Persons and Masks Phenomenology of Spirit and Its Laws

8/13/2019 Persons and Masks Phenomenology of Spirit and Its Laws

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Persons and Masks:ThePhenomenologyofSpiritand its LawsRobertBernasconi

TheP henom enology ofSpirit*has many laws. Most prominent arethe law of force in chapter three; the laws of thought, the laws of theheart, and law as commandment in chapter five; the human and divinelaws in thefirstpart of chapter six; and the moral law and the naturallaw in the final part of chapter six. But is there a law to these laws? Isit possible to detect a law which governs them all? The question is notto be understood as an attempt to find an abstract concept of law,which embraces the laws just mentioned, so that the many laws wouldcollapse into one lawa law of laws. That would be to repeat thedialectic of the one and the many, introduced by Hegel in chapter twoof the Phenomenologyand against which he is on guard throughout(115/$ 150). Rather, the questions would concern the necessity governing these laws. Was Hegel's appeal to precisely these laws essential?How are they related?The questions would ask about the necessity governing the presentation of the Phenomenologyitself. It would ask about the lawtheorderthat saves theP henom enology of Spiritfrom the chaos which,according to Hegelhimself,threatens to overtake everyfirstreading ofPhenomenology.As he wrote in an advertisement which, as editor, heinserted in theBam berger Zeitungin June 1807: The wealth of theappearances of the spirit, which at first glance {dem ersten Blicke)seems chaotic, is brought into a scientific order which presents themaccording to their necessity in which the imperfect ones dissolve andpass over into higher ones which constitute their next truth.w2 Thenecessity which determines the order of the Phenomenology showsitself only for a second glance, a rereading. At least that is whatHegel implies in this work and others. Unfortunately, we still await acommentary on the Phenomenology which would meticulously mark

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Hegel and Legal TheoryDrucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld, David Gray Carlson, Benjamin N. CardozoRoutledge (1991)


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and clarify the character of such a rereading. In the absence of theperspective that such a commentary would provide, discussion of thePhenomenology is liable to distortion. Because this paper is largelyconfined to one particular moment of HegePs discussion of law,1 tooshall be guilty of displaying Hegel only through a distorting mirror. Ihope to mitigate the charge by focusing on the very partiality of myaccount.The shape of consciousness1shall be examining will be the very onein which the language of law as1 have considered it thus far is itselfapparently put in question. For although I have catalogued a numberof senses of law in thePhenom enology\that list was far from exhaustive. This is because1confined myself to only one of HegePs words forlaw, albeit the most common word , the wordGesetz.There is also lawas Recht. Rechthas its moment in the Phenomenologyand it is thatmoment which1want to consider. The distinction betweenGesetzandRecht is not easily rendered in English. Knox's translation of thePhilosophiedesRechtsas thePhilosophy ofRighthas helped establishwhat now seems the most obvious option and the one which I willfollow: law forGesetz*rightforRecht.*But what do these words meanfor Hegel? This is not easy to determine. It should be emphasized thatthe distinction is deep-rooted and reflected in other languages apartfrom German, such as Latin lexJius)and French(loifdroit).It is in thePhilosophy of Rightthat Hegel is m ost careful to clarify the differencebetweenGesetz andRecht.Indeed, he marks a passage from RechttoGesetz in the center of the section on Sittlichkeit, which follows thediscussion of Das abstrakte RechtandDie Moralitt. Rechtbecomespositives Recht. Rechtbecomes Gesetzwhen it is posited (gesetzt)inobjective existence when it attains the form proper to its universality,its true determinacy.4

It is a commonplace that the order of thePhenomenologyis not thatof thePhilosophy ofRight.Unfortunately, I shall not here be able toreopen the question of the relation between the PhenomenologyandthePhilosophy of Rightin terms of which the different direction of thetw o works must be approached. This could only have been done if thePhilosophy of Right had been restored to its place in the System ofScience from which it is so often abstracted and if we possessed abetter understanding of the ambiguous place of thePhenomenologyinrelation to the System of Science which it introduces and of which it issimultaneously the first part. I can note, however, that the reversaldoes not arise only becauseSittlichkeitin thePhenomenologyprecedesMoralittand not the other way round as in thePhilosophy of R ight.It also goes further than the fact that the brief discussion ofRechtszu-


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801Being, Person, Communitystand, which follows Sittlichkeit in the Phenomenology and seemsmerely to be appended to it there, is made the starting point of thePhilosophy of Rightas Das abstrakte Recht.In thePhenomenologythere is a transition not fromRechttoGesetzasin the laterP hilosophyof Right,but the other way around It is not as clearly marked as inthe latter work, because Hegel seems less stria in maintaining theseparate meaning of the two words. Nevertheless, it seems thatG esetzis most prominent in the first five chapters; that at the beginning ofchapter six (the chapter on spirit) Hegel uses both Gesetz andRechtto describe the Greek world, with the emphasis perhaps on the formerterm, and that at the end of thefirstpart of the sixth chapter, Hegel'sattention shifts exclusively toRecht.It is that shift which w ill serve asmy starting point. Certainly, this is not the end of the discussionof lawlater in the chapter, for example, the French Revolution isdiscussed in terms of the concept of law rather than ofrightbuthereHegel clearly marks a transition between conceptions of the law.Hegel is perhaps most explicit about this transition in a sentencewhich follows his account oftheconflict between Antigone and Creon.He writes: Only in the downfall of both sides alike is absolute righ t[das absolute Recht) accomplished, and the ethical substance as thenegative power which engulfs both sides, that is, omnipotent andrighteous Destiny [das allmch tige und gerechteSchicksal], steps onthe scene (337/$ 47 2) .w 5Hegel is saying that absoluteright,which hadbeen sought in human law, cannot be found there. The downfall isexperienced by both Antigone and Creon in the guilt they feel. Antigone, following the divine law, is guilty before the human law. Creon,following the human law, is guilty in the face of the divine law. Thetwo laws are not simply opposed to each other. In thefirstpart of thechapter, Hegel had shown how the two laws were interdependent byexaminingtheinterrelation ofthesubstancesthepolis or thefamilyinoneof which each individual finds its element. Only then does heintroduce the situation in which they come into conflict. The sufferingbrought on by the experience of guilt frees the participants from theirrespective charactersin the sense of their allegiance to the separatelaws which differentiated themand the belief arises that nothingcounts except das Rechte (336/S 47 0) . Absolute righ t is thereforefound not in human law or humanrightwhere it had been sought, andthe tie between the individual and its substance is broken.This discussion marks the transition from the familiar and relativelylong discussion ofSittlichkeitto the brief and largely neglected sectionon Rechtszustandor legal status. The section has been neglectedlike much else in thePhenomenologythrough commentators reduc-


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ing it to a story or narrative. This is a widespread practice, not leastbecause Hegel himself has appeared to authorize this approach bydescribing the Phenomenology as the history of the education ofconsciousness (67/$ 78 emphasis in original). The description seemsto fit the chapter on spirit because it follows the course of history fromancient Greece to Hegel's own times. On these terms, the section onlegal status is transitional, albeit only in the rather disarming sense oftrying to fill a gap of well overathousand years. It is impossible to sayprecisely how long the gap is, because of the lack of explicit historicalreference points both inthediscussion ofRechtszustandandthediscussion which immediately follows. It is perhaps not accidental that thenarrative details which would allow Hegel's reader better to identifythe historical moment are withheld. Perhaps it is more surprising thatHegel is sometimes as specific as he is. It is far from clear that thenecessity governing thePhenomenologyis clarified by every additionalhistorical reference that assiduous commentators succeed in identifying. Such references domore tosustainafirst reading of thePhenomenologythan they illuminate the book's order, the law of the book . Forexample, it can be shown that the discussion of Rechtszustand inthe Phenomenologycorresponds to HegePs discussion of the RomanEmpire in theLectureson the Philosophy of W orld History.6This doesnot mean that the discussion in thePhenomenologyisaboutright inthe Roman Empire. Most of the section's five pages are concerned withestablishing parallels to the earlier account of Stoicism and Scepticismin chapter four. Only when w e are better able to explain why HegePsow n focus lies in drawing these parallels will we have learned to reador rather rereadthePhenom enology.Thefirsttime reader, however, will not be impressed by these structural parallels between various sections of the book. Indeed, the firsttime reader is more likely to be struck by HegePs curt condemnationof the concept of person. It comes at the end of a crucial but difficultsentence: uConsciousness of right, therefore, in the very fact of beingrecognized as having validity, experiences rather the loss of its realityand its complete inessentiality; and to describe an individual as a'person* is an expression of contempt (345/$ 480 ). The observationis not an isolated one . Hegel repeats it many years later in thePhilosophy of Rightwhere he writes: Man's summit is to be a person, andyet in spite of that bare abstraction, 'person' isasomewhat contemptuousbareexpression. 7InthePhenom enology,Hegel seems tobesayingthat insofar as the law construes the individual as a person it holdsthe individual in contempt, an observation which would amount to adevastating contempt of court {Michtung des G erichts) on HegePs


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82 IBeing, Person, Communitypart. Or perhaps one should say there is a more fundamental form ofcontempt of court than the one that is usually recognizedthecourt's own contempt of the individual.What is the context of HegePs suspicion of the concept of person?Hegel explained the collapse of the Greek ethical life in terms ofthe contradiction between the human law and the divine law. Thecommunity which replaces it is sustained not by ethical substance butby law as right. It survives only by suppressing the spirit of individualism (341/$ 475) and so becomes a soulless community (342/$ 47 7): itis no more than a multiplicity of individuals all of whom count thesame. Before the law, all individuals are equal. But they have beenequalized only on the basis of an impoverished conception of theindividual as a person.wIn theLectures on the Ph ilosophy of W orldHistory, Hegel captures in a graphic image the dissolution undergoneby the living body of the state when political organization is reducedto the atomism ofaplurality of private persons: he says that it remindshim of when a physical body rots and each of its parts acquires a lifeof its ow n, the wretched life ofaworm.8This suspicion of the conceptof person extends to the concept of right insofar as the two terms areclosely correlated.9Hegel is ill-disposed to the language of rights, andparticularly the notion of equality which belongs to it. In a famouspassage of thePhilosophy of Right,he says that thedemand for equalitybelongs to uempty understanding which takes this abstraction and itsought9as real and rational. *10Such abstractions seem to be endemicto the law, but the point is particularly appropriate to a discussion ofRoman law. In his 1802 essay Natural Law {Naturrecht) Hegelquoted Edward Gibbon'sTheDeclineandFallof the Roman Em pire:The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fireof genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated/ 12The question is whether this is HegePs main concern in this section ofthe Phenomenology. Why does Hegel come to focus on the wordperson and subject it to his invective? To what is the language ofpersonhood opposed?

The word person is very telling for HegePs purpose. ThomasHobbes provides the best introduction to HegePs discussion. Hobbeswrites inLeviathan:The word person is Latin: instead whereof the Greeks have [proso-pon],which signifiestheface,aspersonain Latinsignifiesthedisguise,or outwardappearance of a man, counterfeited on the stage; andsometimes more particularly thatpartofit,which disguiseth the face,


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Robert Bernasconi I83asamask or vizard: and from the stage hath been translated to anyrepresenter of speech and action, as well in tribunals, as theaters.13

Hobbes here observes a difference between the Greek and the Latinlanguages. In terms of this difference, the passage from Greek civilization to Roman civilization amounts to a passage from the face to themask. This would correspond quite closely to the transition Hegelmakes from the fullness of ethical life, which he calls the living immediate unity of individuality and substance (342/$ 47 7) , to the abstractimpoverishment of the Roman world. Is the transition fromGesetztoRechttherefore to be understood as a passage from face to mask?Before calling Hobbes to HegePs aid, it shouldbenoted that Hobbes,whose linguistic sensitivity is normally so reliable, missed the mark onthisoccasion. Does notprosopanalsomean mask? This appearsto havedawned on Hobbes also. The Latin edition ofLeviathan(published in1668 , seventeen years aftertheoriginal English edition) tried to salvagethe text by saying that in Latinperson more frequently (frequentis-sime)meant mask. The point was made more precise in Hobbes'sresponse to Dr. Bramhall'sCatching of the Leviathan. Hobbes saidthat it may be possible to render the Latin word personain Englishwith accuracy, but there is no Greek equivalenta point readily illustratedbythe history ofChurchdoctrine.16Theunderlying claim, whichsurvives the recognition that both prosopan and persona can meanmask, is that with the Romans the word is given political significance.Or, to put it another way, even if there never was a pure face free ofall masking, it is the Romans who made it a virtue of entering thepolitical arena in disguise.The word person played an important role in Roman law. Romanlaw distinguished between the law which pertains to persons (jus adpersonas)and the law which pertains to things jusadrem).Nevertheless, Roman law did not regard all human beings as persons. Slaveswere things according to the law. That is to say, persons possessedlegal rights, but slaves did not.17Hegel, however, seems to neglect thisusage in his characterization of law within the Roman Empire and notonlyinthePhenom enology.IntheLectures on thePhilosophy of W orldHistory, in the course of a discussion of the position of individuals aspersons in ancient Rome, Hegel said not only that individuals wereperfectly equal . . . and without political right, but also that inrespect of equality slaves made only a trifling distinction (einengeringen Unterschied).}BHegelseemstohaveoverlooked the importantrole played by the question of thestatusof the person condicioperso-


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841Being, Person,Communitynae)in Roman law. He ignores, for example, the distinction betweenthehonestioresandhum iliores.19One wonders how Hegel can attackthe conception of person for proposing an abstraa equality withoutraising what seems to us the obvious point: that this equality, such asit was, was itself only sustained by inequality. Is that not precisely thekind of point one would expect Hegel, of all people, to be making?And not without good reason. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegelshows that he is fully aware of the confusions which arise from theclassification of the law intojus ad personasandjus ad rem20as wellas the deficiency of the definition of man in Roman law for excludingthe slave: The very status of slave indeed is an outrage on the conception of man. 21 Why then are such considerations absent from thediscussion of legal status in the Phenomenology} Indeed, why doesHegel not do more to amplify his understanding of the law and theperson in thePhenom enology}My answer, asIhave already intimated, is that he is more concernedto establishaparallel between legalstatus on theone hand and Stoicismand Scepticism on the other. Hegel sets out the parallel in the followingway. Stoicism is the abstraa form of legal status. It is the thoughtofindependence{Selbstndigkeit) which posits its essence in the unity ofpure thought. What in Stoicism was only implicit in an abstraa waybecomes in legal status an actual world (343/$ 47 7) . But in both casesthere is a detachment from what might sustain it. Just as Stoicism isdetached from actual existence, the law of the person is not attachedto aricheror more powerful existence of the individual as such (344 /$ 47 9) . That is to say, the law of the person is superficial. The abstraaform of legalism amounts to a formalism.22The alleged parallel withStoicism's passage to Scepticism is the context for Hegel's observationthat legal status similarly passes into confusion and dissolution.This is not the only parallel in play. Hegel also says that u[t]he freepower of the content determines itself in such a way that its dispersioninto an absolutemultiplicityof personal atom s is, by the nature of thisdeterminateness, at the same time gathered into One, a spiritless pointalien to them . . . (345/$ 481) (emphasis added)w Thus, at the verypoint where Hegel establishestheparallel with StoicismandScepticism,he also introduces an echo of the dialectic of the one and the many,first introduced in the chapter on perception and often returned to(particularly in the context of discussions of law). A further parallel isestablished when the one of the one and the many is identified. Theone, the gathering point of the multiplicity of persons, is identified byHegel as the master of the world, a solitary single individual that


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thinks of itself as being an actual living god (345$ 481 ). BecauseHegel couches the discussion in terms of theMmaster of the world, itis possible to see here a reference to the master-slave dialectic. Thenecessity of thePhenomenologylies in the repetition of structures andso emerges only retrospectively as these come to be multiplied. Hegelthus requires that his reader should constantly relate the section athand with previous sections. The importance of the early sections ofthe book, which are often given die most attention, is not recognizeduntil they are seen not only as forms of consciousness, but also fortheir role as moments of subsequent forms.

The reference to the master-slave dialectic provides an initial explanation of w hy Hegel is content to ignore the difference between slavesand freemen within the RomanEmpire andturn his back on the Romanusage oftheword person at the very time he appears to be exploringit. His justification has a structural basis in the law ofPhenom enology.The subjects over whom this master exercises his power relate to oneanother through him. He is, in HegeFs phrase,uthe continuity of theirpersonality or, as he also says, the whole content and the realessence (345/$ 48 1) . But the master also destroys his subjects' personality.23 Hegel wants to suggest that from this perspective, slaves andpersons alike are all deprived by the master and that only the collapseof this whole world will resolve the problem. If Hegel is not moreexplicit on this question, it is perhaps in pan because he is aware ofhow readily it might be m isunderstood, how insensitive it might appearto be to the condition of slavery. But it is also because the issue at thispoint is essentially not the historical one , but in keeping with the veryproject of thePhenomenology ofSpirit,,the structure of the shape ofconsciousness under examination. This structure is defined in terms ofits relation to other shapes of consciousness now conceived at itsmoments.Hegel summarizes the whole movement as follows: Legal personality thus experiences that it is without substance, in that the contentwhich is valid for it is alien to it (346/$ 48 2) . The same idea isexplicated more concretely in theLectureson the Philosophy of WorldHistory. Privateright,which was initially proposed as the correlate ofpersonality, turns out to be a not recognizing of personality to thepoint of beingitsdisappearance.24The contradiction which Hegel callsthe misery of the Roman world and also its discipline is that(e]ach person is, according to the principle of personality, entitledonly to possession, while the person or persons lays claim to thepossession of all such persons, so thatthesinglerights at once sublated


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86IBeing, Person, Communityand deprived ofright,w2


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Robert Bernasconi 187understanding this proposition with the reference to the shape of spiritthat expresses it. Hence the proposition, The self is absolute essencecomes to be understood to mean,aThe selfassuch, the abstract person,is absolute essence (522/$ 750) . In this way, Hegel returns in chapterseven to the themes already dealt w ith in the first parts of chapter sixand offers a rereading of them. This rereading of legal status is ananticipationalbeit a far from simple oneof the rereading of thewhole book to which 1 referred earlier.I shall not try to take up all the questions raised by Hegel's returnto the topic of legal status in the course of his discussion of religion,but I would like to remark upon certain surprising aspects of thatdiscussion. Indeed, it would be possible to claim that they confirm thefirstimpression that HegePsPhenomenologyis a chaos. Perhaps m ostpuzzling of all is that legal status as discussed in chapter six is said inchapter seven to correspond to the discussion of comic consciousness:uIn the condition of right, then, the ethical world and the religion ofthat world are submerged and lost in the comic consciousness and theunhappy consciousness is the knowledge of thistotalloss (523/$ 753emphasis in original), the discussion of comedy, though, does notappear to be about Roman comedyfar from it. The most explicitreferences are to Aristophanes.29 How can Greek comedy correspondto Rechtin the Roman Empire?Although it is true that Hegel finds personhood to be dominant inboth of them, this is not what sustains the parallel even though it mightbe thought to contribute to its persuasiveness. In chapter seven, Hegelintroduces the concept of the person in the context of the tragic hero.The tragic hero is split into the actual self of the actor and the maskof the person or, as one might say in this context, the mask of thepersona.In comedy, by contrast, the mask that the tragic actor usedto be the person represented ttnseinePersonzusein) is droppedor, Hegel will even say,ttplayed w ith.* Why? Because the self wantsto be something genuine, something right (ues . . . lt die Maskefallen, eben indent es etwas Rechtes sein will ) (518/$ 744). Hegelunderstands the loss of the distinction between actor and personawhich takes place once the mask is taken offasmeaning that the actualself of the actorand the self of the spectator, too coincides with hisor herpersona (520/$ 747). So long as the mask is in place, the selfhas not yet becomea person. Nevertheless, it is not in terms of personhood that Hegel establishes the parallel between legal status andcomic consciousness, but in terms of the proposition, MThe self isabsoluteessence. If Hegel seems to disregard chronology by analogizing legal status within the Roman Empire to Greek comedy, then this


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881Being, Person, Communityappears as a problem in large measure due to the assumption that thelater sections of thePhenomenologygettheir persuasive character fromthe historical references they contain. Were that indeed the case, anyfudging of these references would diminish the alleged necessity ofthe work. There is, to be sure, a rather different reading wherebycomm entators have sought to establish that Hegel's discussion is governed not by its historical references but by its relevance to his ownday.29But that reading also is ultimately in historical terms and disregards an instruction which Hegel himself introduces at the beginningof the chapter on religion. Hegel began the chapter by indicating thatin relation to religion, Spirit is not be represented as occurringintime(476/$ 679). Indeed, in the final chapter Hegel clarifies that it is notjust for religion but also for science that a historical presentation is notappropriate. (557-58/$$ 800-02). The historical reading falls away,or more precisely, the historical and scientific approaches m ust coexistin the form of what Hegel calls comprehended history (begriffneGeschichte)(564/$ 808 ). ThePhenomenologycallsfirst forahistoricalreading according to which it is an introduction to science. Such areadingplacesPhenomenologywithin historyin thecourse of justifyingthe claim that Hegel's time is the time for a introduction to science.Alongside thatreading,orrather followingit as itscorollary,isanother,according to which thePhenomenologyis already science. These tw oreadings need each other.

Hegel marks the second reading all the more intensively as the firstreading comes to its close. This is exemplified in the way that whatmight be called structural considerations dominate narrative ones.More familiarly, thePhenomenologyas science becomes m ore prominent than the Phenomenology as history. Not that the one ever displaces the other altogether. The double play of the passage from narrative to structure can most readily be exhibited by turning to Hegel'spresentation of the proposition, The self is absolute essence* at thebeginning of the section on revealed religion. This is a speculativeproposition, showing in a particularly acute way that * inhibition ofthought which provokes the comm on complaint that philosophicalworks must be read again and again before they can be understood.As Hegel puts it in the Preface to the Phenomenology the readerexperiences that something is meant other than what the authorthought hemeant:uthis correction of our meaning compels our knowing to go back to the proposition and understand it some other way(52/$ 63). Not that this second reading of a speculative propositioncorresponds exactly to what I have called a rereading. It would bebener simply to say that such a proposition upsets any attempt to


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containitwithin aone-trackn reading. Following Hegel's own accountof speculative propositionsin thePreface,theproposition theselfisabsoluteessence passes into the proposition that theabsolute essenceis the essenceoftheself (52 1-2 2/$ $ 74 9- 50 ), The speculative propositionisread in such a way thatitcombines two converse propositionswithout settingoneagainsttheother.The historical reading dependsonmaintaining order,let us say theorderinwhichtheshapesofconsciousness appear.The law ofsuchareading, which is not the law of the Phenomenology* dependsonsequentiality. Thatis whyan historical readingofthePhenomenologyfinds itself obligedtoplay downthemovementof themoments thatcanbe seen retrospectively. In alleginga connection between legalstatus and comic consciousness, Hegelisofferingaparticularly complicated formof this discussion.Theconnectionis established becauseboth legal statusandcom ic consciousnessareexpressedby theproposition, ttThe selfis absolute essence. It is with referenceto it,ratherthanintermsof any alleged historical coincidence, thattheparallelbetween themis to beunderstood.

Inoted above that Theselfisabsoluteessence can be interpretedtomean that,tfThe self as such,theabstract person,isabsolute essence.Because substancehashere sunkto thelevelofa predicateoftheself,the sentence records the lossofsubstance sufferedby theindividualinthe transitionto legal status fromtheGreek ethical world wheretheselfwas anaccidentof thesubstance.But at thesame time, absoluteessenceisthe essenceoftheself.Thatis tosay,theinessentialityofthepersonissustainedby theself whichislordof the world. Hegelex-presses thisin thesectionon legal status withthephrase self-consciousness, as absolute essence, isactual (346/$483 emphasisinoriginal).The saying, The selfisabsolute essence, also recordsthedissolutionofdivine substance through comic consciousness.Theexpulsionof the gods from their heaven, which began with tragedy, is completedin comedy.Theself takestheplaceof thegodsasabsolute essence.Withtheadventof comic consciousness thereis alossofessentialityonthe pan of the alien. Consequently,the individual self takesthecharacterof self-certainty and enjoys well-being (520/$ 748).Atthesame time, however, consciousness finds thatthedivine substanceuntilnow embodiedin a form opposedto consciousness, suchas astatueorsome other workof artisnotsomething separate fromit.Having externalized itselfas athing, self-consciousness makes itselfauniversalself.The connection with unhappy consciousness, whichhadalready been drawn for legal status in chaptersix, is extendedin


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90 /Being, Person,Communitychaptersevento comic consciousness. Unhappy consciousnessissaid tocomplete comic consciousness in spite of the well-being that comicconsciousness was said to enjoy. This is because comic consciousnessis the complete alienation of substance such that substance becomesself-consciousness (523/$ 749).Forboth legal statusandcom ic consciousness, therefore,thespeculative proposition, uThe self is absolute essence,w can be read in twoways.The proposition does not carry the same m eaning in both cases,and the difference corresponds, in part, to the different interest of thetwo chapters: whereas the analysis of legal status refers to consciousness,the analysis of comic consciousness refers to the self-consciousness of spirit. However, on rereading the Phenomenology from thepoint of view of the system of science, one recognizes that comedy andlegal status are both to be understood in terms of the proposition,rather than the other way around.

Hegel speaks here,aselsewhere, with a number of voices. He recordsthe path of consciousness, but also offers the dialectical observationsof the we ttwcwwho recognize the contradiction into which consciousness falls and so see how the new true object arises out of theold through its experience. aW e n see this only from the standpoint ofabsolute knowledge. Through rereading the book, uw e have accessto the structures which emerge in the parallels drawn between thedifference forms of consciousness. There are also the asides the extrinsic comments like thosein theScienceofLogic,which sustainapolemicagainst Kant independently of the systematic work of theLogicitself.30HegePs rejection of the term person, his contempt of court, seemsto haveasimilarstatustotheseasides,because it neglectsthesystematicrole of personhood in the discussion, where thenecessityof its appearance is the primary issue. The first reading, which operates at the levelof critique, is sustained by asides like the condemnation of the conceptof person. The interest in such asides falls away in the second reading.Atfirstglance, HegePs account of legal status is simply negative. Tocall someone a person, as right tends to do, is, according to Hegel, anexpression in contem pt. Further, Hegel evokes chaos in the course ofhis discussion. Having observed how persons find themselves in theirsolitary master w hoin turndependsonthem,heconsidersthecharacterof a solitary self cut off from the universal multiplicity of individuals.Cut off from this multiplicity, the solitary self is, in fact, an unreal,impotent self Liberated from the negative power controlling it, isthe chaos of spiritual powers which, in their unfettered freedom, become elemental beings raging madly against one another in a frenzy ofdestructive activity

w (345/$ 481). Indeed, some commentators have


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understoodthepassage fromtheGreek ethical world tothecondition ofright onlyas acollapseinto chaos anddisruption.32The verymeaning ofthePhenomenologyislost ifrights identifiedas aform of chaos. Hegelhas attempted to bring to chaos an order which was not simply that ofa teleology. This order emerges in rereading thePhenomenology. Thecharacter of such a rereading has been prepared by HegePs own com mentary on the speculative proposition,uThe selfisabsolute essence.nBut it has only been prepared for, andIcannot here satisfy the demandto reread the sections from the standpoint of absolute knowing. As aresult,this paper hasonlyaprovisionalstatus as regards itspresentationof HegePs text, not to m ention the tentati veness which iscalledfor simplyon account of the sheer difficulty of HegePs text at every point.The discussion of legal status, like so much else in thePhenomenonogy, is therefore to be divorced from the underlying purpose of thebook only with great caution. One law of thePhenomenologywhichthe section on legal status illustrates very well is that one can pluckfrom HegePs work arguments of broader significance at one's peril.But then, might not the same also be true of thePhilosophy of Rightwhich, like thePhenom enology\is too often seen in isolation from thesystem of which it is only a part and by no means the culmination?This has serious implications for whatever we might attempt to dounder the title uHegel and Legal Theory. I noted above that if theproblem of ethical life is that every right has to be treated as a trueright, the problem ofthejuridical conditionisthat absoluterightprovesto be a loss of righ t. Even to say that absolute righ t is not simply loss,but is also gain , is still to fall short of speculative truth. A 6rst readingof the Phenomenology will look to what arises out of the discussionof legal status for its truth. It will find its truth in the course of history,its linear succession. We know enough to know that a rereading of thePhenomenologywould find its truth in the systematic presentation ofthe whole. A piecemeal treatment of Hegel, such as the present one,will always fall short of such a presentation. That is one law of thePhenomenologywhich should not be evaded.

NOTES1. G. Hegel, Phnomenologie des Geistes (F. Meiner ed. 1948) [hereinafter Phnomenologie];G.Hegel,Phenomenology ofSpirit(A.Millertrans. 1977)(theauthorhas made occasional revisions to Miller's translations) [hereinafter Phenomenology of Spirit). [Editor's note: Unless otherwise indicated, citations will refer firsttothe pagenumber ofthe Germantextand then the section numberoftheEnglish

translation of thePhenomenology.]


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92 /Being, Person, Comm unity2. Selbstanzeige der Ph no m eno logie / Phnomenologie des Geistes, in 9 Gesammelte Werke 446 (F. Meiner ed. 1980).3. It should be noted that prior to Knox, the book had already been translated twice

as the Philosophy of Rights and once as the Philosophy of Law. See G. Hegel,Philosophy of Rights (T.C. Sanders trans. 1855); G. Hegel, Philosophy of Rights(S.W. D yde trans. 18 96 ); G. H egel, Philosophy of Law (J. Loewenberg trans.), in7 German Classics of the 19th and 20th Centuries (1914).4. G. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, $ 21 1 (T. Knox trans. 19 52 )(18 21 ); see Kaufman,Hegel's Concept of Personality in thePhilosophy of Right, 6 Graduate Fac Phil.J. 75 , 1 01- 02( 197 7) .5. This sentence must be read in conjunction with an earlier one which reads: Itsabsolute right is, therefore, that when it acts in accordance with ethical law, it

shall find in this actualization nothing else but the fulfillment of this law itself,and the deed shall manifest only ethical action. (333 /$ 467 ).6. G. H egel, Vorlesungen ber die Philosophie der Geschichte, in 12 Werke (Suhr-kamp 1970) [hereinafter Philosophie der Geschichte]; G. Hegel, The Philosophyof History (J. Sibree trans. 1956) (hereinafter Philosophy of History).7. Das Hchste des Menschen ist, Person zu sein, aber trotzdem ist die bloeAbstraktion Person schon im Ausdruck etw as V er'ch dich es. Philosophy ofRight, supra note 4, $ 35, Zusatz.8. Philosophie der Geschichte, supra note 6, at 38 4; Philosophy of History, supranote 6, at 317.9. Hegel says elsewhere that the proposition of right is that each should be treatedby the other as a person.* G. Hegel, Texte zur Philosophischen Propdeutik, in4 W erke 23 3 (Suhrkamp 19 70) ; G. H egel, The Philosophical Propaedeutic 23 (A.Miller trans 1986).

10 . Philosophy of Right, supra note 4 , $ 2 00 , Zusatz.11. G. Hegel, Jenaer Kritische Schriften, in 4 Gesamm elte Werke (F. Meinered . 1968)[hereinafter Jenaer Kritische Schriften]; G. Hegel, Natural Law (T. Knox trans.1975) [hereinafter Natural Law)12. G. H egel, Jenaer Kritische Schriften, supra note 11 , at 4 92 (quoting E. Gib bon ,1 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 56 (J. Bury ed. 1925)); G. Hegel,Natural Law, supra note 11 , at 1 0 1 -0 2 (same).13. T. Hob bes, Leviathan 125 (M . Oak eshott ed. 19 62). For more general explorations of the concept of p erson, see The Category of the Person (M . Carrithers, S.Collins 6c S. Lukes eds. 1985) and Probleme* de la Personne (L Meyerson ed.1973).14. T. Ho bbe s, Leviathan, in 3 Thom ae Hobbes Opera Philosophica Que LatineScripsit Omnia 123 (G. Molesworth ed. 1841).15. T. H obb es, An answer to a Book Published by Dr. Bramhall, Late Bishop ofD en y ; called the Catching of the Leviathan, in 4 The English W orks of Th om asHobbes (W. Molesworth ed. 1840).16. Id. at 31 1 (noting that in their discussion of the Trinity, the Greek Fathersemployed the wordhypostasis (substance) instead of the wordpersona); see alsoAn Historical narration concerning Heresy, and the PunishmentThereof, in 4The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, supra note 16, at 387, 400 (same).


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17. J.B. Moyle, Introduction to Book One, in Imperatoris lustimani Instituitionum85 (5th ed. 1912).18. Philosophie der Geschichte, supra note 6, at 383 (authors translation); The

Philosophy of History, supra note 6, at 316.19. On these andother indications of inequalityinRomanlaw,seeM.Finley,AncientSlavery and Modem Ideology 144 (1980); P. Garnsey, Social Status and LegalPrivilege in the Roman Empire 200-03 (1970).20. Philosophy of Right, supra note 4, $ 40 , Zusatz.21. Id S 2, Zusatz.22. Hegel elaborates this parallel in his lectures on the philosophy of history. Heobserves that Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Scepticism share an indifference to

everything that actuality has to offer. Hegel believes the same is true of abstractlaw. PhilosophiederGeschichte,supra note6, at 385;ThePhilosophy of History,supra note 6, at 318.23. To contribute to the task of multiplying references, Hegel's account may againhave been suggested by Edward Gibbon. In his 1802 essay.NaturalLaw,Hegelcontinuedthequotation to indudetheselines: They receivedlaws andgovernorsfrom the will of their sovereign The posterity of their boldest leaders wascontentedwith the rankofcitizens andsubjects.Themost aspiring spirits resortedto . . . the standard of the emperors; and the deserted provinces, deprived of

political strengthorunion, insensibly sunkinto thelanguid indifference of privatelife. * Jenaer Kritische Schriften, supra note 11, at492;Natural Law, supra note11,at 102.24. Philosophie der Geschichte, supra note 6, at 38 7; Philosophy of History, supranote 6, at 320.25. Philosophie der Geschichte, supra note 6, at 387-8 8; Philosophy of History,supra note 6, at 320.26. The movement of the world of culture and faith sublates this abstraction of the

person, and, through the completed alienation, through the ultimate abstraction,substance becomes for spirit at first the universal will, and finally spirit's ownpossession. (423/S 596).27 . For a survey ofand contribution tothe continuity debate, see Flay, Religionand the Absolute Standpoint, 56 Thought 316-27 (1981).28. See the editorial notes toPhnomenologiedes G eistes*in 9 Gesammelte Werke519,520(1980) .29. Forexample, citing Rousseau's importance for the French Revolunon, Hyppolite

understands the presence of thediscussionoflegal status inthe text of thePhenomenologyinterms of thehigh regard in whichthe ancientcitywasheld in Hegel'stime.This observation might be valid, but it remains extrinsic to thePhenomenology*sself-presentation. See Hyppolite,L'etatduDroit (la condition juridique)), Hegel-TageToyaumont 1954,3Hegel-Studien Beiheft 181-1 85 (1966).30. See G. Hegel, Science of Logic (A. Miller trans. 1969) (1812).31. See supra note 7 and accompanying text32. See, e.g., Shklar, Hegel's 'Phenomenology*: An Elegy for Hellas,inHegel's Political Philosophy 73-89 (Z. Pelczynski ed. 1971).

Persons and Masks Phenomenology of Spirit and Its Laws

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