Person and Property

Abstract

The first chapter of Hegel’s book treats the most immediate form¹ of the free will’s objective realization. This form is not the foundation of his system of “right,” but it is the first, most elementary yet essential element of that system. The true foundation lies in the freedom of the spirit, whose structure has been sketched in the preceding two chapters. What must now be unfolded is the range of concrete phenomena and institutions in which freedom is actualized more or less adequately. The first element, “abstract right,” is only one moment of the concrete world of freedom in which we participate; as such, it is one of the conditions of freedom rather than a concrete phenomenon by itself. The criterion according to which we can evaluate the various phenomena in which “right” (in its broadest sense) seems to realize itself, and which will be the guiding thread for this exposition, lies in the (still very abstract) idea of freedom as self-determination and of right as its necessary actualization. These ideas, which were the result of the deduction outlined in the preceding chapters, must now be developed in all their worldly concreteness.