paper suggests a different interpretation. It argues that, in order to really understand Hegel’s theory of international relations, it is necessary to consider how it is related to the momentous changes that occurred in the wake of the French Revolution and to previous philosophical developments in the Age of Enlightenment. Indeed, the convergence of these two aspects in his own philosophy of history should suggest that, according to Hegel, by the early nineteenth century international politics had finally entered a new era in which states would still interact as the foremost actors, but would be bound nonetheless by an unprecedented awareness of their historical character.

In this article, I argue that species are mutable in Hegel’s philosophy of biology. While scholars have argued for the compatibility of Hegel’s philosophy and Darwin’s theory of evolution, none have dealt with the ontological status of species in their respective accounts. In order to make the case that for Hegel species are mutable, I first deal with a textual problem that in the 1827 edition of the Encyclopedia, the species concept appears after the sexual relationship, whereas in the 1830 edition it appears prior. I argue that these different sequences entail different models for the species concept. By examining the conceptual development leading up to the account of species, on the one hand, and contemporary biological accounts of the status of species on the other, I argue that the 1827 model is more consistent both with Hegel’s method and with the species concept of contemporary biology.

As a young Victoria Scholar from South Africa studying at Oxford from 1931–33, Errol Harris encountered most of the prominent representatives of “Oxford Idealism” there. He discovered that, predominantly under the influence of Bradley, they were uniformly convinced that Hegel’s Naturphilosophie was a superfluous “addition” to his system, accomplishing nothing not already provided by the Science of Logic, and that, moreover, to treat Nature as a reality (as opposed to an appearance) would introduce a fundamental contradiction into Hegel’s thought. In this general attitude they were strongly supported by the Italian “neo-Idealists” with whom they were closely engaged. In work accomplished during those two years, Harris laid the foundations for a thorough reversal of this attitude, arguing that in the absence of a philosophy of nature Hegel’s system could be neither coherent nor complete. On this basis Harris would eventually succeed in constructing the outlines of a complete cosmology grounded in twentieth-century physical theory.

In his different analyses of ancient Egypt, Hegel underscores the marked absence of writings by the Egyptians. Unlike the Chinese with the I Ching or the Shoo king, the Indians with the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the Persians with the Avesta, the Jews with the Old Testament, and the Greeks with the poems of Homer and Hesiod, the Egyptians, despite their developed system of hieroglyphic writing, left behind no great canonical text. Instead, he claims, they left their mark by means of the architecture and art. This paper explores Hegel’s analysis of the Egyptians’ obelisks, pyramids, sphinxes, etc. in order to understand why he believes that these are so important for understanding the Egyptian spirit. This analysis illustrates Hegel’s use of history and culture in the service of philosophical anthropology.

Replying to my four commentators allows me to clarify some distinctive features and merits of Hegel’s natural law constructivism; how Hegel’s insights have been obscured by common, though inadequate philosophical taxonomies; and how Hegel’s natural law constructivism contributes centrally to moral philosophy today, including ethics, justice, philosophy of law and philosophy of education.

Kenneth Westphal provides here a masterful evolutionary account of Normative Constructivism in its classical development, which encompasses Hobbes, Hume, Kant and Rousseau, and culminates in Hegel’s vision of Sittlichkeit. In the process of endorsing the comprehensive moral anthropology of the latter, Westphal rejects the essentialist/objectivist rhetoric of Plato’s Euthyphro and invokes Hume’s alternative to Moral Realism, which is articulated in the view that what might appear “artificial” and “conventional” in our understanding of the rules (norms) of Justice does not necessarily imply that these rules are thus arbitrary. Westphal advocates a metaphysically agnostic Normative Constructivism, which separates our claims to what, on the one hand, is deemed to be morally factual, and on the other, is simply morally relevant. Whilst I acknowledge that this separation of claims is not only possible, but necessary, I argue that it is not, in any critically viable sense, consistent with the rejection of moral objectivism.

Rockmore’s book German Idealism as Constructivism is an ambitious attempt to show that German Idealism is a tradition characterized by the project of perfecting constructivism. On the one hand, Rockmore offers good evidence that this is the case, and it seems indisputable that the German Idealists are preoccupied with this issue. In addition, the text offers deep insights and is particularly strong as concerns the relation of the various Idealists to natural science and the history of science. On the other hand, there is also good evidence that casts some doubt on Rockmore’s thesis. German Idealism as Constructivism may not close the book on this issue, but it certainly contributes to the conversation, and should be taken seriously by any good student of the tradition.

I begin my comment on Westphal’s study by exploring briefly his refutation of “the arbitrariness thesis,” and then focusing on the “conditio humanae,” i.e. the conditions of life as freedom realized in common life. As I understand it, coordination and cooperation among persons are required because employing freedom in the presence of others presupposes an act of recognition that acknowledges a priori the necessity of universal respect. The right to use and possess things within the institution of property is an illustrative example of this necessity. Justice requires possession not in the form of some equal distribution (which is a matter of contingency) but as a normative requirement that “everyone shall have property.” One must have property in order to enter the world of inter-subjectivity and become a person. This has important implications for determining how poverty is related to the validity of laws, which depends on the joint legislative will of all persons.

Kenneth Westphal, in his “Hegel, Natural Law & Moral Constructivism,” offers an argument to the effect that Hegel elaborated a theory of natural law. Westphal contrasts such a natural law with positivism. Such a contrast holds out an either-or prospect: either Hegel is a legal positivist or he is a natural law thinker. I ask whether it is possible that Hegel elaborated a third theory of law other than that of positivism or of natural law. In addressing this possibility, I first raise a problem in Westphal’s adoption of Hegel’s regressive argument. The ultimate justification, according to Westphal, is an a priori concept: namely, the equal rational will. I then exemplify the importance of the problem when a constitutional lawyer identifies intermediate principles justifiable with reference to such a final referent of justification. The problem raises the prospect that Hegel’s theory of law has elements of both natural law and positivist law. Section 3 highlights the need to situate any natural law claim in the particular ethos of the movement of legal consciousness through the experience of time.

In a series of impressive articles, Kenneth Westphal argues that Hegel should be understood as a natural law constructivist. In this essay, I examine what Westphal means by this, showing that any such position requires postulating rights or duties that exist prior to the formation of political institutions. I show that Hegel consistently denies the existence of any such natural rights or duties and conclude that he must have a fundamentally different, non-foundationalist conception of the fundamental task of moral philosophy.

This paper argues that Hegel’s Philosophical Outlines of Justice develops an incisive natural law theory by providing a comprehensive moral theory of a modern republic. Hegel’s Outlines adopt and augment a neglected species of moral constructivism which is altogether neutral about moral realism, moral motivation, and whether reasons for action are linked ‘internally’ or ‘externally’ to motives. Hegel shows that, even if basic moral norms and institutions are our artefacts, they are strictly objectively valid because for our very finite form of semi-rational embodied agency they are necessary and because sufficient justifying grounds for these norms and institutions can be addressed to all persons. Hegel’s moral constructivism identifies and justifies the core content of a natural law theory, without invoking metaphysical issues of moral realism, anti-realism, irrealism or ‘truth makers’ (of moral propositions), etc. I begin with Socrates’ question to Euthyphro to distinguish between moral realism and moral irrealism (§2). I then summarise basic points of constructivist method (§3) and how Hume’s theory of justice inaugurates this distinctive species of natural law constructivism (§4). How this approach addresses issues of political legitimacy is highlighted by Rousseau’s juridical innovation (§5). How this approach is better articulated and justified by Kant’s specifically Critical method is briefly considered in connection with his justification of rights to possession (§6), so that we can then recognise Hegel’s natural law constructivism in his Outlines (§7). Hegel’s account of rights to possession corresponds closely to Kant’s (§8), and his account of juridical relations as human interrelations accords with natural law constructivism (§9). This finding is corroborated by some central features of Hegel’s account of Sittlichkeit, including how Hegel adopts, undergirds and augments Rousseau’s and Kant’s Independence Requirement for political legitimacy (§10).

This article seeks to gain a new perspective on Hegel’s Eucharistic theology by reading it through the lens of his philosophy of nature, specifically, his extensive discussion of animal eating, digestion, and excretion. This juxtaposition confirms Walter Jaeschke’s claim that Hegel, in offering a philosophical interpretation of the Eucharist, articulates a sacramental principle governing the whole of reality. In Hegel’s system, the biological process of assimilation serves as a master image of the work of Spirit across a number of natural, cultural, religious, and philosophical phenomena.

This paper shows that Hegel’s ontology of living beings provides us with indispensable conceptual resources for making sense of his account of the ontology of human action. For Hegel, living bodies are ontologically distinct in that their objective presence is thoroughly permeated by the self-reflexivity characteristic of subjectivity, and as such they cannot be adequately conceived in terms of categories (mechanistic, chemical, or generally causal categories) that are appropriate to inanimate, “subject-less” objects. It is argued that actions are similar in this regard, and like organic bodies they need to be conceived as self-realizing, self-articulating, dynamic wholes whose various material parts cannot be thought independently of their internal relations and their place in the whole. It is argued, further, that the categories Hegel appeals to in conceiving how organisms develop through stages are useful for making sense of how the objective shape of an action unfolds over time.

Schweickart and I both discuss market socialism. Neither of us accepts the traditional Marxist view that market economies necessarily produce contradictions that drive them toward collapse. Both of us think the socialist experiments of the twentieth century show that markets cannot successfully be eliminated. Thus, for market socialism, we keep a market and we work to prevent it from producing contradictions, alienation, and collapse. One question that arises here concerns the role of labor unions. Should they (like Hegelian corporations) play a major role in market socialism, or are there respects in which they would obstruct it? There is another important issue that Schweickart should discuss. Market socialism, given its commitment to a market, must face the issue of market generated alienation or fetishism. Can market socialism avoid such problems? And if so how?

This paper argues that Marx’s critique of capitalism is not, as commonly believed, a critique of the “free market.” I argue that the “market” under capitalism should be understood as a three-fold market—for goods and services, for labor and for capital. I argue that Marx’s critique is essentially a critique of the latter two markets, and not the first. Hence theoretical space opens up for “market socialism.” I proceed to elaborate briefly what specific institutions might comprise an economically viable socialism that would not be vulnerable to Marx’s critique.

On what might be called a Marxist reading, Hegel’s analysis of civil society accurately recognizes a necessary tendency toward a polarization of classes and the pauperization of the proletariat, a problem for which Hegel, however, has no solution. Indeed, Marxists think there can be no solution short of eliminating civil society. It is not at all clear that this standard reading is correct. The present paper tries to show how it is plausible to understand Hegel as proposing a solution, one that is similar to that of social democrats, and one that could actually work.

I resolve a tension in Hegel’s views, which I call the “paradox of irrationalism,” in order to lay the logical foundation of Hegel’s philosophy of the absurd. The paradox is that Hegel both affirms and denies that the world is rational. While critics maintain that this presents a genuine problem for Hegel, I argue Hegel resolves this paradox by showing that reason constitutes itself through the irrational element that it itself grounds. I make my case by investigating the categories of diversity and contingency, which are central to the paradox of irrationalism and Hegel’s account of human agency.

This paper has three sections. 1) For Hegel, the true infinite is the fundamental concept of philosophy. The true infinite challenges current non-metaphysical interpretations of Hegel, as it challenged Kant’s restriction of cognition to finitude and attack on metaphysics. The consciousness of limit (finitude) implies a transcendence of limit, and an infinite opposed to the finite shows itself to be finite. 2) Hegel accepts Kant’s approach to the God-question through practical reason, but rejects Kant’s postulates as incoherent. The content of the God-postulate contradicts the subject-relative form of the postulate. Kant’s moral God is a spurious infinite. The true infinite is a self-determining, self-realizing, inclusive whole which sublates the subjective ‘ought to be’ of the postulate. 3) For both Hegel and Nietzsche the moral god is dead; both pursue the question of theology after the death of God. I explore Hegel’s account of tragedy and his conception of tragic reconciliation. The latter is not a comic, but an “anguished reconciliation, a disquieted bliss in disaster.” The death of God and reconciliation include negation and suffering, and are closer to tragic reconciliation than to Dante’s Divine Comedy with its impassible absolute that lacks serious opposition.

This paper begins with Hegel’s critique of Kant in the Encyclopaedia’s examination of three positions on objectivity. According to this critique, Kant’s philosophy is flawed because it reduces objectivity to a relation isolated within the subjectivity of the knower, does not integrate the contingent into its understanding of the rational, and does not acknowledge the reality status of contradiction. The second section of the paper examines Hegel’s analysis of dialectical proof procedure in the introductory essays of his major works. The rest of the paper examines the way the Phenomenology proves that rationality is a common ground governing both independent thought and the independence of the natural world, that the contradictory otherness of nature requires an irrational element, which neither observational nor practical thought can overcome, and that truth is an infinite spirit that both transcends and dwells within the finite reality of the human spirit.

German philosophers of the classical period viewed Spinozism as posing a threefold challenge: fatalism, atheism, and acosmism. This paper focuses on acosmism as a vantage point for understanding the resulting “Pantheism Controversy.” Drawing on insights into the ineliminability of indexical thought, I argue that Mendelssohn’s refutation of acosmism entails rejecting traditional theism: The finite world cannot be the product of an omnipotent creator. Schelling and Hegel recognize this consequence, but each responds in a different way: Schelling with a conception of creative ethical individualism, Hegel with a conception of divine love and redemptive power to abolish the past and overcome fate. To understand these conceptions as a response to the Spinozist challenge is also to see how they themselves constitute a challenge to the Kantian Frame.

Commentators generally neglect Hegel’s analyses of the religions of Asia, presumably for fear of being charged with Eurocentrism, racism or colonialism. Hegel’s engagement with these religions, however, occurs during the time when the birth of fields such as Egyptology and Indology gave rise to increased scholarly interest in Asia. Hegel supported the work of Georg Friedrich Creuzer, whose book on symbolism showed the debt that the Greek and Roman religions owed to Egypt, Persia and India. Creuzer’s methodology inspired Hegel, and his support of Creuzer is evidence that Hegel was not the political and social reactionary that many scholars have taken him to be.

This paper examines the Hegelian moment of the for-another in its negative relation to the other moment of particularity: the for-itself. I identify the dissolving, fluidifying action of the for-another by examining figures within the Philosophy of Nature, particularly comets and moons, but also Hegel’s physics of light and sound. The dissolution of the lunar for-itself at the hands of the cometary for-another illustrates how the dynamic relation between the two moments of particularity participates in the presentation of essence, within the Hegelian syllogism, i.e. as mediating between the universal and the singular. The dynamic action of cometary negativity occurs throughout the Philosophy of Nature and therefore should be pivotal to how the work is read.