Reading The Young Marx’s Critique Of Hegel’s Philosophy Of Right

It is practically and theoretically significant to make clear the whole course of the young Marx’s turn to historical materialism and socialism, and his critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right is a major clue as well as a key viewpoint of this course.Marx’s first encounter with Hegel’s philosophy of right was the outcome of the collapse of his1837Berlin project of jurisprudence. That project, closely connected with Marx’s learnings in Bonn and Berlin, was carried out according to the German idea of "Rechtswissenschaft"(legal science or science of jurisprudence) represented by Savigny, and generally speaking was within the Romanist branch of the Historical School of Law. While attempting to responding to the three methodological problems in his peculiar way, Marx met fundamental philosophical challenges that could not be overcome by simply solidifying his knowledge of positive law. Moreover, thanks to the logical conclusion of his Schellingian dialogue Cleanthes and influences of Eduard Gans, Marx had to turn to Hegel’s philosophy of right and logic. Therefore he found the imperfection of the Berlin project of jurisprudence, went beyond the Historical School of Law, and then accepted a version of Hegelianism.The turn to Hegel’s philosophy of right and the communication with members of Doctors’ Club promoted Marx to quickly touch the empirical content of the modern world and form some problematic fittable to the modern development, which determined his attack on the reactionary institutions and ideologies in the contemporary Germany and then on Hegel’s philosophy of right. However, it was not an easy matter to establish the opportunity, order and concrete undertaking of critique, therefore we need to clarify Marx’s critical activities from his university days to1843, in order to fully understand the background of his critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right. We can identify the extension of Marx’s perspective within this period, i.e., from resisting indirectly and directly the idea of Christian state of Friedrich-Wilhelm Ⅳ himself and those State Philosophers of Prussia, to commencing with concrete social and economic problems and civil life (that is, the difficult problem of material interests) in Germany, then to going beyond the status quo of Germany, advocating a "Franco-German scientific alliance" and considering the liberation and future of Germany from a broader perspective of modernity. Marx not only criticized the Schellingian philosophy in a hidden way through his dissertation, but also openly attacked on the historical jurisprudence admired by the authorities. The problematic as well as the intellectual elements of his critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right came into being in this period.Since his university days, Marx had established a sort of critical method in analysis and reading, which made him able to radically sublate Hegel’s philosophy of right in both internal and external dimensions, and which naturally becomes the subject of our elaboration now. The gist of this sort of method includes four points:firstly, to derive the true principle from a thinker’s particular conclusions and intentions, so as to discern "rational state" from speculative philosophy of right; secondly, to separate logical forms from empirical contents, in order to examine in presupposition the speculative structure of Hegel’s philosophy of right; thirdly, to test the concrete practical results of a theory through most important issues of the day, such as constitutional monarchy, representation, primogeniture, civil society conditions, and to transcend the appeals of theoretical political party and practical political party through the interactive movement of theory and practice. Such method obviously differs from the idea of "critical criticism" among Bruno Bauer and others.The1843manuscripts of Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right was the first explicit and systematic expression of Marx’s critique of Hegelian philosophy of right. The reasons that Marx began with the theory of state of Hegel, not according to the order of Elements of philosophy of right, included Marx’s intention of breaking through the inherent structure of Hegel’s system, the priority of the matter of state in his time, and the place of political theory as the subject and central achievement of Hegelian philosophy.It is adequate to propose a set of explanations, independent of as well as corresponding to Marx’s critique, of the original intent of Hegel’s philosophy of right and theory of the state before we come to the concrete critique and establishment of Marx’s critique itself, in order to better evaluate Marx’s power of insight and critique. My studies show that not only Hegel’s philosophy of right, but also his whole philosophical system, attempt to stand firmly on the modern point. Fitting to that modern standpoint and deriving from his diagnosis of the1789French Revolution, Hegel’s philosophy of right praises highly the "concrete freedom" as the dialectic of universality and particularity, and criticizes the Friesian principles of sophists and the Kantian empty formalism, which would lead to a conception of abstract freedom. The object of Hegel’s theory of the state is "the species of state", the state in general transcending the historical taxonomy of state, and Hegel constructed an "architectonics of rational state", involving the "Begreifen (conceptual comprehension)", the concrete as well as the abstract, the institutions as well as the subjective conditions, and the "medium".Marx understood Hegel’s philosophy of right completely and precisely, and rejected his method based on two considerations:the inherent conservatism of Hegel’s philosophy of right resulted from his method itself, and the incompetence of his method in actually construing law and state. Here arose the scientific method of historical materialism. Meanwhile, Marx criticized the concrete institutional arrangements in Hegel’s philosophy of right, arguing that Hegel should have described democracy but in fact described constitutional monarchy, that Hegel hoped to overcome the split between civil society and political state but unfortunately failed, and that Hegel expected political state to determine civil society, but such expectation failed and deviated from real conditions. Through the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right, Marx made further critical examinations into modern civil society and therefore put forward his doctrine of socialism, which was the ultimate achievement of his critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right.