Hegel and Marx on Individuality and the Universal Good

Baumann, Charlotte

doi:10.1017/hgl.2016.33

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…While this view of market laws as a threatening, violent, and arbitrary force anticipates lines of reasoning that Marxists would later expound, Hegel believes that the structural problems of the market economy can be mitigated by embedding the market in a state where professional groups oversee and coordinate their market relations in the legislative assembly. Unlike the early Marx (see Baumann 2018b) who favours the view that all human beings share a species-being ( Gattungswesen ), Hegel believes it is important that individuals develop distinct (professional) identities and that the market offers a good space in which this can occur. Only when having relatively fixed, clear, and relatable identities can human beings relate to one another on this basis, defend their respective interests, and ensure that each group supports all others as best as possible 9 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While this is not the place to discuss Hegel's theory of the political state in detail (see Baumann 2021Baumann , 2018b, the above discussion shows that it is only fitting for Hegel to argue that individuals need clearly structured group identities and interests, and that (representatives of) these groups should oversee their relations. Those relations include their economic relations.…”

Section: Embedding the Market And The State Organismmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Hegel on Market Laws and External Teleology

Baumann

2022

Hegel Bulletin

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

By highlighting the logico-metaphysical undergirding of Hegel's discussion of the market, this article brings to light certain proto-Marxist or proto-socialist tendencies in Hegel as well as key disagreements with Adam Smith, which have been missed by recent studies like Herzog's Inventing the Market (2013). For Smith, market laws function like an impartial arbiter that rewards honest effort; his main worry is that individuals may fail to display virtues like honesty, probity and frugality, thereby hindering the smooth functioning of the market mechanism. For Hegel, by contrast, the market is a de-personalized player in its own right that imposes its arbitrary rule, a rule that does not reflect in any way the virtues and efforts of market participants. This assessment is easily overlooked, unless one realizes that Hegel believes the market to be functioning according to the structures that he discusses in the ‘Objectivity’ section in his Science of Logic. As a consequence of this assessment Hegel attributes a different role to the state than Smith does: Rather than aiding and shaping individuals, by means of institutions, education and health care, the state needs to address the structural functioning of market laws and, to some extent, inhibit its free-flowing functioning. Individuals need to re-appropriate their own social relations by organizing them along the lines of the logical organism or internal teleology. After outlining Hegel's interpretation and assessment of the market structures with the help of the Logic, I will discuss Hegel's demand for an organic state, that sublates and oversees the market, thereby safeguarding the important personal freedoms enjoyed by market participants.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Embedding the Market And The State Organismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hegel on Market Laws and External Teleology

Baumann

2022

Hegel Bulletin

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Almost all scholars have argued that, intent on not being totalitarian, Hegel advocates for reconciliation between individuals and the community (Baumann, 2016; Honneth, 1994, p. 23; Hyppolyte, 1946, p. 31; Loick, 2017, p. 37; Pippin, 2000, p. 252; Taylor, 2015, p. 14, 21; Theunissen, 2013, p. 16; Wood, 1990, p. 41, 57). Yet the very content of this reconciliation and the arguments supporting it are a matter of dispute.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual freedom against liberalism: Hegel's nonliberal individualism

Parra‐Ayala

2023

The Southern J of Philosophy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article, I argue that the main contribution of Hegel's philosophy of right to the contemporary political debate is that it opens a window on the idea that liberalism and individual freedom are incompatible. My main thesis is that the liberal conception of the State and law, structured from a nonrelational account of singularity, ends up denying the individual freedom that it claims to defend. I begin by reconstructing the Hegelian concept of freedom from its most general lines, showing that being free consists in wanting to become someone and not so much in wanting to do something. After showing that the purpose of becoming someone can only be fulfilled in a social medium, I focus on Hegel's critique of the liberal state (as expounded in the section on “civil society”). I argue that civil society structurally impedes individuals from realizing their purpose of becoming someone: the economical interactions of civil society give rise to impersonal and inscrutable mechanisms, which take the social conditions of people's individuation beyond their control. Finally, I claim that (rational) individual freedom consists in being able to thematize and democratically control the very social conditions of individuation through the State and law.

show abstract

The idea of the common good in the young Marx and nonutilitarian consequentialism

Gluchman

2023

History of European Ideas

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Hegel and Marx on Individuality and the Universal Good

Abstract: Picking up on Marx's and Hegel's analyses of human beings as social and individual,

Cited by 7 publications

References 14 publications

Hegel on Market Laws and External Teleology

Hegel on Market Laws and External Teleology

Individual freedom against liberalism: Hegel's nonliberal individualism

The idea of the common good in the young Marx and nonutilitarian consequentialism

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About