I

HEGEL’S THEORY OF THE STATE

Mark Twain is reported to have said that “whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of the Atlantic with a verb in his mouth”.[1] Turgid prose aside, a successful exposition of Hegel’s conception of the state and the body politic, as it is articulated in his Philosophy of Right, must overcome several substantial obstacles, both ideological and philosophical. In the Western political tradition, there is a tendency to view the state primarily as an apparatus of control which guarantees individual rights, such as the right to property, and prevents the reversion of the community to chaos and the war “of every man, against every man”.[2] This is the legacy of political theories like those of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke which view the state as the result of a contract: a conscious, rational decision by individuals to transfer their natural rights to a sovereign power in exchange for the protection of their lives and their personal property. To the liberal sensibility, the Hegelian state appears to be the antithesis of its contractarian counterpart. It seemingly denies liberal rights and demands, among other things, that individuals make their interests “subordinate to it and dependant on it”.[3] As such, Hegel’s theory of the state is liable to draw hostile reaction. Indeed, Hegel’s characterization of the state has been referred to as many things: as a general model for totalitarianism according to Bertrand Russell, as the codification of the “god-state” by L.T. Hobhouse, as the cause of the death of virtue in twentieth century revolutionaries by Albert Camus, as an apology for Prussianism according to Karl Popper, and as a theoretical justification for imperialism according to Noam Chomsky.[4]

However, to conceive of the state simply as an instrument is possibly to view the Hegelian state as something it is not. It can be argued that to view Hegel’s theory of the state in this manner, and subsequently to understand it as being hostile to individual freedom, is to fail to appreciate its fundamentally liberal spirit. Carl Friedrich writes that

Hegel’s view of law and ethics, involving as it does also his view on politics and history, is basically at variance with prevailing views, the concept of the state being that of a community rather than an institution (Anstalt). The failure to grasp this divergence of the concept of the state, as Hegel uses it, has been the source of most of the misunderstandings. For if the prevailing modern concept of the state as primarily a government, an institutional manifold comprising those who exercise command functions in the community is substituted for Hegel’s essentially Aristotelian conception of the state as the highest community, there arise immediately authoritarian, not to say totalitarian implications which are far removed from the essential liberalism of Hegel’s conception.[5]

true liberty consists in obedience to an arbitrary authority, that free speech is an evil, that absolute monarchy is good, that the Prussian state was the best existing at the time when [Hegel] wrote, that war is good, and that an international organization for the peaceful settlements of disputes would be a misfortune.[6]

In addition to the ideological barrier, there is a far more formidable metaphysical barrier to achieving a clear grasp of Hegel’s theory of the state. Interestingly, this is the kind of obstacle which an interpreter of Hobbes or Locke need not consider to the same extent as an interpreter of Hegel does. While contractarian theories of the state have problematic metaphysical bases in concepts such as free will and natural right, metaphysics is not their life-blood. For example, Thomas Hobbes’ critique of the Aristotelian theory of perception, or his views on the uses of speech,[7] are not the pillars on which his theory of the purpose and form of the state stands. Indeed, Hobbes would be able to articulate his theory of the state, which stands more or less on its own, even in the absence of his metaphysical insights. In marked contrast, Hegel’s theory of the state as it is explained in Philosophy of Right can be understood only as a special case of Hegel’s elaborate metaphysical system. Within this system, the state cannot be conceived merely as a coercive instrument legitimized by the rational self-interest of human beings. Rather, the state, as it is put forth in Philosophy of Right, must be viewed as a parenthesis within a much grander vision of the historical movement of the universe. As a result Hegel lacks, as Pelczynski suggests, the clarity and general persuasiveness of Hobbes, but avoids the shallowness of a state premised on rational self-interest alone.[8]

These ideological and metaphysical barriers are, I suggest, the greatest hindrances to grasping Hegel’s conception of the state. Contrary to the Hobbesian or Lockean conceptions of the state on which contemporary liberal society is premised, Hegel’s state cannot be understood simply as the sum of the coercive institutions reigning over civil society. Thus, Hegel’s claim that the laws and the interests of civil society must be subordinate to the state is not an affirmation of the state’s entitlement to use its instruments in a totalitarian fashion. Nor can the state be understood in the absence of the metaphysical system which is its raison d’être. To appreciate Hegel’s theory of the state more fully, one must view the state first as the earthly expression of a universal consciousness in the process of becoming ever more self-aware, and, second, as an ethical community in which human freedom reaches its perfection. The nature of Hegel’s state will now be expanded upon by first turning to a discussion of his general metaphysical system of which the state is a necessary part.

II. THE CIRCLE OF NECESSITY

Hegel’s political philosophy has something to tell us about our world even without his metaphysics. As Plamenatz states,

[e]ven if it is true that whoever rejects the Hegelian metaphysics misses the essence of his theory of the State and of man’s progress in society, the fact remains that it is those parts of the theory which still make sense when the metaphysical system is rejected.[9]

 In an important respect, the Hegelian enterprise is no different than that of all the other great figures of Western thought, back to the pre-Socratic philosophers. Hegel’s question was an epistemological one, which asked what it was that human beings could truly know, and how such knowledge could be used a basis for making the universe comprehensible. He should be understood as a direct response to the writing of philosophers such as Kant, Schelling, and Fichte, whom Hegel accused of forsaking reason for mere intuition. It is perhaps ironic that a philosophical system that is often condemned on account of its other-worldliness so strongly championed reason over intuition and mysticism.[10]

The primary reality in Hegel’s system is Geist. However it is conceived, Geist should not be viewed as analogous to the Christian God or as an entity standing outside of material reality, but as Absolute Mind: the living, conscious force behind the motion of the material universe which subsumes material existence under itself yet is also embodied as material existence and contiguous with it. All of the material universe which we as human beings encounter is not simply created by Geist, but represents Geist’s life functions—the very conditions necessary for Geist’s existence. Yet, the material universe is also the medium in which Geist expresses itself and which is posited by Geist in order to manifest itself. Thus, as Taylor explains, Hegel conceives the universe as both a life-form and an enciphered text in which Geist reveals what it is. The universe constitutes the necessary conditions for the existence of Geist, yet the universe is, simultaneously, posited by Geist as such. The universe exists by design, yet it also exists as a prerequisite for its designer.[11]

While Hegel argues that the phenomenological universe is the medium in which Absolute Mind expresses itself and, thus, that Absolute Mind is knowable through the philosophical penetration of material reality, he realizes that the mere fact that the universe appears to be an emanation of Geist is not, in itself, sufficient proof of Geist’s existence. That the material universe appears to be the orderly creation of some higher being only establishes the plausibility of Absolute Mind, not its necessity. Therefore, unlike, for example, Thomas Aquinas’ teleological proof of God’s existence which argues that the intricate workings of the material universe could only be designed by a divine artificer,[12] Hegel attempts to present a logical proof which he hopes will, on the strength of reason alone, make the existence of Absolute Mind self-evident.

In Science of Logic, Hegel demonstrates the necessity of Absolute Mind by means of dialectical development. He first identifies the most ontologically empty, impoverished category of reality of which one can conceive with certainty. This forms the ground-stone of knowledge about which there can be no doubt. Second, he identifies the internal contradictions of that initial category. Finally, he synthesizes a subsequent category which reconciles the inherent contradictions of the previous one, but which contains new contradictions of its own. The starting point for Hegel, which serves as an indisputable ground for his system, is undifferentiated Being. Because of the contradictory nature of undifferentiated Being which consists in the fact that undifferentiated Being is essentially nothing, Hegel is able to deduce the necessary existence of determinate Being.[13] The contradictory moments of being and non-being are thus subsumed under a new category which is not simply posited but which is logically necessary, and which subsequently becomes the thesis in the next round of dialectical development. The goal of this ongoing dialectical process is to reveal an ultimate thesis which possesses no internal contradictions and is, as such, self-subsistent. According to Hegel, only one category of being, Absolute Mind, has the quality of non-contradiction which sign-posts it as the final stage of the ascending dialectic.

As Hegel explains in his Phenomenology of Spirit, history is the process of Geist—or Absolute Mind—coming to ever more complete self-awareness and self-consciousness. If Geist is to become truly self-aware, Hegel argues, then the universe must contain finite spirits—creatures which exist in time and have physical extension—because consciousness must exist somewhere. Geist must be embodied; therefore, there must be finite things manifesting themselves as “incomplete Spirit, a concrete shape in whose whole existence one determinateness predominates”.[14] Self-consciousness is possible only over and against something else; otherwise, Geist’s self-consciousness would be little more than a dim sense of self-reference.[15] The life of such a disembodied infinite spirit “would at best be one of dull self-feeling, there would be nothing in it which merited the name ‘consciousness’, much less ‘rational awareness’”.[16] Thus, Absolute Mind must necessarily be mediated by some kind of finite being lest it sink into a self-referential state of unreflectiveness and, consequently, fail to be truly absolute.

In essence then, Hegel sees the structure of the material universe as being contingent on the fact that it is the embodiment of Geist, and posits that the form which the material universe takes can be deduced rationally from the requirements of Absolute Mind which must be both embodied and expressed in the universe. Geist can only be actual to the extent that it makes itself Subject, or “in so far as it is the movement of positing itself, or is the mediation of its self-othering with itself.”[17] Furthermore, since the finite universe exists solely to embody Absolute Mind, Geist’s self-awareness is perfected when we, as rational human beings, recognize ourselves as its vehicles. At the moment we recognize ourselves as such, our knowledge of the universe, our science, undergoes a transformation from knowledge of a universe which is other than us to a self-knowledge of the universal spirit of which we are, at present, the finite parts. In the process of coming to full self-awareness, Geist comes to its fullest possible self-expression. Furthermore, in so doing, it perfects its vehicles, finite and rational beings, which thus come to grasp the universal flowing through themselves and overcome the alienation between themselves and Absolute Mind which was, initially, a prerequisite to the process of Absolute Mind becoming self-aware. History, which is the process of Absolute Mind returning to itself, is simultaneously the process of finite beings coming closer and closer to unity with the universal purpose in which they are immersed and, thus, to freedom. As people come progressively closer to fulfilling their purpose as finite vehicles of Absolute Mind, they continually strip away the truths of epochs, which were viewed as radical truths in the first instance, but which are revealed as merely ideological, historically contingent constructs. To Hegel, in addition to being the return of Absolute Mind to itself, world history is the progress of the consciousness of individual freedom.[18]

Therefore, in Hegel’s metaphysics, we are presented with a development that begins with undifferentiated Being and, on the strength of reason alone, ends in fully non-contradictory Geist which, by its own nature, posits the material universe. Hegel’s world-system is premised entirely on rational necessity and not a problematic argument from design. Taylor provides a good synopsis of the movement of this system:

We show in our ascending dialectic that finite reality can only be as an emanation of Geist, hence that given finite reality, self-positing Geist must be. But then we can also demonstrate ... that a self-positing Geist, that is a cosmic spirit who lays down the conditions of his own existence, must posit the structure of the finite things we know. In these two movements, ascending and descending ..., our argument returns to its starting point. The existence of finite reality which originally we just took as a given is now shown to be necessary. Originally just a datum, it is now swept up in the circle of necessity.[19]

Our ascending movement thus starts with a postulate and proceeds by necessary inference. But what it infers to is ontological necessity, the proposition that everything which exists is posited by Geist according to a formula of rational necessity. The circle is thus not a single stream of inferences. Rather, it involves a reversal of starting point. We begin with the ascending movement which is a movement of discovery. Our starting point is finite existence which is first in the order of discovery. But what we reveal is a pervasive ontological necessity, and this shows that our original starting point is really secondary. Finite reality is itself posited by Geist, God, the Absolute. This is the real starting point in the order of being.[21]

Having considered what Hegel believed the motion of history to entail, one can now speak meaningfully of the Hegelian theory of the state. For, in Hegel’s system, the state is not merely an apparatus to which free men consent in order to protect their interests. Rather, it is the sine qua non of freedom. The state is an integral part in the historical realization of both Geist’s self-consciousness and human freedom. According to Hegel, the historical purpose of Geist is to achieve perfect self-awareness and self-understanding. As we have noted, this cannot be achieved until finite, rational beings (like ourselves) become aware of themselves as contingent vehicles of Geist, that is, until finite beings grasp the universal. The role of the state, through education, legislation, and community life, is to facilitate this historical process in which individual, self-interested men come to grasp the universal through their particularity and, in so doing, become truly free.

III. HEGEL’S OBJECTIVES

The Philosophy of Right’s famous epigram, “What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational”,[23] shows Hegel at his most quotable but can be quite misleading to contemporary ears.

As this phrase suggests, Hegel’s aim in articulating his theory of the state was to attempt to “apprehend and portray the state as something inherently rational”,[24] and not to look beyond the present state for truth. Far from finding enlightenment, he argues, whoever tries to look beyond the actual state and construct a state as it ought to be will be confronted only with relativism and vacuity. Hegel was adamant that any philosophy of the state must not be driven by arbitrary visions of what the state ought to be because this will necessarily degenerate into “an infinite variety of opinions” and, thus, make it impossible to discern what is “universally recognized and valid” or “substantively right”.[25] Rather, all such a philosophy can hope to demonstrate is how the actual state is to be understood. To Hegel, philosophy finds its voice in the words and thoughts of its own epoch. Its scope and lexicon are limited by the spirit of the age. It cannot step outside of its own epoch any more than a man could leap over the Colossus of Rhodes. Should philosophers attempt such a leap beyond the actual, they find themselves in a realm where any theory, no matter how ludicrous, may be legitimately constructed. Such half-philosophy is said by Hegel to take us away from grasping the world as it really is. Since the true philosophy’s only justifiable course is to reconcile itself to the actual as the expression of reason, philosophy must have no pretensions of apprehending the state as it has yet to be or as it might become. Just as the owl of Minerva “spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk”,[26] so too does the philosopher only grasp a particular epoch in thought once the sun has set upon it.

Despite Hegel’s identification of the actual state with reason, his theory of the state must not be read, as Russell, Hobhouse, and others have suggested, as advocating a radically conservative philosophy by which the existence of any state can be justified simply because it is. The reason for this hinges upon what Hegel considers to be actual. In casual speech it is not uncommon for the words ‘actuality’ and ‘existence’ to be used interchangeably. Usually, if something is said to be actual, then it is also said to be existent and vice versa. “In common life”, Hegel states, “any brain-wave, error, evil, and everything in the nature of evil, as well as every degenerate and transitory existence whatever, gets indiscriminately called an actuality”.[27] However, blurring the distinction between words in this manner muddles Hegel’s argument. When Hegel says that the actual is rational, he is not arguing that the existent state, as we encounter it in unmediated sensual experience, is rational. In The Philosophy of Right, what is actual is not simply that which is and which impresses itself upon our senses. To ascribe actuality to a contingent existence is to say that actuality “has no greater value than that of something possible, which may as well not be as be”.[28] Rather, the actual is that which is not contingent and fulfils its true essence in a manner which can be subsequently grasped by reason.

Understood in Hegel’s terms, the actual state is not necessarily the state as we see it, but resembles an ideal ‘form’ of the state—the eternal substance beneath the fleeting appearances. To refer to Hegel’s actual state as being the ‘form’ of the existing state is possibly misleading though, for this suggests that Hegel’s conception of actuality corresponds to something like Plato’s Theory of the Forms. This is not entirely true. In Plato’s writing, the Forms exist independently from worldly objects which are merely imperfect projections of the Forms they represent, and cannot be known through their worldly embodiments.[29] In contrast, according to Hegel, what is actual is inseparable from what is existent even though it might be represented in a distorted fashion. Thus, while the Forms are eternally inaccessible, the actual can known through the philosophical penetration of the phenomenological world. Unlike the Platonic Forms, the actual can be apprehended by reason. Bearing this in mind, Hegel’s contention that the actual state was the embodiment of reason ceases to be an apology for the state as he encountered it and becomes instead an exhortation to thinking people. Hegel demands of us that we disregard the apparent state which “emerges with an infinite wealth of forms, shapes, and appearances” and shrouds the essential kernel of the actual state with “a motley covering”.[30] To dwell on externalities is not, for Hegel, the proper course of philosophy. The purpose of philosophy must be to discern the light of eternal truth shining within these externalities.

If, as Hegel argues, reason is embodied in the actual state but not necessarily the existent state, then Hegel’s claim that the actual is rational is not a conservative principle but a critical one. A state may have existence but, if it fails to promote ethical life, it lacks actuality. In failing to do that which it is in the state’s essence to do, i.e., facilitate ethical life, it leaves its essence unfulfilled. It is irrational. Far from being a whitewash which justifies authoritarian ideologies from Soviet Stalinism to the German National Socialism,[31] the identification of reason with the actual state acts as a standard by which we can assess historical states. In Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, the agenda is as much critical as it is expository. Though Hegel’s aim is to describe the actual state, The Philosophy of Right is also prescriptive in the sense that it sets up the actual state as the standard of rationality which the existent state, the “hieroglyph” of reason, should emulate.[32]

  IV. THE NORMATIVE ORDERS[33]

The state, as Hegel conceives it, is the last of three ethical components—The Family, Civil Society, and the State—which together constitute the normative order known as Ethical Life. Ethical Life is, furthermore, the third of three normative orders: Abstract Right, Morality, and Ethical Life. As the third ethical component within the third normative order, the State should be seen as the pinnacle of the double triad and as following logically from the other components. 

The discussion of the normative orders in The Philosophy of Right is an integral part of its attempt to explain law, morality, and ethical life as expressions of the development of Absolute Mind. As discussed earlier, history is, from the perspective of Absolute Mind, the process of reintegrating its finite phase into itself, and, from the perspective of finite beings, the process of coming to grasp the universal. Hegel believes that true freedom is possible only when this process has run its course, and there is a perfect coincidence of individual will and the actual, universal will. Consequently, perfect freedom is not something which human beings are naturally fitted for and subsequently relinquish. It is actually something which can be found only when human beings attempt to elevate themselves above immediate, natural life and unite themselves with Absolute Mind. This process is outlined in The Philosophy of Right, and is said to culminate in the State—the institutional expression of rationality and freedom. Thus, in the hands of Hegel, the State takes on a cosmic significance. It is, as Plamenatz calls it, a “side-effect” of the historical development of universal spirit and its finite embodiment.

Abstract Right

Corresponding to the first normative order, Abstract Right, is a particular kind of freedom. In the realm of Abstract Right, the individual will is immediate and its actions are influenced by nothing but a simple rule of reciprocity.[34] Therefore, by the norms of Abstract Right, one is free to do whatever one wishes provided that, in doing so, the same right of others is not compromised. The exercise of Abstract Right has its greatest expression in the acquisition and maintenance of property. Property is not only necessary as a means of satisfying material needs but as a means by which men can be recognized in the world. As Hegel puts it, “[i]f emphasis is placed on my needs, then the possession of property appears as a means to their satisfaction, but the true position is that, from the standpoint of freedom, property is the first embodiment of freedom and so is in itself a substantive end”.[35] In order to make oneself known as an individual, one must infuse some external object with personal will. The agreement of the rest of the world not to trespass against this property does not simply demonstrate a recognition of the property’s ability to satisfy the needs of its owner, but also the general acceptance of the owner as a willing, free being. Property is the self which has been made objective. It is the embodiment of personality. Thus, the deprivation of property is an issue of loss of humanity, not just a loss of the means by which to satisfy needs. The imperative of Abstract Right, therefore, is to express oneself in the world, to be recognized as a person, and, reciprocally, to respect others as persons.[36]

Morality

The norms of Morality are different from those of Abstract Right for they concern people not merely as self-interested, egoistic creatures but as beings capable of acting according to conscience. For Hegel, the point of departure for morality is a will which is moved by conscious self-reflection rather than by simple appetite. According to the norms of Abstract Right, human will is embodied in external things—property. The result of this is the capacity of people to make themselves known in the world through the objects they own. In contrast, in the realm of Morality, the individual will is no longer focused upon external objects but upon itself.[37] At the level of Abstract Right and property, the will is embodied in external things. At the level of Morality however, the will becomes embodied in itself. Thus, the individual becomes aware of himself as a moral agent.[38] Through the introspection of the will the individual surpasses his simple, legal knowledge of what he must not do as dictated by the principle of Abstract Right. As a moral being he is also aware of what he must do—even if this action does not coincide with his immediate self-interest. Hegel believes Morality to be an improvement over Abstract Right. The will is no longer embodied in an external object and is, as such, not subject to coercion. The will embodied in any kind of property can be coerced and manipulated by trespasses against that piece of property. In contrast, will existing as will takes the form of powerful inner conviction which cannot be coerced and which allows the individual to stand the most savage external pressures. In the sphere of Morality then, to be free is to transcend appetite and to have the capacity to choose material deprivation or pain should this be required by moral principle.

Ethical Life

In contrast to the principles of Abstract Right and Morality, which have two inherently limited forms of freedom corresponding to them, true freedom is said to come into its own in the sphere of Ethical Life—hence Hegel’s extended treatment of it.

To Hegel, Ethical Life is actual freedom made existent, or a universal pulled down to earth. As such, it is “the concept of freedom developed into the existing world”.[42] Ethical Life involves a subjective disposition as moral life did. However, unlike the unmediated subjectivity of Morality, the subjectivity of Ethical Life is imbued with a conception of what is, in an absolute sense, right. Thus, it is the good come to life, the perfection of freedom, grasped in thinking, and made existent in the world of our day-to-day experience.

According to the principles of Abstract Right and Morality, there is always some tension between the will of the individual and the external world which is, subsequently, viewed as a fetter upon that individual will. There is a similar sense of ‘otherness’ in the Ethical order. The individual is aware that there is a distinction between his particular will as a citizen and the universal needs of society as a whole. However, the ethical individual now sees the objectivity of the ethical order as an expression of his own subjectivity. In other words, the individual and universal interests present in the community converge such that their content is identical.[43] The ethical order is ‘other than’ the individual, yet its needs and norms coincide exactly with the individual will. Ethical Life has as its prerequisite the particular man who wills the universal, such that he finds freedom, rather than a fetter, in the prevailing set of social norms.[44]

As Hegel explains it, the ethical order is expressed in certain powers which regulate the lives of individuals. These powers are embodied in the state’s offices and institutions and are executed by individuals motivated by universal ends who, subsequently, will whatever is most necessary to the ethical order.[45] Together, the state offices and their officers constitute the legal and administrative apparatus of the state. The ethical substance of the state, and its laws, stand over and against those living in the state. These represent the absolute authority of the state which is inseparable from the mentality of Absolute Mind. Yet, these institutions and laws are not alien to the people, for the ethical person stands for these laws as he does for his own essence; thus, the individual has a sense of self-hood in the objective ethical order.[46] The relation of human beings to the ethical order is one of identity. Of course, the laws and institutions of the ethical order are binding on the will of the individual and, as a willing being, the individual stands apart from them. But the subsequent ‘bond of duty’ appears restrictive to an individual only to the extent that he subscribes to the norms of abstract right or morality. The ethical community is a fetter to the individual if, and only if, his actions are egoistic or degenerately moral.

In sum then, in the ethical order, freedom is neither unmediated impulsiveness, nor negation, but action according to consciously accepted universal norms and laws. In saying this, Hegel clearly distinguishes himself from thinkers like Hobbes and Locke[47] and aligns himself more with Jean-Jacques Rousseau who argued that “to be governed by appetite alone is slavery, while obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself is freedom”.[48] In the ethical order, the individual is liberated from indeterminate or negative freedom which is in fact servitude. “In duty”, writes Hegel, “the individual acquires his substantive freedom.”[49] There is no conflict between the particular will and the universal will because they coincide and the private conscience no longer stands in opposition to the ethical substance of the state. The individual grasps the duties imposed by the state as being, in reality, of his own design and can give himself freely to them. It should be stressed then that, by acting according to duty, individuals do not forfeit their rights. Since the universal and the particular wills are now identical in the ethical community, there is no longer any distinction between right and duty. This allows Hegel to argue that, in an ethical order, “a man has rights in so far as he has duties, and duties in so far as he has rights”.[50] Neither excludes the other.

Despite its unity of rights and duties, Ethical Life is not a homogeneous thing. Just as there are three distinct normative orders, of which Ethical Life is one, so too are there three moments within Ethical Life. As Hegel has argued, both Abstract Right and Morality are logically prior to Ethical Life; nevertheless, these are cogent only in the context of an ethical order. Thus, Ethical Life has the same kind of self-positing character that was earlier identified in Absolute Mind. Within the category of Ethical Life we witness the same kind of differentiation into three phases: the Family, Civil Society, and the State. The Family represents the most immediate and natural phase of ethical life. With the dissolution of the family, it passes into the second phase which is civil society. The third phase—which is the logical outcome of the other two—is the state qua ethical community. Just like Absolute Mind and Ethical Life, the state is put forth as the outcome of a logical movement through its preceding categories. Furthermore, like Absolute Mind and Ethical Life, the state posits its antecedents. In the self-positing structure of this Ethical triad is the basis of Hegel’s argument that the family and civil society are subsumed under the state, and that the state plays the leading role in helping individual human beings see the universal. To Hobbes and Locke the state was an apparatus; to Hegel the state was no less than the light of Absolute Mind on earth. 

V. THE STATE  

In Hegel’s thinking, the State is the culmination of the inability of the family and civil society to be adequate expressions of true ethical life. These prior moments are ethical moments and do play a role in the process by which Absolute Mind reveals itself in the world and becomes actual in communities of rational, finite minds. However, they are, in themselves, insufficient to help finite individuals grasp the universal will and, in so doing, facilitate Geist’s coming to self-consciousness. The only sphere of Ethical Life adequate to this task is the State.

The family is described by Hegel as being the natural, or immediate, manifestation of Geist’s historical movement as it is seen in the realm of human beings. The unity of the family is characterized by love and the “self-consciousness of one’s individuality within this unity as the absolute essence of oneself, with the result that one is in it not as an independent person but as a member”.[51] In the family there is a consciousness of individuality in unity, hence a realization of Ethical Life. The right that an individual possesses within a family is never actually exercised in that context, and it is not until the dissolution of the family that a family member can act according to the principle of right vis à vis other members. In the absence of considerations of right, the family cannot be viewed as a legal entity based on contract.[52] Rather, it is bound together by altruism. At the point that the family dissolves, either because of a parent’s death, or a child’s leaving the home, those who were family members by inclination begin to become independent people. Where there was once a natural unity, and family members were moments of the whole, there is now only a link of money or other assistance.[53] Thus, the naturally ethical link between family members ends just as certainly as people must die or move out into the world.

It is the inevitable self-destruction of the family which, in Hegel’s eyes, makes it inadequate to the task of facilitating a lasting ethical life. However, it should not be supposed that, with the dissolution of the family, people cease to participate in an ethical order. The reason for this is that the dissolution of the family brings about the release of individuals from their familial unity into self-subsistence. Though the remnants of the dissolved family now act according to self-interest, and not love or a sense of blood-relation, they become related to all other self-interested persons in the process of satisfying their needs. Thus, they are absorbed into a new kind of universal, ethical order. Individuals living outside of the immediacy of the family appear to be conditioned strictly by personal desires and, as such, might be called unethical. Yet, in acting according to personal desire, these individuals actually act according to a universal necessity. They act according to the widely held acquisitive values of their society and, thus, observe its ethical norm. This new sphere of ethical life is civil society.

Civil society is characterized by Hegel as the sphere of Ethical Life which is particular in appearance but which has universality as its underlying essence.[54] In other words, there is in this sphere an apparent divergence between the particular will and the universal but, in fact, the particular is conditioned by universal concerns—things like economic laws and the basic needs that all members of civil society share. Though a man in civil society acts according to his wants and desires he does not act simply according to his rights and moral convictions; rather, he acts in a manner that allows him to satisfy his wants. Since these wants can be satisfied only through interaction with other people, there is a universality expressed in the particular wants of one man. The interpenetrated “system of needs” compels individuals to participate in a higher plane of universality. Through the attempt to satisfy particular needs in a system of interdependent individuals, there forms in civil society a situation in which “the livelihood, happiness, and legal status of one man is interwoven with the livelihood, happiness, and rights of all”.[55] This ensures that “individuals can attain their ends only in so far as they themselves determine their knowing, willing, and acting in a universal way and make themselves links in this chain of social connexions”.[56] Modern people cannot subsist on their own and, because of this, they touch the universal.

The problem with civil society as an ethical order, despite the fact that it unites individuals through universal economic laws and the universal human needs which are its basis, is that unrestrained, self-seeking men tend to rend the social fabric. In their ferocious pursuit of personal goods, egoistic and impulsive men push civil society to extravagance and degeneration.[57] Furthermore, though the individuals of civil society are drawn together by the necessities of economic life, they are incapable of managing large, capital-intensive industries. For example, a single entrepreneur who derives benefits from well-maintained infrastructure might not ever consider building a new rail‑road line because of the tremendous expense involved. While particular individuals might be bound by need to large-scale projects like road repair and maintaining a standing army, the likelihood that individuals will initiate such projects on their own is very slight. The more technology- or capital-intensive a public good is, the less likely it is that self-seeking individuals will underwrite the risks of creating such a good. Consequently, the need arises for some kind of public authority which can exercise external control over the particularistic tendencies of civil society, protect positive rights, enforce contractual obligation, and supervise public services which would be too unwieldy or expensive for individuals to look after on their own. Therefore, in addition to the naturally occurring “system of needs” which unites the individual with the universal by the principle of interdependence, Hegel suggests two further organizations: the Police and the Corporation.[58] Through administration and education, these two organizations prevent civil society from flying to pieces under the pressure of particular interests.

Yet, like the family, civil society is ultimately inadequate to the concept of Ethical Life for reasons that Hegel makes clear. Undoubtedly, the three universal powers of civil society—the system of needs, the corporation, and the police—work to unite individuals with the universal needs of society. However, as already noted, the system of needs is prone to rampant self-centredness. Furthermore, the corporation serves only to bring together tradesmen of a specific art. Its end is “restricted and finite” in the sense that it only fosters universality within a clique of craftsmen and not across society. Finally, in being a regulatory body, the public authority of the police necessitates “a separation and a merely relative identity of controller and controlled”.[59] As a result, the police sets itself up as an ‘other’ which is an admission of the disjunction between private and public will and the impossibility of true ethical life. The individual does not see his own will reflected in civil society and cannot consciously accept it as something emanating from himself. He cannot find freedom in adhering to its norms. The limited ability of civil society to express ethical life causes the sphere of civil society, which previously displaced the family, to pass over into the sphere of the state. According to Hegel, “[t]he philosophic proof of the concept of the state is this development of ethical life from its immediate phase [the family] through civil society, the phase of division, to the state, which then reveals itself as the true ground of these phases”.[60] The state—like self-positing Absolute Mind—appears as the final result of the development in the ethical sphere while showing itself to be the true basis of the phases that precede it. By Hegel’s thinking then, the state is not the end of ethical development but its beginning. It is within the state that the family develops into civil society and also within the state that civil society achieves stability. The state is not simply created by the logical development of the ethical sphere but is also present in this development, the purpose of which is to yield a community conducive to freedom and truly ethical life.

To Hegel, the state is the embodiment of ethical existence which allows human beings to acquire universal consciousness and which facilitates the self-knowledge of Geist through such universally conscious beings. It is nothing less than the Divine “manifest and revealed to itself, knowing and thinking itself, accomplishing what it knows and in so far as it knows it.”[61] For an individual to be politically virtuous is for him to will, of his own volition, the ends of the Divine as it exists in the world—that is, the ends of the state. The unity of the particular and universal will is the condition in which “freedom comes into its supreme right”.[62] On no account should the functions of the state be confused with those regulatory functions of the police. If one views the state simply as an apparatus which secures an individual’s rights and freedom from harm, then membership in a state becomes a matter of self-interest. As such, membership is an optional thing to be given up whenever a person feels that his or her association is no longer advantageous. But, to Hegel’s mind, the state is not merely a glorified gendarme having one head and many limbs. Rather, it is what allows human beings to take their place in the historical development of universal mind, and, hence, makes them capable of ethical living. Hegel minces no words in this respect. The state is neither an impartial umpire nor a leviathan: “The march of God in the world, that is what the state is”.[63]

Hegel is equally clear about the nature of the freedom that members of a state possess. He is quick to diverge from the Hobbesian ‘freedom from external compulsion’, and to align himself with the Rousseauian ‘freedom to adhere to laws consciously made for oneself’. In Hegel’s actual state freedom is not untutored subjectivity, or hostility, towards a state which is viewed as a necessary evil. On the contrary,

concrete freedom consists in this, that personal individuality and its particular interests not only achieve their complete development and gain explicit recognition for their own right (as they do in the sphere of the family and civil society) but, for one thing, they also pass over of their own accord into the interest of the universal, and, for another thing, they know and will the universal; they even recognize it as their own substantive mind; they take it as their end and aim and are active in its pursuit. The result is that the universal does not prevail or achieve completion except along with particular interest and through the co-operation of particular knowing and willing; and individuals likewise do not live as private persons for their own ends alone, but in the very act of willing these they will the universal in the light of the universal, and their activity is consciously aimed at none but the universal end. The principle of modern states has prodigious strength and depth because it allows the principle of subjectivity to progress to its culmination in the extreme of self-subsistent personal particularity, and yet at the same time brings it back to the substantive unity and so maintains this unity in the principle of subjectivity itself.[64]

However, Hegel’s conception of the state was also highly critical of the Greek tendency to silence the individual voice in the interest of the state. Though he borrowed the Greek notion of ethical community, he cannot be read as subscribing to the Aristotelian ideal that “while it is desirable to secure what is good in the case of an individual, to do so in the case of a people or a state is something finer and more sublime”.[66] Nor can he be read as an enthusiast of Plato’s Noble Lie by which the good of the state was to be held above the good of the individual.[67] Particularity is an essential moment of society as Hegel conceived it. Because subjective particularity was not incorporated into the organization of the polis, Hegel believed it was destined to emerge as something hostile, “as a corruption of the social order”. In a society which suppresses the individual will,

either it overthrows society, as happened in the Greek states and in the Roman Republic; or else, should society preserve itself in being as a force or as a religious authority, for instance, it appears as inner corruption and complete degeneration, as was the case to some extent in Sparta.[68]

As careful as Hegel is to lay out his theory of the state in minute detail, his account fails to adequately make an important distinction. A large part of Hegel’s account concerns the “organism of the state”—the institutions of the state such as the Crown, the Executive, and the Legislature. These institutions correspond to what Hegel calls the “strictly political state”.[70] They do not, however, correspond to the state proper, i.e., the state qua ethical community. The problem here is that Hegel uses the word ‘state’ when referring both to the political state, and the state proper. Pelczynski raises the point that, because Hegel did not distinguish rigorously between the strictly political state and the state proper, some readers might take Hegel’s state to be no more than the political institutions of the state.[71] Thus, it is not surprising that Hegel’s theory of the state has been read as a precursor to totalitarianism.[72] If a reader fails to grasp Hegel’s conception of the state as an ethical community, then Hegel’s claim that individual will must pass of its own accord into the interest of the state seems to be a demand that the individual surrender his or her will to a set of arbitrary institutions. Though this was categorically not what Hegel had in mind, and the “[f]ailure to realize this has been responsible for numerous misrepresentations of Hegel’s position and his attitude to ‘the state’”,[73] Pelczynski justifiably holds Hegel partly responsible for the misconceptions surrounding his theory.

Hegel’s lack of clarity about the state aside, the state should not be read as an amalgamation of institutions but as an organized community permeated by ethical life. It is in the context of ethical life that the state “which, sundering itself into the two ideal spheres of its concept, family and civil society, enters upon its finite phase, but it does so only in order to rise above its ideality and become explicit as infinite actual mind”.[74] The state qua ethical community, which separates off from itself the other two spheres, defines the character of these spheres and is reflected in them. Therefore, the family and civil society are both contingent on the state for their form and content, and “mind is present as their objective universality glimmering in them as the power of reason in necessity”.[75] Though family and civil society, as inadequate expressions of ethical life, are logically prior to the state, Hegel sees the state as being the actual basis of family and civil society which the state separates off from itself for the sole purpose of transcending these moments. The state, in which ethical life and freedom come into their own, is the light of reason in the world which is subsequently reflected in family, civil society, and the institutions of the state. All of these spheres are necessarily rational to the extent that they develop in accordance with the state’s essence which is to be the earthly repository of Absolute Mind and to facilitate the union of the family and civil society with the universal.

In sum, Hegel’s philosophy comes full circle with the state. As we have seen, Hegel believed history to be the process of Absolute Mind splitting itself off into finite moments, transcending this finitude through self-reflection, and returning to unity. In the realm of Absolute Mind, this final unity would result in perfect self-knowledge and self-awareness. In the realm of men, the reunification with Absolute Mind would permit individual human beings to grasp the reason inherent in it, act in accordance with this reason, and, hence, be free. To Hegel’s mind, the state facilitates the process by which human beings move beyond their particular interests by unifying these with the universal. In the family, the rationality of the human world is obscured by sentiment. In civil society, this rationality is obscured by simple self-interest. Only the state promotes human self-consciousness such that human beings can know what is substantively rational and act according to this. Unlike the family or civil society, the state has world-historical significance and posits the family and civil society in the image of its own rationality.

In addition, with his concern for ethical life, Hegel’s philosophy marked a return to the Hellenic ideal of community. But Hegel does not condone the sacrifice of the individual will to the universal and he had no illusions that the Greek state could or should be resurrected. The social differentiation which is, on one level, counter to the universal is nonetheless a necessary part of the modern state. By Hegel’s day, economic interests had taken on a role that they did not have in classical society and thus had to be legitimized and integrated. Far from suppressing individual freedom, the Hegelian state aimed to uphold freedom and to enable each individual to realize his or her own freedom in conjunction with others. Far from being a coercive instrument hanging over the individual, the Hegelian state, premised as it is upon the individual’s self-consciousness and his capacity to grasp the universal, requires less coercion than previously possible. “Coercion”, says Avineri, “is the mark of undeveloped, undifferentiated structures. Where self-consciousness comes into its own, coercion becomes superfluous.”[76]

The strength of Hegel’s conception of the state, then, was the degree to which it achieved a synthesis of the ethical life characteristic of the polis and modern liberal thinking while avoiding the extremes of both. Hegel’s theory of the state was not an anticipation of totalitarianism, nor was it, as Hegel’s identification of actuality and rationality might suggest, a conservative apology for the authoritarian Prussian state. As Hegel pointed out in his Preface, no existent state could achieve the philosophical idea of the state as he formulated it in Philosophy of Right. Thus, to say that Hegel was writing about Prussia is somewhat suspect. Avineri also disputes the conservative interpretation of Hegel. He cites provisions in Philosophy of Right, such as the election of representative assemblies, “which were absent in Prussia and which cannot by any stretch of the imagination, be seen as a reflection of Prussian reality”. The Philosophy of Right thus “can be viewed as an oblique critique of Prussian conditions”.[77] This, combined with Hegel’s explicit claim that he was trying to discern the character of the state in general, casts doubt on the notion that Hegel used Prussia as a model for his political theory. Says Taylor of Hegel’s ‘Prussianism’: “That such an appalling salad of the merely positive and the sub-rational should be attributed to Hegel, the philosopher of a rational cosmic order, is one of the great ironies of modern intellectual history”.[78] Hegel did not intend his state to be a rehash of Greek ideas, a model for totalitarianism, or a self-congratulatory excuse for conservatism. Rather, he saw the state, and its institutions, as part of the ongoing historical process of actualizing freedom. As the repository of reason in the world, the state expressed the universal against the individual’s tendency towards unmediated egoism.

While the strength of Hegel’s state was its alleged ability to reconcile the particular desires of individuals with the universal ends of Absolute Mind, this strength was, for Karl Marx, only apparent. Denying that the light of the state’s reason shone in the sphere of civil society, Marx argued instead that the state was a reflection of the decidedly irrational civil sphere. Furthermore, in addition to inverting the relationship between the state and civil society established by Hegel, Marx offered a critique of the mediating structures of Hegel’s state: the Executive and the Estates. Through his critique of the philosophical form and the practical content of Hegel’s theory of the state, Marx was able to suggest that the character of civil society was not determined by Absolute Mind as it is expressed in the state but that the character of the state was determined by the general mindlessness of civil society. Contrary to what Hegel had claimed, Marx posited the state as simply the reflection of individual self-interest within civil society and the state’s mediating structures as organs in the service of careerism and private property.

[1]See Peter Peel’s Preface to Alfred Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century (Vivian Bird, trans.; Torrance, California: Noontide Press, 1982), xxvii.

[2]Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (C.B. Macpherson, ed.; Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1985 [1968]), 185.

[3]G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right (T.M. Knox, ed.; London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1967 [1952]), §261, §313. For references to the Preface of this text, page numbers from the Knox edition will be indicated. Otherwise, passages will be identified according to their paragraph number rather than by page. Each successive point in Hegel’s argument is divided into a main proposition, often a remark, and, occasionally, an addition. In this paper, no distinction has been made between these and references to paragraphs include any remarks or additions corresponding to them.

[4]See Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays (London: George Allen &Unwin Ltd., 1950), 9-33; L.T. Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1921 [1918]), 5; Albert Camus, The Rebel (New York: Random House, 1956), 134-148; Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (New York: Harper & Row, 1968 [1962]), 312-335; and Noam Chomsky, Year 501: The Conquest Continues (Montréal, New York: Black Rose Books, 1993), 4.

[5]Carl J. Friedrich, The Philosophy of Hegel.(New York: Modern Library, 1954 [1953]), xliv.

[6]Russell, op. cit., 22.

[7]See Hobbes, op. cit., 86, 100-110.

[9]John Plamenatz, Man and Society, Volume II (London: Longmans, Green and Company Ltd., 1963), 132.

[10]See the Preface to Phenomenology of Spirit (A.V. Miller, trans.; Oxford, New York, Toronto, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1977 [1952]), especially §6.

[11]Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977 [1975]), 88. The implications of this for the Biblical doctrine of Creation are significant. If the material universe is both an expression of Geist and the prerequisite of Geist’s existence, then the doctrine of Creation is incoherent. Though Geist achieves self-expression in the universe and is thus logically prior to it, the material universe constitutes the conditions necessary for the existence of Geist. Geist cannot legitimately be considered the transcendent creator of something which is the precondition of Geist’s existence. We must assume, then, that Hegel understands both Geist and the universe to have always been.

[12]Aquinas formulated the teleological argument for the existence of God thus:

We see that things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that they achieve their end, not fortuitously, but designedly. Now whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is directed by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

[13]G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic (A.V. Miller, trans.; Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1991 [1969]), 82.

[14]Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §28.

[15]Ibid., §§20, 21. As Hegel explains it, the unmediated Absolute Mind is “only the universal”. It is the universal which, because of its immediacy, is incapable of grasping itself as such. Just as, to Hegel, the phrase “all animals” does not constitute a zoology, Absolute Mind does not express what is contained within it. Only through the process of differentiating “all animals” into frogs, rabbits, sea-cucumbers, etc. and then reintegrating these individual parts into a system of knowing animals does the phrase “all animals” come to denote something other than an empty universal. Similarly, only through differentiation and “becoming-other” which is subsequently “taken back” does Absolute Mind come to reflect upon itself as absolute and, through the mediation of its finite phase, become conscious of itself as absolute.

[16]Taylor, op. cit., 89

[17]Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §18.

[18]G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History (J. Sibree, trans.; New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1956 [1899]), 17-22. It should be further noted that when Hegel refers to ‘World-History’, he is not referring strictly to the history of our Earth but to all of “both physical and psychical Nature”.

[19]Taylor, op.cit., 98.

[20]Loc. cit.

[22]Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §18.

[23]Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 10.

[24]Ibid., 11.

[25]Ibid., 3.

[26]Ibid., 12.

[27]G.W.F. Hegel, “Excerpts from the Introduction and Logic Section of Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline”, Metaphysics: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Ronald C. Hoy and L. Nathan Oaklander, eds.; Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1991), §6.

[28]Loc. cit.

[29]See “Meno” (W.K.C. Guthrie, trans.) and “Phaedo” (R. Hackforth, trans.) in Greek Philosophy: Thales to Aristotle (Reginald E. Allen, ed.; New York: Free Press, 1985 [1966]), 110-141, 155-196.

[30]Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 10.

[31]It is worth noting that, in his major work, Alfred Rosenberg (a leading ideologue of the National Socialist movement) refers to Hegel only in passing and refers to his philosophy as “the antithesis of all that is truly German” and “a doctrine of power alien to the blood”. See The Myth of the Twentieth Century (Vivian Bird, trans.; Torrance, California: Noontide Press, 1982), 175, 328.

[32]Hegel’s distinction between actuality and existence is made more concrete in his discussion of the “Proceedings of the Estates Assembly in the Kingdom of Würtemberg, 1815-1816.” In this essay, Hegel states clearly that positive law as it is expressed in the existent state is not necessarily rational. Hence, it is not necessarily actual. Positive law, according to Hegel, can only be rational to the extent that it conforms to the underlying principles of right. It is these underlying principles which are inherently actual, not the positive laws of the state. To see these principles as actual is to reconcile oneself to reason; to see positive law as actual is to cling to mere formalism. See T.M. Knox and Z.A. Pelczynski, eds., Hegel’s Political Writings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 281.

[33]In this section, the phrase “normative orders” is used, following Pelczynski, as shorthand for the three different spheres (Abstract Right, Morality, and Ethical Life), towards which Hegel thinks the human will can be oriented, and within which particular sets of behavioural norms predominate. The phrase refers only to the spheres in which certain norms—egoistic, moral, or ethical—are upheld, and does not imply a division in Hegel’s thought, typical of contemporary analytic philosophy, between normative and empirical thinking. See Philosophy of Right, §33. 

[34]Ibid., §34, §38, §40.

[35]Ibid., §45.

[36]Shlomo Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974 [1972]), 136.

[37]Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §105.

[38]Ibid.,§106.

[39]Ibid., §107-108.

[40]See Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from Underground” in Notes From Underground/ The Double (Jessie Coulson, trans.; London, England: Penguin Books, 1972 [1864]). 

[41]Plamenatz, op. cit., 228.

[42]Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §142.

[43]Ibid., §143.

[44]Ibid., §144.

[45]Ibid., §145.

[46]Ibid., §147.

[47]Both Hobbes and Locke tend to define freedom in negative terms, i.e., as freedom from external compulsion by other people or groups. They neglect another component of freedom which is, in the words of Larry Arnhart, “not just the absence of external restraints but self-mastery”. See Arnhart’s discussion of Rousseau’s conjunction of freedom and duty in Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Rawls (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987), 275.

[48]Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (Maurice Cranston, ed.; Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1986 [1968]), 65.

[49]Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §149.

[50]Ibid., §155.

[51]Ibid., §158.

[52]Indeed, Hegel would be nonplussed by the contemporary notion that marriage constitutes a contract between a man and a woman. Contract presupposes that one party to the contract holds rights against the other and that both parties relate to each other as individuals. Hegel does not think in this manner. To his mind, marriage is a conscious act by which two people consent to make themselves one person rather than assert their individuality. In Hegelian terms, marriage can be understood as a contract only to the extent that it is an agreement to transcend the individuality of the couple. If marriage is a contract at all, it is a contract to transcend contract.

[53]Ibid., §159.

[54]Ibid., §181.

[55]Ibid., §183.

[56]Ibid., §187.

[57]Ibid., §185.

[58]Hegel’s description of the Police and the Corporation takes place in §§231-249 and §§250-256 of Philosophy of Right. Though Hegel uses the term Police, this body should not be regarded simply as a department of government which works to uphold the legal code. Hegel had a broadly-based public authority in mind which would, among other things, ensure reasonable market prices for essential food items and coordinate public welfare programs. The Corporation on the other hand is comparable to a craftsmen’s guild which unites people of specific trades in a community and furnishes them with rights, privileges, and duties as part of their membership. Corporations help to channel individual egoism into a universal structure such that, in the words of Avineri, “even a member of the business class, who is totally immersed in particularistic pursuits, will have to relate in some reciprocal way to other members of his trade”. Both of these organizations work to temper the particularistic tendencies of civil society. They are thus mediating structures without which “antagonistic bourgeois cannot be co-operative citoyens” and “‘fraternity’ would disappear under ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’”. [See Avineri’s Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, 165] Part of the confusion about the Police and the Corporation may arise because, in the contemporary mind, these kinds of public authorities are associated with the state. To Hegel though, public authority operates in the sphere of civil society, not the state. 

[59]Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §256.

[60]Loc. cit.

[61]Ibid., §257.

[62]Ibid., §258.

[63]Loc. cit.

[64]Ibid., §260.

[65]See Pelczynski, op. cit., 5.

[66]Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (J.A.K. Thomson, trans.; London and Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1987 [1955]), 64.

[67]Plato, Republic (Allan Bloom, trans.; New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1968), §§414c-415d.

[68]Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §206.

[69]Ibid., §261.

[70]Ibid., §267.

[71]Pelczynski, op. cit., 13.

[72]Recall Friedrich’s comment on page 18 of this chapter.

[73]T.M. Knox’s note to §267 in Philosophy of Right, 365.

[74]Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §262.

[75]Ibid., §263.

[76]Avineri, op.cit., 193.

[77]Ibid., 116.

[78]Taylor, op. cit., 457.