Hegel's Political Philosophy On the Normative Significance of Method and System

Hegel famously argues that his speculative method is a foundation for claims about socio-political reality within a wider philosophical system. This systematic approach is thought a superior alternative to all other ways of philosophical thinking. Hegel's method and system have normative significance for understanding everything from ethics to the state. Hegel's approach has attracted much debate among scholars about key philosophical questions - and controversy about his proposed answers to them. Is his method and system open to the charge of dogmatism? Are his claims about the rationality of monarchy, unequal gender relations, an unelected second parliamentary chamber and a corporation-based economy beyond revision? This ground-breaking collection of new essays by leading interpreters of Hegel's philosophy is dedicated to the questions that surround Hegel's philosophical method and its relationship to the conclusions of his political philosophy. It contributes to the on-going debate about the importance of a systematic context for political philosophy, the relationship between theoretical and practical philosophy, and engages with contemporary discussions about the shape of a rational social order.

1 - What Might it Mean to have a Systematic Idealist, but Anti-Platonist, Practical philosophy?
2 - Systematicity and Normative Justification: The Method of Hegel's Philosophical Science of Right
3 - In What Sense is Hegel's Philosophy of Right 'Based' on His Science of Logic? Remarks on the Logic of Justice
4 - Method and System in Hegel's Philosophy of Right
5 - The Relevance of the Logical Method for Hegel's Practical Philosophy
6 - The State as a System of Three Syllogisms: Hegel's Notion of the State and Its Logical Foundations
7 - Hegel's Shepherd's Way Out of the Thicket
8 - To Know and Not Know Right: Hegel on Empirical Cognition and Philosophical Knowledge of Right
9 - Individuals: the Revisionary Logic of Hegel's Politics
10 - Hegel on Crime and Punishment
11 - The Logic of Right
12 - Hegel, Autonomy and Community
13 - Hegel's Natural Law Constructivism: Progress in Principle and in Practice

Thom Brooks is Professor of Law and Government at Durham University and Dean of Durham Law School. His books include Punishment (2012), Hegel's Political Philosophy (2d 2013) and Becoming British (2016). He is the founding editor of the Journal of Moral Philosophy. Sebastian Stein is research associate at the Ruprecht-Karls University, Heidelberg and at the Eberhard-Karls University, Tübingen. His publications include Freedom for free: Hegel on cognition, willing, free mind and the methodological cost of finite freedom in Hegel's Philosophical Psychology, eds. Ziglioli & Herrmann-Sinai (Routledge, 2016) and Hegel and Kant on rational willing: The relevance of method in the Hegel Bulletin.