Community in Hegel's Social Philosophy. Issue 2 (August 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lumsden, Simon
• Is Part Of: Hegel bulletin. Volume 41:Issue 2(2020)
• Page Start: 177
• Page End: 201
• Publication Date: 2020-08
• Subjects: Philosophy, German -- Periodicals; Periodicals; 193
• DOI: 10.1017/hgl.2017.12
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2051-5367

Abstract

Abstract: In the Philosophy of Right Hegel argues that modern life has produced an individualized freedom that conflicts with the communal forms of life constitutive of Greek ethical life. This individualized freedom is fundamentally unsatisfactory, but it is in modernity seemingly resolved into a more adequate form of social freedom in the family, aspects of civil society, and ultimately the state. This article examines whether Hegel's state can function as a community and by so doing satisfy the need for a substantial ethical life that runs through Hegel's social thought. The article also examines why Hegel does not provide a detailed analysis of community, as a distinct sphere between the private and the public political sphere in the Philosophy of Right, and why it is not a key platform of his social freedom.