Commentary on the Philosophy of Right, Chapter 8
General and Modern — a Double Caution
A second methodological clarification follows the one made in the previous section, one that is equally important and that carries through the entire presentation to come. The question of universality and particularity demands not only that we seek the universal within particulars — it also demands that we examine each individual determination to see whether it is really universal or whether it occurs only in a specific historical situation. This examination is necessary because two opposite dangers threaten the text.
The first danger is that of projection. It consists in specifically modern determinations — capitalist ones in particular — being projected back onto all historical forms under the pretense of universality. Whoever presents the modern competitive market as the universal form of economic mediation is projecting. Whoever presents modern private property as universal property is projecting. Whoever presents modern conscience-morality as universal moral consciousness is projecting. Marx made this danger, directed against Hegel, into a central methodological warning: what appears as the rationality of the state is often only the rationality of this state under specific historical conditions.
The second danger is that of naive smoothing-over. It consists in specifically modern determinations, which ought to be recognized as real achievements over earlier forms, being treated as mere historical variations and thereby diminished. The formal equality of all persons before the law has not existed everywhere and always; it was won, in specific historical struggles, against resistant powers. Whoever treats it as a merely modern variation overlooks its real status as an achievement. The same holds for the recognition of the person as a thinking being, for the separation of private and public, and for the formation of a sphere of subjectivity in which conscience has its own right.
Both dangers point in opposite directions, but they share a common ground: the failure to concretely examine the question of universality and modernity for each determination. Whoever conducts no such examination falls into one danger or the other.
From this follows a methodological obligation for the presentation that follows. For each individual determination — person, property, contract, purpose, intention, conscience, family, civil society, state — the question is asked (at least implicitly): does it occur in several historical forms, or is it specifically modern? At decisive points this examination is made explicit; at other points it remains a methodological disposition without being spelled out expressly. Where a determination proves to be specifically modern, a second question follows, one that is methodologically load-bearing: the distinction between genesis and validity.
Genesis asks: how did a determination historically come into being? What conditions brought it forth? This question is to be answered empirically and historically — through investigation of sources, conflicts, and material and ideal preconditions. Validity asks: does this determination have a conceptual justification? Can it be justified from the concept of that which it governs? Or is it a merely historical positing without immanent necessity? This question is to be answered conceptually and systematically — by examining whether the determination corresponds to the concept of the matter or contradicts it.
The distinction matters because the two questions permit different answers that cannot be reduced to one another. A determination can be genetically explicable and at the same time lack any valid grounding — for instance, if it arose from historical relations of power and merely stabilizes those relations of power. Conversely, a determination can have arisen genetically in a specific historical situation and nevertheless possess a validity that reaches beyond that situation — for instance, if it articulates an insight already contained in the concept of the matter. The right of personality, for example, arose genetically out of the struggle against feudal arbitrariness, but it has a validity that reaches further: if the human being is taken seriously as a thinking being, then he must have a protected space for his own decisions. Wage labor, by contrast, arose genetically out of the separation of producers from the means of production — but its conceptual validity is far less clear; it can be recognized as a historical form and at the same time subjected to critical examination, without that critique having to ignore the historical fact.
That this distinction is not brought to Hegel from outside is shown by his lectures. On genesis, he says in 1821/22 that it took “an immense length of time for the human being to recognize himself as a person and also to recognize others as persons.”[1] On validity, he says in 1824/25, using the example of slavery and after enumerating all the historical justifications for it, every one of which he rejects: “Historical justification is therefore not sufficient to demonstrate something as rational, and yet this is precisely what matters.”[2] The irreducibility of the two questions could hardly be stated more clearly.
Genesis and validity are made explicit in the presentation that follows at the decisive points. Most determinations will not be treated in full depth with respect to both questions — that would overburden the text — but wherever a determination is recognized as specifically modern and its position within the system needs to be clarified, the distinction is operative.