Abstract
Some commentators on Hegel’s political philosophy have doubted the possibility of a Hegelian theory of global justice. The argument is that Hegel’s theory of international relations is classically realist in an extreme sense: not only is the state the locus of the highest sphere of political right, the only judge between states internationally is ‘history’ rather than any global institution. Thus, Hegel appears to quite radically reject cosmopolitanism and perhaps even the idea of global justice. This essay will sympathetically engage with critics in trying to convince them of another possibility. I will argue that we can uncover a clear theory of global justice in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right with clear connections with recent leading work by contemporary philosophers, such as David Miller and Martha Nussbaum. A Hegelian theory of global justice is possible and, I will try to argue, attractive.
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Notes
- 1.
See G.W.F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A. Wood, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) [hereafter PR], §§321-40.
- 2.
This section borrows from Thom Brooks, Hegel’s Political Philosophy: A Systematic Reading of the Philosophy of Right (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 115–20, 174–77.
- 3.
See Hegel, PR, §332: “independent states are primary wholes which can satisfy their own needs internally.” See also ibid., §§259A, 332, 330A; 331; G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on Natural Right and Political Science: The First Philosophy of Right, Heidelberg 1817–1818 with Additions from the Lectures of 1818–1819, trans. J.M. Stewart and P. Hodgson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) [hereafter LNR], §161R; and G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, vol. II, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 1061.
- 4.
See Hegel, PR, §258A.
- 5.
See G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller (Amherst: Humanity Books, 1969/1999), 757: “The worst state, one whose reality least corresponds to the concept [Begriff] [of a State], insofar as it still exists, is still Idea” (translation modified).
- 6.
See Hegel, LNR, §160.
- 7.
See G.W.F. Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic: Part I of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences with the Zusätze, trans. T.F. Geraets, W.A. Suchting, and H.S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), §80A and Thom Brooks, “No Rubber Stamp: Hegel’s Constitutional Monarch,” History of Political Thought 28 (2007): 91–119.
- 8.
See G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind: Part Three of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971) [hereafter PM], §524R.
- 9.
Hegel, PR, §279R (translation modified).
- 10.
This is not to say that Hegel denies the expression of these particular interests in the state. Indeed, the representation of individual interests is reserved for Hegel’s legislative body. However, it is to say that Hegel’s head of state cannot be an elected official. (See Hegel, PR, §§201-6, 298–318.)
- 11.
Hegel, PR, §336.
- 12.
In this way, Hegel can be thought to avoid “the domestic analogy” that “states: international relations = individuals: domestic realm” that some have found problematic. (See Chiara Bottici, “The Domestic Analogy and the Kantian Project of Perpetual Peace,” Journal of Political Philosophy 11 (2003), 392–410.)
- 13.
The few exceptions include David Boucher, Political Theories of International Relations: From Thucydides to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 343 and Kenneth R. Westphal, “The Basic Context and Structure of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 260.
- 14.
Hegel, PR, §329 (translation modified).
- 15.
See Hegel, PR, §§329, 331.
- 16.
See Hegel, PM, §544 and Hegel, PR, §301A.
- 17.
Hegel, PR, §321 (translation modified) [“Der Staat hat in dieser Bestimmung Individualität, welche wesentlich als Individuum, und in Souverän als wirkliches, unmittelbares Individuum ist.”]
- 18.
See Hegel, LNR, §161.
- 19.
See Hegel, PR, §333R: “There is no praetor to adjudicate between states.”
- 20.
For example, see J. N. Findlay, Hegel: A Re-examination (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1958), 326; Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (2nd ed.) (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, [1941] 1955), 222; John Plamenatz, Man and Society, vol. 2 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1963), 260–61; and Hugh A. Reyburn, The Ethical Theory of Hegel: A Study of the Philosophy of Right (Oxford: Clarendon, 1921), 256.
- 21.
See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1651] 1996), 244 [chapter 31].
- 22.
See Hobbes, Leviathan, 111 [chapter 16].
- 23.
Hobbes, Leviathan, 90 [chapter 13].
- 24.
See Hegel, PM, §545.
- 25.
See Hegel, LNR, §160R.
- 26.
See Hegel, LNR, §162 and Hegel, PR, §§333R, 334.
- 27.
Hegel, PR, §324R.
- 28.
Hegel, LNR, §162R.
- 29.
See Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46 (1992), 391–425 and also Alexander Wendt, “Collective Identity Formation and the International State,” American Political Science Review 88 (1994), 384–96; and Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). For the opposite view of anarchy, see Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, [1959] 2001), 160.
- 30.
See Hegel, PR, §333.
- 31.
Hegel, PR, §331R (translation modified).
- 32.
For example, see Boucher, Political Theories of International Relations, 342–44. On the master and slave example, see G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 111–19. See also an illuminating account of the master and slave by Robert Stern in his masterful Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit (London: Routledge, 2002), 71–85.
- 33.
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 114.
- 34.
The relevant passage—found in Hegel, PM, §435A—occurs in the section “Acknowledging Self-consciousness [Das anerkennende Selbstbewußtsein]” within Hegel’s discussion of “Consciousness as Such [Das Bewußtsein als solches]” in the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit “[Die Phänomenologie des Geistes]” section of his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences.
- 35.
See Hegel, PM, §432A.
- 36.
See Hegel, PR, §331R.
- 37.
Hegel, PR, §182A.
- 38.
I therefore disagree rather strongly with Hans-Martin Jaeger. (See Thom Brooks, “Hegel’s Theory of International Politics: A Reply to Jaeger,” Review of International Studies 30 (2004), 149–52 and Hans-Martin Jaeger, “Hegel’s Reluctant Realism and the Transnationalisation of Civil Society,” Review of International Studies 28 (2002), 497–517.)
- 39.
For example, see David Boucher, “British Idealist International Theory,” Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 31 (1995), 73 (“Hegel’s ill-deserved, but not wholly unfounded, reputation as a brutal realist”); Brooks, “Hegel’s Theory of International Politics,” 149–52; Kimberley Hutchings, International Political Theory: Rethinking Ethics in a Global Era (London: Sage, 1999), 94 (Hegel “is acknowledged as a key figure in realism”). See also Chris Brown, Terry Nardin, and Nicholas Rengger, eds., International Relations in Political Thought: Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 462, 465 and Chris Brown, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 66.
- 40.
Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1962), 153.
- 41.
See Brooks, “Hegel’s Theory of International Politics,” 149.
- 42.
See Joseph M. Grieco, Cooperation Among Nations: Europe, America, and Non-Tariff Barriers to Trade (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 3–4.
- 43.
See Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979), 102.
- 44.
See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 79–128.
- 45.
See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 93–94; Robert O. Keohane, “Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond,” in Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. Robert O. Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 163–65.
- 46.
I therefore disagree with David Boucher who argues that “any resemblance between the conclusions of Hegel and those of the Realists will be to some extent coincidental … [because Hegel] rejects the philosophical foundations of Realism, that is, the use of nature as a criterion of conduct.” (Boucher, Political Theories of International Relations, 339.) I disagree because it seems clear on my reading that Hegel does not, in fact, reject realism, in endorsing realism’s four main characteristics. If I am correct to argue that Hegel does support this view of realism, then it is difficult to see why precisely we would be mistaken to understand his theory of international relations as a realist theory of international relations even if we found insubstantial differences between Hegel’s views and the views of other realists.
- 47.
On global justice, see Thom Brooks, ed., The Global Justice Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008).
- 48.
For example, see David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) and Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2008).
- 49.
See Hegel, PR, §338.
- 50.
My understanding of identity and global ethics is indebted to the work of my dear friend, Bhikhu Parekh. (See Bhikhu Parekh, A New Politics of Identity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.)
- 51.
See Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice, 17 and David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 49–80, reprinted in Brooks, The Global Justice Reader, 284–305.
- 52.
See Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice, 39 and David Miller, “Cosmopolitanism: A Critique,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 5 (2002), 80–85. See also Thom Brooks, “Cosmopolitanism and Distributing Responsibilities,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 5 (2002). 92–97, at 92–93. While Miller does refer to these examples, he does not use any formal identifying name for this and other examples.
- 53.
Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice, 37.
- 54.
Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice, 39.
- 55.
Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice, 125.
- 56.
Thomas Pogge, “Cosmopolitanism: A Defence,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 5 (2002), 86–91, at 87. See also Frances Myrna Kamm, “The New Problem of Distance in Morality,” in her Intricate Ethics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 368–97.
- 57.
Pogge, “Cosmopolitanism,” 91.
- 58.
In personal correspondence, Miller has confirmed that he does accept this. Nor should this be surprising as it appears to be wholly consistent with his position.
- 59.
See Martha C. Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” in For Love of Country? Debating the Limits of Patriotism, ed. Joshua Cohen (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), 2–17, 145, reprinted in Brooks, The Global Justice Reader, 306–14. References will be to The Global Justice Reader.
- 60.
Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” 309.
- 61.
Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” 312–13. See Andrew Dobson, “Thick Cosmopolitanism,” Political Studies 54 (2006), 165–84.
- 62.
See Hegel, PR, §49R.
- 63.
See Hegel, PR, §75.
- 64.
See Hegel, PR, §§82-104 on “wrong” [das Unrecht].
- 65.
While my focus will be on organized religion, I do not want to suggest that non-organized religions fail to offer an equally significant source of shared identity.
- 66.
On Miller’s view that nations support a public culture and public goods, see Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice, 131.
- 67.
See Hegel, PR, §§252-53.
- 68.
It might also be said that professional philosophers enjoy a public culture celebrating eye-opening teaching, critical discussion of ideas, and publication.
- 69.
Part of this essay was presented to a workshop coordinated by the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature (CSMN) at the University of Oslo. My most sincere thanks to this audience and also David Boucher, Fabian Freyenhagen, Kim Hutchings, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Raino Malnes, David Miller, Bob Stern, Leif Wenar, and Andrew Williams for helpful comments and discussions. I am most thankful to Andrew Buchwalter for the kind invitation to contribute to this important collection.
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Brooks, T. (2012). Between Statism and Cosmopolitanism: Hegel and the Possibility of Global 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_4
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