The Moral Life of Law in Hegel

It is a distinctive feature of Hegel's moral and political philosophy that it is characterized as a philosophy of right or law. Though Hegel had only moderate interest in technical issues in positive jurisprudence, much of his philosophical work can be understood as a series of reflections on what it means to live according to law, and specifically how the moral and political life distinctive of modernity can be said to be structured by law. Hegel's philosophy of law is in the tradition of natural law, broadly speaking, but it is just as much an overcoming of modern natural law, since it proposes not only to provide a evaluative standard against which one might judge existing laws, but an account of how the potentially critical perspective of the moral individual can be brought to an attitude of free assent to and reverence for objective laws and institutions. This dissertation is a close examination of four areas of Hegel's philosophy which are most central to this project in the philosophy of law: Hegel's concept of the philosophical 'Idea of right', his account of 'immediate' ethical attachment to law, his account of the legal system in the Philosophy of Right, and his account of ethical disposition.