The article provides a tentative reading of Hegel’s police as a concept that constitutes a crucial test for the rationality of Hegel’s state and that actually played a very important role in the formation of his model of rationality. It starts by considering some significant changes in Hegel’s approach to the subject in the Jena period, especially in reference to Fichte and Spinoza; then, it presents Hegel’s conception of the police as the interface of the universal in his mature (...) class='Hi'>political philosophy, together with his treatment of the disturbing problem of poverty and the rabble; and to conclude, it adds some general remarks on Hegel’s police, then and now. (shrink)

Civil society was defined in various ways. Among others, J. Locke, G.W.F. Hegel and A. de Tockeville presented the most relevant characteristic of what civil society is or could be. For the purpose of the paper we distinct civil society and the state. To the first one we assign spontaneity and diversity, the second we treat as procedural and homogeneous. In the paper we will stand for the thesis: civil society is the nest of virtues and (...) as such characterized plays one of the most prominent parts in contemporary social and political reality. The problem is not that presently civil society does not exist. The problem is that once it was established within the state, it has been developed in such a way that it became a hybrid combined from the state and what could be called apolitical human activity. The core of the problem is that the hybrid is more political than apolitical. To the essence of civil society belong: existence of free associations of any kind, economy free from political coerce as much as it could be and public sphere of opinion, all organized in such a political way that the political power is limited by division of it to three independent institutions: a legislature, an executive and a judiciary and also by the law. A ground for apolitical human social activities was prepared by J. Locke in his political theory. The state is one of possible emanations of apolitical society in the state of nature. Montesquieu expanded such a vision of society that it exists within the state but the state itself is limited by division of political power and civil rights which allow the members of the society to protect their freedom and dignity. Moral civil society we are developing protect the citizens from overwhelming influence of the state and particular egoisms of individuals. As such it promotes moral activity, it brings trust to the public sphere and it protects human dignity. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel is widely considered to be one of the most important philosophers in the history of philosophy. This entry focuses on his contributions to political philosophy, with particular attention paid to his seminal work: the Philosophy of Right. A particular focus will be placed on Hegel’s theories of freedom, contract and property, punishment, morality, family, civil society, law, and the state.

"This book contains ideas to develop interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary views on economy and society. It aims to disseminate heterodox ideas on various subjects related to economics and global society. The book is organised in six parts. Part 1 contains the key lectures of Backhaus on the concept of state sciences and of Klamer on the importance of culture for economics. Parts 2- 6 contain successively contributions in the areas of economic paradigms and theories, population and society, corporate issues, environment, and (...) international relations. Examples of the content are: - the changes of family life cycles due to the rise of non-traditional households; - subjective and objective inflation rates after the introduction of the Euro; - the economics of genetic engineering; - the contribution of foreign direct investment to the economic development of host countries; - the inaccuracy of economic models applied in places characterized by extreme income disparities; - the improvement of political and corporate governance; - evolutionary thinking and emission trading; - freedom and order in the European Union; - the reform of social policy in Europe. The book provides interesting creative multi-disciplinary ideas with respect to various topical issues concerning the contemporary global society. It is highly recommended for economists and social scientists in search of broad views on social science and society.". (shrink)

My dissertation defends W.E.B. Du Bois’s philosophy of modern freedom, which he grounds in the historical reconstruction of the American civic community on the moral basis of free and equal citizenship. Rather than ascribe to him an elitist politics of racial ‘uplift’ and assimilation to Anglo- American folkways, I instead argue that he defends black moral and political autonomy for securing state power and civic equality. Additionally, he challenges both historical and the contemporary political philosophers, including John Rawls, (...) Axel Honneth, and Philip Pettit, to articulate the racial dimension of the development of a social order that actualizes the moral meaning of free and equal citizenship. In establishing his novel philosophy of freedom, I adduce three critical components: (1) Contra standard interpretations of Du Bois that claim he espouses a controversial racialist doctrine, I argue that his racialism is best understood as conceptualizing the ethical salience of racial difference in the context of a democratic plurality. In the light of dominant accounts of plurality that do not foreground race, pace Margaret Gilbert and John Rawls, Du Bois deemphasizes individuals’ free choice in social group formation. In accepting the importance of free choice, he stresses collective historical experience as furnishing the normative salience of racial identity, which prefigures individuals’ free choice. A racialist model of racial difference in a democratic plurality exacts the civic obligation to confront the historical legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. (2) In advancing the moral value of citizenship, Du Bois affirms the moral obligation of the modern American state to represent black interests from Reconstruction onwards. Drawing on G.W.F. Hegel’s normative theory of the modern state, I justify Du Bois’s analysis of postbellum federal policies concerning black freedmen and refugees of the Civil War. Du Bois observes that the Freedmen’s Bureau – established with the passage of the 1865 Radical Reconstruction Amendments – democratically facilitated a ‘social revolution’ by promoting the integration of black freedmen on the moral basis of free and equal citizenship under the aegis of the federal government. Implicit in his analysis is a normative commitment to representational government that in attending to the needs of the postbellum black community incorporates black political will in the public adjudication of the common good – a historically unprecedented phenomenon. (3) With the rise of Jim Crow, when the U.S. federal government skirted its moral obligation to defend black interests, Du Bois argues that the black church and college assumed a civic function. Habits of citizenship flourished there, affirming the moral agency of African Americans as American citizens. Inasmuch as these institutions groomed disenfranchised black citizens for the assumption of political power, I articulate the challenge they present to John Rawls, Axel Honneth, and Philip Pettit to chart the civic dimension of ‘private’ social institutions. Because they neglect to theorize the historical experience of racial subordination, their views of freedom omit a formulation of social cooperation guided by the notion of the civic within the institutional context of civil society. Specifically, their accounts of the interrelation between citizens, social institutions, and the modern state fail to capture the civic function of the black church and college during Jim Crow. Thus, Du Bois’s dynamic, institution-based account of freedom highlights the racial dimension in the historical contestation of the legitimate scope and ends of the American civic community. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 9, Page 1302-1328, November 2022. Robinson Crusoe is a mythic character who lives not only in the popular imaginary but through the history of political and social thought. Defoe’s protagonist lives marooned on his island, isolated and apart from society. The narrative is a perfect naturalisation of the ‘bourgeois’ world, dependent on an ontology of the self-sufficient individual. This article analyses this lineage in the social contract theory of Hobbes, (...) Locke and Rousseau. Later, Hegel used the novel to illustrate his dialectic of mastery/servitude. Challenging the atomism of the state of nature, Hegel’s theory of recognition gives an account of positive freedom, where the individual is formed in and through social interdependence. This sociality is continued by Marx, who satirises Defoe's novel in his value-form critique of political economy. The value-form provides insight into Robinson's island labour and Marx's difference with Locke's labour theory of value. For Marx, the myth of ‘natural man’ hides the domination of capitalist development and Robinson Crusoe reflects the internalisation of the abstract rationality of commodity society. However, Marx's immanent critique of the novel points to a radical idea of social life and freedom. (shrink)

Liberal political theory is all too familiar with the divide between classical and welfare-state liberals. Classical liberals, as we all know, insist on the importance of small government, negative liberty, and private property. Welfare-state liberals, on the other hand, although they too stress civil rights, tend to be sympathetic to “positive liberty,” are for a much more expansive government, and are often ambivalent about private property. Although I do not go so far as to entirely deny (...) the usefulness of this familiar distinction, I think in many ways it is misleading. In an important sense, most free-market liberals are also “welfare-state” liberals. I say this because the overwhelming number of liberals, of both the pro-market and the pro-government variety, entertain a welfarist conception of political economy. On this dominant welfarist view, the ultimate justification of the politico-economic order is that it promotes human welfare. Traditional “welfare-state liberals” such as Robert E. Goodin manifestly adopt this welfarist conception. But it is certainly not only interventionists such as Goodin who insist that advancing welfare is the overriding goal of normative political economy. J. R. McCulloch, one of the great nineteenth-century laissez-faire political economists, was adamant that “freedom is not, as some appear to think, the end of government: the advancement of public prosperity and happiness is its end.” To be sure, McCulloch would have disagreed with Goodin about the optimal welfare-maximizing economic policy: the welfarist ideal, he and his fellow classical political economists believed, would best be advanced by provision of a legal and institutional framework — most importantly, the laws of property, contract, and the criminal code — that allows individuals to pursue their own interests in the market and, by so doing, promote public welfare. In general, what might be called the “classical-liberal welfare state” claims to advance welfare by providing the framework for individuals to seek wealth for themselves, while welfarists such as Goodin insist that a market order is seriously flawed as a mechanism for advancing human welfare and, in addition, that government has the competency to “correct market failures” in the provision of welfare. (shrink)

FROM THE CRITIQUE OF THE HEAVENS TO THE CRITIQUE OF THE EARTH - A CONTRIBUTIONTO THE RECONSTRUCTION OF KARL MARX'S UNFINISHED CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL THEOLOGYThis article presents a reconstruction of Marx’s unfinished 1843 critique of political theology. In the preparatory notebooks for Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx identified Hegel’s political philosophy as an expression of “political theology,” which was to be the subject of his projected critique. However, he never completed nor published the manuscript. (...) This article presents a detailed analysis of the manuscript and its intellectual context in order to reconstruct this incomplete critique of political theology, conceived as the conception of the state as a sovereign subject that transcends and determines society from without that remains predominant in contemporary political thought. The distinctly Hegelian conceptual resources of Marx’s critique allowed him to overcome the contradiction between state and society issuing from this political theological conception of the state without resorting to abstract negation as most prior critiques have done. Marx instead proceeds to show that it is the social significance of this political theology and the associated practices that constitute the earthly existence of the modern state within civil society as a whole. (shrink)

Though the title is a bit misleading, this is a splendid collection of essays, five of which are insightful philosophical commentaries on specific American philosophers and one an exercise in philosophical analysis by a distinguished living American philosopher. W. V. Quine maintains that philosophical inquiry should begin with "clear words" rather than "clear ideas" and it would seem that it also ends with words. In an essay remarkable for both its economy and clarity, Quine charts a path which begins with (...) "observation sentences" and the "primacy of bodies," passes through a "brave new ontology" in which bodies disappear and ends with a nonreductionist linguistic physicalism. Quine states that the "physicalist does not insist on an exclusively corporeal ontology. He is content to declare bodies to be fundamental to nature in somewhat this sense: There is no difference in the world without a difference in the position of states of bodies." The crucial question, as Quine readily acknowledges, is "what to count as states of bodies." Physics seems to point in the direction of a "field theory" in which "bodies themselves go by the board" leaving us with a "brave new ontology"—"the purely abstract ontology of set theory, pure mathematics." To which Quine’s response seems to be that this is so much the worse for ontology. Having earlier stressed that "all entities are theoretical," Quine now asserts that "sentences, in their truth and falsity, are what runs deep; ontology is by the way." While his physicalism is admittedly unfinished and incomplete, the direction is set—to reformulate physicalism "by reference not to physical objects but to physical vocabulary." Roland A. Delattre explores "the political implications and resonances" of Edwards’s metaphysics of beauty. Inasmuch as "beauty" is central to the Edwardean vision, Delattre contends that it must have a bearing upon politics. Admittedly going beyond "anything explicitly offered by Edwards," Delattre convincingly argues that "the logic of this vision of reality is to relativize the claim that the political order is to be understood religiously as the scene for a movement through history towards the kingdom of God." A. Robert Caponigri argues quite persuasively that transcendentalism, as expressed by Emerson and Thoreau, affirms an individualism which allows for the state only as a necessary evil. Brownson, however, rescues transcendentalism by distinguishing "civil society" from both the government and the abstract individual and showing how it serves to mediate "the claim and obligation" between state and citizen. In a delightful and informative essay, Max H. Fisch traces pragmatism backwards and forwards from James’s 1898 address to the Philosophical Union of the University of California. It was in this address that the word "pragmatism" was first used publicly but Fisch supplies compelling evidence that the structure of Peirce’s pragmatism was in print as early as 1868. In sketching the development of "pragmatism from Peirce to C. I. Lewis, Fisch gives us perceptive indications of the varieties of pragmatism. Santayana, according to Frederick A. Olafson makes some telling points against a rationalism which isolates reason from its natural conditions and continuities. But Olafson forcefully argues that Santayana jeopardizes the autonomy and significance of reason by reducing it to an esthetic epiphenomenon. Peter Fuss continues his incisive and controversial interpretation of Royce. Centering on Royce’s analysis of Hegel, Fuss maintains that while Royce occasionally flirts with the "correct" understanding of Hegel’s Absolute, he finally surrenders the view of the Absolute as an all-inclusive unity of a community of finite selves in favor of the outmoded view of the Absolute as a transcendent entity. In an unusually clear and focused introduction, the editors have provided useful mini-versions of each essay.—E.F. (shrink)

This study is the first examination of the works and lives of the women of the St. Louis philosophical movement and Concord School of Philosophy , two branches of the same idealist movement in America that introduced German thinkers to the American reading public, particularly G. W. F. Hegel. The St. Louis branch of the movement focused primarily on education as a civilizing force in society. The concepts of "self-activity" and self-estrangement were seen as integral to the educative process and (...) therefore became predominant themes of the movement. ;Many of the women in this study were contributors to The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, America's first philosophy journal, edited by William Torrey Harris, the recognized leader of the St. Louis and Concord circles. Figures studied include Susan Elizabeth Blow , kindergarten education theorist; Anna Callender Brackett , proponent of higher education for women; Grace C. Bibb , feminist and educator, Ellen M. Mitchell , feminist and Concord School lecturer; and Marietta Kies , a political theorist who posited altruism as a valid ethical principle for use in public life. A number of less prominent women educators and thinkers of the St. Louis movement and Concord School are also discussed. ;All the women in this study were associates of Harris or his colleagues: Thomas Davidson , John Dewey , George H. Howison , George S. Morris , Denton J. Snider , and Louis Soldan. (shrink)

Some stalwarts are included in any and every collection of readings for students on political and social thought. Among these reliable standbys are Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, and Mao Tse-tung. They are all here, marshaled and arrayed in judicious selections, well introduced. But something new has been added in this anthology. You will find in it selections from William F. Buckley, Jr., and Eldridge Cleaver, from Michael Harrington and Frantz Fanon, (...) from Herbert Marcuse and Martin Luther King, Jr., from H. L. A. Hart and Gregory Vlastos, and from others who were or are alive in the latter half of our century. The quality of the material presented is excellent. The final selection, for example, is a first-rate analysis of the notion of a "just war" by Donald A. Wells. The editors, in their general introduction, discuss such questions as what the foundation of political obligation is, how social and political institutions are or may be evaluated, how the ideals of a society are systematized, and what the nature and justification of social change are. A bibliography, a topical syllabus, and an index are usefully provided. This book of readings can confidently be recommended for use as the basic text of a historical or analytical course in political and social philosophy.—W. G. (shrink)

The philosophical understanding of the end of human history has a long tradition and, de­spite many different interpretations, gravitates towards two opposite versions. The opti­mistic version is symbolically presented in G.W.F. Hegel’s concept, while the pessimistic one can be found in the latest conceptual essays of the “late” V.S. Solovyov. This text is structured in a tonality that partly echoes that of the latter. Methodologically, it is based on the subject-centered strategy of existential philosophy and the variation of dialectics associated (...) with it. Thematically, it aims to reflect on the state of posthistory, a term that, according to the author, by virtue of its prefix “post-”, captures not only temporal shades of meaning (“after”), but also parodic ones. Every post-something parodies its own root, speculatively enhancing some meaningful aspects of it and hiding others. Posthistory di­minishes the social for the sake of the socio-technical and hypertrophies the political, which is already dominant in the historical process and its standard perception. The author focuses on the intellectual support of well-defined trends in modern social life and criti­cally analyzes theoretical constructions that fully (B. Latour) or partially (J.O. de La Met­trie) legitimize the reduction of the social to the socio-technical and subordinate, directly (K. Schmitt) or indirectly (S. Newman), the social to the political. While recognizing the weakness of modern society and agreeing with the importance of individual resistance to the negative tendencies that dominate it, the author emphasizes the positive signifi­cance of the individual’s self-identity – in contrast to post-structuralism and post-anar­chism – resulting from the individual’s power over himself. At the same time, the indivi­dual effort is considered insufficient to address the human condition. The prognosis for the posthistorical future is therefore pessimistic. But fortunately, earthly life – human life itself – is not limited to history and posthistory. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 242—252. Introduction The following two works were produced by visual artist Jonas Staal and writer Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei during a visit as artists in residence at The Bag Factory, Johannesburg, South Africa during the summer of 2010. Both works were produced in situ and comprised in both cases a public intervention conceived by Staal and a textual work conceived by Van Gerven Oei. It was their aim, in both cases, to produce complementary works that could (...) be read “through each other,” in which the movement of artistic construction would be imitated by textual deconstruction and vice versa. Both works deal with the way in which capital, apartheid, and monumentality are interwoven in South-African society. The Missing Link addresses a monument for democracy, erected on the premises of a private corporation running both an amusement park and the Apartheid Museum franchise. The textual intervention accompanying this public intervention investigates the limits of the inclusiveness of the anti-discrimination section in the South-African constitution, itself a monumental work of democracy. The Monument for the Distribution of Wealth deals with the history and eventual dissolution of a monumental square, commemorating the Soweto Uprising, in one of the poorest townships of Johannesburg. The history accompanying this public dismemberment of memory is equally fragmented, which is expressed by the many voices recounting uncertain and perhaps even irrelevant “facts” about the genius loci, the way in which the memorial space has actually entered into the memory of the inhabitants surrounding it. Next to their individual practices, Staal and Van Gerven Oei have worked together on a number of projects ever since 2007, including several art residencies. Their work involves an investigation of the different interfaces between art, politics, and public space in media ranging from theater and public interventions, to video installations and (co-authored) textual works. The Missing Link Missing Link (1) Missing Link (2) Missing Link (3) Intervention on the monument entitled The Seven Pillars of the Constitution , part of the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Seven Pillars represent the constitutional values propagated in South Africa since the abolition of the apartheid regime. The monument and museum were built by the Gold Reef Resorts corporation, which is also responsible for the theme park and casino next to it. By placing the word “capitalism” on the wall surrounding the museum, the capitalist system and the constant social divisions that it implies are interpreted as sophistic continuations of apartheid politics. Through the capitalist system, apartheid is still operational within South African society. Whereas during the apartheid regime, the separation clearly ran along race divisions, in the current, “democratic” system, the same actual separation is sustained without it being an explicit element of the foundations of the country, i.e. the constitution. This intervention foregrounds the constant role of capitalism is both periods. At the same time the intervention acknowledges that contemporary Western artisthood is a mirror of the privileges that are offered by the capitalist system, and the type of artist that it produces. The intervention initiates a critical discourse concerning the capitalist system situated within the disaster of capitalism itself, in other words: through the desire to break with the presumption that art would be able to operate outside the capitalist system and to confirm that art—and the artist himself—is in fact modeled on this system. The public intervention by Staal was supplemented by a textual intervention by Van Gerven Oei: a proposition to alter the seventeenth amendment of the South African constitution. Even though the anti-discrimination legislation in South-Africa is one of the most stringent and inclusive in the world, one factor—wealth—remains outside its scope, thus continuing the schisms along racial lines produced during the apartheid regime: §9.3. The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language, birth, and wealth. Monument for the Distribution of Wealth Intervention concerning the June 16 Memorial Acre in Central Western Jabavu, one of the poorest townships of Johannesburg. The monument comprises a park on which different are placed recalling an important protest the black population against the former apartheid regime. In 1976, from a school adjacent to the park, they started a massive protest against the introduction of Afrikaans in the school curriculum. The police reacted violently, and shot several hundreds of students. The construction of the June 16 Memorial Acre was started in 2005, and from the start was the paragon of corruption. Coordinated by local politicians, some family members of the protest leader from 1976 gained control of the realization of the monument, outside the regulation through external institutions. The available budget of 41 million rand (at that time well over 5 million euro) was largely embezzled. In the meantime, the monument has become fully dilapidated and defaced. The park has become overgrown with weeds and covered in a layer of dirt, and the local population is slowly plundering the square to use the material for the construction and decoration of their own houses. The Monument for the Distribution of Wealth develops the dynamics already existent around the June 16 Memorial Acre. Without obtaining official permission in advance, several local inhabitants were hired to break down the monument, sort the materials, and offer it to the neighborhood. Thus, the redistribution of wealth after the fall of the apartheid regime is finally taking place, albeit from the mere remains of the capital that was once invested in the community. The words “monument” and “for free” are spray-painted on the stacks of material, both in English and Zulu, as these are locally the most common languages. Van Gerven Oei supplemented Staal’s public intervention with an account of the history of the monument based on a series of interviews. The account clarifies how the different interests within the protest 1976 are reflected in the exceeding decay of the park, and how in the end those interests were represented by the June 16 Memorial Acre. Monument for the Distribution of Wealth 1: Removing stones Monument for the Distribution of Wealth 3: Pulling down statues Monument for the Distribution of Wealth 4: Offering the material Monument for the Distribution of Wealth 5: Offering the material Monument for the Distribution of Wealth 6 The next day A Fragmentary History of the Monument for the Distribution of Wealth, Formerly Known as the June 16 Memorial Acre in Central Western Jabavu, Soweto Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei The following text, based on interviews and online research aims to provide parts of a history of the park in front of Morris Isaacson High School in Central Western Jabavu, Soweto. The idea for the transformation of the park into a memorial site has its source in the events of June 16, 1976: the start of the the student uprising in Soweto. The development of the park was started in the early 1980s, and the actual transformation into a memorial site, the June 16 Memorial Acre, was initiated in 2005. Over the last few years, several monumental additions have been made to the park: A marble monument with three pillars was revealed on June 16, 2006. A sculpture of a book and several billboards on June 16, 2008. A sculpture of student leader Tsietsi Mashinini on June 16, 2010. The park was transformed into the Monument for the Distribution of Wealth on August 3, 2010. According to the entry “Youth Struggle” on the website South African History Online, the Bantu Education Act was introduced in 1953 . In 1954 , Dr Verwoerd, Minister of Native Affairs, stated: “What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd.” According to the entry “Soweto uprising” on Wikipedia, the Afrikaans Medium Decree was issued in 1974 , forcing all black schools to use Afrikaans and English in a 50-50 mix as languages of instruction. The Regional Director of Bantu Education (Northern Transvaal Region), J.G. Erasmus, told Circuit Inspectors and Principals of Schools that from January 1, 1975 , Afrikaans had to be used for mathematics, arithmetic, and social studies from standard five (7th grade). English would be the medium for general science and practical subjects. Indigenous languages would be used for religion instruction, music, and physical culture. According the entry “Soweto uprising” on Wikipedia, on April 30, 1976 , students from the Orlando West Junior School in Soweto went on strike, refusing to go to school. Their example was followed by other schools in Soweto. A student from Morris Isaacson High School, Toboho “Tsietsi” Mashinini, proposed a meeting on June 13, 1976 to discuss further action. According to Weizmann Hamilton’s article “The Soweto Uprising 1976,” which appeared in the September 1986 edition of Inqaba Ya Basebenzi (Fortress of the Revolution), on June 13, 1976 , the South African Students’ Movement called a meeting at the Donaldson Community Center in Orlando. 300-400 Students representing 55 schools decided to hold a mass demonstration on June 16. According to Brian Mokhele, member of the Joint Community Safety Forum, Dr Edelstein was the first victim of the Soweto uprising and killed the day before the march on June 15, 1976 . Edelstein was an administrator at the pass office in Jabavu and gave golf courses to the local community. Edelstein was put in a garbage bin and pierced by pickaxes. The garbage bin was left at the very spot of the murder for many years. A few years ago, a child was beheaded at the same spot, and the basketball court next to it has been abandoned since. According to Marcus Neustetter, founder of the Trinity Session, this story is untrue. According the entry “Soweto uprising” on Wikipedia, on June 16 , Tsietsi Mashinini led students from Morris Isaacson High School to join up with others who walked from Naledi High School. A crowd of between 3,000 and 10,000 eventually ended up near Orlando High School. According to Raymond Marlowe, a local photographer, Tsietsi Mashinini was heading the march. According to the entry “Hector Pieterson” on Wikipedia, Dr Edelstein died on June 16, 1976 , stoned to death by mob and left with a sign around his neck proclaiming “Beware Afrikaaners.” The first child to die that day was called Hastings Ndlovu. According to Pat Motsiri, Orlando West is claiming struggle heritage through the Hector Pieterson Museum, while Hector Pieterson was from Jabavu. According to Pat Motsiri, his generation effectively struggled between 1980 and 1991, forcing the release of Nelson Mandela and negotiations with the apartheid regime while the 1976-generation was safely in exile. Nevertheless, this has not been recognized in any monument. After the abolition of apartheid, the generation from 1976 returned from exile, occupied important government and ANC positions, creating an abundance of 1976 memorials and refusing to acknowledge that this was only possible because of the younger generation’s struggle. He calls this a generational conflict. According to Archibald Dlamini, the park officer responsible for the Memorial Acre, he started working for the municipality in 1978. In 1981/82 , Isaac Makhele from Pimville, who used to work in the cemetery business, was the first developer of the park. It used to be just a normal park until City Parks decided to develop the Memorial Acre in 2006. In 2007 the work was stopped by the community. According to Brian Mokhele, he left the country in 1989 after he participated in the riots of 1986. But when he returned in 1999 he found that nothing had changed. He says that they were promised to be protected by the Constitution, but that reality is different. The police uses fear to suppress them so that they don’t come out to talk openly. He has been arrested twice, both times harassed and tortured by the police, but in the end always released without indictment. He says that this is their way to threaten communities to back off from politics. According to Moses, who is sitting outside rolling a joint, Brian knows everything. He tells Brian to tell me everything he knows. According to Brian Mokhele, Tsietsi Mashinini was possibly murdered in 1990 during his exile in New York. Two weeks before he was supposed to return to South Africa, his papers in order, he was found dead under mysterious circumstances. His coffin was sealed when he was buried. According to Pat Motsiri, he came up with the idea for the Memorial Acre in 2003 . He submitted the documents for the proposal to the council, which sidelined him as soon as the budget came out in 2005 . According to Brian Mokhele, there was on estimation R 41,000,000 spent to redesign the park and turn it into the Memorial Acre. The millions were divided by Amos Masondo, the mayor of Soweto, the local councilor Bongani D. Zondi, and the director of the city of Johannesburg, Pat Lephunya. They were dividing the money between several contractors: Tsietsi Mashinini’s brothers were involved in the development of the park, they got the tender to do the green areas, the landscaping. Construction was done by other companies, some did the paving, the toilets, etc. EMBA, a private company appointed by the municipality was in control of the money flow, but the money was quickly gone. According to Raymond Marlowe, the contractor bought a BMW with the money. According to Archibald Dlamini, the Mashinini brothers got the tender, so the space would look more like the other places around in Soweto. It was agreed that after they were done, they would return the property to the municipality. They did whatever they could do. According to Mafaisa, a member of the Jabavu business community, he was one of the contractors for the landscaping and the pavement under Mpho Mashinini, one of the brothers. He says that I should contact Mavi for information on Mpho. According to Poi Stuurman, a local youth worker, Mafaisa is one of the guys who ran away with the money. According to Mavi, Mpho Mashinini was never a contractor. The contracts were organized by Sbu Butelezi, the former head of the Gauteng Department for Public Works. The June 16 Foundation and the Mashinini brothers will be the beneficiaries of the park when it is finished. According to Brian Mokhele, City Parks did not accept the Memorial Acre because it was not finished. The rest of the year, the unfinished park is not maintained, as should have happened. This was done deliberately so that in the end they can just clean the whole thing up and have a reason to redo the whole park. According to Brian Mokhele, the Mashinini brothers now work for the government. People that manipulate for money purposes always come from the government’s side. Because the park was left unfinished, the people from the neighborhood are taking away the stones to decorate their own homes with. According to Archibald Dlamini, because City Parks doesn’t accept responsibility of the park, he officially has nothing the guard, except for his cottage, which is municipal property. The thieves come at night and destroy the park, but he cannot do anything because he is sleeping. According to the website of the Thanda Foundation on June 16, 2006 a bronze statue of Hector Pieterson, the first child to die in the 1976 protests, made by Kobus Hattingh and Jacob Maponyane was unveiled in the Maponya Mall in Soweto. The statue is sculpted after the famous image shot by Sam Nzima of Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying the dead body of the boy. The sculpture was sponsored by the Thanda Foundation, founded by the Swedish entrepreneur Dan Olofsson and South-African entrepreneur Matthews Phosa. According to the official website of the City of Johannesburg, the Memorial Acre and Artwork were unveiled in 2006. According to a blog post on sowetouprisings.com, the Memorial Acre was still under development on July 24, 2006. According to Archibald Dlamini, City Parks only cleans up the park once a year just before the June 16 celebrations. Everybody is waiting for the Mashinini brothers to finish their job. The last time he talked with them was in 2007 . According to a sign on the school grounds of the Morris Isaacson High School, the June 16 Trail will be finished in 2008 . According to a blog post on sowetouprisings.com, the Memorial Acre contains another monument erected in Tsietsi’s honor. The monument was created as part of the Sunday Times Heritage Public Art program. Its physical form resembles a giant book which symbolizes the crisis in education experienced in 1976. On the face of the book is the map of the route taken by the students from Morris Isaacson High School in Central Western Jabavu to Phefeni Junior Secondary in Orlando West (currently the site of the Hector Pieterson Museum), while the back cover of the ‘book’ is inscribed with a tribute to Tsietsi Mashinini. The monument was revealed on June 16, 2008 . According to Marcus Neustetter, the billboards on the Memorial Acre were part of a school project realized in 2008. Following several workshops, the students from different high schools along the June 16 Trail were invited to work with artists on the billboards, while the neighborhood community was invited to watch the process during the festivities on June 15 and 16, 2008 . The billboards were supposed to be removed because of construction works on the Memorial Acre, which never ended up happening. According to Brian Mokhele, the former toilet facilities were converted into a house for the park officer. This park officer has been working for city parks for more than 12-15 years, but does nothing here, because the park, including the new toilet buildings, is not finished. The government is now moving around looking for people to take this job because they stopped it. They confronted everybody who was going in and chased them away. According to John, in 2009 , some girls, around 16 or 17 years old, were raped by four men who had been drinking in a local shebeen. When the bar quit they said that they would go home by car, but instead raped the girls on the Memorial Acre nearby. This happened in the unfinished toilets, because the doors couldn’t be closed. According to Brian Mokhele, there used to be some fences around the park because of the construction work that was eventually stopped, but these were also stolen. According to Archibald Dlamini, people from the neighborhood started about two and a half years ago, and the last piece was stolen near the end of 2009 . Sometimes he would catch someone with a roll of fence, and then use it for his own cottage. According to the official website of the City of Johannesburg, a statue of Tsietsi Mashinini by Johannes Pokhela was revealed on June 16, 2010 , “Youth Day.” According to Shirley Makutoane, deputy principal of Isaac Morrison High School, the statue of Tsietsi Mashinini, funded by the June 16 Foundation, has temporarily been placed within the school perimeter. The statue will be moved to the Memorial Acre when it will be finished, in 2011 . According to Brian Mokhele, beside the June 16 Foundation, there is also a June 16 Memorial Acre Foundation. Both foundations are quarreling about the money involved in the Memorial Acre project. Nobody knows who’s involved in them. According to Marcus Neustetter, the June 16 Foundation consists of people that were part of 1976 protest movement, local government officials, representatives of the Hector Pieterson Museum, and the council. According to students from the Isaac Morrison High School, the statue of Tsietsi Mashinini is on the school ground because on the Memorial Acre it would be vandalized by youths from White City, an adjacent neighborhood. Accorcing to Brian Mokhele, the statue of Tsietsi should eventually be mounted on the Memorial Acre. It is wrong that the statue is in the school at the moment, because it is not a public school. He wants the statues to depict the massiveness of the force that was coming into Soweto after the protests. According to Brian Mokhele, City Parks, City of Jo’burg, City Lights, and SAPS are making some sort of plan to take the plan back. They want to remove the trees from the Memorial Acre, and redesign the Memorial Acre into a relaxing park, without political content. They want to depoliticize the square. In doing so,they will have their own employment and not use local workforces. According to Brian Mokhele, the community wants to remove the monuments, amphitheater, and sculptures from the Memorial Acre because they do not resemble anything. The sculptures should be depicting the truth of what happened, because the Memorial Acre is a political heritage site. He wants to involve the people that actually participated in the struggle to make the monument so that everyone can enjoy it and get a better understanding of the struggle heritage. Therefore, he proposes collective ideology in which everyone has a say. This would prevent future vandalization of the monument. According to Pat Motsiri, the sculptures must depict the event around June 16, 1976. Like the story of Dr Edelstein, who was pierced by pickaxes, forced into a garbage bin and burned alive. According to Jonas Staal, the Memorial Acre should be destroyed, its elements stacked on pallets, thus forming the Monument for the Distribution of Wealth . According to Mafaisa, his men can do the work quickly. He has about twenty men working under him. (shrink)

This major addition to the series of Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought seeks to give students with no specialist knowledge access to both the practical and the metaphysical aspects of Hegel's political thought. The ethical and metaphysical texts in this collection both illuminate and contrast with those political and historical texts in which Hegel draws important conclusions about the modern world from remarkable comparative analyses of recent developments in England, France and Germany. The translator (...) of these texts, H. B. Nisbet, was responsible for the acclaimed rendition of Hegel's Philosophy of Right already published in this series, and Lawrence Dickey's lucid editorial commentary introduces this distinctive corpus of political writing by one of the very greatest thinkers in the European tradition. A full chronology, explanatory annotation, glossary and bibliography are appended to aid the student reader. (shrink)

Dallmayr argues that G W F Hegel is perhaps the leading philosopher of modernity and explores his philosophy as it pertains to the meaning of modernity and postmodernity: its celebration of individual freedom and the importance of a network of social relationships, public justice and civic virtue. This important text explains Hegel's work in the context of current theoretical and philosophical debates about modernity, illustrating his response to contemporary issues and recognizing him as a major figure in the history (...) of political thought. (shrink)

The point of departure in this work is a defense against that view which would hold Hegel to be a glorifier of the Prussian state, a reactionary, and an enemy of freedom. Hegel, as the work illustrates, recognized that the French Revolution only annihilated what was already in itself destroyed; and he saluted it with "rapture" as the coming of a "new dawn" in the preface of the Encyclopaedia. He continued to celebrate its anniversary even while at the same time (...) and with no less intensity holding before himself an awareness of the dangers and horrors which it occasioned. In fact, Ritter submits that one might well understand the idea of freedom brandished by the Revolution to be the fundamental element of Hegel’s entire philosophy. Hegel disengages the notion of freedom from all previous connections which, over the centuries, have distorted it, and recovers the classic definition of Aristotle : "free is the man who is for himself and not for another." Political order must guarantee this possibility. The problem posited by the Revolution is: how? Hegel, the supposed "reactionary," in all his writings, both public and private, was consistently opposed, and occasionally with passion, to any political restoration. Yet one should also take notice of Hegel’s extreme and profound antipathy for the associations of students and demagogical movements, which he saw had no rapport with the real political and historical events of the time. Both the romantic liberal and the romantic conservative united in "hatred against the law." They were concerned not with freedom as such, but with political activity which pretended to be in its service, spewing platitudes which would renounce all searching knowledge and make truth an affair of the heart, the soul, or enthusiasm. Hegel alone, with perhaps the exception of Goethe, perceived the profound danger of anarchy revealed in these movements, a danger menacing to all, when one elevates pure subjectivity and sentiment to the rank of norm for political structures. The Revolution was accompanied by the dissolution of all the representations, concepts, and norms of the previous world as if they had been the fabric of dreams. In the face of this event, along with that of the constant danger of anarchy, philosophy must furnish the ideas which can determine that which can be conserved and that which can no longer survive. For both the advocates of restoration and the revolutionaries the Revolution was understood to be the end of previous history, the severing of man from his past: one wanted merely to recover it, the other to bury it. This scission, together with the real power which it has exerted on man and his conscience, is the fundamental structure of the new age. The remainder of the current study pursues the development of this scission, revealing the inner contradiction of the poles when taken alone: the scission itself to be the unity of historic existence in the form of subjectivity and objectivity; and the scission to find its objective expression in modern civil society. There is an on-going enrichment in the notion of freedom until it finds its fulfillment in the modern State, which assures freedom by providing the structures through which it can exist. Most of what should be said is said, although Ritter’s presentation occasionally harbors some confusion, a common and probably inescapable fate when one cuts in on the dialectic to forage for an isolated topic. Still, the book achieves its goal with admirable success, and is certainly a valuable tract on Hegel vis-à-vis the notion of political freedom. The main work is a translation from the German original; it is followed by an address which develops the material in the Philosophy of Right, § 34-81; and the book concludes with a rather amazing fifty-page bibliography citing the influence exercised by Hegel’s political theory throughout the nineteenth century.—R. J. G. (shrink)

As in the transmigration of souls after death in the Pythagorean myth that Socrates recounts in the Phaedo, for G.W.F. Hegel, in the Philosophy of Right, individuals are also 'reborn' out of their original nature into a 'second nature'. This article asks whether the Hegelian transmigration aims at their becoming nothing higher than that 'race of tame and social creatures . . . bees perhaps, wasps, or ants' which the Pythagorean myth relates is the fate of those who 'practiced (...) popular and social goodness . . . but devoid of philosophy and intelligence'. Through an analysis of duty, virtue, rectitude, custom and habit, this article argues that Hegel's account of the nature of fully ethical self-consciousness contains within it a robust, practical knowledge that resists the 'bees problem', shifts the focus of criticism from the truncation of human possibilities to the vitality of life, and ultimately furnishes resources that can secure the latter -- all without abandoning conventionality as the ethical horizon. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Political Events Surrounding Publication of the Philosophy of Right Freedom, Right, and Ethical Life The Family and Civil Society Hegel's Concept of the State The Rational Structure of the State Representative Institutions Abbreviations.

The modern epoch is characterized by a paradoxical form of social inequality: poverty expands alongside the unprecedented growth in socially-produced wealth. Any conception of this dynamic stakes a claim within the classical liberal problematic, where the central political challenge is the negotiation of individual interests with those of the social whole. Part one of this work analyzes three conceptions of this inequality paradox, those of G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. Each encompasses a perspective on (...) the nation-state and its relationship to the institutions of economic intercourse. Chapter One analyzes and argues for an interpretation of “the problem of poverty” in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. I intervene in an ongoing discussion on whether and how Hegel resolves the problem he raises, which holds important implications for those drawing insights from Hegel’s work today. Marx’s work responds to Hegel and represents an original viewpoint on modern inequality (Chapter Two). He identifies its dual economic and political character. I argue that the consolidation of modern property relations in Europe played a critical role in the development of his conception and most theoretically significant is his debate with Proudhon on the cause of inequality. Chapter Three presents an analysis of Keynes’s conception of the inequality paradox. I present a philosophical assessment of his proposed rectification, showing the justifications he offers bear remarkable similarity to Hegel’s approach. Part two takes us to the present day. Expansion of social inequality in the last phase of global expansion of capitalism has strained the nation-state system to its limits, posing economic and political challenges for which there are no institutional solutions. Considering the historical conceptions, I offer an appraisal of contemporary Keynesian perspectives and a counter-assessment, based on the inequality data Piketty, et al. have produced, to argue for a more equitable and democratic alternative. (shrink)

Philosophers traditionally have tried to establish general principles on solid grounding that would validly state and clarify what actually happens and what should happen in a polis. Infrequently, they sullied their hands with attempts to apply their general principles to specific, complex, time-bound, exigent, controversial situations. Now, however, numbers of professional philosophers have turned to the difficult task of applying broad generalizations to thorny issues of the day. Eleven attempts to carry out that task—essays on reform, principled law-breaking, violence, revolution, (...) and the responsibilities of philosophers vis-à-vis public affairs—are included in the present volume. Noam Chomsky, in an essay on philosophers and public policy, wistfully describes as having "a great deal of force," and then rejects, the argument that the only duty of a philosopher qua philosopher, in a time of turmoil, is to do his work with integrity. Of the essays on civil disobedience, one by Gordon J. Schochet critically examines, and in the end comes close to defending once more, the often-defended assumption that the practitioner of civil disobedience should accept the standard penalty. These eleven essays are partisan and practical in that, instead of examining the presuppositions or meaning or bearing of political judgments or ideologies, they present and vigorously support specific judgments, mostly unorthodox judgments, about political issues. This is a distinctly useful and needed book; but more clarification should be forthcoming on the extent to which philosophers as philosophers should take stands on political controversies.—W. G. (shrink)

Trust and corporation (extracts) / by F.W. Maitland -- Respublica Christiana -- by J.N. Figgis -- Society and state / by R.M. MacIver -- The discredited state / by E. Barker -- Conflicting social obligations / by G.D.H. Cole -- Community is a process / by M.P. Follett -- The eruption of the group / by E. Barker -- The masses in a representative democracy / by M. Oakeshott -- The atavism of social justice / by F.A. (...) von Hayek -- Collective entities and moral rights / by V. van Dyke -- Capitalism, citizenship and community / by S. Macedo -- Liberalism and the politicization of ethnicity / by W. Kymlicka -- Are there any cultural rights? / by C. Kukathas -- The civil society argument / by M. Walzer. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that society, embodiment, and nature are crucial to J. G. Fichte’s practical philosophy, which implies responsibilities regarding the natural environment and its non-rational denizens. In section one, I summarize Fichte’s argument that self-consciousness presupposes social interaction between embodied rational beings within a sensible environment. In section two, I explain the relation between rational beings and human bodies. In section three, I discuss the relation between rational beings and nature. In section four, I describe ethical (...) duties toward rational beings. In conclusion, I examine ethical duties regarding non-rational beings. (shrink)

Hegel’s political philosophy used to be judged mainly by the Philosophie des Rechts, and this book was interpreted differently by various students. More recently, serious account has been taken of Hegel’s earlier political writings, published and unpublished. Professor Ilting believes that Hegel’s real and liberal views were contained in lectures before and after the Ph. d. R. and that that book was a temporary aberration, a concession to the Carlsbad Decrees, and an attempt to satisfy the Prussian censor. (...) Consequently he is publishing what he regards as all the evidence for Hegel’s philosophy of natural law and the state from 1818 to 1833. The first volume is now before us; five are to follow, three of texts and two of commentary. The volumes are not sold separately; the price is DM 198 per volume. (shrink)

This book is the Studies in G.W.F. Hegel's Philosophy of Right; Hegel's 'elements of the Philosophy of 'right is his last major published statement not only on the philosophy of law but on ethical theory, natural law, social and political theory as well. The studies of Right, Morality, Ethical Life duscuss Hegel's views both historically and systematically, contrubuting to the lively discussions concerning the signifigance of Hegel's view in the present philosophical context. This book is ment for students (...) of Religion/philosophy. (shrink)

On Humour and the Comic in the Hebrew Bible. Edited by Y. T. Radday and A. Brenner.The Trouble With Kings: The Composition of rhe Book of Kings in the Deuteronomistic History. By Steven L. McKenzie.Sacred Space: An Approach to the Zheology of the Epistle to the Hebrews. By Marie E. Isaacs.Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra. By Michael Edward StonePaul the Convert: iShe Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee. By Alan F. Segal.Creative Biblical Exegesis: Christian (...) and Jewish Hermeneutics through the Centuries. Edited by Benjamin Uffenheimer and Henning Graf Reventlow.The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Escharology. By Brian E. Daley.The Emergence of the Laity in the Early Church. By Alexandre Faivre, translated by David Smith.Pastoral Life and Practice in the Early Church. By Carl A. Volz.The Making of the Creeds. By Frances Young.La correzione fratenia in s. Agosrino. By Agostino Clerici.Beaup and Revelation in the Thought of St Augustine. By Carol Harrison.Grace, Politics and Desire. Edited by Hugo Meynell.Boerhius and Aquinas. By Ralph McInerny.The Weight of Glory. A Vision and Practice for Christian Faith: The Future of Liberal Theology. Edited by D. W. Hardy and P. H. Sedgwick.Atonenrent and Incarnation. By Vernon White.Tragic Method and Tragic Theology: Evil in Contemporary Drama and Religious Thought. By L. D. Bouchard.Parmenides of Elea, Fragments: A Text and Translation, with an Introduction. By David Gallop.Language, Thought and Falsehood in Ancient Greek Philosophy. By Nicholas Denyer.Weakness of the Will. By Justin Gosling.Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy. Vol. I, edited by Monica Asztalos, John E. Murdoch and Ilkka Niiniluoto.Episcopal Power and Norenrine Sociev. 1000–1320. By George W. Dameron.Matins, Lauds and Vespers for St David's Day. By Owain Tudor Edwards.More's ‘Utopia’. By Dominic Baker‐Smith.Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisitionfrom the Basque Lands to Sicily. By William Monter.Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478–1834, By Stephen Haliczer.The Fear of Hell: Images of Damnation and Salvation in Early Modern Europe. By Piero Camporesi, translated by Lucinda Byatt.Lucrecia's Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth‐Centun Spain. By Richard L. Kagan.Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth‐Century Spain: The Alumbrados. By Alastair Hamilton.Japan's Encounter with Christianiry: The Catholic Mission in Pre‐Modern Japan. By Neil S. Fujita.Galileo, Bellannine and the Bible. By Richard J.Augustine Baker's Inner Light: A Study in English Recusant Spirituality. By James Gaffney.The Prorestarit Evaqelical Awakening. By W. R. Ward.The Study of Anglicanism. Edited by Stephen Sykes and John Booty.The Anglican Tradition: A Handbook of Sources. Edited by G. R. Evans and J. Robert Wright.The Restoration Church of England, 1646‐1689. By John Spurr.Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. By Jon Butler.A Woman Styled Bold: The Life of Cornelia Connelly, 1809–1879. By Radegunde Flaxman.Cane Ridge: America's Pentecost. By Paul K. Conkin.Revivalism and Social Change: Christianio, Nation Building and the Market in the Nineteenth‐Century United States. By George M. Thomas.Church and State: The English Experience. By Adrian Hastings.Evelyn Underhill: Artist of the Infinite Life. By Dana Greene.Northern Ireland: Fairh and Faction. By Maurice Irvine.The Tragedy of Belief: Division, Politics, arid Religion in Ireland. By John Fulton.Shattered Vows: Exodus from the Priesthood. By David Rice.Making Saints: Inside the Vatican: Who Become Saints, Who Do Not, and Why. By Kenneth L. Woodward.Ecclesiae Memoria: Miscellanea in onorr del R. P. Josef Metzler, O. M. I. Edited by Willi Henkel. (shrink)

The play contains two different fates of Wallenstein—the first, the fate of the determinate progress of a decision, the second, the fate of this decision and the forces opposing it. Each can be taken as a tragic whole in itself. The first: Wallenstein, a great man—for as his own man, as an individual, he has held command [geboten] over many men—appears as this being in command [gebietende], with the splendor and enjoyment of this reign, mysterious because he holds no mystery. (...) The determinate divides itself, of necessity, against his indeterminateness, into two branches, the first internal, the second external. The internal is not a struggle for determination but a fermenting of it; he has personal stature, fame as a commander, as the deliverer of an empire through individuality, command over many who obey him, the fear of friend and foe; he is himself above [erhaben] determination as subject to the emperor and state he has delivered, still less to fanaticism; his plans themselves must be still higher [erhaben]; what determination can satisfy him? He prepares for himself the means for the greatest [end] of his time, to confer [gebieten], in general, peace upon Germany, and, in particular, to acquire for himself a kingdom, and for his friends—comparable rewards.—[But] his higher [erhabene], self-sufficient soul plays [spielende] with the greatest end, and, for this reason, it is without character and can grasp no end, it searches for something higher to prod it. The independent man, who is yet alive and no monk, wants to shift the guilt of determination from himself, and, if there is nothing that can command [gebieten] him—there can be no such thing—then he creates for himself what will command [gebiete] him. Wallenstein seeks his decision, his action and his fate, in the stars. Precisely the one-sidedness of indeterminate being in the midst of nothing but determinateness, independence within nothing but dependences, brings him into relation with a thousand determinations; his friends built these up into ends that become his, his enemies too, against which they must however fight; and this determination, which has developed itself in the fermenting matter—for these are human beings—binds him and renders him dependent, it is not something he created, rather it seizes him. This succumbing of the indeterminate before the determinate is a highly tragic being, it is posited as great and of consequence.—In this, reflection will not justify genius, only present it. The impression of this as a tragic whole stands out for me very vividly. If this whole were a novel, then one could demand to see the determination clarified,—namely, that which Wallenstein has brought to this rule over the people. They are fettered by greatness, lack of determination, his boldness for their sake. It is however part of the play, yet cannot be acted out dramatically, i.e., appear as determining and at the same time determinate. It appears only as a shadow-play [Schattenbild], as it is called in the Prologue, perhaps in a different sense; but the camp is this rule, as something that came into being [gewordenes], a product. (shrink)

A widespread view about early social functionalism is that its account of functional explanation was underpinned by an analogy between biological organisms and societies that suggested pseudo-explanations about the latter. I will challenge this view through a case study of the use G.W.F. Hegel made of the organismic analogy for the purpose of concept development in his theory of the state. My claim will be that the dismissal of this analogy is premature for two reasons. First, to claim that (...) the organismic analogy figured among the premises of an analogical argument and, thus, as explanans in an explanation misses its point. For Hegel made use of the analogy to model the apparent close cooperation among the parts of the state and, thus conceptualize its characteristic structure in terms of organization: the mutual dependence among distinct structures generated by the state as a whole. Second, the organizational view of social functions thus suggested by the organismic analogy has not obviously been made obsolete by evolutionary theory. Instead, reconsidering the organismic analogy in light of contemporary philosophy of biology puts an account of social functions that has fallen from view (and from grace) in the contemporary discussion back in focus: the organizational account. -/- . (shrink)

To us today, it seems intuitive that an ideal society would secure for its citizens some time for leisure that is, some time to do “whatever they want” after having attended to their various responsibilities and natural needs. But, in this essay, I argue that—in 19th century social philosophy—the status of leisure (Muße) in an ideal society was actually surprisingly controversial: whereas J.G. Fichte makes a strong case for leisure as part of an ideal society (going even so far (...) as considering it its central good), G.W.F. Hegel implicitly argues against this idea. For him, leisure is a crook that we only need as long as the social conditions are not sufficiently ideal—whereas a truly rational society would create a new type of work that subsumes the benefits of leisure into work itself. In this essay, I reconstruct this largely forgotten disagreement and argue that although both positions contain an important overstatement, each includes an important lesson for the contemporary debate on leisure and society. (shrink)

_On Mechanism in Hegel's Social and Political Philosophy_ examines the role of the concept of mechanism in Hegel’s thinking about political and social institutions. It counters as overly simplistic the notion that Hegel has an ‘organic concept of society’. It examines the thought of Hegel’s peers and predecessors who critique modern political intuitions as ‘machine-like’, focusing on J.G. Herder, Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis. From here it examines the early writings of Hegel, in which Hegel makes (...) a break with the Romantic way of thinking about ethical community. Ross argues that in this period, Hegel devises a new way of thinking about the integration of mechanistic and organic features within an organizational whole. This allows Hegel to offer an innovative theory of modern civil society as a component in ethical life. The second half of the book examines how Hegel develops this thought in his later works. It offers an in depth commentary on the chapter on mechanism in the Science of Logic, and it demonstrates the role of these thoughts in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. _On Mechanism in Hegel's Social and Political Philosophy_ offers a critical response to debates over communitarianism by arguing against one of the central figures used by scholars to associate Hegel with communitarian thought, namely the notion that society is organic. In addition, it argues that Hegel political theory is deeply informed by his formal ontology, as developed in the Science of Logic. (shrink)

A key part of Hegel?s practical philosophy is his theory of civil society and the idea of a rational regulation of the market. This is the foundation of Hegel?s theory of a social state. The copyright on the notion of a modern society of freedom and a rational, social state belongs to Hegel. Hegel proves himself to be the thinker who until now has provided the most convincing foundation for freedom in modernity. The theoretical foundation and at (...) the same time bone of contention of Hegel?s political thought is to be found in his concept of ethical life, in particular in his theory of civil society. The current shipwreck of deregulated capitalism does not mean the foundering of our journey towards a free society. Nevertheless the deficiencies and unsustainability of both traditional models - socialist collective ownership and market fundamentalism - exhibit two contradictory claims to a share of the wealth of nations. To take up Hegel?s project is, in essence, to aim at a new conception of an environmentally and socially sustainable and just society, and a corresponding world order. It is to further Hegel?s philosophy of freedom. nema. (shrink)

The texts collected in this volume, which was originally published in 1969, contain Herder's most original and stimulating ideas on politics, history and language. They had for the most part not been previously available in English. In his introduction, Professor Barnard analyses the basic premises of Herder's political thought against the background of the Enlightenment. He examines Herder's concepts of language, community and culture, his theory of historical interaction, and his approach to the problem of change and progress. Finally, (...) he provides a brief comparative analysis of traditionalist thought following the French Revolution, showing how substantive writers like Burke differed from Herder despite the close similarity of political vocabulary. (shrink)

Aesth. Hegel, Aesthetics Aesth. Ed. Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man CI1PR Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right Civil War Marx, The Civil War in France CPE Marx, Critique of Political Economy Em. Hegel, Enzyklopadie der ...

Tracing a central theme of Plato's Republic , G. R. F. Ferrari reconsiders in this study the nature and purpose of the comparison between the structure of society and that of the individual soul. In four chapters, Ferrari examines the personalities and social status of the brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus, Plato's notion of justice, coherence in Plato's description of the decline of states, and the tyrant and the philosopher king—a pair who, in their different ways, break with the terms (...) of the city-soul analogy. In addition to acknowledging familiar themes in the interpretation of the Republic —the sincerity of its utopianism, the justice of the philosopher's return to the Cave—Ferrari provocatively engages secondary literature by Leo Strauss, Bernard Williams, and Jonathan Lear. With admirable clarity and insight, Ferrari conveys the relation between the city and the soul and the choice between tyranny and philosophy. City and Soul in Plato's Republic will be of value to students of classics, philosophy, and political theory alike. (shrink)

This collection of essays looks at the distinctively English intellectual, social and political phenomenon of Latitudinarianism, which emerged during the Civil War and Interregnum and came into its own after the Restoration, becoming a virtual orthodoxy after 1688. Dividing into two parts, it first examines the importance of the Cambridge Platonists, who sought to embrace the newest philosophical and scientific movements within Church of England orthodoxy, and then moves into the later seventeenth century, from the Restoration onwards, (...) culminating in essays on the philosopher John Locke. These new contributions establish a firmly interdisciplinary basis for the subject, while collectively gravitating towards the importance of discourse and language as the medium for cultural exchange. The variety of approaches serves to illuminate the cultural indeterminacy of the period, in which inherited models and vocabularies were forced to undergo revisions, coinciding with the formation of many cultural institutions still governing English society. (shrink)

G.W.F. Hegel focuses his treatment of Sophocles' drama, Antigone , in the Phenomenology of Spirit, on the ideal of mutual recognition. Antigone was punished with death for performing the burial ritual honoring her brother, Polyneices, to whose irreplaceability she attests in her well-known speech of defiance. Hegel argues that Antigone's loss of Polyneices was the irreparable loss of reciprocal recognition. Only in the brother sister relation, Hegel thought, could there be equality in mutual recognition. I argue that this equality cannot (...) be found in a marriage union with a husband or in the public sphere of civil society. Situating Hegel's account of marriage in the Philosophy of Right within the history of marriage and historical literature on the emerging market economy of Hegel's time, I demonstrate that Hegel's perception of equality in the reciprocal recognition of the brother sister relation was a function of both economic realities and his relationship with his sister, Christiane. I show desire in the Phenomenology to be the desire for dominance, and I show the brother sister relation to be free of desire. (shrink)

Photo by Karl Raymund Catabas on Unsplash “After Buddha was dead, they still showed his shadow in a cave for centuries – a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way people are, there may still for millennia be caves in which they show his shadow. – And we – we must still defeat his shadow as well!” – Friedrich Nietzsche[1] INTRODUCTION Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared that “God is dead!”[2] but lamented that his contemporaries remained living in the (...) shadow of God. For Nietzsche, the morality of his time was still based in the Christian tradition, even though faith in God was waning. Bioethics lives under a similar shadow: the shadow of Enlightenment Era-rationalism. Bioethics curricula focus on principles derived from Kantian deontology and utilitarianism. The allure of maintaining a moral framework that provides a rational method that can be handily applied to any situation remains strong. The principlist approach advanced by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress is taught to nearly all medical students in the United States,[3] and is essentially the canonical ethical framework of bioethics. In this model, the principle of autonomy is Kantian in nature, and the principles of beneficence and non-maleficence are utilitarian in nature.[4] Moreover, the presented framework is an approach that, when applied rationally to any healthcare scenario, will yield an outcome “considered moral.”[5] This reflects a faulty conception of philosophy that plagues much of bioethics, wherein the only contribution of philosophy pertinent to bioethics is moral philosophy elucidated by European thinkers in the Enlightenment Era. The landscape of moral philosophy has evolved significantly from the 18th century. However, the bioethical world has not kept up with the philosophical world, remaining instead in the shadow of antiquated moral thinking. Also lacking in bioethics are other disciplines of philosophy, such as philosophy of language, existentialism, and aesthetics, which are often given no consideration at all. The inclusion of both modern moral philosophy and other philosophical fields is necessary if bioethics is to survive its transition into modernity. l. The Shadow of Enlightenment Enlightenment Era philosophers such as Immanuel Kant argued that one need only employ reason to obtain knowledge; emotion bore no relevance when determining ethical behavior. Kant’s moral theories thus privileged a duty to act according to moral imperatives over feelings. Other Enlightenment Era philosophers such as John Locke developed systems that attempted to quantify human goods and human ills. This quantification potentially reduces human welfare and suffering to utility. Today, in the world of philosophy, such a “neutral analysis,” as Cora Diamond noted, is “dead or moribund.”[6] Bernard Williams remarked that such moral philosophy is “empty and boring,”[7] and G. E. M. Anscombe stated that it “no longer generally survives.”[8] And yet, just as the atheists in Nietzsche’s world dwelt in the moral code of a dead God, bioethicists still pursue a unified moral system that takes an input, applies some moral rules, and generates a moral outcome, like the four principles approach that Beauchamp and Childress laid out.[9] Some detractors of principlism take issue with their approach for not being unified enough and want to replace it with a procedural framework that is even more systematic and complicated. They argue that the resulting moral framework would be a “comprehensive decision procedure for arriving at answers”[10] that retains the “impartiality that is an essential part of morality.”[11] The shadow of rationalist morality has caused bioethical decision making to become detached and rigid when bioethics should concern itself with the humans whose lives it affects. A rational, divorced-from-emotion way of thinking ultimately fails to yield satisfactory results when decisions are made by and for emotional beings. Dr. Paul Farmer, among others, championed the idea that bioethics should be de-philosophized, as philosophy, cold and calculated, fails to adequately respond to the realities of those worst off.[12] Instead, Dr. Farmer emphasized the inclusion of the social sciences, like sociology and anthropology, in bioethics. Undoubtedly, Dr. Farmer was on the right track; bioethics should certainly engage directly with the people whom its decisions involve. If the narrow band of moral philosophy currently found in bioethics – that of stringent rationalism – were all that philosophy had to offer, I, too, would advocate for a de-philosophization. Ludwig Wittgenstein notes that to attempt to capture the complexity of moral thinking in a manner that employs reason alone and casts aside emotion is a “hopeless task,” like reconstructing a sharp image “from a blurred one.”[13] Unfortunately, bioethics is mired in the remnants of this hopeless task. To Dr. Farmer, the dominant moral framework was too restrictive and was unresponsive to the social and humanitarian needs of those whom bioethics is meant to help. As such, he wished to free bioethics from the shadow of a morality derived from rationalist thinkers. ll. Beyond Rationalism Like Nietzsche, who tried to resolve Europe’s post-religion vacuum by providing his society with a new way to live, Dr. Farmer wanted to replace the rationalist philosophy upon which bioethics was built with a “resocialization” of the field.[14] I agree with Dr. Farmer’s call for resocialization, as well as his denouncement of philosophy as it exists in bioethics. Evaluating risks and benefits along a predetermined array of moral principles is far too rigid and impersonal to guide what are often the most important decisions one will make. For Dr. Farmer, the most needed change was restoring the social element of bioethics. However, in advocating for this resocialization, Dr. Farmer casts philosophy as the antithesis of social science, noting that “few would regard philosophy … as a socializing discipline.”[15] I disagree. Rationalist moral philosophy may be lacking in socializing force, but there are other fields of philosophy that are responsive to our social reality. Rather than de-philosophizing bioethics, it makes more sense to replace the antisocial philosophies predominant in bioethics with prosocial philosophies better suited to it. Of course, the contribution of philosophy to bioethics is more than moral theories from the Enlightenment Era. There are more recent philosophical contributions from outside the field of moral philosophy that have roused bioethical interest. Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby, et al., argue for philosophy’s continued place in bioethics, citing Derek Parfit’s “non-identity problem,” which altered the landscape of reproductive ethics, and David Chalmers’ contributions to philosophy of consciousness, which have implications for the moral status of brain organoids.[16] Still, these are narrow applications of philosophy to highly specialized areas of bioethics, which not all bioethicists are inclined to delve into. Philosophy in bioethics should not be confined to niche applications in specialist fields but should influence all bioethical thought. Fortunately, there remains untapped a wealth of philosophical disciplines that pertains to exactly this. Philosophy of language investigates the nature of meaning and understanding in communication, which is a necessary social action. Successfully deciphering and conveying moral values in discourse is a bioethicist’s bread and butter, as is resolving disagreements and reaching agreements. Indeed, it is often the case that miscommunication lies at the root of an impasse between a doctor and a patient. An understanding of the nature of the disagreement would help resolve the conflict, as different types of disagreements require different interventions for resolution. For instance, a “substantive disagreement,”[17] in which two parties use the same terms in the same ways and have a fundamental disagreement on which outcome is more desirable, can be resolved only if one party yields to the other. On the other hand, a “merely verbal dispute,”[18] in which two parties use the same terms to represent entirely different concepts and values, requires standardization of terminological usage for its resolution. As such, no one can overstate the moral importance of successful communication in bioethics, and an exploration of language itself would prove invaluable to a bioethicist’s training. Existentialism is another subset of philosophy that acknowledges the social nature of human existence, noting that one’s being in the universe is concomitant with the existence of others sharing the same universe.[19] Thus, there is the recognition that whatever existence is, it is not complete without the existence of others. With this as a starting point, existentialists examined how to live meaningfully with others in this world. Since ethics crucially involves others, it is no surprise that existentialists pondered how to live moral lives. Existentialist conceptions of morality did not revolve around acting in accordance with a set of rules, but rather, recognized individual freedom in choosing how to act and emphasized acting authentically. In this vein, bioethicists should commit to doing what is right rather than committing to applying a set of principles. Existentialism, while part of the broader bioethics literature, is less common throughout bioethics curricula and deserves more prominence. Martin Heidegger, for instance, emphasized the difference between two types of thinking: “calculative thinking” and “meditative thinking.” Heidegger characterizes calculative thinking as a computation, wherein from some given starting conditions “definite results”[20] are determined, and contrasts this with meditative thinking, which he describes as “thinking which contemplates the meaning which reigns in everything that is.”[21] Heidegger was critical of the pervasiveness of calculative thinking, seeing it as the “ground of thoughtlessness,”[22] in which we only relate to the world in a meaningless, mechanical way. This is the emphasized type of thinking in rationalist conceptions of morality popular in bioethics; from a set of starting conditions, a series of rules are applied, and a moral outcome is calculated. Such a technique, however, discounts the personal meaning individuals place on the aspects of their lives relevant to their decision making, as well as the meaning in committing to doing what is right. Under calculative thinking, such a commitment is reduced to rote rule-following. A turn to meditative thinking would ensure that bioethical decisions comport with living meaningful lives. Even aesthetics, a discipline devoted to examining beauty and taste,[23] has a place in bioethics. Just as the viewing of a painting, the listening of a song, or the reading of a book elicits an effective response, hearing a patient’s story leaves an emotional imprint. The recounting of a traumatic moment imparts sadness, and a joyous occasion begets joy in the listener as well. As acknowledged in the field of everyday aesthetics, these aesthetic experiences often spur us to act:[24] The unsightly appearance of a polluted riverbank drives us to remove the trash; the presence of sorrow in one’s life drives us to ameliorate it. To be mindful of aesthetic experiences and allow them to affect us emotionally is paramount to the motivation of a bioethicist to serve the patient, not out of an obligation to a job description, but out of a desire to truly avail the patient of their anguish. For example, the new field of narrative medicine utilizes critical reading and literary techniques to train clinicians and bioethicists in emotional understanding and listening skills that stress the social aspects of medicine beyond rational analysis and decision making. CONCLUSION Dr. Farmer is absolutely correct; bioethics is in dire need of resocialization. It should not be the case that the justification for a moral action is essentially that “the rules say so,” or that simply by teaching such rules to medical students, the very act of making bioethical decisions that diverge from those determined by principles can be seen as an act of “bad faith … hubris or, worse, malpractice.”[25] As bioethicists are coming to realize, the rationalist philosophical traditions that bioethics was founded upon are past their expiry, and the time for change is now. Indeed, as Dr. Farmer urges, “socializing disciplines” like anthropology, history, political economy, and sociology are necessary to humanize the field of bioethics.[26] So too, however, can philosophy be a socializing discipline, if we know where to look. Bioethics should evolve. Its new goal should be to focus on meaningful human relationships, and to phase out rigid, impersonal modes of moral thinking. The limited sampling of unsatisfying moral theories from hundreds of years ago leaves many bioethics students cold, and it is easy to see why bioethicists are ready to part ways with philosophy. I believe this is a move in the wrong direction; there is a place for philosophy in the future of bioethics. Just as bioethics needs a resocialization, it is also needs of a re-philosophization. These enrichments complement one another. There is more to bioethics than mechanically determining the right course of action in a healthcare setting. Bioethics engages with the most ancient of philosophical questions: questions of what makes human existence meaningful, what makes us who we are, how we want to relate to others, how and why we feel, what our place in the world is, how we can communicate what we think, and why our moral intuitions are so compelling. We would be remiss if we did not begin to investigate additional contributions to morality from a wider range of philosophies that try to provide answers to such questions, as they offer a richness to moral thinking that cannot be gleaned from traditional bioethical approaches alone. - [1] Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, ed. Bernard Williams, Josefine Nauckhoff, and Adrian Del Caro, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, 109. [2] Nietzsche, 120. [3] Daniel C O’Brien, “Medical Ethics as Taught and as Practiced: Principlism, Narrative Ethics, and the Case of Living Donor Liver Transplantation,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine 47, no. 1 : 97, https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhab039. [4] K. D. Clouser and B. Gert, “A Critique of Principlism,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 15, no. 2 : 219–36, https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/15.2.219. [5] O’Brien, “Medical Ethics as Taught and as Practiced,” 97. [6] Cora Diamond, “Having a Rough Story about What Moral Philosophy Is,” New Literary History 15, no. 1 : 168, https://doi.org/10.2307/468998. [7] Bernard Williams, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics, Canto ed, xvii. [8] G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy 33, no. 124 : 1, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819100037943. [9] Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 7th ed, 13. [10] Clouser and Gert, 233. [11] Clouser and Gert, “A Critique of Principlism,” 235. [12] Paul Farmer and Nicole Gastineau Campos, “Rethinking Medical Ethics: A View from Below,” Developing World Bioethics 4, no. 1 : 17–41, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-8731.2004.00065.x. [13] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, ed. Joachim Schulte, trans. P. M. S. Hacker, 4th edition, 40. [14] Farmer and Campos, “Rethinking Medical Ethics,” 20. [15] Farmer and Campos, 20. [16] Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby et al., “The Place of Philosophy in Bioethics Today,” The American Journal of Bioethics: AJOB, June 30, 2021, 3–5, https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2021.1940355. [17] Brendan Balcerak Jackson, “Verbal Disputes and Substantiveness,” Erkenntnis 79, no. S1 : 31–54, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9444-5. [18] C. S. I. Jenkins, “Merely Verbal Disputes,” Erkenntnis 79, no. 1 : 11–30, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9443-6. [19] Steven Crowell, “Existentialism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2020, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/existentialism/; Anita Avramides, “Other Minds,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2020, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/other-minds/. [20] Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, Harper Torchbooks, 46. [21] Heidegger, 46. [22] Heidegger, 45. [23] Nick Zangwill, “Aesthetic Judgment,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2021, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/aesthetic-judgment/. [24] Yuriko Saito, “Aesthetics of the Everyday,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2021, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/aesthetics-of-everyday/. [25] O’Brien, “Medical Ethics as Taught and as Practiced,” 112. [26] Farmer and Campos, “Rethinking Medical Ethics,” 20. (shrink)

Avec l'ecrit sur le Droit naturel, Foi et Savoir constitue la voie d'entree, strategiquement fondamentale, dans le systeme hegelien, comme Theorie et Doctrine du Logos. En sa conclusion Hegel ayant expose la coeur de la philosophie de la reflexion dont les hautes figures sont Kant, Jacobi et Fichte, celebre le Vendredi Saint de l'esprit qui abolit le Dieu perdu de Pascal (Br. 441). Ainsi est annoncee la derniere page de La Phenomenologie de l'esprit ou dans le Golgotha de l'Esprit absolu, (...) comme Savoir absolu, depassant le savoir en devenir (Werdend Wissen) se dit la fin de l'histoire dont emerge le sens depuis le Calice auquel reve Schiller (La Phenomenologie de l'esprit, page derniere). (shrink)

In the last decades, Hegel’s mature political philosophy has come to be associated with some form of social or welfare liberalism. Challenging this line of interpretation, this study aims to show that his work harbours a more ambitious philosophical programme, grounded in a different vision of the modern state. However, this programme is only partly spelled out in the Philosophy of Right. While the conceptual logic that guides Hegel’s dialectical progression points beyond the modern liberal standpoint, some (...) of his concrete political choices are more conservative, and some are even opposed to the change of perspective I claim to be at stake in his work. In response to this tension, I undertake a systematic reconstruction of his social and political views, divided into two main parts. First, I highlight the critical dimension I take to be explicitly present in the Philosophy of Right but neglected or misrepresented in the secondary literature. I argue that the different stages of Hegel’s progression are not merely added to one another, but qualitatively transformed, and hence that his account of the state should not be read as a mere complement to the stage of civil society, but as a direct challenge to its underlying logic. Second, I draw the political and economic conclusions implicit in this line of approach. Shifting the focus from Hegel’s interpreters to Hegel himself, I show that the conscious pursuit of the common good he regards as essential to a rational state is not compatible with a capitalist production system nor with the constitutional monarchy he proposes. A true dialectical synthesis of the particular interests of individuals and the general interests of society entails nothing less than a comprehensive democratization of the economic and the political spheres. And the need for this transformation holds the key to Hegel’s enduring political relevance. (shrink)