1.Along with J. G. Fichte and F. W. J.

von Schelling, Hegel (17701831) belongs to the

period of German idealism in the decades following Kant. The most systematic of
the post-Kantian idealists, Hegel attempted, throughout his published writings as
well as in his lectures, to elaborate a comprehensive and systematic ontology from
a logical starting point. He is perhaps most well-known for his teleological account
of history, an account which was later taken over by Marx and inverted into a
materialist theory of an historical development culminating in communism. For most
of the twentieth century, the logical side of Hegel's thought had been largely
forgotten, but his political and social philosophy continued to find interest and
support. However, since the 1970s, a degree of more general philosophical interest
in Hegel's systematic thought has also been revived.
2. Given the understanding of Hegel that predominated at the time of the birth of
analytic philosophy, together with the fact that early analytic philosophers were
rebelling precisely against Hegelianism so understood, the Hegel encountered in
discussions within analytic philosophy is often that of the late nineteenth-century
interpretation. In this picture, Hegel is seen as offering a metaphysico-religious view
of God qua Absolute Spirit, as the ultimate reality that we can come to know
through pure thought processes alone. In short, Hegel's philosophy is treated as
exemplifying the type of pre-critical or dogmatic metaphysics against which Kant
had reacted in his Critique of Pure Reason, and as a return to a more religiously
driven conception of philosophy to which Kant had been opposed.
There is much that can be found in Hegel's writings that seems to support this view.
In his lectures during his Berlin period one comes across claims such as the one that
philosophy has no other object but God and so is essentially rational theology.
Indeed, Hegel often seems to invoke imagery consistent with the types of neoPlatonic conceptions of the universe that had been common within Christian
mysticism, especially in the German states, in the early modern period. The
peculiarity of Hegel's form of idealism, on this account, lies in his idea that the mind
of God becomes actual only via its particularization in the minds of his finite
material creatures. Thus, in our consciousness of God, we somehow serve to realize
his own self-consciousness, and, thereby, his own perfection.
3. An important consequence of Hegel's metaphysics, so understood, concerns
history and the idea of historical development or progress, and it is as an advocate
of an idea concerning the logically-necessitated teleological course of history that
Hegel is most often derided. To critics such as Karl Popper (1945), Hegel had not
only advocated a disastrous political conception of the state and the relation of its
citizens to it, a conception prefiguring twentieth-century totalitarianism, but he had
also tried to underpin such advocacy with dubious theo-logico-metaphysical
speculations. With his idea of the development of spirit in history, Hegel is seen as
literalising a way of talking about different cultures in terms of their spirits, of
constructing a developmental sequence of epochs typical of nineteenth-century

ideas of linear historical progress, and then enveloping this story of human progress
in terms of one about the developing self-conscious of the cosmos-God itself.
As the bottom line of such an account concerned the evolution of states of a mind
(God's), such an account is clearly an idealist one, but not in the sense, say, of
Berkeley. The pantheistic legacy inherited by Hegel meant that he had no problem
in considering an objective outer world beyond any particular subjective mind. But
this objective world itself had to be understood as conceptually informed: it
was objectified spirit. Thus in contrast to Berkeleian subjective idealism it became
common to talk of Hegel as incorporating the objective idealism of views,
especially common among German historians, in which social life and thought were
understood in terms of the conceptual or spiritual structures that informed them.
But in contrast to both forms of idealism, Hegel, according to this reading,
postulated a form of absolute idealism by including both subjective life and the
objective cultural practices on which subjective life depended within the dynamics
of the development of the self-consciousness and self-actualisation of God, the
Absolute Spirit.

The philosophy of right

The text proper starts from the conception of a singular willing subject (grasped
from its own first-person point of view) as the bearer of abstract right. While this
conception of the individual willing subject with some kind of fundamental right is in
fact the starting pointof many modern political philosophies (such as that of Locke,
for example) the fact that Hegel commences here does not testify to any ontological
assumption that the consciously willing and right-bearing individual is the
basic atom from which all society can be understood as constructedan idea at the
heart of standard social contract theories. Rather, this is merely the most
immediate starting point of Hegel's presentation and corresponds to analogous
starting places of the Logic. Just as the categories of the Logic develop in a way
meant to demonstrate that what had at the start been conceived as simple is in fact
only made determinate in virtue of its being part of some larger structure or
process, here too it is meant to be shown that any simple willing and right-bearing
subject only gains its determinacy in virtue of a place it finds for itself in a
larger social, and ultimately historical, structure or process. Thus, even a
contractual exchange (the minimal social interaction for contract theorists) is not to
be thought simply as an occurrence consequent upon the existence of two beings
with natural wants and some natural calculative rationality; rather, the system of
interaction within which individual exchanges take place (the economy) will be
treated holistically as a culturally-shaped form of social life within which the actual
wants of individuals as well as their reasoning powers are given determinate forms.

Here too it becomes apparent that Hegel follows Fichte in treating property in terms
of arecognitive analysis of the nature of such a right. A contractual exchange of
commodities between two individuals itself involves an implicit act of recognition in
as much as each, in giving something to the other in exchange for what they want,
is thereby recognizing that other as a proprietor of that thing, or, more properly, of
the inalienable value attaching to it. By contrast, such proprietorship would
be denied rather than recognised in fraud or theftforms of wrong (Unrecht) in
which right is negated rather than acknowledged or posited. Thus what
differentiates property from mere possession is that it is grounded in a relation of
reciprocal recognition between two willing subjects. Moreover, it is in the exchange
relation that we can see what it means for Hegel for individual subjects to share a
common willan idea which will have important implications with respect to the
difference of Hegel's conception of the state from that of Rousseau. Such an
interactive constitution of the common will means that for Hegel such an identity of
will is achieved because of not in spite of a co-existing difference between the
particular wills of the subjects involved: while contracting individuals both will the
sameexchange, at a more concrete level, they do so with different ends in mind.
Each wants something different from the exchange.
First of all, in Hegel's analysis of Sittlichkeit the type of sociality found in the marketbased civil society is to be understood as dependent upon and in contrastive
opposition with the more immediate form found in the institution of the family: a
form of sociality mediated by a quasi-natural inter-subjective recognition rooted in
sentiment and feeling, love. Here Hegel seems to have extended
Fichte's legally characterized notion of recognition into the types of human
intersubjectivity earlier broached by Hlderlin. In the family the particularity of each
individual tends to be absorbed into the social unit, giving this manifestation
of Sittlichkeit a one-sidedness that is the inverse of that found in market relations in
which participants grasp themselves in the first instance as separate individuals
who then enter into relationships that are external to them.
Perhaps one of the most influential parts of Hegel's Philosophy of Right concerns his
analysis of the contradictions of the unfettered capitalist economy. On the one hand,
Hegel agreed with Adam Smith that the interlinking of productive activities allowed
by the modern market meant that subjective selfishness turned into a
contribution towards the satisfaction of the needs of everyone else. But this did
not mean that he accepted Smith's idea that this general plenty produced
thereby diffused (or trickled down ) though the rest of society. From within the
type of consciousness generated within civil society, in which individuals are
grasped as bearers of rights abstracted from the particular concrete relationships
to which they belong, Smithean optimism may seem justified. But this simply
attests to the one-sidedness of this type of abstract thought, and the need for it to
be mediated by the type of consciousness based in the family in which individuals
are grasped in terms of the way they belong to the social body. In fact, the

unfettered operation of the market produces a class caught in a spiral of poverty.

Starting from this analysis, Marx later used it as evidence of the need to abolish the
individual proprietorial rights at the heart of Hegel's civil society and socialise the
means of production. Hegel, however, did not draw this conclusion. His conception
of the exchange contract as a form of recognition that played an essential role
within the state's capacity to provide the conditions for the existence of rational and
free-willing subjects would certainly prevent such a move. Rather, the economy was
to be contained within an over-arching institutional framework of the state, and its
social effects offset by welfarist state intervention.

Paideia
The ancient Greek city state or polis was thought to be an educational community,
expressed by the Greek term paideia. The purpose of politicalthat is civic or city
life was the self-development of the citizens. This meant more than just education,
which is how paideia is usually translated. Education for the Greeks involved a
deeply formative and life-long process whose goal was for each person (read: man)
to be an asset to his friends, to his family, and, most important, to the polis.
Becoming such an asset necessitated internalizing and living up to the highest
ethical ideals of the community. So paideia included education in the arts,
philosophy and rhetoric, history, science, and mathematics; training in sports and
warfare; enculturation or learning of the city's religious, social, political, and
professional customs and training to participate in them; and the development of
one's moral character through the virtues. Above all, the person should have a keen
sense of duty to the city. Every aspect of Greek culture in the Classical Agefrom
the arts to politics and athleticswas devoted to the development of personal
powers in public service.
Paideia was inseparable from another Greek concept: arete or excellence, especially
excellence of reputation but also goodness and excellence in all aspects of life.
Together paideia and arteform one process of self-development, which is nothing
other than civic-development. Thus one could only develop himself in politics,
through participation in the activities of the polis; and as individuals developed the
characteristics of virtue, so would the polis itself become more virtuous and
excellent.
All persons, whatever their occupations or tasks, were teachers, and the purpose of
educationwhich was political life itselfwas to develop a greater (a nobler,
stronger, more virtuous) public community. So politics was more than regulating or
ordering the affairs of the community; it was also a school for ordering the lives
internal and externalof the citizens. Therefore, the practice of Athenian

democratic politics was not only a means of engendering good policies for the city,
but it was also a curriculum for the intellectual, moral, and civic education of her
citizens. [A]sk in general what great benefit the state derives from the training
by which it educates its citizens, and the reply will be perfectly straightforward. The
good education they have received will make them good men (Plato, Laws,
641b710). Indeed, later in the Lawsthe Athenian remarks that education should be
designed to produce the desire to become perfect citizens who know, preceding
Aristotle, how to rule and be ruled (643e46).
Constitutional Paideia
Constitutional paideia is a term I shall use to designate a form of constitutionalism
that construes a nation's constitution essentially in terms of ongoing processes of
collective self-formation.(1) As such, it is markedly distinct from competing models.
It is distinct from liberal models, notably represented today by John Rawls, for whom
a constitution must "guarantee certain basic political rights and liberties and
establish democratic procedures for moderating the political rivalry, and for
determining issues of social policy."(2) While constitutional paideia is not chary of
liberal concern for legal and moral constraints, it rejects the latter's commitment to
entrenched rights and a fixed sense of a nation's legal-political identity. It is likewise
distinct from communitarian models, represented however ambiguously by Frank
Michelman. While sharing with such models a focus on communal identity, its
commitment to processes of self-formation renders constitutional inhospitable to a
theory keyed to a set of preexisting cultural valuesthat "more encompassing
common life, bearing the imprint of a common past."(3) Constitutional paideia is
distinct further from republican models, represented equally ambiguously by
Hannah Arendt. Although it shares with republicanism the notion that
constitutionalism must be sensitive to principles of public virtue, collective power,
and civic commitment to a shared enterprise, it places special emphasis on the
conditions for constituting collective identity and nationhood itself.(4) Constitutional
paideia is also distinct from deliberative models, represented notably by Jrgen
Habermas, for whom "the constitution establishes political procedures according to
which citizens, in the exercise of their right to self-determination, successfully
pursue the cooperative project of establishing just (or more just) conditions of
life."(5) While constitutional paideia is committed to the proposition that a
constitution facilitates public reflection on ends of communal life, it claims
additionally that collective deliberation denotes a process whereby a people itself is
constituted and reconstituted. (6)
The proposition that Hegel fashions a notion of constitutional paideia may seem
prima facie implausible. Here I refer, however, not to the monarchical component of
Hegelian constitutionalism, a component whose significance is regularly
exaggerated. A more serious objection to the notion that Hegelian constitutionalism
denotes processes of self-formation derives from Hegel's rejection of the
Enlightenment view that a constitution can be a formal-legislative enactment, a

construction (ein Gemachtes). He rejects this view because it fails to acknowledge

the degree to which a people is always already constituted. The notion that a
constitution could be an explicit act of creation is proper to the liberal conviction
that, outside formal institutions, individuals are isolated atoms who are related to
one another in the formless "shape" of an aggregate. Yet this view, aside from the
injustice it may do to a concept of human nature, misconstrues political action
(constitution-making included), which is unintelligible unless individuals are already
related to one another in some constituted manner.(7)
Hegel's point is not to deny place in political life to a more formal notion of the
constitution, one based on publicly recognized procedures guaranteeing individual
liberties. A theoretician of the modern constitutional state, he, too, specifies the
framework for a constitution faithful to the liberal principle of the rule of law. His
thesis is only that what he calls the "political constitution"(12)(Konstitution) cannot
be identified with the constitution as such (Verfassung). The latter denotes that
broader assemblage of norms, institutions, and customs that defines a nation and
gives meaning and validity to particular institutions, formal agreements and
procedures included.(13)
From this, however, it cannot be concluded that Hegel's is, after all, a
communitarian approach to constitutionalism. What is unique in his effort to embed
a constitution within the culture a people is precisely the degree to which this itself
mandates processes of constitutional learning. Precisely because a constitution
does express the living "spirit" of a people, it must accommodate processes through
which a culture routinely refashions inherited traditions so as to ensure their
applicability to changing social circumstances. If a constitution cannot be made, it
can and must be renewed (verjngert)(14) if it is to retain vitality. Indeed, far from
employing the language of construction, Hegel explicitly adopts that of
"interpretation" (Auslegung).(15) Understood as a transmitted legacy whose vitality
requires renewal, a constitution depends on a community of interpreters who
reappropriate and clarify legal-political traditions, principles, institutions in light of
present realities.(16)
Little wonder then that Hegel assigns constitutional pride of place to the legislature,
which he asserts is a "part" of the constitution and not just, as with the executive
and the crown, a branch of government subject to it. By so identifying
constitutionalism with parliamentarianism and, particularly, parliamentary debate,
Hegel accommodates the "new and further determination" that a constitution
requires for its continued legitimacy.(17) By identifying the constitution primarily
with processes of collective deliberation, he reaffirms the thesis that a constitution
"essentially . . . becomes, i.e., it advances via learning (Bildung)."(18)
Hegel's point is not simply that constitutionalism depends on processes of collective
self-formation but that it itself is that process. This follows from his identification of
a constitution with the Volksgeist. For Hegel, the legitimacy of a particular Volksgeist

is measured on the standard of achieved and achieving processes of self-formation:

the genuine spirit of a people is reflected in its ability cognitively to identify with the
traditions shaping it. The Volksgeist is the "free substance which knows
itself."(19) Yet this self-knowing process defines the Bildungprozess itselfthat
"transition from an ethical substantiality which is immediate and natural to one
which is infinitely subjective, at once reflexive and raised to shape of
universality."(20) Thus in equating the constitution with Volksgeist, Hegel likewise
equates a constitution with popular processes of self- cultivation. All constitutions
are "internal developments of the Volksgeist; each expresses "a Volksgeist as it
develops itself in history."(21) Hegel may claim that no one formally makes a
constitution, but this is only because constitutionalism itself connotes the organic
process through which an entire culture shapes, constitutes, and indeed "makes
itself."(22)
Thus while Hegel accentuates the cultural situatedness of a constitution, he is not
thereby barred from prioritizing processes of historical learning and collective selfcultivation. Instead, structures of historical embeddedness and progressive paideia
are, for Hegel, two sides of a common coin. One does justice to the historicity of a
constitution by relating it to the "lived" culture that gives its authority legitimacy,
and yet this vitality can be assured only through learning processes, including
above all processes of collective self-interpretation. For Hegel, constitutional history,
like history generally, records not "the becoming of things foreign to us, but the
becoming of ourselves and our own self-knowledge."(23)
In this respect Hegel's theory can be instructively compared to that of Bruce
Ackerman.(32) Like Ackerman, Hegel advances an emphatic notion of constitutional
politics, one accounting for systematic alteration of constitutional principles via
ongoing processes of popular self-constitution. With Ackerman, Hegel also
recognizes that an account of constitutional change must accommodate larger
cultural forces and cannot be restricted to any formal amendment process. On the
other hand, Hegel would reject Ackerman's contraposition of constitutional to
ordinary or everyday politics. He would, in particular, reject Ackerman's Kuhnianinspired view that change occurs through radical, episodic shifts operating outside
ordinary political and legislative life. Claiming instead that constitutional change
transpires through gradual transformations in a culture's self-understanding, Hegel
would argue that everyday politics also thematizes constitutional issues, and any
difference between the two is more of degree than kind. Hegel thus anticipates
Michelman, who construes constitutional change "more like a movement from
margin to centera shift of attentionthan . . . the total replacement of one `world'
by another."(33) Conversely, Hegel would insists that even constitutional politics
must be subject to the legal constraints that govern ordinary legislation and
administration. While constitutionalism cannot be defined in terms of rights
foundationalism, it also cannot be abandoned to the whims of subinstitutional
populism. In a philosophy of law understood at once as Naturrecht und

Staatswissenschaft, a political culture is sustainable only if ordinary legislation is

capable of broaching constitutional questions and constitutional politics is not
exempt from the formal constraints regulating ordinary parliamentary activity.(34)
A similar point can be made by noting the sense in which constitutional learning, for
Hegel, is a process of collective self-education. Here two matters are of import. The
first involves the relation of metaphysics and politics, always accentuated by Hegel.
As noted, Hegel claims that constitutional paideia, like Bildung generally, is
regulated by the logic of self-knowing subjectivity that defines his metaphysics. This
is to say, however, that the process of Bildung is itself governed by certain general
norms. To be successful, this process must meet general criteria of subjectivity,
selfhood, correspondence, self-agreement, reflective appropriationcriteria
permitting differentiation between genuine and spurious forms of self-cultivation.
What precisely these standards are and how they are to be determined is, naturally,
a difficult matter. Clear, though, is that in asserting that the Bildungsprozess must
express the "shape of universality,"(39) Hegel proffers a notion of constitutional
paideia able to challenge the self-understanding of a particular legal community.
(40) Second, in line with his social theory, Hegel maintains that the identity of a
culture presupposes an openness to other cultures, including a limine other
interpretations of its own culture. He makes the point when arguing that, as regards
the nation-state, constitutional law (das innere Staatsrecht), presupposes
international law (das ussere Staatsrecht). "Without relations with other states, the
state can no more be an actual individual [Individuum] than an individual [der
Einzelne] can be an actual person with relationship with other persons. . . . The
legitimacy of a state . . . is essentially to be completed through the recognition of
other states."(41)While Hegel does define a constitution in terms of communal selfinterpretation, his account of the logic of such interpretation incorporates a pluralist
sensitivity that challenges rather than reinforces a given cultural context.