Hegel: Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) Revised ed. Edition

As a graduate student in political theory, I found this edition to be indispensable while making my way through Hegel's political thought. The annotation by Allen Wood was immensely helpful, and I would recommend this translation of the work over the older translation by T.M. Knox.

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Hegel gives primacy to constitutional monarchy, but wants a government that allows civic participation. Citizens should participate in government as part of a subset of the whole–not as individuals. Hegel calls these subsets “corporations.” I don’t know to what extent corporations in the mid-19th century resemble corporations today. But we can view it another way by calling them “estates,” which is exactly how medieval many participated in the monarchical order.Hegel wants a constitutional monarchy, to which I have grave misgivings. I understand why, though. At that time in Europe, the old liturgical tradition had largely been eradicated. Institutions tended to reflect raw power. Hegel likely saw "traditional" monarchies as absolute monarchies and wanted to mute that tendency.Most interesting, he sees the monarch--properly understood--as the concrete embodiment of a culture's values. It's also important to point out that Hegel did not mean by "state" what we mean by it, simply the bureaucratic apparatus that takes away liberty. He meant the combined culture and volk.The Foundations of the Modern StateMonarchy as the Representative Individual: consistent with his earlier points, Hegel notes that there must be some way for the individual to retain his subjective right, yet at the same time freely and fully identify with the community (Staat). This happens by way of monarchy. Beneath the monarchy are Estates, who mediate the King to the people. Nowhere does Hegel mean representation according to our usage today. The King does not "represent" the will of the people, but through his kingly majesty allows the people to identify.The French Revolution: Political TerrorHegel defines it as "absolute, unlimited freedom." Complete freedom means that outcome should be decided by me. Of course, since I am in society it is not decided by me alone. Therefore, complete freedom is decided by the strongest individual. This is the conclusion of indivdiualism ala Locke.I think the reason is that if Hegel is right and one should view the Modern Narrative as a continuation of the French Revolution, then the only moral alternative is to reject said narrative. Hegel's challenge to modernity: the modern ideology of equality and of total participation leads to a homogenization of society. This shakes men loose from their traditional communities but cannot replace them as a focus of identity" .Translation: all natural societies organically flow from a unified belief system/ethnos (cf. Augustine, City of God, 19.4). Modernity is the negation of this. Without this unified system of belief, men cannot "connect" to one another. Thus, no real community. Thus, no real unity and society is held together by force (ala Hegel on Rome) and terror (ala Hegel on France).Hegel's conclusion, which Taylor rejects, is a rationalized monarchy. Hegel was a monarchist but he was not a traditionalist, and for that reason he was not a conservative. He agreed with the older conservatives that society must be founded on authority, estates, and a strong monarch; Hegel, however, based these spheres, not on divine right or tradition, but on reason. In this sense Hegel stands firmly in the Enlightenment.According to Hegel France is utterly lost in terms of a political future. England is better, but she is not far behind in spiritual rot, for England (like America today) is run riot with an excess on particular rights. And in this chaos of individualism, special interest groups backed by powerful elites have taken control (like America today)."The only force which could cure this would be a strong monarchy like those late medieval kings which forced through the barons the rights of the universal. But the English have crucially weakened their monarchy; it is powerless before Parliament which is the cockpit of private interests.Hegel wanted man to participate in civic life, and I think he was able to avoid the two extremes of absolute monarchy and oligarchic Republicanism. While Hegel wanted man to participate in the civitas, he knew that man as an individual among (often wealthier and more powerful) individuals, could not participate in civic life. For example, if all that matters is "individualism," then the strongest individual wins--and your claims are marginalized. This is more often a problem in Republics than in monarchies, for a monarch can often block and shut down the "rich oligarchs."What Hegel opted to do was posit the Guild (he calls it "corporation." I will not call it that because it connotes and denotes something different today). The Guild (or Guilds), which represents the workers and the individuals, can allow man to face "Big Business" and "Big Capital," not as a mere individual, but as a group of workers.

As a mystery novelist with my first novel in its initial release, I have found that reading a variety of works helps me in my writing. I first came in contact with the works of Hegel as an undergraduate at Claremont McKenna College. Hegel's thoughts have provided foundations for political movements ranging from the far right to the far left, and this work, an excellent translation, provides insight into this thinker's thoughts. Excellent work. A classic in every sense of the word.

This edition is an enormous improvement over the Knox version published by Oxford, but I have done a third version that I hope you'll consider. Three of its advantages: (1) unlike Wood, I don't proceed on the assumption that Hegel's dialectical logic is nonsensical, so I attempt to clarify it, both in the translation and in notes; (2) additional materials from student transcriptions of Hegel's lectures are included with the sections they relate to, not in endnotes; (3) my edition has no endnotes, only footnotes, so readers don't have to waste time flipping to the end of the book to find what is often irrelevant and distracting information. For more on my edition (titled HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT), see the review by Peter Kalkavage on its Amazon page.Again, I much admire this edition, and if it had been available when I started mine, I wouldn't have started at all. That said, I do think that mine offers significant advantages, including those listed above.

This is not the version of the book i received.