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Drawing from a variety of Hegel's writings, Shannon Hoff articulates a theory of justice that requires answering simultaneously to three irreducibly different demands: those of community, universality, and individuality. The domains of "ethicality," "legality," and "morality" correspond to these essential dimensions of human experience, and a political system that fails to give adequate recognition to any one of these will become oppressive. The commitment to legality emphasized in modern and contemporary political life, Hoff argues, systematically precludes adequate recognition of the formative cultural contexts that Hegel identifies under the name of "ethical life" and of singular experiences of moral duty, or conscience. Countering the perception of Hegel as a conservative political thinker and engaging broadly with contemporary work in liberalism, critical theory, and feminism, Hoff focuses on these themes of ethicality and conscience to consider how modern liberal politics must be transformed if it is to accommodate these essential dimensions of human life.
Acknowledgments
Note on the Text
Introduction

Part 1. Law, Ethicality, and Forgiveness

1. Themes from “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate”

2. The Immediacy of Ethical Life

3. The Right of Personhood

4. The Legal Conditions of Action

5. Law, Right, and Forgiveness

Conclusion to Part 1

Part 2. The Actuality and Practice of Law

6. The Ideal Nation and the Real Nation

7. Criminal Action

Conclusion to Part 2

Part 3. Hegel and Contemporary Political Life

8. The Politics of Liberalism

9. Hegel and the Politics of Recognition

Conclusion to Part 3

Conclusion: The Ethics and Politics of Conscience

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

Philosophie

Philosophie politique

Philosophy

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Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	27 mars 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438450292
Langue	English

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THE LAWS OF THE SPIRIT
THE LAWS OF THE SPIRIT
A HEGELIAN THEORY OF JUSTICE
SHANNON HOFF
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2014 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
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Marketing by Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoff, Shannon.
The laws of the spirit : a Hegelian theory of justice / Shannon Hoff.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5027-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770–1831. 2. Spirit. 3. Justice (Philosophy) I. Title.
B2949.S75H64 2014
193—dc23
2013014432
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
for John Russon, whose many words echo through the pages of this book and whose commitment to philosophy and to aspiring philosophers is unparalleled
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Note on the Text
Introduction
PART 1
LAW, ETHICALITY, AND FORGIVENESS
1 Themes from “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate”
2 The Immediacy of Ethical Life
3 The Right of Personhood
4 The Legal Conditions of Action
5 Law, Right, and Forgiveness
Conclusion to Part 1
PART 2
THE ACTUALITY AND PRACTICE OF LAW
6 The Ideal Nation and the Real Nation
7 Criminal Action
Conclusion to Part 2
PART 3
HEGEL AND CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL LIFE
8 The Politics of Liberalism
9 Hegel and the Politics of Recognition
Conclusion to Part 3
Conclusion: The Ethics and Politics of Conscience
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I believe that there is a singular tradition of Hegel scholarship in Canada, one by which I have been guided as long as I have been studying Hegel, and I am indebted to new and old figures in that tradition for their commitment to clarifying Hegel’s powerful capacity to illuminate the nature of human experience. I am also indebted to John Russon’s Toronto Summer Seminar and its various extensions, both for support in the development of a philosophical voice and for the gift of a philosophical community; I would like to express my appreciation for, among many important others, Kym Maclaren, Greg Kirk, Whitney Howell, Jeff Morrisey, Susan Bredlau, Ömer Aygün, Eve Rabinoff, Greg Recco, Karen Robertson, Patricia Fagan, David Ciavatta, Kirsten Jacobson, Eric Sanday, and Scott Maratto, with whom I hope for many more years of conversation and merriment. To the many junior members, senior members, and staff of the Institute for Christian Studies, who together make ICS the incomparable educational institution that it is, I owe many years of support and partnership in the pursuit of knowledge and the good life. I am grateful to Kelly Oliver, and to Lambert Zuidervaart, Eduardo Mendieta, and Robert Bernasconi, for their persistent support throughout the years, to Chad Kautzer for his friendship and commitment both to the just and to the early stages of this work, and to Jonathan Weverink. I am also grateful for the hospitality of the various “offices” in which this manuscript was produced, offices with names like Ideal, Holy Oak, Manic, and Jet Fuel. Finally, I am grateful to my family—to my parents, Elly and Bram Hoff, for the uniquely powerful ways in which they have carved out a place in the world for me; to my brother, Marcel Hoff, for his unfailing while inadvertent support of this project; and to Aron, Rachel, Ben, Zoë, Kristin, Antoine, Julie, Peter, Jacqueline, Norah, Jaden, Asher, Rowley, Mies, Finn, and, I must add, Little and Hussein, for the “ethical life” they continue to provide.
Chapter 1 is based on an essay published in Philosophy Today ; chapter 2 is based on an essay published in The Owl of Minerva ; chapter 5 is very loosely based on an essay published in Philosophy Today ; and most of what is now chapter 8 was published in an article in Philosophical Forum .
NOTE ON THE TEXT
The focus of this study is G. W. F. Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes of 1807. References to this text will be to Phänomenologie des Geistes , hrsg. v. Eva Moldenhauer u. Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), and to Phenomenology of Spirit , tr. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). References to the Miller translation will be given as M followed by the paragraph number, and references to the Moldenhauer and Michel edition will be given as S followed by the page number.
References to the Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts of 1821 will be to Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts , hrsg. v. Eva Moldenhauer u. Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), and to Elements of the Philosophy of Right , ed. Allen W. Wood, tr. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). These references will be given as PhR and the paragraph number; paragraph numbers are the same in the German and English versions.
References to “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate” will be to Early Theological Writings , tr. T. M. Knox (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1948) and will be given as ETW .
References to the third section of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, “The Philosophy of Spirit (§§377–577), will be to G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften III , hrsg. V. Eva Moldenhauer u. Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), and to G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit , tr. William Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).
References to Remarks will be given as paragraph or page number followed by R, and references to Additions will be given as paragraph or page number followed by A.
I have used the translations noted above as a general guide, but I have made modifications to them when necessary. These modifications are not noted in the text.
INTRODUCTION
Human beings appear in the world as single, circumscribed bodies that seem to operate on their own initiative, separable from every other being and every environment with which they come into contact. On the surface, they seem both fully formed and simply present—a determinate collection of relatively stable physical, mental, and psychological attributes. They seem to be a fully actualized part of reality; they seem complete, with all of their qualities enumerable and describable.
But these bodies speak, move, and change. They communicate with other such beings and move themselves through space in various ways, merging with other parts of the world in order to exist and to develop. The human being is not simply the body that appears, present and complete, in the world; it is also that which has cultivated it, and who it will become, elements that are not present and describable in the same way as the qualities it carries with it are. It is composed of the things and people around it, the history and future before and beyond it, that enable it to take a particular form. The human being is the home it makes for itself in the world, the earth that sustains its life, the force of gravity that allows it to exist on a surface and to interact with other bodies, the technological “prostheses” by which it extends the scope of its activity, the other people who enable its development, the laws, customs, and regulations by which this life with others is organized. It extends beyond itself; it is not simply itself, not simply given, not circumscribed by its own physical and psychological boundaries. Its functions as an individual body are supplemented in various ways: by its environment, by technology, by social life, by language. Thus is it both a natural and a technological being, a given and a made being. And its extensions are not merely added onto an already-existent entity; there is no fully formed human being who simply adds to herself, taking the initiative to make her capacities more sophisticated, to supplement her already-formed functions. The bearer of prostheses, so to speak, comes into being through them. Human individuals are as if slowly carved out of their extensions in the world and slowly develop more or less conscious and reflective extensions into it.
In the Phenomenology of Spirit , Hegel takes up the challenge of explaining the forces and extensions that cultivate and constitute individual human beings—the challenge, that is, of thinking through the massive historical, interpersonal, and political realities to which human identity, activity, and thought are indebted. His name for this reality that is our ground and the arena of our becoming, but that is simultaneously beyond us, is Geist , “spirit.” It is difficult to comprehend this “spirit,” since it requires that we resist thinking of identities as abstract and thinking of “objective” and “subjective” reality as clearly distinct. Thus, in addition to its task of describing “spirit,” Hegel’s Phenomenology takes on the task of cultivating in its readers the tools with which to conceive of it or the ways of thinking that will do justice to the nature of individual identities and to the nature of reality. 1
Hegel’s philosophy is a careful delineation of all the ways in which human identity is most significantly not in simple possession of itself, but emerges out of a process of dynamic interaction with what is spatially and temporally outside and beyond its self-presence. To say this is, on the one hand, to do so from the point of view of that human identity—from the point of view of that being that is dispossessed of itself. But Hegel also tracks another “point of view” as well, and that is the point of view of the