The legal philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel
pp. 579-611
in: Enrico Pattaro, Damiano Canale, Hasso Hofmann, Patrick Riley (eds), A treatise of legal philosophy and general jurisprudence 9-10, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
It is difficult to think of two philosophers more different than Hegel and Rousseau: Who can imagine Rousseau lecturing regularly and punctually, perhaps on the destructive effects of the arts and sciences, in a university? Still more inconceivable, who can imagine Hegel's Confessions? But it is instructive to compare them, for in respect to one restricted but significant problem—that of relating individuals to a social whole by means of their wills in such a way that will means only rational and social will, and not arbitrariness, or caprice, or "natural" will—they have a difficulty in common. Their dilemma is much the same insofar as both writers at once value and fear "the will" as the source of freedom on the one hand, and of mere willfulness on the other.
