Elements of the Philosophy of Right

Introduction

Hegel published the book in Berlin in 1820, dated 1821, as a compendium for his lectures. Its preface contains the sentence “What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational” and the image of the owl of Minerva, which begins its flight only at dusk: philosophy comprehends its time only afterwards. The work has three parts: abstract right (property, contract, wrong), morality (intention and conscience) and ethical life (family, civil society and state). The analysis of civil society as a system of needs, with the problem of poverty, is often singled out. Marx’s critique of 1843 began as a commentary on its section on the state.

Connections

Builds on

• Republicc. 375 BCE · Plato
• The Wealth of Nations1776 · Adam Smith

Criticizes

• The Social Contract1762 · Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals1785 · Immanuel Kant

Taken up in

• Prolegomena to Historiosophy1838 · August Cieszkowski
• The Theory of the State1842 · J. V. Snellman
• Genesis and Structure of Society1946 · Giovanni Gentile

Criticized in

• Fear and Trembling1843 · Søren Kierkegaard
• The Open Society and Its Enemies1945 · Karl Popper

More works by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

• 1807Phenomenology of Spirit
• 1812Science of Logic