Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Problem of a Philosophical Rendering of Nature and Hegel’s Philosophy of the Real
- Part I ‘Gleaming leprosy in the sky’
- Part II Spirit’s Birth from within the Bio-Material World
- Part III The Problem of Surplus Repressive Punishment
- Conclusion: Freedom within Two Natures, or, the Nature– Spirit Dialectic in the Final System
- Bibliography
- Index
11 - Crime, the Negation of Right, and the Problem of European Colonial Consciousness
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Problem of a Philosophical Rendering of Nature and Hegel’s Philosophy of the Real
- Part I ‘Gleaming leprosy in the sky’
- Part II Spirit’s Birth from within the Bio-Material World
- Part III The Problem of Surplus Repressive Punishment
- Conclusion: Freedom within Two Natures, or, the Nature– Spirit Dialectic in the Final System
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
If Hegel's analysis of property suggests that such an institution functions as an objective expression of free will that is generated arbitrarily, where the particular and common wills involved agree contingently, then his analysis of wrong [Das Unrecht] gives us a precise sense of the ways in which willing strictly in terms of particularity has the perpetual possibility of violating the very principle of rightness and, therefore, freedom as realised within the domain of abstract right. Hegel's analysis of wrong as instantiated under the category of crime makes explicit limitations that permeate the domain of right to this point in its development. That is to say, there is a way in which, at the level of right, one might act in accordance with the universal principle of right or, conversely, one might not. The latter possibility is what Hegel analyses by way of various modes of wrong which, in turn, make overt the negation that resides immanently within the domain of abstract right, the ways in which this institution violates the contours of its own internal development. While the collapse is generated by way of spirit's activity as right, Hegel, nevertheless, assigns significance to the natural, immediate dimension of personhood involved in that collapse. Hence, he connects crime and nature. We intend to substantiate this claim presently in order to critically read Hegel on this point, highlighting not only how it propels the analysis forward to a more comprehensive perspective from which to consider the development of right, but also critically engaging Hegel in this context, stressing important problems that follow from such a framing of crime.
Playing on the distinction between Schein (show or semblance) and Erscheinung (appearance), Hegel seeks to illuminate the essential difference between the registers of contract (common agreement between two property owners) and wrong. He writes:
This appearance of right [we add ‘in contract’], in which right and its essential embodiment, the particular will, correspond immediately, i.e. fortuitously, proceeds in wrong to become a show, an opposition between the principle of rightness and the particular will as that in which right becomes particularized.
Whereas contract offers what we might call a partial insight into the realisation of the concept of right, wrong operates, contradictorily, as an expression of right that simultaneously negates right.
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- Information
- The Problem of Nature in Hegel's Final System , pp. 189 - 211Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2018