Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.10, 2018

The State and Justice—A Comment on Honneth’s Approach to the Reactualization of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

(Abstract)

Deng Anqing

Hegel was the first philosopher to think about modernity as a problem. His analysis of the crisis of modern civil society shapes an “ethical” state based on natural law that will resolve the difficulties that lie beyond the power of civil society, thus constructing a theory of state justice that differs from the general theory of social justice. However, Hegel’s theory of state justice lay outside Western mainstream justice discourse, which has never acknowledged it. To effect a change in this situation, the famous German philosopher Honneth dedicated himself to the systematic task of the reactualization of Hegel’s philosophy of right. The significance of this work should be fully acknowledged, but Honneth’s approach is not beyond question. Unless we start from the textual interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy of right and follow its metaphysical framework, we cannot give rational assent to the fundamental feature of Hegel’s theory of justice, which regards the state as the very locus, foundation and guarantee of the actualization of the ethical concepts of freedom and justice; nor can regarding Hegel’s theory of state justice as a theory of justice by means of social analysis be considered a true reactualization of Hegel’s philosophy of right. Therefore, we should return to Hegel’s text, clarifying the way in which his “civil society,” as an intermediate link in “ethical loss,” uses the state’s regulatory and shaping role to construct a truly achievable approach to justice based on individual freedom and the full development of society within the modern state (social state) as the realization of the concept of ethics.