Hegel and the Russian Constitutional Tradition
ABSTRACT: This paper advances the idea that Russian constitutionalism developed through a reinterpretation of Russian history in terms of Hegel's concept of the World Spirit. Russians implicitly viewed their nation as the embodiment of Hegel's World Spirit, which would have a unique messianic mission for humanity. However, the specifics of Russia's historical development diverged from Hegel's critical stage of ethical development, in which individuals would be mutually recognized as free beings. For this reason, the rights of the individual in Russia were seen until recently as originating exclusively in the state and valid only insofar as a given individual constituted an organic part of the whole or collective. I give examples from all six Russian and Soviet constitutions. I also demonstrate how the 1993 post-Soviet constitution represents a major breakthrough in the advancement of individual rights in Russia.
Hegel is the philosopher whose teachings on history, politics and law set the stage for the genesis and evolution of the Russian constitutional tradition. Although Hegel made only a brief mention of Russian history in his own writing, (1) his theories have played a major role throughout the development of Russian constitutionalism.
In my presentation I would like to raise and develop, as time allows, the following five theses:
1) The mature Russian political and legal tradition emerged in the middle of the 19th century through reinterpretation of previous Russian national development in terms of Hegel's understanding of history as a process of the self-development of the World Spirit as the Absolute.
2) The embodiment of the World Spirit was interpreted as th...
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(3) D. I. Chizhevskii, Gegel. v Rossii [Hegel in Russia] (Paris: Dom knigi, 1939) 32-35, 50, 222, 246-258.
(4) Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977) 212.
(5) Hegel's Philosophy of Mind, Being Part Three of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), trans. William Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971) 240.
(6) K. D. Kavelin, "Vzgliad na iuridichevkii byt drevnei Rossii," in Nash umstvennyi stroi: stat. i po filosofii russkoi istorii i kul. tury ["A View of the Legal Life of Old Russia," in Our State of Mind. Articles on the Philosophy of Russian History and Culture] (Moscow: Pravda, 1989) 15.
(7) Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy in three volumes, vol. 2 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995) 97. I made some corrections in the translation of this piece from Hegel.
Historically, Russia has always been a country of perplexing dualities. The reality of Dual Russia, the separation of the official culture from that of the common people, persisted after the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War. The Czarist Russia was at once modernized and backward: St. Petersburg and Moscow stood as the highly developed industrial centers of the country and two of the capitals of Europe, yet the overwhelming majority of the population were subsistent farms who lived on mir; French was the official language and the elites were highly literate, yet 82% of the populati...
Moss, W., 2014. A History of Russia Volume 2: Since 1855. 1st ed. London, England: Anthem Press London, pp.112-113.
In sections 190-193 of Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel’s Phenomenology of Sprit, Hegel looks into the relationship between the lord and the bondsman. In this examination of the relationship, Hegel makes the move to find out what both the lord and bondsman offer to each other in terms of existence and or identity. The formulation that Hegel made in the selected sections is that the bondsman had more to gain in terms of intellectual growth than his lord who becomes intellectually dormant due to the bondsman acting in the likeness of his lord.
Hamlet makes use of the idea of theatrical performance through characters presenting themselves falsely to others – from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern spying on Hamlet to gain favor with the King, to Hamlet himself playing the part of a madman – and through the play within the play, The Mousetrap. This essay will discuss the ways in which Hamlet explores the idea of theatrical performance, ‘acting’, through analysis of the characters and the ‘roles’ they adopt, specifically that of Hamlet and Claudius. The idea, or the theme of theatrical performance is not an uncommon literary element of Shakespearean works, the most famous of which to encompass this idea being As You Like It. This essay will also briefly explore the ways in which Hamlet reminds its audience of the stark difference between daily life and dramatization of life in the theatre.
...is an account of the birth of self-consciousness through intersubjectivity or the integration within culture. It is a dialectical interpretation that acts, for Hegel, as a form for perceiving the way in which the self comes to know itself through the other and through historical processes. The master/slave dialectic is an early account of intersubjectivity and also a lack of intersubjectivity because it is not based on equal recognition. Self-consciousness, for Hegel, is attained only through the recognition by another independent self. The human world is a world based on recognition, and the human being has within themselves the desire for recognition from other human beings. Hegel proposes that one cannot become a self-conscious individual without seeing oneself in another, and that each individual bases their existence on a world that is founded upon recognition.
This paper briefly looked at the structure of Nagel’s overall argument and then outlined and analyzed the part of his argument where it seems inconsistent.
To Hegel, the history of the developing self-conscious mind was the same as the history of philosophy. Through out time, conflicting theories have laid claim to their one exclusive form of truth. Hegel implies that we should not focus on these conflicted ideals but view each as “elements of an organic unity”. This places Hegel as part of a progression of philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, and Kant) who can generally by described as Idealists, whom regarded freedom or self-determination as real and being important for the soul or mind or divinity.
Marx, Karl. "Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy in General." marxists.org. marxists.org, 19/10/2009. Web. 26 Mar 2010. .
Kung, Hans. The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Theological Thought As Prolegomena to a Future Christology. T&T Clark, 2001. hard cover.
Marijuana has a long standing history of being one of the most controversial substances in America. While the history or the Cannabis plant indicates not only acceptance as a useful plant, but even advocated as a source of revenue and medicinal usage, much of the United States government propaganda over the last 100+ years has led Americans to accept very slighted and often false information about the plant and its uses. Based on the origin of the illegalization of marijuana and the inconsistent findings of its effects in comparison to other substances, both legal and illegal, marijuana should be decriminalized and treated as a recreational substance just as alcohol and tobacco are.
Wood, A. (1986). The Russian Revolution. Seminar Studies in History. (2) Longman, p 1-98. ISBSN 0582355591, 9780582355590
Marijuana has been the center of debate for several years now. There are many opinions on the subject, some believe that marijuana will be a “save all” that can help with medical advances, is less harmful than alcohol along with the taxability, so they push extremely hard for it to be legal. Others believe it will cause the world to collapse starting with it being addicting and moving to the detrition of our mental health, and want to do all they can to keep it illegal. Even though some believe it is bad for your mental health and can be very addictive, marijuana should be legal because it has positive medicinal and recreational uses and is taxable and safer than alcohol.
The Web. 5 May 2015. Franklin, Simon and Emma Widdis, eds. National Identity in Russian Culture: An Introduction.
A careful study of the Critique of German Ideology made it clear to me that society posses certain ingredients which makes it differ from other human forms of growth. In the article Hegel “substance ” and self-conscious made me understand that no matter how you feel and what you are going through one has to be able to stand without undermining what is going on around him he started his argument with religious conception where basically he dealt with the aspect of theology and
Social scientists often reference Georg Hegel’s work in Phenomenology of Spirit, as he attempts to develop the notion of self and the limits of its autonomy in society. In it, he describes what is often termed the master-slave dialectic. The master-slave dialectic describes the internal, or if taken more literally, the external struggle of recognition between two figures, the master and the slave. Their relationship is at once both reflective and reflexive, as one begins to understand the other as the antithesis of his or herself, giving an identity not only to the other, but also to his or herself. This dialectic places the figures in conflict with one another, where the historically determined means for resolution is the social defeat of