Commentary on the Philosophy of Right, Chapter 9
Conclusion
The conceptual-logical course of the Philosophy of Right can be summarized retrospectively as follows: the free will must realize itself in the world, otherwise it is not free. It does this by setting itself ends and using means to realize them — the teleological structure of the logic of the concept becomes, in objective spirit, the philosophy of the real of conscious human action. In abstract right, the will posits itself in the thing (property), in exchange (contract), and in defense against wrong. In morality, it withdraws into itself and becomes conscience. Right and morality are each, taken by themselves, one-sided; their truth is ethical life, in which family, civil society, and state are articulated.
The decisive point for a present-day reading is the juncture at which civil society and state meet. Hegel sees the contradiction — the rabble — and identifies it with conceptual sharpness. He has developed the teleological inversion, in which the means turns against the end, within the Logic itself; he knows that mere life — including social life — cannot distinguish between successful and parasitic self-preservation. What he cannot accomplish with his own means is the economic analysis of its necessity. Marx accomplishes this analysis, methodologically in a Hegelian manner — not as an objection to the architecture, but as its concretization at a point Hegel himself had left open. Pistor shows today, at the level of form, what this economic structure means legally, and opens up a question of substance that in Marx still seemed closed by the labor theory of value. Todd shows that the familial preconditions of political form are not arbitrary. Neither is a refutation of Hegel, but empirical concretions without which his architecture would today remain empty.
The methodological lesson is the one with which we began. Hegel’s Logic is not empirical derivation, but neither is it a mere search scheme; it is an ordering form of conceptual necessity, showing which determinations must emerge from one another when freedom realizes itself institutionally. Teleology and the Idea of cognition and volition are not, in this, arbitrary stations of the Logic, but a bracket in which conscious human action becomes conceptually graspable: as the setting of ends, the use of means, the realization of ends — and as the ever-threatening inversion in which the means turns against the end. Whoever reads the Philosophy of Right without this bracket loses its inner necessity; whoever reads it without the Marxian concretion loses its sharpness against reality; whoever reads Marx without the Hegelian bracket loses the methodological substance of his analysis. The three readings together are only the whole reading. It must nonetheless be recalled that the teleological bracket does not explain everything that requires explanation in the whole material: it makes the structure of inversion visible, but it does not by itself supply the specific economic form-determination of capital. That comes from the analysis of the value-form, of wage labor, of competition, and of accumulation — an analysis that lies beyond the architecture of the Philosophy of Right and must be carried out in a volume of its own.
So that the line developed through this text is not read as too smooth a synthesis, its real fracture points must finally be marked.
First, regarding Hegel: if the thesis is that Hegel remains, in his philosophy of the state, “too reconciliatory,” what is meant by this must be differentiated. Three layers must be distinguished. The logical and methodological core of the Hegelian position — the state as the place where the universal becomes conscious; ethical life as the sphere in which the reasonable is to become practical; the task of a mediating instance that brings together what has fallen apart in civil society — is load-bearing and is not refuted by the critique. Even the Eastern Bloc’s Marxist reception had largely adopted this core and believed it could regard its own state as the true realization of what Hegel had conceptually demanded. Hegel’s linguistic expression in certain passages, by contrast, goes too far — he formulates as though reconciliation were already accomplished, where the matter designates a task. This layer of diction is Hegel’s own contribution to the difficulty he posed for his reception, and it does not disappear even on a careful reading. Finally, the time-bound assumption that in the state of Hegel’s time (Napoleonic reform-era Prussia) the unity of cognition and volition was already realized — an assumption historically unfulfilled and asserted by Hegel himself more strongly than the matter can bear. Whoever distinguishes these three layers recognizes that Marx’s critique hits chiefly the second and third layers, while the logical core can be brought out as what it is: a demand that coincides neither with Hegel’s own diction nor with the state of his time.
Second, regarding Marx: Marx criticizes not only Hegel’s language, but also real political constructions — the estates, the crown, inheritance law in the sense of Hegel’s exposition, the bureaucracy as an accomplished reconciliation. These real critiques are not sublated by a sympathetic reading of Hegel; they remain as a difference. What mainly distinguishes Marx from Hegel and Gans is the detailed economic analysis of the circumstances that produce the rabble — an analysis that neither Hegel nor Gans accomplished, and which is the condition for the Hegelian demand (the circumstances must disappear) to be concretely operationalized.
Third, regarding Gans: Gans is a bridge, but not yet Marx. He thinks in a Hegelian spirit — cognition of reality, cognition of circumstances, right action arising from this cognition — and applies this consistently to the rabble, where Hegel himself still hesitated. His statement “the rabble must disappear” means, in substance: the circumstances that produce the rabble must disappear. What Gans does not accomplish is the detailed economic analysis of these circumstances; he holds fast to the Hegelian concept of property and seeks the solution in the free corporation. He makes visible the step that lies between Hegel and Marx, without yet taking it.
Fourth, regarding Pistor: Pistor supplements Marx at the level of legal form, but does not replace him. What Pistor shows — the coding of capital through private legal modules — is a concretion of the Marxian analysis, not an alternative to it; the question of substance that Marx sought to close with the labor theory of value remains open, but the economic form-determination that he developed is not replaced by Pistor, but carried forward onto another level.
Fifth, regarding teleology: the teleological bracket explains the structure of inversion — the immanent possibility that the means turns against the end — but it does not alone explain why this inversion becomes system-sustaining in capitalist relations. That is explained only by the analysis of the specific economic forms, which must be carried out in a volume of its own.
Whoever carries along these five fracture points loses nothing of the developed line; he only sees it more clearly, because he knows the places where it does not grow together smoothly, but where the concretions must do their own work.
A philosophy of right that wants to write today can go back neither behind Hegel nor behind Marx. It must retrace the conceptual-logical course and carry along the economic concretion — as two sides of the same matter. It must leave open the open questions that are open: what conscious ethical life looks like, whether and how the state can fulfill what Hegel charges it with, in what relationship economic coding and political form stand to one another. And it must recognize that the answer to these questions is not to be found in theory, but on the terrain of political practice — a terrain that subjects must fight for themselves, because no instance will give it to them.
This is the task this attempt serves: not to assert a new synthesis, but to clear the ground so that the question itself can be posed again. Reconciliation in the Hegelian sense does not mean that the unreasonable is accepted as reasonable, but that the reasonable is made practical.