On Mon, 25 Jun 2018 at 10:01, Peter G Stillman Stillman@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

If we go to the PR in this Paul-Alan-Srivats exchange, one line which I find interesting is:  §94:  "Abstract right is the right to coerce, because the wrong which transgresses it is an exercise of force against the existence of my freedom in an external thing".  Given what has been written, we can go at this line in a variety of ways.  One is that for Hegel (as for Hobbes and Locke), coercion is inherent in abstract (or natural) right, or more precisely for Hegel coercion comes on the scene as right's response to wrong (which is a coercion).  Another is that -- thinking of Srivats post -- §94 seems to me to perfectly fit the Naxalites:  they deny that my freedom can exist in an external thing, and so they annually revolt against the Indian state, presumably trying to establish their own universal, where my freedom is indifferent or unrelated to ownership of external things.  Or, referring to the PhS §302 quote of Srivats, they put "another world, another right, law, and customs in place of those already existing".

Peter

On Sun, Jun 24, 2018 at 11:40 PM, R Srivatsan r.srivats@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Two very specific aspects about India (unfortunately I don't know of American equivalents).

One, the Marxists-Leninists or as they are called the Naxalites, are seen as criminals by the Indian State. This is because they have openly declared (since 1967 at a place called Naxalbari) their aim to overthrow the bourgeois state that supports feudal domination in the countryside.  They regularly, at least once a year go into gun-battle with special state forces, get killed and inflict severe damage too (killing).  They are treated like criminals by the law -- with some kind of instability.  On the one hand, they are treated by the state prosecutors as seditious and are sought to be punished by life imprisonment if not death..  On the other hand, the civil-liberty advocates (often Naxalite sympathisers) demand that the State treat them as common criminals for the acts they have committed and for which they are arrested.  There is a perpetual oscillation on this count in the degree of punishment they are sentenced to.

Two, in post Independence India (since 1947), the state sets itself up as the revolutionary force -- modernizing Indian society through law.  It thus sets up a new principle of sovereignty that seeks to subvert traditional social laws in many ways.  In this it is like British rule, except it is possible to argue strongly that British rule was not truly, organically developmental -- the idea of development was a mask for colonial rule in perpetual security.  Well, not that it isn't true for the Indian ruling classes!

In any case, the idea of sovereignty is an emblem of the power to insist on the universal validity of 'the law' over the people -- it has always had as Derrida put it a mystical foundation to its authority.

Srivats

On Mon, 25 Jun 2018 at 08:12, 'Alan Ponikvar' ponikvaraj@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Being lazy and not going to the text to read this in context, the crime against the general actuality can be either a violation of law in an individual way – simple wrongdoing - or a violation seeking to overturn the lawful regime in a general way with an alternative lawful regime.

 

What the latter crime reveals is how the general actuality is not only prepared to resist wrongdoing but is also prepared to view any challenge to its regime as inherently criminal.

 

• Alan

 

From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2018 10:23 PM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] Hegel and Virtue Ethics

 

 

Paul,

 

I was thinking something like the following, without having read it.  I wonder where I picked up "crime is the first expression of spirit" though!

 

302. A new field thus opens up for observation in the behaviour of consciousness in its actuality. Psychology contains the collection of laws in accordance with which Spirit relates itself in various

ways to the various modes of its actuality as an otherness already given. On the one hand, Spirit receives these modes into itself, conforming to the habits, customs, and way of thinking already to hand, as being that in which it is an actuality or an object to itself; and, on the other hand, Spirit knows itself as spontaneously active in face of them, and in singling out from them something for itself, it follows its own inclinations and desires, making the object conform to it: in the first case it behaves negatively towards itself as an individuality; in the second case, negatively towards itself as a universal being. According to the first aspect, independence gives to what is already there merely the form of self-conscious individuality as such and, as regards the content, remains within the general actuality already given; according to the second aspect~ it gives the actuality at least a peculiar modification which does not contradict its essential content, or one even whereby the individual, qua particular actuality with a peculiar content, sets itself in opposition to the general actuality, an opposition which becomes wrongdoing or crime when it sets aside that actuality in a merely individual manner, or when it does this in a general way and thus for all, putting another world, another right, law, and customs in place of those already existing. (PhS Miller)

 

I find this of great depth, showing that the crime (as the largest and most powerful expression of individuality) can in fact invert the world and set new laws, customs, systems of right in place: a revolution.

 

So I think again, Family law, civil law -- and then 'criminal law'.  Criminal law is the ambiguous, oscillation that depends on moral self-conflict at two levels -- at the individual level, where the breach of the code of ethics demands a disrespect for the demands of substance (society); at the universal level where the demands of society themselves begin to fail to hold, lose their subsistence.

 

The need to push criminal law is always a crisis for the State -- something that reminds it of its own instability, its persistent lack of a form that is truly universal; for crime is an individual rejection of the universal -- a particular challenge to its authority.

Srivats

PS:  I give up - what is your own answer to your challenge?

 

On Mon, 25 Jun 2018 at 01:14, Paul Trejo petrejo@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Srivats,

 

Thanks for riffing on Hegel's structure of "family law, civil law and criminal law", 

 

You saw two directions: 

 

(1) external systems.  I agree with you that family law is mainly concerned with children -- civil law is mainly concerned with private property disputes -- and criminal law is mainly concerned with punishment.

 

(2) right as modern, i.e. outside Church domination. I agree with you that for Hegel, consequences of behavior are rarely individual, but usually social -- whether intended or unintended. 

 

While crime also includes strictly human elements, i.e. self-consciousness and full awareness of exceeding the boundaries of private property laws -- you called this, "the first expressions of spirit."

 

I don't find that in Hegel.

 

However, Srivats, I will agree with you this far.   Crime seems to be the LOWEST FORM of spirit -- just as Bullets are the LOWEST FORM of communication..

 

If, by "first expression" you mean the "lowest expression" then I do agree with yiou.;

 

Neverthess, Srivats, although I appreciate your free riff, I still have the same question as at the beginning -- WHY DID Hegel jump immediately into Family, Civil, and Criminal Law within his heading of "Ethical Life??"

 

All best,

--Paul

 

---

From: "R Srivatsan r.srivats@... [hegel]" <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2018 9:29 PM
Subject: Re: [hegel] Hegel and Virtue Ethics

 

 

Paul

 

Thanks for this.

 

If I free-wheel or riff on the structure of "family law, civil law and criminal law", I see two singular Hegelian directions.  

 

One, all these are in different ways external systems -- however, family law is to me essentially related to the law of childhood -- political engagement in the natural abstract universality of which you are an unproblematic part.  Civil law is the law that is based on right to property, in other words an alienation, a separation, boundary that establishes your right in a world that is alien to you.  Criminal law is not the third term of the triad, but is the punishment for the breach of civil right to property, and other rights of course.

 

Two, interestingly, in the domain of right, the church doesn't figure, thus marking right as modern (in Hegel's time in history).

 

Now for Hegel, it would seem to me, the consequence of an action is not individual, nor strictly is the origin of the action.

 

The consequence is not individual because what happens is not what one wishes to happen: a) unintended consequences; b) consequences that are part of a larger logical formation within which individual consciousness is embedded.

 

The origin of the action is not individual simply because of reason b) in the previous paragraph.  Consciousness and self-consciousness (which are the basis of crime, as action that arises beyond the natural bounds of community) are the first expressions of spirit.

 

So criminal law is simply a guard-rail against injury to others.

 

The question is of course, can there be a third term of the triad family, civil law, ... what I harked to in my second paragraph?  If there is a third, can it exist at the individual level?  And is this third in harmony with itself?  Can this harmony express itself at the individual level?  I would hesitate to say State -- even if Hegel did say so (I'm not sure), but again, perhaps the State -- as emerging not in its good will, but as the culmination of revolutionary terror? Also not as expressing good will, but the necessity of the concept that may be experienced as individual freedom?

 

Srivats

 

 

--

R Srivatsan
Anveshi Research Centre for Women's Studies 
2-2-18/2/A Durgabai Deshmukh Colony
Hyderabad 500 013
Office Phone: +91 40 27423690
Mobile: +91 94404 80762, +91 77027 11656
Home Phone +91 40 2773 5193

--

R Srivatsan
Anveshi Research Centre for Women's Studies 
2-2-18/2/A Durgabai Deshmukh Colony
Hyderabad 500 013
Office Phone: +91 40 27423690
Mobile: +91 94404 80762, +91 77027 11656
Home Phone +91 40 2773 5193

--

Peter G. Stillman
Department of Political Science
Vassar College (#463)
124 Raymond Avenue
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604-0463

--

R Srivatsan
Anveshi Research Centre for Women's Studies 
2-2-18/2/A Durgabai Deshmukh Colony
Hyderabad 500 013
Office Phone: +91 40 27423690
Mobile: +91 94404 80762, +91 77027 11656
Home Phone +91 40 2773 5193