On Hegel 's Criticism And Transcendence Of Modern Natural Law

This paper mainly focuses on Hegel’s early article,’On the Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law’, to review Hegel’s criticism on the modern natural law concept and Hegel’s surmount of it. This paper is mainly consisted of three parts. The first part makes a brief review on the natural law concept. The natural law concept has long historical tradition, it also shows different meaning in history. Generally speaking, it mainly emphasized on natural justice in ancient times and in middle ages, and it mainly emphasized on natural right in modern times. The second part reviews Hegel’s theoretical criticism on the modern natural law concept. Hegel classified the modern thinkers’ argumentation about natural right into two kinds, namely the argumentation of empiricism and the argumentation of formalism. The former is represented by Hobbes and Locke, and the latter is represented by Kant and Fichte. Hegel made his criticism on these argumentations respectively. The third part mainly focuses on Hegel’s surmount of the modern natural law concept. Hegel coined the concept of ethical life, distinguishing it from the modern concept of morality, and thus he reestablished the natural law concept and established his political philosophy.The modern natural law concept is mainly based on the basis of abstract right and morality, its mainly character is that it abstracts the individual from its social and historical background. Based on it, the individual has priority over the community, and the country’s aim lies in maintaining the individual’s natural right. In Hegel’s view, this standpoint of atomism is abstract and unilateral, it cannot explain the inner necessity of mutual connection and the need for the real unity. Thus, Hegel reestablished the natural law concept on the basis of ethical life, seeking the unity of the community and the individual and the unity of natural justice and natural right. The ethical life emphasizes the priority of the community, this in some sense recover the Greek perception of natural justice; meanwhile, the ethical life does not deny the individual’s natural right. The good of the community can only be realized by the individual. This is also the unity of objectivity and subjectivity, in terms of objectivity, it represent itself as certain social order which does not rely on the will of the individual; in terms of subjectivity, it internalizes itself in the individual, it is not because of habit but because of subjective reflection that the individual comply with the objective order. Thus Hegel reestablished the natural law concept by the ethical life, seeking the unity of the Greek principle of substantiality and the modern principle of reflection.