Philosophy of Right

Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts — the Philosophy of Right, variously translated as Philosophy of Law — is Hegel's mature work in political and social philosophy. Published in 1820 based on lectures Hegel had been giving since 1817 in Heidelberg and continued in Berlin, the work develops the architecture of what Hegel called 'objective spirit': the sphere in which freedom achieves concrete social reality through institutional forms. The work proceeds from abstract right (property, contract, punishment) through morality (the individual's relation to her own duty) to ethical life (Sittlichkeit), which is further developed through three institutional stages: family, civil society, and state. The Preface contains the two most famous Hegelian sentences — 'What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational' and 'the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk' — both among the most contested in philosophy.