This study examines the philosophical foundations of Hegel's social theory by articulating the normative standards at work in his claim that the central social institutions of the modern era are rational or good.

Hegel's enduring importance lies in the fact that his philosophy sheds light on many contemporary problems; his conception of freedom enables us to reconcile many of the differences that divide liberalism and communitarianism. While liberalism tends to overemphasize the individual and devalue the community, communitarianism tends to do the reverse. One of his central aims is to integrate liberalism's concern for the political rights and interests of individuals within the framework of a community. As Hegel's Critique of Modernity demonstrates, Hegel strove to discover social structures that would allow individuals to escape the alienation that characterizes contemporary life. He sought a method of reconciling his contemporaries to the modern world by overcoming the things that split the self from the social world-that is, a place where people are at home in the social world. A sense of estrangement is all too common, even for those who enjoy more personal freedom and material abundance than ever thought possible. While Hegel is speaking directly to and about his contemporaries, their social world bears much is common with ours. Consequently, his attempt to reconcile philosophical and social contradictions can elucidate our own condition. While the modern world reflects important contributions, the advent of modern liberalism leads to excessive individualism that fragments social life, leaving individuals disconnected and adrift from meaningful social life. The major goal of Hegel's political philosophy is to reconcile the individual with his or her political community in a way that overcomes the alienation of modern life. Book jacket.

The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism features essays from leading scholars on German philosophy. It is the most comprehensive secondary source available, covering not only the full range of work by Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, but also idealists such as Reinhold and Schopenhauer, critics such as Jacobi, Maimon, and the German Romantics

The renaissance in Hegel scholarship over the past two decades has largely ignored or marginalized the metaphysical dimension of his thought, perhaps most vigorously when considering his social and political philosophy. Many scholars have consistently maintained that Hegel’s political philosophy must be reconstructed without the metaphysical structure that Hegel saw as his crowning philosophical achievement. This book brings together twelve original essays that explore the relation between Hegel’s metaphysics and his political, social, and practical philosophy. The essays seek to explore what normative insights and positions can be obtained from examining Hegel’s distinctive view of the metaphysical dimensions of political philosophy. His ideas about the good, the universal, freedom, rationality, objectivity, self-determination, and self-development can be seen in a new context and with renewed understanding once their relation to his metaphysical project is considered. Hegel’s Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Politics will be of great interest to scholars of Hegelian philosophy, German Idealism, nineteenth-century philosophy, political philosophy, and political theory.

"Justice is a cultural and historical constant, characterized by plurality and incommensurate theories. This book identifies regulative and critical dimensions in the works of Kant, Hegel, Heller, and Honneth. The significance of the categorical imperative mediating plurality leads to a dynamic idea of justice that resists relativism"--

This collection of original essays discusses the relationship between Hegel and the Frankfurt School Critical Theory tradition. The book’s aim is to take stock of this fascinating, complex, and complicated relationship. The volume is divided into five parts: Part I focuses on dialectics and antagonisms. Part II is concerned with ethical life and intersubjectivity. Part III is devoted to the logico-metaphysical discourse surrounding emancipation. Part IV analyses social freedom in relation to emancipation. Part V discusses classical and contemporary political philosophy in relation to Hegel and the Frankfurt School, as well as radical-democratic models and the outline and functions of economic institutions.

A new edition of the first systematic reading of Hegel's political philosophy. Elements of the Philosophy of Right is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important works in the history of political philosophy. This is the first book on the subject to take Hegel's system of speculative philosophy seriously as an important component of any robust understanding of this text.

Although Hegel and feminism seem an unlikely couple, Hegelian philosophy played a prominent part in the thinking of groundbreaking feminist philosophers from Simone de Beauvoir to Luce Irigaray. This book offers a new generation of feminist readings of Hegel from leading scholars in the both fields. Through close readings and innovative arguments, this book makes a significant contribution to the debate on gender and provides insight into philosophical method.

Recovering Hegel from the Critique of Leo Srauss offers a defense of modernity against the critique of the influential mid-twentieth century political philosopher, Leo Strauss. Strauss, whose influence on contemporary conservative political theory is well documented, discovered the ground of much of what he found wanting in contemporary political and social life to lie in the philosophy of the 19th century German philosopher, G. W. F. Hegel. Specifically, Strauss accused Hegel of being the greatest exponent of historicism and thus the relativism that afflicts modern thought. Ultimately, according to Strauss, this has led to the nihilism and general mediocrity that characterizes modern western culture. In this book, Sara MacDonald and Barry Craig examine Strauss’s reading of Hegel and argue that in fact it is a mis-reading. Contrary to Strauss’s interpretation, this book holds that Hegel was no relativist and in fact sought to show the compatibility of objective, eternal truth with modern human subjectivity. At the same time, it illustrates the way in which Hegel’s thought prepared the ground for enlightened modern liberal democracies and also remains relevant to current social and political conversations.

Hegel’s philosophy has witnessed periods of revival and oblivion, at times considered to be an unrivalled and all-embracing system of thought, but often renounced with no less ardour. This book renews the dialogue with Hegel by looking at his legacy as a source of insight and judgement that helps us rethink contemporary economics. This book focuses on a concept of institution which is equally important for Hegel's political philosophy and for economic theory to date. The key contributions of this Hegelian perspective on economics lead us to the synthesis of traditional approaches and new ideas gained in economic experiments and advanced by neuroeconomists, sociologists and cognitive scientists. The proper account of contemporary 'civil society' involves comprehending it as a historically evolving totality of individual minds, ideas and intersubjective structures that are mutually dependent, tied by recognitive relations, and assert themselves as a whole in the ongoing performative movement of 'objective spitit'. The ethics of recognition is paired with the ethics of associations that supports moral principles and gives them true, concrete universality. This unusual constellation of seemingly remote fields suggests that Hegel, read in a pragmatist mode, anticipated the new theories and philosophies of extended mind, social cognition and performativity. By providing a new conceptual apparatus and reformulating the theory of institutions in the light of this new synthesis, this book claims to give new meaning both to Hegel as interpreted from today, and to the social sciences. Seen from this perspective, such phenomena as cooperation in games, personal identity or justice in the version of Amartya Sen's 'realization-focused comparisons' are reinscribed into the logic of institutional theory. This 'Hegel' clearly goes beyond the limits of philosophical discussion and becomes a decisive reference for economists, sociologists, political scientists and other scholars who study the foundations and consequences of human sociality and try to explore and design the institutions necessary for a worthy common life.