Natural Law and Political Ideology in the Philosophy of Hegel

by Tony Burns

This work considers two is Hegel a legal positivist or a natural law theorist; and, is he a totalitarian or a liberal? The author examines both questions and concludes that Hegel's best work constitutes a synthesis of pre-modern (the Greeks, Aristotle)and modern thought (liberalism).

199 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1996

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Burns argues, against most of Hegel's interpreters, that Hegel was an essentially conservative thinker in the realm of Burkean conservatism, and that this conservatism followed from Hegel's understanding of natural law in a modernized Aristotelian form, adopted from Montesquieu.

Burns could be right but I think there are many counterarguments that he does not address. For example, Houlgate's An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History sees Hegel as a fundamentally modern and liberal thinker who was conditioned into a more limited expression of his thought by his situation. Burns, for example, does not address the differing relationships of Burke and Hegel to the French Revolution. Burns recognizes that Hegel sought to build off the historical developments of the Revolution whilst criticizing its excesses, but equates this extremely lax critique to Burke's well-known scathing and reactionary one. This seems almost ridiculous. I am also extremely skeptical of Burns' interpretation of Burkean thought as essentially a sort of progressive conservatism which advocated reform—I think Losurdo's analyses of Burke in Heidegger and the Ideology of War: Community, Death, and the West and Nietzsche, the Aristocratic Rebel: Intellectual Biography and Critical Balance-Sheet provide a portrait of Burke and his impact upon German philosophical and political thought that is far more radically reactionary than his supposed modern conservatism to be shared with Hegel.

In my eyes, if Hegel was the conservative Burns sees him as, he was not one of the Burkean tradition.