Abstract
Hegel’s account of war in the Philosophy of Right is a significant expression of Hegel’s understanding of the importance of mutual recognition in social and political life. Its deployment evokes and relates to Hegel’s account of the struggle for recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Just as the account in the Phenomenology of Spirit invokes an imagined emergency situation in the life and death struggle to highlight the existential importance of recognition, so war serves to underline the life and death issues at stake in the commitments of citizenship. War exhibits the fragility of social and political order and points to the overwhelming need of individuals to recognize the duties of citizenship. War, however, is only one mode in which citizens recognize themselves to be citizens, just as social recognition underpins the entire development of knowledge that is charted in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel’s emphasis upon recognition in his remarks on war and on institutional maintenance underpins his rejection of internationalism and his repudiation of cosmopolitan norms of justice. Justice, for Hegel, is about the maintenance and development of conditions of right in particular ethical communities.
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Notes
- 1.
The nature of this claim and its argumentative support will be made clear in the course of the paper. It relies on affinities between the two depictions of recognition rather than express testimony by Hegel. An emphasis upon what might be termed the existential dimension of war is argued for by Geiger in Ido Geiger, The Founding Act of Modern Ethical Life: Hegel’s Critique of Kant’s Moral and Political Philosophy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007).
- 2.
Pinkard’s recent biography of Hegel is a model of considered, thoughtful scholarship, but its identification of Hegel as a cautious moderate reformer does not do justice to his imaginative and at times excessive prose. See Terry Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
- 3.
G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J.B. Baillie (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971); Phaenomenologie des Geistes (1807), in Werke: Theorie Werkausgabe 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), 82–84.
- 4.
See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976).
- 5.
For a radical reading of Hegel, which emphasizes the positive role of work on the part of the slave in the Phenomenology of Spirit, see Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (New York: Basic Books, 1960).
- 6.
Phenomenology of Mind; Werke 3.
- 7.
Terry Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
- 8.
G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967) [hereafter PR]; Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oderNaturrecht und Staatswissenscahft (1821), Werke 7.
- 9.
G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, trans. William Wallace and A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); Enzklopedie der philosophischen Wissenschaften vol. 3 (1817), Werke 9.
- 10.
PR, 37–57; Werke 7, 41–79.
- 11.
PR, 56–64; Werke 7, 79–87.
- 12.
PR, 75–104; Werke 7, 106–141.
- 13.
PR, 75–104; Werke 7, 106–141.
- 14.
PR, 208; Werke 7, 278.
- 15.
PR, 208; Werke 7, 278.
- 16.
PR, 209; Werke 7, 279.
- 17.
PR, 212; Werke 7, 284.
- 18.
PR, 212–216; Werke 7, 284–289.
- 19.
PR, 215; Werke 7, 287.
- 20.
PR, 215; Werke 7, 287.
- 21.
PR, 215; Werke 7, 287.
- 22.
PR, 215; Werke 7, 287.
- 23.
PR, 216–227; Werke 7, 288–297. See also Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History, trans. Leo Rauch (Indianapolis and Cambridge, Hackett Publishing Company, 1988). Vorlesungen ueber der Geschichte der Philosophie, Werke 7.
- 24.
PR, 216–227; Werke 7. 288–297. See also Introduction to the Philosophy of History.
- 25.
PR, 208; Werke 7, 278.
- 26.
Hegel argues expressly against “abstract” rights, the social contract and utopian rational schemes. The point of his famous Doppelsatz (the rationality of actuality and vice versa) is to rule out such contrivances rather than to adhere strictly to the status quo.
- 27.
See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971) and Robert Nozick, Anarchy State and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974).
- 28.
Note that Hegel’s emphasis upon the constructive activities of Spirit, and his express testimony in his early writings, rule out his subscription to anything like a traditional notion of natural law.
- 29.
For a cogent questioning of the prevalent moralism, see Bernard Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
- 30.
There is an affinity here between Hegel and Wittgenstein in that Wittgenstein is keen to avoid recourse to explanations that are not required to account for an on-going social practice. See, in particular, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §§239-242. For a contemporary translation of this standpoint to international ethics, see Mervyn Frost, Global Ethics (Abingdon Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2009).
- 31.
For a contemporary critique of contemporary cosmopolitan global justice, see David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
- 32.
For the dilemmas arising out of the necessarily bounded character of democratic regimes see Seyla Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism, ed. Robert. Post (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
- 33.
See for instance, David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995); and Ulrich Beck, trans. Kathleen Cross, Power in the Global Age (Cambridge: Polity, 2002).
- 34.
See Ulrich Beck, Power in the Global Age for a radical enthusiastic embrace of the prospective role of the EU and cosmopolitanism more generally.
- 35.
For interesting insights into the indeterminacy of democracy, see Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).
- 36.
For a perceptive review of the state of play on nationalism, see Alan Buchanan and Margaret Moore, Nations, States and Borders (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
- 37.
See Bonnie Honig, Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
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Browning, G. (2012). Hegel on War, Recognition and Justice. In: Buchwalter, A. (eds) Hegel and Global Justice. Studies in Global Justice, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8996-0_10
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