The Actual and the Rational – Hegel and Objective Spirit - Hardcover

Kervegan, Jean–francois; Ginsburg, Daniela; Shuster, Martin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022602380X ISBN 13: 9780226023809

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2018

Synopsis

One of Hegel’s most controversial and confounding claims is that “the real is rational and the rational is real.” In this book, one of the world’s leading scholars of Hegel, Jean-François Kervégan, offers a thorough analysis and explanation of that claim, along the way delivering a compelling account of modern social, political, and ethical life.

Kervégan begins with Hegel’s term “objective spirit,” the public manifestation of our deepest commitments, the binding norms that shape our existence as subjects and agents. He examines objective spirit in three realms: the notion of right, the theory of society, and the state. In conversation with Tocqueville and other theorists of democracy, whether in the Anglophone world or in Europe, Kervégan shows how Hegel―often associated with grand metaphysical ideas―actually had a specific conception of civil society and the state. In Hegel’s view, public institutions represent the fulfillment of deep subjective needs―and in that sense, demonstrate that the real is the rational, because what surrounds us is the product of our collective mindedness. This groundbreaking analysis will guide the study of Hegel and nineteenth-century political thought for years to come.

About this title

About the Authors

Jean-François Kervégan is full professor at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Daniela Ginsburg is a freelance translator. She cotranslated Knowledge of Life by Georges Canguilhem.

Martin Shuster is professor of philosophy and the Isaac Swift Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022602380X
• ISBN 13: 9780226023809
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416