The Problem of Nature in Hegel'sPhilosophy of Right

Abstract

The notion of being-at-home-in-otherness is the distinctive way of thinking of freedom that Hegel develops in his social and political thought. When I am at one with myself in social and political structures (institutions, rights and the state) they are not external powers to which I am subjected but are rather constitutive of my self-relation, that is my self-conception is mediated and expanded through those objective structures. How successfully Hegel may achieve being-at-home-in-otherness with regard to these objective structures of right in the Philosophy of Right is arguable. What is at issue in this paper is however to argue that there is a blind spot in the text with regard to nature. In Ethical Life the rational subject's passions and inclinations are brought into the subject such that she is ‘with herself’ in them; with regard to external nature no such reconciliation is achieved or even attempted. In Abstract Right external nature is effectively dominated by and subsumed into the will and it is never something in which one is with oneself. It remains outside the model of freedom that Hegel develops in the Philosophy of Right. There is something troubling about this formulation, since it excludes nature from freedom, but also something accurate, as it reflects the unresolved attitude of moderns to the natural world.

The Principle of Life in Hegel’s Philosophy

“…Reading Hegel's writings it is not difficult to realize that there has been a central metaphor in his philosophical system i.e. the dynamic activity and development of life to describe the process of the activity of reason and thought (Lumsden, 2021a). Hegel uses the term life in his philosophical writing, and after careful observation and reading, we realize that he does not mean for us to take the word life literally, nor for us to see reason as life in the abstract he means that reason is a dynamic, living movement that is constantly developing (Baumann, 2021).…”