Philosophy of Right
Head of Workshop: Andrew Haas (Office Hours: Mondays, 15:00-17:00 or by appointment,
Хитровский пер., д. 2/8, корп. 5, Room 308).
Schedule: 2014, Module 3, Mondays, 12:10—15:10pm, 13 Jan—17 March, Room 406, Small
Trehsvyatitelsky Lane, 8/2.
Assessment:
30% class participation.
30% written paper (Due: 17 March, 16:00; 3-5 pages).
40% final oral exam (24 March, 12:10—15:10).
Syllabus
Week 1:
Introduction: On the Concept of Freedom
Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Pure Reason
(Analogies of Pure Reason; and Second Antinomy).
Week 2:
What is History?
Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History (Chapters One and Two).
Week 3:
What is Reason?
Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History (Chapters Three and Four)
Week 4:
What is Right?
Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Introduction)
Week 5:
Abstract Right: Property, Contract, Wrong (On Having and Being)
Hegel, Philosophy of Right (First Part)
Week 6:
Concrete Right: Good and Responsibility (On Being Implicated)
Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Second Part)
Week 7:
Conceptual Right: Family and Friends (On Trust)
Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Third Part)
Week 8:
Conceptual Right: Barbarism and Civilization (On Force and Violence)
Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Third Part)
Week 9:
Conceptual Right: State and World (On Survival)
Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Third Part)
Week 10:
Concluding Discussion
Further suggested reading: Kant, Metaphysics of Morals; Kant, “Idea for a Universal History from a
Cosmopolitan Point of View”; Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals; Heidegger, On the Essence of Human
Freedom; Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice; Foucault, Discipline and Punish; Derrida, The
Force of Law.
Oral Exam Questions (chose three):
1. What is Hegel’s critique of Kant’s concept of freedom?
2. Is right, for Hegel, historical? If so, how so—if not, how not?
3. Hegel writes: “What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational”—explain.
4. Hegel argues that we need a justice freed from subjective interest from the contingency
of power—explain what he means. And how is, for Hegel, justice possible?
5. Normally, punishment is assumed to be a threat that motivates lawful behavior, a
deterent to crime, or a means of social control—does Hegel agree or not? If so, why
so—if not, why not?
6. What is Hegel’s argument for or against happiness?
7. According to Hegel, why do we do wrong? And how can we get people to do the right
thing?
8. What is wrong with the family, according to Hegel—and what should be done about it?
9. Hegel wrote to Schelling: “Enlightenment relates to culture as theory does to praxis, as
cognition to ethics”—how is this applicable (or unapplicable) to Hegel’s philosophy of
right?
10. Hegel writes that revolution is “the overthrow of all existing and given conditions within
an actual major state and the revision of its constitution from first principles”—explain.
11. The state, for Hegel is a “hieroglyph of reason,” or “ the actuality of concrete
freedom,”—explain.
Additional Secondary Sources (bibliographies are easily available):
S. Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge, 1972).
D. Cornell, Hegel and Legal Theory (Routledge, 1991).
P. Franco, Hegel’s Philosophy of Freedom (Yale University Press, 1999).
M. Hardimon, Hegel’s Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation (Cambridge, 1994).
A. Honneth, The Pathologies of Individual Freedom: Hegel’s Social Theory (Princeton, 2010).
S. Houlgate, A Companion to Hegel (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).
D. James, Rousseau and German Idealism (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
F. Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom (Harvard, 2000).
A. Patten, Hegel’s Idea of Freedom (Oxford University Press, 1999).
Z. Pelczynski, Hegel’s Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives (Cambridge, 1971).
A. Peperzak, Philosophy and Politics: On the Preface to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Nijhoff, 1987).
R. Pippin, Hegel on Ethics and Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
M. Riedel, The Hegelian Transformation of Political Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1984).
L. Stepelevich, Hegel’s Philosophy of Action (Humanities Press, 1983).
R. Stern, “Hegel’s Doppelsatz: A Neutral Reading,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 44(2) (2006).
R. Stern, G. W. F. Hegel Critical Assessments (Routledge, 1993).
C. Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge University Press, 1975).
J. Waldron, The Right to Private Property (Clarendon Press, 1988).
R. Williams, Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition (University of California Press, 1997).
A. Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1990).