Marx’s Criticism And Transcendence Of Hegel’s Philosophy Of Law

As a witness to the French Revolution,Hegel’s philosophy of state is based on an examination of the journey of England and France towards a modern state,and is a product of the development of history and the times.However,the conservatism of his philosophy is also reflected in the part of his philosophy of the state.While recognising the independence of civil society,Hegel uses the concept of the rational state to unify and encompass it.Under the principle of ’substance as subject’,Hegel sees the state as the highest expression of ethics,the realisation of reason and freedom in its own right.Marx takes the dilemma of material interests in the real world as an entry point and reverses Hegel’s assertion that the state determines civil society.First,Marx criticised the Hegelian mystical view of state.In Marx’s view,Hegel’s assertion that the family and civil society are ‘subordinate to’ and ‘dependent on’ the state is an insoluble dichotomy and therefore false.Secondly,Marx pointed out that Hegel’s various intermediary links in the ascent of civil society to the state are full of logical mystical arguments.Hegel uses logical presuppositions to argue for the objectivity of ideas,and facts as experience become the result of mystical activity beyond themselves.Finally,Marx identified the inadequacy of Hegel’s understanding of the division of state power as a division of state reason.Marx critiqued the royal,executive and legislative powers,representing singularity,particularity and universality respectively,and further pulled the state down from the abstract notion of rationality.Moreover,Marx also built on Feuerbach’s anthropology and moved from a logical reversal of subject-predicate to a mediated reconciliation in logical discourse,step by step lifting the veil from Hegel’s mystical view of the state and moving from an idealist to a materialist position.In his exploration of the nature of the political state and civil society,Marx turned his attention to civil society,which determines the rational state,and thus opened the door to historical materialism.On the basis of practice,Marx took substantive law as his entry point and firmly established that law is "second nature" and not the will of the rational state in terms of its origin and nature.At the value level,he stood firmly on the side of the people,putting forward the idea of "popular sovereignty" and insisting that only democracy could embody the will of the people.With Marx’s reversal of the Hegelian state’s determination of civil society,human agency and subjectivity seem to have been established,but Marx was not yet completely free from the influence of Hegel and Feuerbach.Marx’s understanding of democracy had not yet transcended the bourgeois position;he did not realise that the democracy of the new capitalist world opened up by the French Revolution was founded on private ownership,nor did he systematically set out the real forces and scientific ways of achieving popular democracy.But by this time Marx had already firmly established a beautiful picture of the unity of political and social life in the world of the future,and had begun his exploration of political economy with civil society as the new cut-off point.In short,in the study of the transformation of Marx’s thought,we can always see Marx’s commitment to solving the difficult problems of his time.While people enjoy rich material wealth,influenced by the market economy,their spiritual outlook inevitably gives rise to problems such as entertainment first,individualism and nihilism.From time to time,extreme statements and negative ideas emerge in the identification with the state and in the understanding of the relationship between the state and the individual.Marx’s reflections on the question of state and freedom remain very important as a guide to solving the realities of contemporary Chinese society and the all-round development of Chinese people.