Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns

Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns constitutes an extremely valuable and original contribution to the study of the genealogy of modernity and of bourgeois culture.Joseph A. Buttigieg, editor, The Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci Domenico Losurdo is one of the great contemporary authorities on Hegel; his work needs to be known in the English-speaking world.Fredric Jameson, Duke University

Domenico Losurdo is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Urbino and President of the International Hegel-Marx Society for Dialectical Thought. He is the author of numerous books in Italian.

Translators Note xii Hegel Source Abbreviations xv Preface to the Italian Edition xvii ONE. A Liberal, Secret Hegel? I. Searching for the Authentic Hegel 3 1. Censorship and Self-Censorship 3 2. Linguistic Self-Censorship and Theoretical Compromise 9 3. Private Dimension and Philosophical Dimension 14 4. Hegel...a Mason? 16 5. Esoteric and Exoteric History 20 6. Philosophical Arguments and Political Facts 23 7. An Interpretative Misunderstanding or a Real Contradiction? 26 II. The Philosophies of Right: A Turning Point or Continuity 32 1. Reason and Actuality 32 2. The Power of Sovereign 39 3. One Turn, Two Turns, or No Turn at All 46 TWO. Hegel, Marx, and the Liberal Tradition III. Contractualism and the Modern State 53 1. Anticontractualism=Antiliberalism? 53 2. Contractualism and the Doctrine of Natural Law 56 3. Liberal Anticontractualism 58 4. The Celebration of Nature and the Ideology of Reactionism 60 5. Hegel and Feudal, Proto-Bourgeois Contractualism 64 6. Contractualism and the Modern State 67 IV Conservative or Liberal? A False Dilemma 71 1. Bobbios Dilemma 71 2. Authority and Freedom 72 3. State and Individual 78 4. The Right to Resistance 83 5. The Right of Extreme Need and Individual Rights 87 6. Formal and Substantive Freedom 90 7. Interpretative Categories and Ideological Presuppositions 92 V Hegel and the Liberal Tradition: Two Opposing Interpretations of History 96 1. Hegel and Revolutions 96 2. Revolutions from the Bottom-Up or from the Top-Down 100 3. Revolution According to the Liberal Tradition 103 4. Patricians and Plebeians 107 5. Monarchy and Republic 111 6. The Repression of the Aristocracy and the March Toward Freedom 113 7. Anglophobia and Anglophilia 116 8. Hegel, England, and the Liberal Tradition 118 9. Equality and Freedom 120 VI The Intellectual, Property, and the Social Question 124 1. Theoretical Categories and Immediate Political Options 124 2. The Individual and Institutions 128 3. Institutions and the Social Question 131 4. Labor and Otium 133 5. Intellectuals and Property-Owners 138 6. Property and Political Representations 141 7. Intellectuals and Craftsmen 142 8. A Banausic, Plebeian Hegel? 145 9. The Social Question and Industrial Society 148 THREE. Legitimacy and Contradictions of Modernity VII Right, Violence, and Notrecht 153 1. War and the Right to Property: Hegel and Locke 153 2. From the Ius Necessitatis to the Right of Extreme Need 155 3. The Contradictions of Modern Economic Development 157 4. Notrecht and Self-Defense: Locke, Fichte, and Hegel 160 5. Negative Judgment,Negatively Infinite Judgment, and Rebellion 163 6. Notrecht, Ancien Regime, and Modernity 166 7. The Starving Man and the Slave 169 8. Ius Necessitatis, Ius Resistentiae, Notrecht 171 9. The Conflicts of Right with Moral Intention and Extreme Need 172 10. An Unsolved Problem 177 VII Agora and Schole: Rousseau, Hegel, and the Liberal Tradition 180 1. The Image of Ancient Times in France and Germany 180 2. Cynics, Monks, Quakers, Anabaptist, and Sansculottes 181 3. Rousseau, the Poor Peoples Grudge, and Jacobinism 183 4. Politics and Economics in Rousseau and Hegel 186 5. The Social Question and Taxation 189 6. State, Contract, and Joint-Stock Company 193 7. Christianity, Human Rights, and the Community of Citoyens 195 8. The Liberal Tradition and Criticism of Rousseau and Hegel 199 9. Defense of the Individual and Criticism of Liberalism 200 IX School, Division of Labor, and Modern Mans Freedom 204 1. School, State, and the French Revolution 204 2. Compulsory Education and Freedom of Conscience 206 3. School, State, Church, and Family 210 4. The Rights of Children 213 5. School, Stability, and Social Mobility 215 6. Professions and the Division of Labor 220 7. Division of Labor and Banality of Modernity: Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche 222 X Moral Tensi