{"agent_id":"hegel","agent_name":"G.W.F. Hegel","slug":"the-state-and-concrete-freedom","label":"The state and concrete freedom: is the Philosophy of Right authoritarian or the theory of mediated freedom?","topic":"The state and concrete freedom","question":"Is the Philosophy of Right authoritarian or the theory of mediated freedom?","position":"The rational state is the actuality of concrete freedom — not Popper's proto-totalitarian apparatus and not the Romantic-organicist totality. It is constitutional monarchy with mediating institutions: civil society with its system of needs, administration of justice, police, and corporation; the legislative body with its estates; the hereditary monarch as the moment of subjective sovereignty; the bureaucracy as the universal estate. The state is the realization of freedom because it is the institutional structure within which the will wills itself as objective — the rational mediation of the individual's particular ends with the universal ends of the political community. Atomistic social- contract theories, treating the state as a contract among pre-socially-constituted individuals, mistake what is derivative for what is fundamental: individuality is itself a product of the institutions that make it possible. The Doppelsatz — what is rational is actual; what is actual is rational — is not the apology for any-status-quo but the claim that rationality is the principle of historical actuality.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The rational state is the actuality of concrete freedom — not Popper's proto-totalitarian apparatus and not the Romantic-organicist totality.","n":[]},{"t":"It is constitutional monarchy with mediating institutions: civil society with its system of needs, administration of justice, police, and corporation; the legislative body with its estates; the hereditary monarch as the moment of subjective sovereignty; the bureaucracy as the universal estate.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The state is the realization of freedom because it is the institutional structure within which the will wills itself as objective — the rational mediation of the individual's particular ends with the universal ends of the political community.","n":[1,2]},{"t":"Atomistic social- contract theories, treating the state as a contract among pre-socially-constituted individuals, mistake what is derivative for what is fundamental: individuality is itself a product of the institutions that make it possible.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The Doppelsatz — what is rational is actual; what is actual is rational — is not the apology for any-status-quo but the claim that rationality is the principle of historical actuality.","n":[]}]],"texts":"Philosophy of Right §§142-360 (Sittlichkeit through family, civil society, state); §§257-281 on the state, the constitution, the monarch, the legislature; the Preface (the Doppelsatz); Encyclopedia §§483-552. Reception: Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. II (1945) — the 'totalitarian' charge; Allen Wood, Hegel's Ethical Thought (1990); Frederick Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel's Social Theory (2000); Axel Honneth, Freedom's Right (2014); Charles Taylor, Hegel (1975).","works":["Philosophy of Right §§142-360 (Sittlichkeit through family, civil society, state)","§§257-281 on the state, the constitution, the monarch, the legislature","the Preface (the Doppelsatz)","Encyclopedia §§483-552"],"reception":"Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. II (1945) — the 'totalitarian' charge; Allen Wood, Hegel's Ethical Thought (1990); Frederick Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel's Social Theory (2000); Axel Honneth, Freedom's Right (2014); Charles Taylor, Hegel (1975).","status":"Popper's 'Prussian apologist' / 'totalitarian' charge is the canonical attack and is now widely held to rest on a caricature. Wood, Neuhouser, and Honneth have developed the 'mediation of freedom' reading: the Philosophy of Right is a theory of the institutional conditions of concrete freedom, closer to constitutional liberalism than to Popper's reading. Charles Taylor's Hegel (1975) framed the modern Anglophone reception.","era":"1770-1831","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Elements of the Philosophy of Right","page":"pp. 336–337","canonical":"","quote":"Addition (G). The state as actual is essentially an individual state, and beyond that a particular state. Individuality should be distinguished from 281 particularity; it is a moment within the very Idea of the state, whereas particularity belongs to history.","label":"Elements of the Philosophy of Right, pp. 336–337"},{"n":2,"work":"Elements of the Philosophy of Right","page":"p. 330","canonical":"","quote":"'The state is the actuality of the substantial will, an actuality which it possesses in the particular self-consciousness when this has been raised to its universality; as such, it is the rational in and for itself.","label":"Elements of the Philosophy of Right, p. 330"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-metaphysics-question","label":"The metaphysics question: speculative metaphysics or non-metaphysical category theory?"},{"slug":"empty-formalism","label":"Empty formalism: can Kant's categorical imperative derive concrete duties?"},{"slug":"recognition-anerkennung-and-geist-as-social","label":"Recognition (Anerkennung) and Geist as social: is self-consciousness constituted intersubjectively?"}]}