| The argument about Hegel's theory of state, regarded by people as either the jackal of the totalitarianism and the philosophy of the authorities of restoration, or the philosophy of the French Revolution and freedom ,had always been an issue debated heatedly in the past over one hundred years. Different from these viewpoints, the thesis tries to point out that Hegel is acted as not only the inherit of liberalism and the sympathizer of the French revolution ,but also the radical criticizer of the Enlightenment and the Jacobinic despotism. He sufficiently affirmed the principle of the subjective freedom which had been raised highly since the Renaissance. Meanwhile, he keenly perceived the limits of the individualism freedom, terrified at the absolute terror caused by the absolute freedom. Reflecting on the French Revolution and the social practice in Germany, Hegel ascertained a unique theory of state, trying hard to apply the republic universality of the ancient times to the modem subjective freedom , hoping to overcome the localization of the individualism in the civil society, and thus to find the actual social conditions for the reality of the subjective freedom.Hegel's philosophy is thoroughly threaded by the principle of reason and freedom, and the system of the movement of the absolute spirit is also that of development and self-actualizing of the freedom. In his grand system, if it can be supposed that the philosophy of nature is only the probing into being by itself, then in the philosophy of spirit, the consciousness and will of freedom becomes the central topic. But in the stage of subjective spirit ,freedom still only stays in pure individual, in completely intrinsic lay, not until in the period of objective spirit dose the concrete freedom, with practical content, appear. In the field of the objective spirit, Hegel mainly probed into three phases of abstract right, morality and ethics, in which he revealed the objective aspects of the abstract right as well as the irresolvable conflicts between its abstract universality and the particularity of personal right, the subjective freedom of morality and its undeniable empty and abstract universality. In ethics, it represents itself both as the will of freedom and its all kinds of social relationship. Hence the subjective freedom and the objective liberty united.The ethical system is divided into three stages which are family, civil community and state. Family is the direct ethical spirit with only the abstract universality . In the civil community, everyone becomes his own goal, but individual particular goal can never be reached unless the happiness of all the others can be satisfied at the same time. That is, the civil community satisfiedevery individual requires by means of various forms of universality : material life, the guarantee of the judicatory system ,the police and corporation as assistance. In accordance with Hegel's logic, the conflicts and the one-side limits will only be overcome in the phase of state . The state is the highest ethical substance, which united the individual freedom and happiness with the universal reason, materializing the necessity and the law of the social life. The particularity of the family and the civil community is thus realized and guaranteed, while the state represents universality of the reason by means of boosting and guaranteeing the independence, right, happiness of every individuality, with the full development of subjective freedom as well. In this sense, Hegel even regarded the state as the spirit of the earth, the progress of God in the world.Hegel's state theory is quite different from despotism, when trying out to avoid the revealed malpractice by the extreme individualism since the Enlightenment. He tried hard to give a new assertion for the reason of the state by means of consolidating all kinds of conflicts, though, of course, because of the non-erased remark of idealism and the limit of the epoch, it still contains a great deal of reservation, which was later to be utilized by fascism a... |
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