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Hegel’s Political Philosophy

Hegel’s Political
Philosophy
On the Normative Significance of
Method and System
Edited by
Thom Brooks
and Sebastian Stein
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
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© the several contributors 2017
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2017
Impression: 1
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address above
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and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
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contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Introduction 1
Thom Brooks and Sebastian Stein
1. What Might it Mean to have a Systematic Idealist, but Anti-Platonist,
Practical Philosophy? 25
Paul Redding
2. Systematicity and Normative Justification: The Method of Hegel’s
Philosophical Science of Right 44
Kevin Thompson
3. In What Sense is Hegel’s Philosophy of Right “Based” on His
Science of Logic? Remarks on the Logic of Justice 67
Robert B. Pippin
4. Method and System in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right 82
Allen W. Wood
5. The Relevance of the Logical Method for Hegel’s Practical Philosophy 103
Angelica Nuzzo
6. The State as a System of Three Syllogisms: Hegel’s Notion of the
State and Its Logical Foundations 124
Klaus Vieweg
7. Hegel’s Shepherd’s Way Out of the Thicket 142
Terry Pinkard
8. To Know and Not Know Right: Hegel on Empirical Cognition
and Philosophical Knowledge of Right 161
Sebastian Stein
9. Individuals: The Revisionary Logic of Hegel’s Politics 183
Katerina Deligiorgi
10. Hegel on Crime and Punishment 202
Thom Brooks
11. The Logic of Right 222
Richard Dien Winfield
vi contents
12. Hegel, Autonomy, and Community 239

Liz Disley
13. Hegel’s Natural Law Constructivism: Progress in Principle and
in Practice 253
Kenneth R. Westphal
Index 281
Acknowledgements
We have collected several debts leading up to the publication of this book. We must
first thank our contributors for producing a diverse range of insights into the neg-
lected topic of how Hegel’s system informs his political philosophy. When Thom was
a graduate student at the University of Sheffield and Sebastian was a graduate student
at the University of Oxford, the importance of Hegel’s system and method remained
underappreciated in our view. This is a project we have wanted to produce for some
time and we hope that this topic will feature more prominently in future work on Hegel’s
philosophy more generally, as a productive insight into his complex and wide-ranging
works. Working together on this project has been as interesting as it has been enjoyable.
Thom extends his thanks to Sebastian for his considerable help in putting much of
this book together, including producing an original translation of the chapter by Klaus
Vieweg rendered in English for the first time here. This was a substantial task to under-
take in addition to contributing his own original piece and sharing editorial duties—
and this book is much richer for it. I owe many thanks to Brian O’Connor for being the
first to help me realize the importance of Hegel’s system and method for understand-
ing his political philosophy. I am grateful to Michael Rosen whose work continues to
exercise a profound influence on me explicitly and implicitly. Bhikhu Parekh devel-
oped my thinking on much of this material and my work benefits enormously from his
critical interventions and scholarly example. Finally, Bob Stern deserves the most
thanks of all for guiding much of my thought to where it is today.
Sebastian would like to thank Thom for conceiving of the project, taking him on
board just at the right time, and for commenting on the contribution’s main draft. It
was nothing but joy to work with such a motivating mentor and learn about the intri-
cacies of the editing process. I would also like to extend special thanks to Michael
Inwood and Felix Stein for patiently commenting on two drafts of the contribution and
to professors Anton Koch, Jens Halfwassen, Robert Pippin, Sebastian Ostritsch, and
Ioannis Trisokkas for helping me shape its core ideas. Much was learned from the con-
structive criticism made by the participants at the Leuven University conference
“Hegel, une pensée de l’objectivité” and Professor Koch’s and Professor Halfwassen’s
research workshops at Heidelberg University. The works of Michael Inwood and
Stephen Houlgate have been a source of great inspiration ever since my first encounter
with Hegel’s thought, as have been the exchanges with David Merrill, Lucia Ziglioli,
Susanne Herrmann-Sinai, Lisa Herzog, Roberto Vinco, Carl O’Brien, Frank Chouraqui,
Hermes Plevrakis, Christian Martin, Tobias Dangel, Giuseppe Blasotta, Lee Watkins,
Resgar Beraderi, and Daniel Dragicevic amongst others. Their curiosity and passion
for the truth keep me on the Way.
Notes on Contributors
Thom Brooks is Professor of Law and Government, Dean of Durham Law School
and Associate in Philosophy at Durham University.
Katerina Deligiorgi is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Sussex.
Liz Disley is an Honorary Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of St
Andrews.
Angelica Nuzzo is Professor of Philosophy at CUNY.
Terry Pinkard is University Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University.
Robert B. Pippin is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor in
the Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the College at
the University of Chicago.
Paul Redding is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney.
Sebastian Stein is Postdoctoral Researcher at Ruprecht-Karls-University in
Heidelberg.
Klaus Vieweg is Chair for Civil Law, Law of Information Technology and Law of
Technology and Business at the Law School of Erlangen University and Director of
the Institute of Law and Technology.
Kevin Thompson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University.
Kenneth R. Westphal is Professor of Philosophy at Bogazici University and
Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of East Anglia.
Richard Dien Winfield is Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Georgia.
Allen W. Wood is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor Emeritus at
Stanford University.
Introduction
Thom Brooks and Sebastian Stein
I.1. A New Debate

Bertrand Russell called Hegel ‘the hardest to understand of all the great philosophers’.1
Hegel’s philosophy has certainly attracted much debate—and the Philosophy of Right
and his political philosophy have been at the heart of important controversies. The first
concerned his ideology, where scholars were divided on whether he work supported a
politically right or left interpretation. Shortly after its publication in 1821, Hegel’s work
was branded dangerously authoritarian.2 Others agree, including Karl Popper who
claimed Hegel is ‘the father of modern historicism and totalitarianism’.3 Such views are
now widely rejected by virtually all commentators—and even Popper shifted his position.4
A second, more contemporary debate has focused on the role played by metaphysics
in Hegel’s philosophy. In the first section of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel says this
work is primarily concerned with ‘the concept of right [Recht] and its actualisation’.5
For Hegel, ‘right’ does not merely exist, but it can exist in varying degrees—and so
some manifestations of right are said to be more real or actual than others. Hegel’s
metaphysics of ‘the Concept’ have been challenged by many interpreters leading to the
‘non-metaphysical’ reading of the Philosophy of Right dominant today which attempt
to separate out Hegel’s ontological claims from his account of political thought.6 In the
words of Z. A. Pelczynski:
Hegel’s political thought can be read, understood, and appreciated without having to come to
terms with his metaphysics. Some of his assertions may seem less grounded than they might
1
Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945): 730.
2
See Rudolf Haym, Hegel und seine Zeit (Berlin, 1857).
3
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II: The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx and the
Aftermath, 5th edition (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966): 22.
4
Popper later admitted ‘factual mistakes’ in his interpretation of Hegel’s political philosophy and said
that ‘I looked upon my book as my war effort: believing as I did in the responsibility of Hegel and the
Hegelians for much of what happened in Germany’. See Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 393–4.
5
G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991): §1.
6
See Thom Brooks, Hegel’s Political Philosophy: A Systematic Reading of the Philosophy of Right, 2nd
edition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013): 2–3.
2 Thom Brooks and Sebastian Stein
otherwise have been; some of his statements and beliefs may puzzle one; some intellectual
curiosity may be unsatisfied when metaphysics is left out; a solid volume of political theory and
political thinking will still remain.7
Comments like these raise serious questions about the importance of Hegel’s philo-
sophical foundations and whether they are more than ‘some intellectual curiosity’ of a
few Hegel scholars—or whether there is something of greater interest to be found in
taking a much closer look.
We believe such an examination is needed urgently. The topic of this book is a
new issue that emerges from this debate between the non-metaphysical readings that
isolate the Philosophy of Right from its systematic context and metaphysical readings
that take the Science of Logic and the wider system into account when they interpret
the Philosophy of Right. This difference entails a profound interpretative change con-
cerning the philosophical foundations of Hegel’s political thought. Hegel famously argues
that the system-informing speculative method that he details in his Logic grounds his
claims about socio-political reality and is the inevitable and superior alternative to
all other ways of philosophical thinking. We argue that it is only in the light of this
method and the system it begets that Hegel’s claims about socio-political reality can be
rationally evaluated in his own terms.
Until recently, however, Hegel scholars have paid generally insufficient serious attention
to the importance of his philosophical method and system in explaining his philosophy.
It has become commonplace for studies of his texts to focus on a specific aspect of his
system and overlook the importance of his method for our understanding of his ideas.
These readings can be considered ‘non-systematic’ because most commentators neglect
the systematic structure of Hegel’s arguments and overall philosophical enterprise.
Instead, scholars have chosen to ‘buckle down to the study of the Philosophy of Right
for example and try to work out the context of his arguments as he elaborates in that
text’—and ignore its connections to his philosophical system.8
A systematic reading of Hegel’s work takes more seriously these features of method and
system.9 It is clear that Hegel intended his ideas about socio-political normativity to be
understood in a particular way. The opening lines of his Philosophy of Right state that it:
is a more extensive, and in particular a more systematic exposition of the same basic concepts
which, in relation to this part of philosophy, are already contained in a previous work designed
to accompany my lectures, namely my Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences.10
This passages raises two key points. The first is that the Philosophy of Right—and his
political philosophy more generally—was not meant to be understood separately from
7
Z. A. Pelczynski, ‘An Introductory Essay’, in G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Political Writings, trans. T. M. Knox
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1964): 136–7.
8
See Dudley Knowles, Hegel and the Philosophy of Right (London: Routledge, 2002): 21.
9
The distinction of a systematic reading versus a non-systematic reading of Hegel’s philosophy is
presented in Brooks, Hegel’s Political Philosophy, especially 1–28 and 161–77.
10
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 9.
Introduction 3
his wider philosophical system that is outlined in the Encyclopaedia, with the Philosophy
of Right being an elaboration of the Encyclopaedia’s section ‘Objective Spirit’.11 There
is nothing controversial then about how Hegel intended his audiences to understand
his work—although it is a topic of debate whether Hegel’s method and system play
the important role he assigned them.
The second key point is that if the Philosophy of Right and its political philosophy is
to be considered part of the system then its claims should be understood in a system-
atic way. This means more than just locating the text within a wider philosophical
enterprise outlined in his three-volume Encyclopaedia, but also demands becoming
more attentive to the distinctive form of dialectical argumentation that informs the
Philosophy of Right as much as they do his wider system.
Whether or not his method and system matter for his political philosophy has usually
been dismissed. Examples abound. Frederick Neuhouser argues:
[E]ven though Hegel’s social theory is undeniably embedded within a more comprehensive
philosophical vision—one that includes views about the nature of ultimate reality and the
meaning of human history—it is possible, to a surprisingly large extent, to understand his
account of what makes the rational social order rational and to appreciate its force even while
abstracting from those more fundamental doctrines.12
Similar comments about the relation of Hegel’s philosophical system to his political
thought are made by Allen Wood:
Because Hegel regards speculative logic as the foundation of his system, we might conclude
from its failure that nothing in his philosophy could any longer be deserving of our interest.
But that would be quite wrong. The fact is rather that Hegel’s great positive achievements as
a philosopher do not lie where he thought they did, in his system of speculative logic, but in a
quite different realm, in his reflections on the social and spiritual predicament of modern
Western European culture.13
Serious criticisms like these raise questions about Hegel’s systematic project. Was
he wrong in tying the notion of philosophical truth to systematic thinking and the
speculative method? Is it possible to criticize or appreciate some of his claims without
endorsing or rejecting the entire system and its method? Was Hegel deceived about
the importance of his method and system for his political philosophy? Are his claims
about the rationality of political institutions—like monarchy, unequal gender rela-
tions, and a corporation-based economy—beyond non-speculative revision or even
reconstruction? Since Hegel’s method is supposed to save him from both dogmatism
and relativism, is there anything about his criticism of previous philosophies that
could make his approach attractive to contemporary thinkers? Or is it preferable
11
See G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971): §§483–552.
12
Frederick Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory: Actualising Freedom (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2000): 4.
13
Allen W. Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990): 5.
to focus on Hegel’s conclusions only, disregard his method, and interpret him
non-systematically?
There is clearly a debate to be had about the importance of Hegel’s method and
system for his political philosophy and wider thought—and we think that there is too
little substantive work that explicitly explores this issue. We thus see an urgent need for
greater reflection on these foundational ideas and for a new wave of research into
Hegel’s systematic thought in general and the Philosophy of Right in particular.
I.2. An Overview
This collection of new essays is dedicated to the questions that surround Hegel’s philo-
sophical method and its relationship to the conclusions of his political philosophy. It
contributes to the ongoing debate about the importance of a systematic context for
political philosophy and the relationship between theoretical and practical philoso-
phy. It also engages with contemporary discussions about the shape of a rational social
order and gauges the timeliness of Hegel’s way of thinking.
In Chapter 1, Paul Redding uses a discussion of Rorty’s endorsement of Hegel to
analyse the nature of Hegel’s ‘new’ metaphysics.14 Rejecting the old metaphysics’
Platonic project of talking about the world in ‘God’s own language’, Rorty finds
a brother in arms in Hegel and his method of ‘redescription’: in the Phenomenology,
so Rorty argues, Hegel ‘out-redescribes’ the major philosophers of the Platonic-
metaphysical tradition and thereby enables an emancipation from their objectivist
aspirations.
The freedom from classical metaphysics that Hegel thereby makes possible, so
Redding’s Rorty, is more important than Hegel’s own attempt at providing a new
objectivist point of view with his account of ‘absolute knowing’. While the practical
goals of freedom and justice remain accessible through the empirical world’s truths,
the metaphysical master narrative, i.e. ‘Truth’ and its claim to necessity, is undermined.
Inspired by Hegel’s method of redescription, the (post)modern philosopher is to adopt
a point of view from which previous thinkers are undermined but unlike Hegel
remains ‘ironic’ about this perspective.
While Redding agrees with Rorty that Hegel is anti-Platonic in his aspirations, he
rejects Rorty’s sacrifice of ‘Truth’ for freedom: Redding’s Hegel is able to have both.
How so? Drawing on the notion of ‘struggle for recognition’, Redding describes Hegel’s
notion of ‘the will’ as overcoming Kant’s and Fichte’s rejection of desire’s object: Hegel’s
rational will accommodates a positive as well as a negative dimension—it is a will to
something as well as a negation of a given object of desire.
Drawing on the Logic’s section of the syllogisms of ‘existence’ and ‘reflection’,
Redding suggests that the content of Hegel’s ‘free willing’ sublates the ‘de re’ (‘freedom’)
and ‘de dicto’ (‘Truth’) dichotomy. While the validity of ‘de re’ (‘existence’) beliefs
14
All quotations in discussion about Chapter 1 are from that chapter unless otherwise stated.
Introduction 5
depends on contextual background information, ‘de dicto’ (reflective) validity is

supposed to be timeless. Both existence and reflection are necessary but on its own,
neither is sufficient for describing rational intentionality: To be properly rational
actors, we must reflectively adopt a contextually defined content to our willing. The
choices we make take place ‘in the world’, and by conceptually redetermining the
content of our willing, we ever more adequately ‘bring out the structure of the actual
world for a subject who belongs to that world’.
This means that there is no essentially (e.g. Aristotelian) right way of acting. Instead,
what has to be done is to be judged in the context of a world with particular, specific
features and contexts. For Redding, this makes Hegel a ‘modal actualist’—the object of
our metaphysical knowledge is the actual world we inhabit: it is knowledge of the
actual world, known from ‘a reflectively mediated position within it’.
So freedom is to be gained ‘by grasping real possibilities that exist within the actual,
possibilities that can thereby be realized to create a new actuality’. This happens
‘via participation in a socialized cognition in which others are, in the style of Kant,
recognized as free minds and not as objects of nature’.
In Chapter 2, Kevin Thompson argues that Hegel’s notion of normative justification
in general and of the state in particular has to be able to withstand the three sceptic
challenges: (A) a claim is grounded in unwarranted assumptions, (B) the claim’s foun-
dation is itself in need of justification, and (C) the claim presupposes what it seeks
to establish.15
According to Thompson’s Hegel, ‘representational thinking’ is unable to answer
these challenges because it ‘employs preconceived notions or makes use of ungrounded
assumptions’ and while both rationalism and empiricism fall prey to the shortcomings
of representational thought, Hegel proposes thinking in terms of ‘concepts’ as an
alternative to representational thought. Unlike representations, so Thompson argues,
Hegel’s ‘concepts’ are independent from representational and (rational) intuition-
informed content because they (a) track conceptual, immanent development,
(b) establish necessary entailment of their determinations, (c) engage in ‘retrogressive
grounding’, and (d) begin without presuppositions (i.e. they assume neither rules of
procedure nor their subject matter). The only fundamental precondition of Hegelian
‘concepts’ is the ‘justification of the systematic [i.e. concepts-mapping] standpoint
itself ’. By connecting all conceptual determinations, Thompson’s Hegel sets out ‘to
establish the oneness of thought and being so that the concepts and relations out of
which the system is to be fashioned already had their ontological credentials secured’.
This enables Hegel to undermine the notion of a standard of truth that is external
to thought/being and so Hegel ‘is […] able to capture the core of foundationalism’s
concern with grasping the nature and truth of reality itself and coherentism’s insist-
ence on constitutive relational dependence in a way that avoids the dogmatism of the
former and the relativism of the latter’. Thompson’s Hegel’s ‘true way of knowing […] is
15
nothing other than the process of development that is proper to being itself and this is
to grasp the rationality, the dialectic of the concept, within all that is’.
What does this mean for the Philosophy of Right’s concern with ‘right’, itself a con-
ceptual determination and thus part of the conceptual system? Also here, so Thompson
argues, philosophical thought has to ‘observe the immanent development of the pure
concept of right into its interdependent whole, [i.e.] its complete actualization’. So it
is by sticking to the requirements of systematic, concept-mapping justification that
Hegel ‘is able to show that right is not only one of the essential determinations discovered
in the unfolding of freedom, it is the concrete existence, the necessary embodiment,
through which human striving is able to be genuinely free.’
In Chapter 3, Robert B. Pippin connects the project of the Science of Logic with the
Philosophy of Right via the notion of actuality: in virtue of its status as logic, transcen-
dental logic, and metaphysics, the Science of Logic tells us about those categories in the
light of which simultaneous sense-making about thought and world takes place.16
Beyond Kant’s restriction of the question of intelligibility to the concerns of the
finite representatives of a ‘species’ and its sense-making practices, Pippin’s Hegel is
concerned with ‘general intelligibility’ and argues that any notion of ‘objects “outside”
something like the limits of the thinkable is a non-thought, a sinnloser Gedanke’. To
Pippin’s Hegel, ‘to be is to be intelligible; the founding principle of Greek metaphysics
and philosophy itself ’.
In going beyond Kant’s limitations, so Pippin argues, Hegel approximates Aristotle.
To him, ‘[e]ntities are the determinate entities they are “in terms of” or “because of” their
concept or substantial form. Such entities embody some measure of what it is truly to
be such a thing, and instantiate such an essence to a greater or lesser degree.’ This leads
Pippin to describe Hegel’s ‘actuality’ as the result of Aristotle-style ‘dynamis’ (potential,
Möglichkeit) that actualizes itself and takes on the form of an actualized potential
(energeia, Wirklichkeit). This actuality—rather than mere existence or appearance—is
the concern of the philosopher: ‘The suggestion is that Hegel thinks of anything’s
principle of intelligibility, its conceptual form, as an actualization in the Aristotelian
sense, the being-at-work or energeia of the thing’s distinct mode of being’.
This also applies to the Philosophy of Right. Its concern, the actuality of freedom,
‘is neither an analysis of the mere concept of right, nor an empirical account of exist-
ing systems of right’. Instead, it is ‘the concept together with its “actuality,” where the
latter is distinguished from “external contingency, untruth, deception, etc.”’. So on
Pippin’s reading, Hegel’s philosopher wants to know whether what he is historically
confronted with is actually a freedom-actualizing socio-political institutional
framework, whether it truly is ‘the determination by the power of thought of its own
norm for a free life?’
Pippin notes that in Hegel’s philosophical description of the forms of ‘actualized
freedom’ in the Philosophy of Right, the Logic’s categories of being, essence, and the
16
Introduction 7
concept correspond to the abstract right, morality, and ethical life. Each form leads
into another due to the previous one’s incoherence: e.g. thinking of each other only as
abstract right’s persons does not allow us properly to understand the motivations
behind our actions and so morality is needed to fill that sense-making void.
According to Pippin’s Hegel, the actuality of someone’s rational activity is thus not
just the sum total of their externally observable actions or their inner motivations. It
has to consider both of these: ‘We need to understand how “what shows,” “what mani-
fests itself ” [Schein] can be said to reflect their essence when they do (if they do, then as
appearance [Erscheinung]), even if, as appearances, no one deed is ever a manifestation
or simple representation of essence as such’. While Pippin admits that ‘Hegel’s Logic
does not provide any ground rules for how to do this’, he argues it is enough to know
that this is how sense-making of actions ought to proceed.
So although the Logic does not furnish a ‘blueprint’ for understanding the Philosophy
of Right, it describes what people actually are, and how they can lead free, norm-governed
lives. The rational norms in question constitute Hegel’s notion of ‘right’ and they can
‘be understood only in terms of our ways of understanding anything’, i.e. logically.
However, so Pippin maintains, ‘Hegel freely admits and insists on the fact that these
modalities of righteous lives can be, must be, inflected in different historical ways’.
While Hegel might be correct in arguing that the rational state enables and controls
civil society’s pursuit of self-interest, the concrete way in which this historically happens
is not necessarily for Hegel to grasp.
Rejecting attempts to read Hegel as deducing everything that socio-politically exists
from the concept of right (e.g. down to ‘Krug’s fountain pen’), Pippin is also open to
criticisms of Hegel: just because Hegel knew that right is the essence of socio-political
reality does not mean that he necessarily knew what right is. Analysing our contem-
porary political landscapes, Pippin dismisses Marx’s critique of Hegel that the latter
tried to fit history into the concept rather than the other way around, but Pippin allows
that Hegel might have been wrong about how civil society and state can be reconciled.
With liberals and conservatives both rejecting the state without giving an alternative,
it seems that civil society has freed itself from the state’s embrace. And while we do not
need to understand the Logic and its intricacies to understand what is wrong with
contemporary political life, so Pippin concludes, it remains important to understand
the logic of Hegel’s project in the Philosophy of Right.
In Chapter 4, Allen W. Wood argues that labelling him as a ‘non-systematic’ interpreter
of Hegel’s practical philosophy amounts to misunderstanding his stance.17 Maintaining
that ‘we still have much to learn from past philosophers, by asking them our questions
and reading their texts as answers to them’, Wood rejects that this amounts to ‘reading
your own thoughts into the philosopher’: ‘In appropriating a past philosopher, you
need to be self-aware of your own act of appropriation, and you must devise an
approach that lets you get the most philosophically out of the encounter.’
17
With regard to Hegel, Wood argues that appropriating him implies understanding
him which in turn implies ‘understanding the system and method through which he
thought’. This, so Wood deduces, entails that ‘[t]here is no choice between reading Hegel
“systematically” and reading him in response to our questions. There are only different
ways of doing both at once.’ Although Hegel’s ‘speculative logic’ is no ‘replacement for
traditional logic’ and that one need not ‘see Hegel’s ethical insights as grounded in
(hence sharing the same fate as) his now clearly outdated speculative-logical system’,
Wood also maintains that ‘one’s understanding of Hegel’s ethical thought [is] greatly
enhanced if one approached it with an appreciation of the way it is shaped by his
method and his systematic concerns’.
Wood then traces Hegel’s method back to the post-Kantian period during which
Kant was criticized for drawing his categories rather ‘mechanically from the tradition
of scholastic formal logic’ and called for a more ‘rigorous kind of derivation’ of philo-
sophical concepts. Second, so Wood, the post-Kantians accused Kant of separating
‘sensible intuition from the thought of understanding’ and asked for ‘a transcendental
explanation not merely of the forms of thinking but also of the matter’.
It was Fichte who took the ‘first great creative step’ beyond Kant on Wood’s reading
and ‘sought a method by which the categories of thought might be successively intro-
duced’. Simultaneously deducing ‘I’ and its object (‘non-I’), Fichte attempted to justify
the categories of thought by exposing their contradictions. For Wood’s Fichte, the
most basic contradiction between ‘I’ and ‘non-I’ can be avoided if ‘we introduce a new
concept—that of limited, partial or divisible activity or negation’. It implies that each
negation is ‘compatible’ with the other and ‘[t]his compatibility constitutes the com-
mon ground for their synthesis or reciprocal dependency’. Fichte’s method is ‘synthetic’,
so Wood, insofar as he seeks to unite opposing propositions in higher-order categories
that avoid the lower-level contradiction.
For Wood, ‘[i]t seems self-evident that the synthetic method was the model for
Hegel’s dialectical method’ since ‘Hegel also proceeds by showing how every limited
thought-determination leads us into contradictions, which can then be resolved by
introducing a new thought-determination. Hegel calls this process the “proof ” of the
new thought-determination.’ Unlike Fichte, so Wood,
Hegel did complete the systematic development of such a system of thought determinations.
This was his Science of Logic. He then developed the ‘real’ parts of his encyclopaedic philosophical
system by going through a similar process with the thought-determinations through which
those regions of reality are grasped: the philosophy of nature, and the philosophy of spirit.
Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right is a yet more detailed execution of this dialectical
process within one part of the philosophy of spirit, namely the sphere of objective spirit (or
social life).
Wood rejects the idea that Hegel’s project as undertaken by him has ‘continuing
philosophical value’ but asserts that ‘understanding the details of Hegel’s systematic
[is] indispensable to the appropriation of his living philosophical contributions’. Wood
Introduction 9
then gives examples for why he thinks Hegel is still of philosophical interest today: He
argues that ‘Hegel anticipated some of the problems philosophers now have relating
[…] the sciences to one another, arguing that Hegel developed an approach to such
problems that ‘is worthy of serious consideration’. According to Wood, Hegel’s ‘con-
ceptual pluralism’ can teach us something about the limits of naturalism’s tendency
to reduce all phenomena to natural ones instead of acknowledging each domain’s
limitations. While Hegel would be more systematic about the different concepts’ rela-
tionships than contemporary thinkers, so Wood claims, he would also argue that the
spiritual is privileged over the natural and that the ‘highest spiritual cognitions’ such as
art, religion, and philosophy enable access to the ‘highest truth’.
While sympathetic to conceptual pluralism in general, Wood does ‘not think we can
accept Hegel’s version of conceptual pluralism in its original form’ and that ‘Hegel
belongs to an earlier stage of the history of science and philosophy than the one where
we are now. We cannot simply look at Hegel’s own writings and doctrines for the right
answers to our questions.’ Still, Wood maintains that Hegel’s spiritual categories
‘deserve to be seriously considered as options in dealing with the issues to which natur-
alists think they have […] all the answers’. Since Hegel’s own thoughts can only be
understood in the context of method and system, so Wood argues, he resists the idea to
‘“quarantine” [Hegel’s] philosophy of right from his system’ and does not ‘refuse to take
his system into account when understanding his ethics’.
Wood also finds Hegel’s ‘hierarchical version of conceptual pluralism’ at play in the
‘philosophy of objective spirit—his philosophy of right’: ‘Social life and the norms that
belong to it form a plurality of different systems and subsystems, whose limitations are
signalled by the fact that a way of thinking, when pushed beyond its limits, falls into
contradiction and becomes self-undermining.’ In differentiating between abstract
right, morality, and ethical life, Wood thinks Hegel ‘captures the distinctness and inde-
pendence of right and morality that he inherited from Kant and Fichte’ and even in the
face of Hegel’s differentiations within ethical life, morality and abstract right ‘retain
their validity’.
To show that not all the problems of Hegel’s account of right have solutions, Wood
cites Hegel’s treatment of peasants, women, day labourers, ‘rabble’, and ‘poverty’, all of
which seem unavoidable features of Hegel’s ‘just’ state. For Wood, this points to the
problem that ‘it is not at all clear that people’s rights or aspirations to subjective free-
dom were even close to being properly actualized in the European state of 1820, or in
the society in which we live today’: ‘As Hegel presents things, the benefits of both right
and morality are enjoyed only by a minority of the members of society—in effect, by
the male bourgeoisie and civil servants—the young men, and their fathers, whose
social position was like that of Hegel himself and of those to whom he lectured. The
inadequacy of that society, as Hegel portrays it, even by the standards of his own theory
of freedom, is all too clear today.’
Citing Fichte, Wood counters that ‘[i]f we can be reconciled with existing social
reality at all, it must be only conditionally and provisionally; we cannot rationally be
content with the world as it actually is’ and states that ‘[i]f Hegel’s philosophy really
aims at reconciling us with the modern world, we must reject it. For the modern world
is not reconcilable to itself.’
In Chapter 5, Angelica Nuzzo argues that the Philosophy of Right and the Science of
Logic are systematically united by their concern with what Hegel calls ‘the idea’.18 And it
is this common concern that enables a reading of the Philosophy of Right in the light of
the Logic and vice versa.
Arguing that ‘the fruitfulness and vitality of Hegel’s practical philosophy […]
depend both on its being conceived as a part of the system of philosophy’ and ‘on its
being based on and articulated according to the dialectical-speculative method devel-
oped in the Logic as the first and foundational part of the system’, Nuzzo relies on the
notion of ‘action’ as common denominator between Logic and Philosophy of Right:
while the Logic discusses action as such, the Philosophy of Right discusses action in the
forms of right, morality, ethical life, politics, and history.
With regards to systematicity, Nuzzo suggests that ‘the “system” (or systematic
“whole”) is the form that [freedom as truth, i.e. the “discrete, dynamic, ongoing pro-
cess of self-production and self-actualization”] takes as it acquires objective reality—in
knowledge, in action, in history’. The same freedom that informs the determinations
of the Logic, so Nuzzo argues, defines and structures the Philosophy of Right. This
freedom is the concept (or world-immanent ‘soul’ or ‘consciousness’) that gives itself
actuality (or the idea) and so Logic as well as the ‘philosophical science of right’ are
both ‘complementary investigations on the actuality of the idea’: The Logic describes
the idea’s ontological structure, the Philosophy of Right describes the idea’s ‘historical
actualization’.
Nuzzo parallels the ‘retrospective character’ mentioned in the Logic’s final discus-
sion of ‘absolute method’ with the Philosophy of Right’s philosophical look on to the
world once actuality has manifested itself, and she argues that Hegel’s speculative
method performs the very ‘dynamic flux’ of thought’s movement that also determines
the world: ‘By bringing change to bear directly on pure thinking, by making thinking
one with the movement it accounts for, Hegel’s logic does the very thing that it purports
to understand and describe.’ For Nuzzo, this means that the question of intelligibility
becomes one of theory as much as one of praxis.
On her reading, logic is action and it is this action that informs the Philosophy of
Right’s determinations: the logic of action is actualized by ‘different spiritual agents—
alternatively, individual, collective, institutional, economic, political agents—under
the specific conditions dictated by a changing historical actuality’. Focusing on the
Logic’s absolute method’s notion of ‘beginning’, Nuzzo compares how the Logic’s
moments of ‘being’, ‘essence’, and ‘concept’ deal with this notion in different ways.
While the logic of being defines beginning as pure immediacy and nothing, the logic of
18
Introduction 11
essence begins in opposition to being as something ‘other’ while the concept is always
already with itself from the beginning.
This, so Nuzzo argues, parallels the Philosophy of Right’s discussions of different
forms of violence: being’s beginning’s emptiness is the absolute freedom of destruction
and revolutionary violence. Meanwhile, essence is violence against being, as mani-
fested in revenge and Unrecht’s ‘shine’ that enables right to reassert itself. The logical
concept’s constructive freedom parallels the determination of ethical life. Here, vio-
lence is turned on itself, and constructive formation and creation in the form of ‘ethical
powers’ ‘rule over the life of individuals in a non-violent way as the citizens identify
with them, trust them, and see in them the source of their self-conscious activity
within the ethical whole’.
In Chapter 6, Klaus Vieweg examines the syllogistic architecture of the Outlines’
account of the state in order to find a more rational rendering than the one Hegel
provides.19 For Vieweg, Hegel’s whole argument for the modern state ‘rests on the logical
spirit’ and it takes the ‘speculative mode of cognition’ to grasp properly the argument’s
philosophical nature.
Vieweg’s focus on logical form leads him to argue that the state’s ‘inner constitution
is a whole consisting of three syllogisms’ whose mutual connection takes place within
the idea of right’s totality. After analysing the role of syllogistic structure in the realm
of inter-state relations, Vieweg turns to the notion that ‘the state is a system of three
syllogisms’. These are: ‘(1) the singular (the person) con-cludes himself through his
particularity […] with the universal […]. (2) The will or the activity of the individuals
is the mediating [term] that gives satisfaction to their needs in the context of society,
right, etc., and provides fulfilment and actualization to society, right, etc. (3) [T]he
universal (State, government, right) is the substantial middle term within which
the individuals and their satisfaction have and preserve their full reality, mediation,
and subsistence.’
Vieweg maintains that the ‘syllogisms of quality’ and of ‘reflexion’ fail adequately
to describe the interconnections between the particular, universal, and individual
moments and only the syllogism of necessity succeeds because it explicates that
‘Concrete freedom consists in the fact that personal individuality (I) and its particular
interests (P) find their complete development and the recognition of their specific
right within the state (the universal of the constitution).’
For Vieweg, this means that it is only as ‘citizen’ that the acting subject ‘achieves the
highest form of recognition within an individual community’ and is able to unite all the
‘dimensions of subjectivity’. These are: ‘Personality, moral subjectivity, membership
in a family and in civil society.’ As a citizen, the subject grasps its individuality ‘also as
an universality’ and proves its freedom by, for example, ‘respecting reasonable laws
as something universal’. Of the three available necessary syllogisms (categorical,
19
All quotations in discussion about Chapter 6 are from that chapter unless otherwise stated. This essay
appears for the first time in this collection translated into English by Sebastian Stein.
hypothetical, and disjunctive), it is the disjunctive syllogism that ‘exposes the moments
of the concept in their speculative unity’ and explicates that each of the moments
‘represents the whole and contains the respective others within itself ’. For Vieweg,
this means that ‘[o]nly a citizen (Citoyen) that is logically-speculatively thought of
in this way can serve as the foundation of a political state that is truly free.’ According
to the disjunctive syllogism of the state, ‘every moment of the concept’s determination
(I, P, U) is itself the whole and the mediating ground—the citizens, civil society, and the
political state as community of the citizens (Citoyens)’.
After identifying the necessary, disjunctive syllogism as most adequate description
of inter-state and intra-state relations, Vieweg applies the same analysis to the state’s
constitution’s separation of powers. In so doing, he follows Hegel and identifies the
power of the crown with individuality (I), government with particularity (P), and
the legislative power with universality (U), but argues that Hegel’s own descriptions
of their relation ‘fail sufficiently to develop the entirely developed concept and the
transition into the idea’. Vieweg is surprised ‘that the brilliant logician Hegel does not
properly demonstrate the connectedness (‘con-clusion’) of the three syllogisms and
fails to explicate the moment of the systematic whole, i.e. of the three syllogisms’ unity,
in sufficient detail.’ For Vieweg, it is not the monarch as final decider but the legislative
power that ‘must be associated with the highest function of finalization’.
One reason for Hegel’s failure to employ the disjunctive syllogism in the context of
the division of powers and to establish the ideal nature of the constitution, so Vieweg
suspects, ‘can be found in Hegel’s debt to his time’: His contemporaries’ ‘debates
surrounding constitutional theory’ led him ‘to find a guarantee of stability and order
in constitutional monarchy and motivate him clearly to delineate this notion of
monarchy from other versions and varieties of state constitutions’. Still, since the
application of the disjunctive syllogism’s requirements would place the legislative
power at the centre of the state—and Hegel was aware of this—Vieweg suspects that
Hegel ‘fooled the Prussian censors with considerable finesse and chutzpa and placed
his faith in his subsequent interpreters to realize a reconstruction and correction in
accordance with the requirements of Hegel’s Logic especially’. Applying Hegel’s own
syllogistic reasoning to the state’s constitution, Vieweg argues that it is the legislative
power, which is the only one capable of truly tying the three conceptual moments
together and bringing them into the unity of the universal reasonable will: ‘The consti-
tution and the constitutional laws, the constitution itself and the legislative power’ are
the true foundation of the state’s structure.
On Vieweg’s reading, placing the legislative power at the deserved middle position
of the syllogism reveals that it is ‘the true syllogism of state-life, in which all powers
originate in the people as such’. This makes the people themselves the ‘sole purpose of
the state’ and the legislative power ‘has the special function of cognizing and determin-
ing the specific purposes of the state’. Since the citizens elect the legislature, the disjunctive
syllogism’s application reveals ‘their function as justifying instance of state power’. For
Vieweg, this is ‘universal reasonable will, which manifests itself as constitution and as
Introduction 13
legislative assembly’ and this entails that ‘[e]very citoyen must be enabled to equally
participate in the creation of the universal—be it by way of membership in political
parties and societies, by way of direct (plebiscitary) democracy, or by indirect, repre-
sentative institutions’.
For Vieweg, ‘[a]pplying the logic correctly entails the theoretical legitimization of a
republican, democratic constitution and of the fundamental meaning of the legislative
assembly as expression of a representational-democratic structure.’ This means that
‘the political trinity has its ground in the “holy spirit” of the universal reasonable will of
the citizen, the educated Citoyenneté as lawmaker and sovereign’. Ultimately, so
Vieweg, the application of the disjunctive syllogism to the state’s constitution shows
that in the most rational state, the institutional set-up ‘is the subject’s syllogizing with
itself, which, strictly speaking, is no syllogizing anymore’ and so ‘enables the citizen
and citizenship in general to be autonomous, i.e. free, within the reasonably structured,
legislative power in which universality, particularity, and individuality are united’.
The truly rational state, so Vieweg argues, ‘is the structure that satisfies the needs of
the citizens as much as it is the product of the free activity and unification of the
legal subjects’.
In Chapter 7, Terry Pinkard asks how Hegel combines ‘his appeal to sociality and
history with his otherwise timeless conceptions at work in his Logic’?20 Pinkard’s search
for an answer leads him through a discussion of Hegel’s notion of the idea to observations
about Kant’s and Fichte’s notions of rational action, and finally, to a history-focused,
social interpretation of Hegel’s account of rational willing.
According to Pinkard, Hegel’s ‘idea’ is ‘the phenomenal world as comprehended in
thought, and in practical contexts, Hegel expresses this by saying that the Idea is the
warp and the passions are the weft of world history’. As ‘unity of the phenomenal world
and the noumenal world’, the idea is actualized against the ‘infinitely extending’ back-
ground of the phenomenal world that escapes perception and intuition to some degree.
Insofar as it does not, it forms part of the Idea, whose ‘“infinity” can be grasped not, as
it were, as one thing after another but in the boundlessness of the conceptual’.
Some ways in which the idea is manifest and grasped are abstract right and the
moral standing of persons. Asking why such reasons-motivated persons have moral
rights, Pinkard suggests that part of the answer ‘lies in the philosophy of history that
comes at the end of the book and is therefore supposed to be the “ground” for all that
has come before it. History has led us to the conclusion that we are required to think of
all subjects that they are free’, i.e. that ‘there is no overarching natural authority among
persons’. For Pinkard, both history and philosophy thus converge in their defence of
the necessity of the modern conception of rights.
Arguing that ‘there is something in people which does historically come to demand
respect for itself ’, Pinkard’s Hegel thinks of the intra-subjective seeming conflict
between the demands of ‘reason’ and ‘the drives’ as reason ‘shadowboxing’ with itself.
20
This is because Pinkard sees Hegel as subscribing to the ‘incorporation thesis’, according
to which both reason and emotions are aspects of a historically realized reality of moral
subjectivity that has self-consciousness about itself and its inner moral conflicts—the
‘I think’ is its constant companion. For Pinkard’s Hegel, the subject’s knowledge of what
he is doing is essential to the action: ‘[T]he subject gives the “form of self-consciousness”
to his life’.
This also means that self-conscious agents ‘bring themselves’ under the concept of
leading an apperceptive life. They know this non-empirically because it is a feature
of their subjectivity that they are subjects that bring themselves ‘under the concept of
“subject”’: ‘[W]e are concept-mongering creatures because we make ourselves into
concept mongering creatures’. To Hegel, being a spiritual being, so Pinkard argues,
means just that: to self-consciously engage in progressively unfolding actions.
This reading relies to the Aristotelian notion of actuality: ‘To understand a con-
cept fully, we must understand how it may be actualized in use, and in the case of
a practical concept, how, in Hegel’s way of putting it, it must be able to “actualize
itself ” if it is to count as a practical concept at all.’ So that a ‘purportedly practical
concept that could not be made real (be “actualized”) would in fact not be a practical
concept at all’.
For Pinkard, it is finite subjects who actualize practical concepts by taking them up
and putting them into practice, thereby translating them from possibility to actuality.
When they choose to actualize the human good, self-determining subjects can come
into conflict about how and what to actualize. Such conflicts can be dissolved only in a
social space that is structured by some kind of authority that motivates the subjects
mutually to recognize and treat each other as ends, also. Each of these structured social
contexts is ‘historically indexed’ so that all human action and enacting takes place in
the context of world history that defines what is possible for the agents.
Pinkard adds that Hegel’s rationally acting subjectivity ‘takes its own concept, its
concept of itself, to be the truth to which the world should measure up, not the other
way around’ and expresses the significance of its own concept of human life in art, reli-
gion, and philosophy. These describe ‘shapes of life’ and ‘[w]hen a shape of life cannot
comprehend what it is doing, it begins to lose its normative allegiance among people
living in terms of it’. This leads to alienation among the agents that are supposed to live
in accordance with it. Once a form of life has ‘broken’ the agents have to pick up what
still works in a new, hopefully viable socio-political arrangement. To Pinkard, ‘Hegel
has a view of history such that people have under many different conditions lived
through such breakdowns of meanings in a way that has compelled them to a conclu-
sion about human life such that nobody by nature has authority over anybody else, and
therefore “all are free”’.
Finally, Pinkard identifies another feature of Hegel’s rational agents: the two interests
of (1) insuring that one’s ‘judgments about what a human life has subjective validity’
by thinking ‘“This is what those of us would do in this case”’ and (2) that the maxims of
actions be objectively valid. The agent wants to know if her maxims are ‘true’ and she
Introduction 15
acts wondering ‘whether “What we do” is true, that is, is what a true human being
would do’.
One of Hegel’s objective truths about modern agency, so Pinkard, is the notion that
modern moral rights
demand a moral point of view, a reasoning from the standpoint of what any rational human
would do; and a conception of those social goods that make it good for any individual subject
to think of his concept as good—that means that it is good to be a rights-bearing, moral agent,
in the sense that one is doing what ultimately matters in a human life—so that even when the
world fails to conform to this concept, it has the means to right itself.
What this actually means, so Pinkard argues, is what Hegel attempts to capture with
the triad of ‘rights, morality, and ethical life’, moving on from there into ‘not yet
adequately charted thickets’.
In Chapter 8, Sebastian Stein investigates the relationship between empirical cogni-
tion and philosophical knowledge in the context of Hegel’s practical philosophy.21
Against interpretations of Hegel that suggest empirical experience and historical
circumstance condition philosophical knowledge, Stein differentiates between uncon-
ditioned philosophical knowledge (‘PK’), conditioned empirical knowledge (‘EK’),
and potentially conditioned philosophical knowledge (‘PCPK’). While PK is true by
definition, EK is always opinion and PCPK is how finite, potentially mistaken thinkers
relate to PK.
According to Stein, Hegel defines the conceptual structure of EK as ‘the uncondi-
tioned concept as Geist that knows about the unconditioned concept in form of a
presupposed reality’. In contrast, PK is the unconditioned concept as free Geist that
knows the unconditioned concept as free Geist: it is unconditioned, self-thinking,
absolute Geist. From PCPK’s perspective, so Stein’s Hegel, ‘we’ as cognizing subjects
aim for PK when we attempt to replace ‘representations with concepts’. Instead of
the conditioned, externally informed representations of EK, ‘we’ want to think PK
in the form of determinations of the very unconditioned concept that informs and
enables our existence, thinking in general and reality.
Crucially, so Stein’s Hegel, PK grounds EK and PCPK. ‘We’ can err and entertain
doubt about PK because there is PK in the first place. If PCPK were more fundamental
than PK, it could not guarantee the universal validity it automatically appeals to when
posited as fundamental. Furthermore, if PCPK were everything there was, there would
be no criterion for distinguishing PK from error: unless ‘we’ as finite thinkers always
already know PK, we could not recognize it when we encounter it.
Unlike other interpretations of Hegel’s notion of philosophy that focus on the condi-
tioned or potentially conditioned perspective of finite thinkers only, so Stein maintains,
his reading addresses Hegel’s explicit concern with the ultimate unconditionality of
PK and is able to explain how ‘we’ and ‘Hegel’ as historically positioned, finite thinkers
21
can err about PK. From ‘our’, PCPK-style perspective, there remains the possibility
that the ‘always already present’, all-informing unconditioned truth of PK is explicated
inadequately. The same applies to Hegel: as a historically situated, finite thinker, it
is possible that he erred about PK and that his account of right is partially or totally
mistaken. However, ‘our’ alternative account of right can only successfully substitute
‘his’ insofar as ‘we’—rather than ‘him’—correctly channel unconditioned Geist’s
self-thinking. The only adequate standard for PK’s truth is neither ‘Hegel’s’ thinking
nor ‘ours’ but the truth itself.
In Chapter 9, Katerina Deligiorgi connects the Logic and the Philosophy of Right
by investigating the conceptual role that ‘individuality’ plays in both contexts.22 In so
doing, she aims to make sense of Hegel’s ‘criticism of the politics of individualism […]
and his recognition of the positive, liberating function of modern individualism’.
Looking at the Logic, Deligiorgi finds two meanings of ‘individual’, one that Hegel
wants to preserve, the other, he wants to undermine: Deligiorgi’s Hegel rejects the idea
that an ‘individual’ is ‘something that counts as one by virtue of not being reducible to
something else’, i.e. a ‘simple’. Instead, so Deligiorgi argues, Hegel thinks of an ‘individual’
as something ‘incomplete’: ‘in order to fully characterize what makes someone an
individual, further information must be adduced’.
More precisely, Deligiorgi locates Hegel’s discussion of individuality in the Logic’s
Kant-inspired discussion of ‘the notion’: unlike Spinoza’s ‘just given’ unity, ‘the notion’—
Hegel’s shorthand for Kant’s ‘transcendental unity of apperception’—there becomes a
placeholder for the concept of ‘individuality’. Arguing that the notion has ‘the deter-
mination of negativity’, Deligiorgi’s Hegel follows Kant in thinking that the notion ‘is
known only through the thoughts that are its predicates’ and that individuation takes
place in the individual’s ‘opposing itself to all that is other and excluding it’. For Hegel,
so Deligiorgi, an individual is an individual because it is not one or more other
individual(s) and because it assumes certain predicates in a negativity-driven manner.
Via a discussion of Geach’s reconstruction of Aquinas’ conception of ‘form’,
Deligiorgi suggests that Hegel thinks of individuality in the same way Geach argues
that Aquinas thought of ‘form’: for Geach’s Aquinas, ‘form’ is the ‘that’ in propositions
of the kind ‘that by which X is y’. This ‘that’ is not a ‘thing’ like a universal Platonic ‘form’
but only makes sense in connection to the thing it is the form of: without something
that has the form, there is no form.
In the same way, so Deligiorgi argues, for Hegel there is no ‘individual’ unless it is
an individual determined as something. How then are individuals determined in
the context of political philosophy? Hegel’s concept of ‘ethical life’ gives us a clue, so
Deligiorgi: ‘members of ethical life are very finely characterized as family members,
members of particular estates, classes, and so on. These contents have normative
weight: to be a son, a citizen, and a farmer is to be under certain obligations, there are
certain things you have to do, they are marked out as the “rules of his own situation”’.
22
Introduction 17
For Deligiorgi’s Hegel, individuals are individuals because of ‘the multi-layered spiritual
being that defines them’.
Deligiorgi then suggests supplementing ‘moderate collectivist’ readings of Hegel’s
notion of political individuality with ‘methodological atomism’ to ensure the ‘norma-
tive dimension’ of Hegel’s conception by enabling reference to ‘interests at the atomic
level’ that do not stand in the way of ‘formation of shared interests’, since they allow for
‘non-instrumental participation in a social whole’. Despite this progress with regards
to an analysis of Hegel’s notion of (political) individuality, Deligiorgi maintains that
there is need for further discussion how the desiderata of an ‘ongoing redefinition
of political, social, cultural identities’ and ‘friction among competing models’ can be
reconciled with the demand for the possibility that ‘someone […] reflectively accepts
her world and finds in it simply what is her own and nothing else’.
In Chapter 10, Thom Brooks evaluates the common perception of Hegel as a retrib-
utivist regarding punishment who ‘justified punishing deserving criminals in order to
“annul” their crimes’.23 Although ‘Hegel is clear that punishment is only justified where
it is deserved by an offender for committing a crime’, the orthodox reading of Hegel as
a ‘genuine retributivist’ ‘rests on a mistake’, so Brooks, because such labelling fails ‘to
take sufficient account of Hegel’s distinctive form of [systematic] argumentation’:
while the conventional readings focus almost exclusively on the Philosophy of Right’s
section on ‘abstract right’, the passages in ‘ethical life’ also need to be considered in
order to make systematic sense of Hegel’s complete notion of punishment.
‘Abstract right’ suggests that a crime is ‘an infringement of a right as a right’ that
makes it necessary to reassert the violated right and ‘cancel the crime’ by ‘punishing the
criminal’. Brooks argues that ‘[p]unishing offenders is a way to protect and maintain
the rights of individuals. This includes offenders, too.’ By arguing that the criminal has
a right to punishment, Brooks’ Hegel reasserts ‘the rights of all—including the offend-
er’s rights’ by means of punishment: ‘Punishment is not about damaging an offender’s
rights, but maintaining them.’ Rejecting deterrence and the ‘eye for an eye’ doctrine, so
Brooks, Hegel argues that proportional, not equal ‘punishment is merely a manifestation
of the crime’.
While Hegel’s remarks in ‘abstract right’ seem to support the retributivist interpretation,
so Brooks suggests, they do not do so unequivocally nor is this all Hegel says on the
topic. Undermining the retributivist reading of punishment in ‘abstract right’, Hegel
argues that a crime is the failure to recognize what is right by appealing to a ‘particular
point of view’ alone. When right’s universal validity is undermined and agreed contracts
are broken; a crime is committed.
Punishment, so Brooks’ Hegel, ‘is merely the negation of the negation’ (PR, §97A).
Its purpose is to nullify the crime by reaffirming the right that illegality contravened
and restore right to its proper recognition’. Since Hegel says nothing about moral
23
responsibility for wrongdoing or ‘how much punishment is deserved’, his view is not
an example of classical retributivism.
Against the notion that Hegel’s theory of punishment is close to Kant’s, Brooks
argues that Hegel considers ‘additional factors’ in defining punishment and does not
argue that ‘there is some ideal value—provided to us by way of retribution—that we
can use to set deterrent or rehabilitative punishments to’. Rather than a moral retribu-
tivist, Hegel shows himself to be a legal retributivist in abstract right: ‘offenders deserve
punishment on the more narrow and limited justification that the offender commits a
crime. It is this act or omission resulting in a public wrong like illegality that is what
any offender must possess to be held deserving of punishment.’
Crucially, if one goes beyond the claims of abstract right into ethical life, Hegel’s
notion of punishment turns out to be even less retributivist for Brooks. Taking
seriously Hegel’s claim that ‘his work should be read in a systematic way where con-
cepts, including crime and punishment, are developed and fleshed out as we proceed
through a dialectical process’, the responsible commentator must consult Hegel’s
remarks in ethical life on the matter.
Hegel claims that ‘the distribution and amount of punishment is not determined by
an individual’s state of mind alone, but external factors like a crime’s potential “danger
to society” (PR, §218)’. This means, according to Brooks, that the affirmation of right
that is punishment ‘transpires within a wider context—and Hegel takes this context
seriously. All thefts may share specific features in general as attempts permanently
to deprive another of her possessions. Hegel’s point is that the damage done to this
right to own property, in this example, and reaffirm it can shift in value due to
external factors.’
Such factors include the ‘stability of society’—‘[a] stable society that is self-confident
and relatively harmonious is less threatened by crime; offences do not pose as chilling a
threat to it’. Furthermore, ‘[f]or Hegel, a theft during peacetime is the same offence-
type as a theft committed during civil war. But the thieves are not the same all the way
down because the circumstances surrounding their thefts can be different. It is this
difference in circumstances that is substantively important for informing how we
should punish offenders.’
This motivates Brooks to argue that ‘[i]nterpreters that claim context has no substantive
part to play fail to grasp the fact that punishment is an institutional practice in the world
and not apart from it. Only in some heavenly, unreal beyond are all crimes to be the same
independently of their becoming real. Punishment is a practice in human community and
the wider circumstances pertaining to justice are relevant to the just administration
and distribution of any criminal justice system.’ However, for Brooks, Hegel’s remarks
on punishment leave opaque ‘how we should make judgements about when and how
to punish’ and that ‘[t]he orthodox consensus has not caught on to this problem’.
Citing the Science of Logic, Brooks ends his argument by showing that Hegel is the
first to provide a ‘unified theory’ of punishment, combining retributive, preventative,
and reformative characteristics:
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“Did he turn to and help when you landed, and found so much to do?”
asked Dick.
“Just what he did, as well as he could with his dainty ways. You see,
Dick, it’s got to be second nature with him to be eternally brushing himself
off. He hates the sight of dirt, which is just the opposite of some boys. But
then Humbert has been made a sissy by his uncle and his aunts. He should
have been called Geraldine or something like that. Still, I will say he did a
heap better than I ever thought he would.”
“Give him half a chance, Leslie,” urged Dick. “In spite of his superior
airs and high-flown language I think he’s a boy after all. What you saw was
a glimpse of the real nature showing under all the veneer they’ve plastered
on him. For years this thing of ‘cultuah’ as he calls it has been drilled into
the poor chap, so that he just can’t help it if he acts the way he does.”
“Well, I certainly hope he wakes up real soon then,” asserted Leslie;
“because some of the fellows say they won’t stand for his lofty ways much
longer. A ducking a day would wash some of it out of him, according to my
notion. My father says that true culture brings simplicity, and what
Humbert’s got is snobbery.”
The afternoon wore on, and much was accomplished. It is true the camp
did not present such a trim appearance as Mr. Bartlett intended should be
the case; but then they would have most of another day before Mr. Holwell
arrived.
Supper was prepared amidst much confusion, which would also have to
be remedied.
“‘Too many cooks spoil the broth,’” the camp leader quoted, “and I’ll
arrange it so that those who know something about the business of getting
up meals will have regular turns helping Jim at the job.”
“What about the greenhorns, sir?” asked Asa Gardner.
“For the moment they get off scot-free,” laughed Mr. Bartlett. “But they
will have to act as scullions and wood-bearers to the cook. That’s the
penalty for ignorance. The one who understands things always gets to the
top of the heap, and the one who doesn’t know beans, except when he tastes
them, has to do the drudgery in this world. So if you’re wise, Asa, hang
around when the meals are being prepared and pick up all the information
you can.”
“I certainly mean to, sir. And I want to say right now that I’ve eaten
twice as much supper as I would have done at home. It was just bully!”
“Oh! you’ve come by your camp appetite in a hurry it seems,” laughed
Dick.
They sat around for a long time afterwards, chatting, and singing some
of their school songs. For the first evening Mr. Bartlett meant to be easy
with the campers, he told them. The real discipline would begin in the
morning.
It was a novel experience for some of the lads who had never camped
out before. The fretting of the water along the shore; the mysterious
murmur of the soft wind through the tops of the pines and hemlocks; the
cries of certain night birds, such as an owl and a heron and a hawk, foraging
for food; gave them an excuse for looking half fearfully around at times,
and wondering if the darkness were peopled with all manner of strange
creatures. And the boys had not forgotten Mr. Nocker’s remarks about
watching out for a thief.
“What did he mean by looking out for a thief?” asked Leslie.
“I don’t know,” answered Peg. “Maybe we’ll find out some day.” And
they did—as we shall learn later.
Then came the moon, a little past her prime, peeping over the hills far to
the east, and looking down upon them, as though questioning in a mild way
their right to the occupancy of that island camp.
It was all very romantic, and even Asa Gardner confessed that he liked
it. The day, however, had been a strenuous one for all of them, and several
of the boys could already be detected slily yawning when they thought no
one was looking; so Mr. Bartlett concluded it would be wise for them to
think of taking to their blankets.
Before the order was given for retiring at nine o’clock, however, Mr.
Bartlett announced the programme for the early morning.
“At sunrise reveille will be sounded, when every boy is expected on the
campus, as we shall call this open space here. Mr. Rowland will put you
through the usual United States Army setting-up exercises. After that the
flag will be raised on the flagpole we’ve prepared, and will be saluted. Then
comes the morning bath and swim in which all are expected to join. After
breakfast we will have a brief chapel service in the big tent. At that time I
expect to announce the programme for the first day in camp. And now good
night to you all, boys. I hope every one of you will sleep well.”
After a little confusion, all sounds gradually died away, and only the
crackling of the fire could be heard, together with the wash of the waves
against the rocks. Camp Russabaga was asleep.
CHAPTER IX
THE RULE OF ORDER AND DISCIPLINE
When the boys were talking of retiring Asa Gardner, who had been
hovering near, approached Mr. Bartlett and Dick.
The former, of course, knew more or less about the strange lad whose
past had been of a character to make him unhappy. Dick had managed to
explain to both the young men who were in charge of the camp how Asa
was fighting his battle manfully, and consequently they sympathized with
the boy.
“Do you want to ask me anything, Asa?” inquired Mr. Bartlett, kindly.
“Just a little favor, sir,” came the hesitating reply, for Asa was easily
confused, realizing as he did that people looked on him in a different way
from what they did ordinary lads.
“Then don’t hold back,” urged the young man, “for you’ll always find
that both Mr. Rowland and myself are willing to accommodate any of you
when it can be done without disturbing the ordinary routine of the camp too
much.”
“It was only this, sir,” continued Asa. “According to the programme
mapped out by Mr. Rowland, and which he read to us, I’m selected to sleep
to-night in the cabin along with three other fellows.”
“And what objection do you have to that, Asa? I think Mr. Rowland
picked out those who were to occupy the cabin with a purpose in view,” the
camp leader remarked, kindly.
“I’m sure he did, sir, for he said as much,” Asa admitted. “But you see
it’s this way with me. I’ve been feeling a heap better ever since I took to
sleeping on that porch they enclosed with wire netting. It’s been nearly a
year now since I started to try that sort of thing, and I’ve got so used to it
I’m afraid I’d feel awfully choky and queer if I tried to sleep in a room
again.”
“I reckon there’s a whole lot in that, too, Asa,” said Dick, with a quick
glance at the camp leader, who nodded in approval. “I’ve heard people say
they couldn’t bear to go to bed inside four walls after sleeping outdoors for
a long time. They complain that it seems to smother them.”
“Just so,” added Mr. Bartlett, “and I suppose that’s why gypsies who
used to come to Cliffwood trading horses and telling fortunes said no
winter’s storm could ever drive them to seek shelter in a house-dweller’s
place. I’ll make arrangements to have you exchange places with one of the
boys in a tent, Asa. And I’m glad you spoke of it in time. Remember, both
Mr. Rowland and I will be pleased to oblige any of you boys when the
request is as reasonable as yours.”
“I don’t suppose there’ll be any danger out here on this big island, sir?”
remarked Asa, a little uneasily, Dick noticed, as he glanced around at the
moonlit vicinity, and shivered.
“Oh! there’s very small chance that the island holds any wild animals
larger than raccoons and squirrels,” replied the camp leader.
“Besides, Asa,” Dick added, “you must remember that even a wildcat is
afraid of fire, and as a rule shuns the presence of human beings. The
chances are we’ll not be disturbed in any way while camping on Bass
Island.”
And so it came about that Asa found a place in one of the tents, where
he could make himself comfortable near the entrance, and breathe all the
free night air he wished.
Dick slept close to the opening of the tent he occupied in company with
three other campers. Mr. Bartlett had constituted him a sort of assistant
campmaster, to take charge whenever both he and the physical instructor
were absent. Besides this, everybody knew that Dick was better acquainted
with certain matters connected with outdoor life than most of the other
boys, since he had long made woodcraft a study.
Once, during that first night on the island, on awakening from a sound
sleep, Dick crawled softly out of the tent and took a look around. It was a
beautiful night, such as filled his boyish heart with delight.
The moon, almost full, was climbing up close to the zenith, and sent
down a flood of bright light on the slumbering world below. The soft night
breeze continued to whisper among the tops of the tall pine trees. The
gentle waves washed the rocky shore of the big island with a soothing
murmur never to be forgotten.
Just as the sun began to peep above the eastern horizon a gun was fired
and a bugle reveille followed immediately afterward. Those of the boys
who were not already up came dashing out of the tents and the cabin,
prepared to enter upon the duties of this, the first full day in camp.
They found both Mr. Bartlett and the physical instructor ready for them,
while Sunny Jim, who was never seen without a broad grin on his face, had
begun to bustle around amidst his pots and pans as though making
arrangements for starting breakfast.
“Every one in camp with the exception of our cook will be expected to
join in the programme for the early morning!” called out Mr. Rowland, who
was a splendidly built young man, the possessor of several medals won in
athletic matches. “The first of these will be the setting-up exercises, to start
your blood into full action, after which we will have a dip in the lake.”
A number of the boys did not know the least thing about swimming, and
were more or less timid about entering the water. Mr. Rowland soon gave
them to understand there was nothing to be afraid of. He intended that there
should be no skylarking, no ducking, no horse-play among themselves.
“We expect to have swimming classes,” he told them as they gathered
around at the edge of the water, clad in their bathing trunks only. “A life
saving crew will be organized, and no boy will be allowed to go beyond
certain bounds on penalty of having his privileges curtailed, or even cut off
altogether. There will be no accidents in the water at Camp Russabaga if we
can prevent it. Now listen while I lay down the law, and then every one of
you must enter the water.”
Three of the boys looked glum at hearing this talk. As may be easily
understood they were Nat Silmore and his two cronies, Dit Hennesy and
Alonzo Crane. They had finally decided to accompany the campers in the
hope of finding numerous chances to enjoy a joke at the expense of their
fellows. It appeared now as though they had deceived themselves and had
made a great mistake, and this realization caused them to look “sour,” as
some of the boys expressed it, understanding what was the matter with the
trio of tricksters.
The flag was already flying in the morning breeze, and it really looked
as if the camp had been inaugurated after the customary manner. All over
our land similar camps organized by enthusiastic members of the numerous
Y. M. C. A. organizations are being conducted along the same lines. Some
of these are run during the entire summer, detachments of young fellows
coming and going from time to time, and all benefiting greatly through their
brief stay in the open, under strict and sanitary rules.
Sunny Jim had been bustling around preparing breakfast. With that
broad smile on his ebony face he looked as though he meant to do his part
toward making the camp a success. The boys knew him very well, since
Sunny Jim had been a character in Cliffwood for many years. They were
also aware of his reputation as a first-class cook, and anticipated being
treated to many a sumptuous feast while they were in camp.
Some of the boys dressed more rapidly than others, and among the
clever ones were Dick, Peg Fosdick and Dan Fenwick. Peg, having a notion
that he would like to learn all he could about camp cooking as practised by
an experienced man like Sunny Jim, hovered around the fire, watching and
offering to assist whenever he saw the chance.
Breakfast was almost ready, and some of the other boys could be seen
thrusting their heads out from the tents to sniff eagerly the delightful odors
that permeated the camp.
It was just at this time that Peg, who had been looking around and
asking hurried questions of the colored cook, was heard to call aloud
indignantly:
“Say, I just want to know who’s gone and hid away that new aluminum
frying-pan I brought along. I borrowed it from our cook at home just
because it was so big and nice and shiny, as well as light. I carefully put it
on this nail here, and Jim says he never once touched it, yet you can see it’s
gone. Did anybody glimpse a sign of it around?”
“Here, who’s started to playing tricks in this camp so early?” called Dan
Fenwick, indignantly. “My nickel watch was in my vest pocket when I
undressed, but it’s disappeared like smoke. Mr. Bartlett, make the fellow
own up who took it, won’t you please?”
CHAPTER X
THINGS BEGIN TO VANISH
“Are you fellows joking, or is all you’re saying true?” demanded Phil
Harkness; while the others began to crane their necks and stare at Dan and
Peg.
“Honest Injun, the frying-pan has cleared out, and if it doesn’t turn up,
why Sunny Jim and I will have to do the best we can with these common
sheet iron ones,” Peg grumbled. “And that isn’t the worst of it, either,
because just think what’ll happen to me when I get home again.”
“And you can see for yourselves that my vest pocket doesn’t show a
sign of my little nickel watch,” added Dan, with a shrug of his shoulders
and a quick look around, as though a suspicion had suddenly clutched hold
of him.
“But Dan,” interrupted Elmer Jones, “seems to me that before we
crawled into our blankets I saw you hang your watch on to that nail driven
through the tent pole.”
“Well, come to think of it, that’s just what I did do,” admitted the
mourning Dan. “But you don’t see any watch on that nail right now, do
you?” and he rubbed his eyes vigorously as though trying to discover
whether they could be playing a trick on him.
Everybody agreed that the nail was destitute of any such appendage as a
dollar nickel watch. Mr. Bartlett looked serious, but allowed the boys to talk
it over.
“Well, there’s no use mourning for lost things when breakfast is nearly
ready,” declared good-natured Fred Bonnicastle. “Mebbe the watch is just
having a little joke of its own, and will turn up later in some pocket of your
clothes, Dan.”
“I’m as hungry as a wolf!” called out Clint Babbett.
“Huh! I could eat my weight, and then not half try,” ventured Nat
Silmore.
If the truth were told, Nat spoke up in this boyish way simply because
he fancied some of the others were commencing to cast queer looks in his
direction.
Dan did not say anything more but he did much thinking. Dick Horner
was bothered. At first he concluded that it must be some boyish prank, and
that presently the culprit would confess his guilt with shamefaced looks,
realizing that after all it did not pay to play silly jokes, especially in a camp
where strict discipline was to be maintained.
The more Dick thought it over, however, the less inclined he was to
view it in such a simple light. So far as the vanishing watch was concerned
that might pass current, for every one knew how much Dan thought of the
present from his father on his last birthday; but when the disappearance of
the cooking pan was considered, what boy would be silly enough to hide
that?
That the subject was in the minds of most of the campers was evident,
for while they were enjoying breakfast the thing came up again. It was Peg
who introduced it by saying:
“Seems to me Mr. Nocker knew what he was saying when he warned us
to beware of that thief up here on Bass Island. Looks as if we ought to chain
things down good and tight every time we go to sleep, because they do
seem to have a queer way of walking off.”
Humbert Loft was seen to curl his lip, and those close to him heard him
give a scornful sniff while he observed in his drawling, affected way:
“It’s simply shocking, that’s what I think. Why, right now every
individual in this camp is really under suspicion of being a vulgar thief! I
never dreamed that I should find myself amidst such dreadful surroundings.
I imagine some of my ancestors would turn in their graves with horror if
they knew a Loft had the finger of suspicion pointed at him.”
He looked as though his appetite had been taken away by the thought.
The boys, however, being no respecters of persons, only laughed.
“The walking’s good between here and the station, Humbert!” remarked
one.
“And there’s sure to be a train for Cliffwood before night, you know,”
another told him in a mocking tone.
Humbert turned red, but for all that there was a glint of defiance in his
eyes, Dick noticed, when he flung back his answer.
“Oh! I suppose we’re all in one boat, boys, and if you can stand it I
ought to be able to do so. On the whole, I’ll reconsider your offer of some
of that bacon, Eddie. Perhaps it may start my sluggish appetite, who
knows?”
“But who can it be, hanging around here and stealing everything he can
lay his hands on?” persisted Phil Harkness.
“Might be some lunatic that’s escaped from the asylum and is hiding in
the woods and brush on the island!” intimated Peg.
The suggestion met with some favor, several of the boys agreeing that
there might be a grain of truth in such a thing.
The two camp leaders were amused, as well as puzzled, by all this talk,
and waited to see what would come of it.
“I’ve read a lot about the queer things people out of their minds keep on
doing,” Andy Hale asserted. “But it seems to me if a crazy man were
hanging around up here our grub would be the first thing he’d tackle.”
“Well,” Clint observed, sagaciously, “he might have done that if we
hadn’t been wise enough to stack about all of the grub in the other cabin,
and fasten the door.”
Dick said nothing, but did considerable thinking. For once he was ready
to admit that the mystery of the night gave birth to unusually puzzling
questions that would have to be solved if they hoped to enjoy their outing
on Bass Island, and he resolved to talk the matter over with Mr. Bartlett and
Mr. Rowland as soon as he had an opportunity.
“We might set some sort of trap for the rascal, and make him a
prisoner,” suggested Andy Hale, thoughtfully. “Now I reckon I could
manage to fix up a deadfall such as they trap bears with in the Maine
woods.”
“But that’d be apt to hurt the poor fellow, or even kill him,” protested
Clint Babbett.
“With a rope and a bent sapling I can show you how they trap alligators
in some countries,” spoke up another boy eagerly. “I was reading about it
only last week, and actually tried it on our dog. Why, when the sapling was
released the noose in the rope tightened around both his hind legs, and the
first thing I knew there was poor old Carlo hanging head down, and yelping
to beat the band. I had to cut the rope in a big hurry because he acted like a
wild thing.”
“How would that sort of thing go, Dick?” asked Leslie, with a wink at
his chum.
“Well,” replied the other, with one of his smiles and a glance toward Mr.
Bartlett, “I hardly think any of us would want to be so cruel as to hang a
human being up by the legs, with his head down; and especially if, as we
suspect, he should be one who was out of his mind and not responsible for
what he did.”
Somehow in all the talk that flew around concerning the important
subject Dick could not but notice that there were two of the boys who
seemed to be tongue-tied.
These were Dan Fenwick and Asa Gardner.
Dick could easily comprehend why Dan should keep silent, because, as
the loser of the watch that had so strangely vanished, Dan was feeling more
or less morose. And then again, when Dick considered what the past
reputation of Asa Gardner had been he felt that there was some reason why
the new boy should not seek to draw attention to himself.
Asa certainly looked troubled. He listened to all that was said, turning
his eyes from speaker to speaker, but uttering not a word himself. When any
one addressed him, merely asking him if he would have another cup of
coffee or a little more bacon, Asa always gave a violent start and drew in
his breath with a sigh before replying one way or the other.
Breakfast was finally finished and the boys hung around waiting for Mr.
Bartlett to read the programme for the day.
He and Mr. Rowland were busy with the details of that programme, and
Dick had not yet found the opportune moment for speaking to the camp
leader. Dan came over to Dick’s side the first favorable chance he had.
“I want to speak to you about something queer, Dick,” he remarked, as
he threw himself down and looked carefully around, as though to make sure
some one he had in mind was far enough away not to overhear what he
expected to say.
“All right,” Dick told him, “fire away. I can be keeping up my work on
this home-made broom of twigs which we’ll have to use to sweep with. Is it
about your watch?”
“Just what it is, Dick,” the other went on to say, gloomily. “In a nutshell
then, I happened to wake up in the night, and saw some one walking
between me and the fire. And Dick, it was Asa Gardner!”
CHAPTER XI
MR. HOLWELL GETS THE WELCOMING CHEER
Dick heard the other make this accusation with a sinking heart. Could it
be possible after all Asa Gardner was guilty of taking the things that had
disappeared?
“Why, when you stop to think of it, Dan,” he told his informant, “while
a boy given to pilfering might carry off a watch if sorely tempted, what
earthly use would he have for Peg’s new aluminum frying-pan?”
This seemed to be a poser, and Dan shrugged his shoulders and made a
whimsical face. A new idea came to him, however, and almost immediately
he spoke up again.
“Well it’s just this way, Dick. My mother always said that taking things
as some people do becomes a disease with them. I’ve read of wealthy
women who steal things in stores. They call them kleptomaniacs. That
means they take all sorts of things when they see a good chance, even if
they haven’t the least bit of use for the same.”
“Then your mother thinks Asa was influenced that way when some
people called him light-fingered, and some of them said he was a common
thief?” continued Dick.
“Yes, that’s what she thought,” replied Dan. “You know I’ve got the
dearest mother of any fellow in all Cliffwood, and she hates to think badly
of any boy.”
“And we mustn’t forget that Asa hasn’t any mother—now,” added Dick
softly, as he cast a pitying look across to where the object of their
conversation was helping Sunny Jim gather together the breakfast dishes
and pans, and acting as though he really liked the work.
“I hate myself for suspecting him, Dick,” honest Dan went on to say.
“And so far as my losing that watch goes I don’t mean to push the thing any
further. Whoever took it is welcome to his booty, for all of me.”
“On my part,” said Dick, firmly, “I feel different about it. We can’t go
on this way, losing things, and even suspecting each other. The mystery
must be cleared up sooner or later. I’ll step over and get to talking with Asa.
Perhaps I can ask him if he happened to be up during the night. I’d like it if
we could go to Mr. Bartlett and tell him the whole thing was straightened
out.”
“Oh, what’s the use of going to Asa?” objected Dan. “He’s sure to deny
it. I wonder now,” he added, after a pause, “if there could be such a thing as
Asa, or any other fellow here, for that matter, being a sleep walker?”
Dick gave a little whistle of surprise at hearing such a startling
suggestion.
“You certainly do have the most original ideas of any fellow going,
Dan,” he remarked. “Such a thing might happen, of course, but there’d be
small chance of it up here, with twenty boys in camp.”
“Except for my waking up at the time I did,” urged the other, “nobody’d
have known about Asa’s being on his feet in the dead of night. But after
you’ve had your little talk with him tell me what comes of it, will you?”
“I certainly will,” promised Dick.
Shortly afterwards he joined Asa, and entered into conversation with the
boy. A little later on Dick came sauntering back to where Dan was sitting,
waiting for the summons to gather on the “campus” which had not yet been
given.
“Well, did he deny being abroad in the night, Dick?” eagerly asked the
other, taking care to speak in a low voice.
“Not a bit,” Dick told him. “I never even had to ask him. We were
talking about whether it would pay to keep the fire going at night when Asa
of his own accord remarked that it was still blazing feebly when he felt so
thirsty that he had to crawl out and go over to where we keep the bucket of
spring water with the dipper. And he added that while he was not quite sure,
because he had not got fully used to reading the time of night by the stars,
he thought it must have been somewhere in the neighborhood of one
o’clock.”
Dan looked thoughtful on hearing that.
“Tell you what, Dick,” he said presently. “I’m going to try to forget all
about my watch. Let it go at that. So Asa is trying to be a real woodsman, is
he? Well, I wish him luck then.”
With that he walked away, and Dick, looking after him, said to himself
that Dan Fenwick had a heart in his breast several sizes too big for him.
Dick later on often found himself watching Asa Gardner when he
fancied the other was not noticing. He could see that the boy was not
wholly at ease for some reason. Still Dick would not allow himself to
believe that Asa was guilty.
“I can’t forget that day I saw him lying there on his mother’s grave and
promising her never to break his word if it killed him fighting off the old
temptation,” Dick kept telling himself again and again. “No, Asa can’t be
guilty, but all the same I’ll feel a heap happier when we do find out who the
thief is.”
Presently the boys were summoned into the big tent where Mr. Bartlett
carried out the usual short chapel service, for every camp of the Y. M. C. A.
is conducted on a religious basis.
“I am ready now,” announced the camp director, “to give you a part of
the duties of the day. At noon I shall have formed my plans for the rest of
the time, and by to-morrow we shall have gotten things to running
smoothly. In the first place this camp is going to be no place for idlers.
Every boy will have a share in the work and be expected to do his level best
in keeping the camp tidy, doing the chores, and, in fact, whatever is given
into his charge.
“Mr. Rowland, who will have entire charge of the athletic proceedings,
has arranged a splendid series of events that he expects will create a healthy
rivalry among many of the boys who are now with us. Prizes will be given
to those who excel in nature study, photography, swimming, diving, rowing,
life-saving feats, woodcraft, and a number of other things along the same
lines. And now if you listen I will read the programme for this morning, so
that every one may know just what he is expected to do.”
The boys showed a keen interest in what the camp director was saying,
although Nat and his two cronies still looked disappointed, because they did
not fancy the idea of being bound down to iron-clad rules and regulations
when they had expected to loaf and to have a roaring good time.
The vicinity of the camp soon took on a bustling atmosphere. Some
planks had been brought from the station on one of the wagons. These some
of the boys, who aspired to be amateur carpenters, managed to fashion into
a very good table, large enough to allow them all to be seated at the same
time, to replace the rougher one thrown together when they first landed.
This could be moved at will, so that in case of bad weather they would
be able to take their meals under the shelter of the big tent. Ordinarily,
however, they preferred dining in the open, for the charm of the thing
appealed to the campers.
A number of rude benches had also been put together, so that things
would look quite comfortable by the time another meal was ready to be
served.
Being appealed to by several ardent fishermen, the camp director had
given them permission to make good use of the handy little minnow seine
made of mosquito netting. The bait thus secured could be kept alive in a
basin constructed near the edge of the lake, into which water from a spring
trickled.
Having taken all the bait they needed with a few hauls, the boys were
given the privilege of going out in one of the boats to try the fishing.
Certain localities were selected that appealed to their instinct as places
where the wary bass would be apt to stay during these hot summer days.
When later on the fishermen returned it was discovered that they had
met with great success. Quite enough prizes had been taken to provide a
fish course for the entire party.
“Some of them are whoppers in the bargain,” remarked Peg Fosdick,
proudly, for he had been a member of the angling party. “Why, that big
fellow must weigh all of three pounds! And how he did jump and pull! I
thought he’d break my rod or line several times. I never before took such a
dandy bass.”
“This island is well named then, it seems,” observed Dick, with
something of satisfaction in his voice as he looked at the splendid strings of
fish. Dick himself dearly loved to spend an hour with hook and line, and
feel the thrill that always raced through his system when a gamy fish had
been secured, fighting frantically for freedom.
“Who’s going to meet Mr. Holwell this afternoon, sir?” asked Fred
Bonnicastle, as they sat around the new table that noon with one of the
camp heads at either end and eagerly devoured the lunch that Sunny Jim,
assisted by a couple of the boys, had prepared for them.
Harry Bartlett had been a boy himself only a few years back, and he
could easily understand what unasked question lay back of that remark.
“You may go, for one, Fred,” he told the other. “Take Asa along with
you. He seems to have taken a fancy to rowing, and has entered in that class
for a prize. The exercise will do him good in the bargain. I have other duties
I want the rest of you to attend to, there is so much to be done before Camp
Russabaga assumes the complete aspect we all want it to wear when Mr.
Holwell arrives this evening.”
Asa shot the leader a look of sincere gratitude, though he did not say
anything. As a rule Asa was not a talkative boy, and some of them noticed
that of late he had seemed to be brooding more than usual.
During the earlier part of the afternoon many things were accomplished,
for under the direction of the physical instructor the boys worked like
beavers.
“About time you were starting across to the landing, Fred and Asa,”
announced Mr. Bartlett, finally, as he consulted his watch.
The pair went off, heading for the mainland. Mr. Holwell had promised
to arrive on the train that reached the little station at four o’clock. He would
take a team to bring him to the camp, and hoped to be on hand long before
sundown.
It lacked a few minutes of five now, and dinner was being gotten ready,
though the fish would not be put on the fire or the coffee started until just as
the minister should arrive at the landing on the main shore.
Asa persisted in doing the rowing across, and even asked Fred to let him
handle the oars on the return trip.
“You see I need all this outdoor exercise I can get,” he explained, and
the request was so unusual that Fred, of course, obligingly granted him
permission.
“I ought to be satisfied to act as the skipper of the craft, and take my
ease, Asa,” he went on to say, laughingly, as he lay in the stern, and
stretched his long legs out comfortably; “so just please yourself. I’m always
ready to oblige a willing worker.”
After a while those on the island heard a series of loud shouts, and they
managed to make out a team that had arrived at the landing. Mr. Holwell
then had not failed them, and every one in the camp felt pleased at the idea
of having him with them. When a man loves boys from the bottom of his
heart it invariably happens that they regard him with something of the same
sort of affection.
“There, he’s getting into the boat now!” called out Clint Babbett, whose
keen eyes were able to keep track of passing events across that mile of
water better than most of the others. “And say! it looks as if he’s brought a
heap of packages along with him.”
“Sure thing,” laughed Peg Fosdick, rubbing his stomach vigorously.
“Mr. Holwell was a boy himself once on a time, and he’s never forgotten
that a fellow gets as hungry as a cannibal every little while. I reckon now he
concluded that we’d underestimated our holding capacity, and that we’d
nearly starve unless he brought along a new lot of supplies.”
“There they start,” said Mr. Bartlett, presently. “When the boat draws in
near our landing be ready to give our honored guest the glad welcome
cheer.”
Closer it drew, under the steady strokes of Asa Gardner. Finally, there
arose a roar of voices, accompanied by the violent waving of hats and
handkerchiefs, that made the minister’s heart beat a little faster than its
wont with pleasure.
CHAPTER XII
HAPPENINGS OF THE SECOND NIGHT
When Mr. Holwell stepped ashore to shake hands heartily all around he
looked very happy indeed.
“I’m delighted to be with you, boys,” he told them again and again, in
his sincere way that always drew young people to him.
“The feeling is mutual then, sir,” spoke up Peg Fosdick, bluntly;
“because we’re just tickled half to death to see you up here at Camp
Russabaga. And now, you assistant cooks, suppose you get busy with
dinner. Mr. Holwell will be awfully hungry after his journey, and Sunny Jim
can’t do it all by himself.”
The camp director, accompanied by Dick as his assistant, took the
newcomer around to show him what had been accomplished. As Mr.
Holwell had never set eyes on the big lake before he was greatly impressed
with the picture he saw in the dying sunlight.
“Wait until sunset, sir,” said Dick, eagerly, “and if it’s anything like we
had last evening, with the whole sky painted in colors, you’ll surely say you
never saw the equal of it.”
“I want to remark right now, Mr. Bartlett, that your boys have done
exceedingly well to get this camp in the condition it is. I’ve been in camps
before now, and, as a rule, the campers are a happy-go-lucky set, willing to
shirk work so as to have what they call a good time. But here everything
seems to have a place, and to be where it belongs. Order is a fine thing for
any boy to learn; and cleanliness comes next to godliness.”
The minister watched the preparations for the meal with kindling eyes.
His memory took him back a good many years to the times when he was a
boy himself; and he could appreciate the enthusiasm with which Sunny Jim
and his helpers went at their pleasing task of getting the good things to eat
ready for the table.
And then that dinner—what a royal one it turned out to be! After the
simple and earnest grace the meal was served. Mr. Holwell showered
unstinted praise on everything that came before him. The fish were broiled
to a turn, the coffee was real ambrosia fit for the gods, the potatoes had
been baked just right, the succotash made him constantly feel like asking
for more. And, winding up with a dish of rice and milk and sugar, he
declared it to be better than any pudding he had tasted for years.
“I think Mr. Holwell is getting his camp appetite in order right away,”
suggested Peg, who, of course, was delighted to have the culinary efforts
praised in this fashion.
“To tell the truth,” admitted the minister, frankly, “I consider that I
showed most wonderful sagacity in fetching along additional supplies with
me, because if I stir up any more appetite than I seem to have to-night
there’ll be a terrible drain on your stock of provisions.”
“Oh! we know where there’s a farm only two miles away,” said Phil,
“and to-morrow half a dozen of us have been detailed by Mr. Bartlett to
tramp over there and get all the eggs and fresh butter and such things we
can lug back with us.”
“And as long as those dandy bass are willing to take our minnows,”
added Peg, “we ought to keep the wolf from the door, somehow or other.”
After the meal they piled high the campfire, and when the dishes had
been looked after every one sat around in various attitudes, either taking
part in the brisk conversation or listening to what Mr. Holwell and the camp
leaders said in the way of congratulation and advice.
Finally, several were discovered surreptitiously yawning, and Dick
realized that the bed hour had arrived. So interesting had the talk been that
none of them had paid any attention to the flight of time.
“Where am I going to sleep?” asked Mr. Holwell, when Harry Bartlett
explained that nine o’clock was the hour set in the camp for retiring.
Moreover, they had put in a strenuous day from before sunrise, and
consequently all the boys were tired.
“We have provided a cot in the tent we occupy, Mr. Holwell,” explained
the physical director. “Some of the boys have made us a small table for our
few toilet articles, shaving things, and such. Besides, we have a couple of
folding chairs. Only for a shortage of tents we should have been glad to
give you one to yourself, sir.”
The minister shook his head vigorously at that.
“I am glad you didn’t,” he told them, smilingly. “I am no tenderfoot
when it comes to camping, you will find; for in days that are past I
wandered over many parts of the world, and even faced many perils. I have
slept in the igloo of an Esquimau, as well as under the haircloth tent of a
desert Bedouin. I would never stand for being given accommodations that
differed in any degree from those of the boys.”
When they heard him say that, some of the campers felt like shouting
their appreciation, only this early in the outing they had come to understand
that boisterous ways must be kept under control.
Somehow or other, there had been so much to talk about while they sat
around the bright crackling fire after supper that no one had thought to
mention the little mystery of the first night of their stay on Bass Island.
Dick remembered about it when he was undressing, and was half
tempted to break rules by crossing over to the tent where the three
gentlemen were to sleep, with the intention of speaking to Mr. Holwell.
“What’s the use?” he asked himself on second thought. “It would only
bother him more or less, and perhaps make him have a sleepless night;
because I’m sure he’d begin to think something about poor Asa. In the
morning I’ll watch my chance and tell him about it.”
Accordingly, Dick held his peace. His tent mates were Leslie Capes,
Peg and Andy Hale, all congenial companions, and Dick expected
considerable enjoyment during the nights they would be together.
Talking aloud was prohibited after half-past nine, so that if any fellows
like Nat and his cronies, who had their quarters together, wished to
converse they would have to do it in whispers.
Mr. Bartlett had laid down strict rules, and the penalties for breaking
these would fall heavily on the heads of the offenders. Curtailing all
privileges might cause the guilty ones to repent of having been so rash.
For once in their lives Nat, Dit and Alonzo found it necessary to do as
they were told; and they were already regretting their step in deciding to
accompany the campers on the outing.
Dick had purposely chosen a particular spot near the exit when
arranging his blanket. He did this for several reasons. In the first place he
liked the idea of attending to the fire in case he happened to wake up during
the night, just as all old woodsmen and hunters were in the habit of doing,
Dick understood. Then again, if there came any sort of alarm, and he
wished to get out in a hurry, it would be more convenient for him than if he
had to stumble over several boys who were beginning to sit up and get in
the way.
Truth to tell, about this time the mysterious events of the preceding
night began to take hold of his mind. Much to his chagrin, for some little
time Dick could not banish them, try as he would.
“Here, this will never do,” he finally told himself after he had turned
over as many as four different times, his thoughts busy all the while. “Just
forget everything but the one fact that you’re sleepy, and it’s getting pretty
late.”
Resolutely holding his mind in check after that, the boy finally
succeeded in falling asleep though it required considerable force of
character to control his feverish thoughts.
Several hours must have crept by when Dick chanced to awaken. One of
his arms felt numb from the weight of his body which had been resting on
it.
“I suppose I might as well throw a log on the fire while I’m about it,” he
told himself, as, yawning, he commenced to push aside his blanket and
crawl forth. “And a few swallows of that cool water wouldn’t go bad either,
for I’m thirsty after all that salty ham I ate.”
The moon was well up in the heavens when he crept forth from the
shelter of the tent and was shining just as brilliantly as on the preceding
night. Without making any sort of noise calculated to disturb even a light
sleeper Dick crossed over to where the flickering fire lay.
As he did so something caused him to glance beyond, and he felt a thrill
as he believed he caught a glimpse of a crouching moving figure over by
the bushes.
CHAPTER XIII
THE MYSTERY GROWS DEEPER
“Why, it’s gone!” muttered Dick, immediately afterwards, for the object
that he had seen so dimly had now vanished.
He stepped over to the red ashes and threw on some small stuff that,
taking fire immediately, blazed up brightly and allowed him to see much
better.
“I wonder if it slipped into those bushes, or went around another way?”
he asked himself.
Was it one of the campers he had seen slipping along in a bent-over
attitude, or could it have been a shadow moving? Dick’s heart was
thumping against his ribs, for he was more or less excited over the
occurrence, especially after what had happened on the preceding night.
“WHY, IT’S GONE!” MUTTERED DICK.
“I’d like to see if anybody is missing from his blanket,” he continued to
mutter, “but to do that I’d have to wake the whole bunch up, and there
would be the mischief to pay. Perhaps I fooled myself after all, and just
imagined I was seeing things.”
So concluding to let the matter rest until morning came, Dick proceeded
to toss a couple of big pine-knots, that would burn for several hours, on the
fire. Then he glanced dubiously around him once more, after which he
returned to his blanket.
But not to sleep immediately, for his brain was too excited for that.
Indeed, the boy lay there, turning from side to side, until the morning star
had arisen above the horizon and shone in upon him, which fact announced
that it was three o’clock.
After that his tired brain allowed him to forget his troubles for a time;
and when he opened his eyes again the first peep of dawn had come.
Dick crawled softly out and proceeded to get into some clothes. There
was no need of arousing everybody in the camp at such an early hour, and
he knew very well that if he chanced to awaken some of the noisy ones
there would be no further peace until the last sleeper had been dislodged.
He was building up the fire a little later when Leslie appeared in his
pajamas, stretching himself, having evidently just awakened.
“Always the first to be on deck, Dick; there’s no getting ahead of you,”
he said. And then he added: “But why are you looking over our cooking
outfit that way? Peg made sure to hide the aluminum kettle he brought
along, if that’s what you miss. He said it was bad enough to lose his frying-
pan without having the kettle follow it.”
“I had forgotten,” remarked Dick, relieved, and it was evident that he
had feared the unknown thief had paid the camp another of his nocturnal
visits.
“Looks as if we might have another good day,” continued Leslie, as he
began to change from his pajamas to his “work clothes,” as he called the old
suit he had been wise enough to wear on this outing.
“I certainly hope we shall have a bright day,” Dick observed, “because
Mr. Rowland has a programme laid out that fills in the whole of it for
everybody.”
“I can see that they mean the boys sha’n’t rust out while we’re up here
on Bass Island,” chuckled Leslie. “They believe with the ant that every
shining hour ought to be improved, because there’s always lots to do.”
“Oh! it isn’t that alone,” he was told, calmly. “As Mr. Holwell says,
boys have just got to be doing something all the time or they’ll think up
mischief; so it’s policy to chain that restlessness to good works. Most of us
seem to like it first-rate in the bargain.”
“Haven’t heard the first whine so far,” admitted Leslie. “Those boys
from the mill are certainly doing great stunts. They never had a chance
before really to camp out decently, with plenty to eat along. And then
there’s Nat and his cronies behaving like human beings for once, though I
shouldn’t be surprised if they did manage to break out before we get home
again.”
“Let’s hope not,” said Dick.
Several other boys now made their appearance. They were not in the
habit of getting out of bed at such an early hour at home; but in camp the
surroundings were so entirely different that they could not get to sleep
again, once they opened their eyes at daybreak and heard whispering going
on outside. Besides, they expected the bugle to sound at any minute now.
Then again with some of them it was a case of hunger, for those terrible
appetites had taken complete possession of them, and hardly had they
disposed of one meal than they began to talk of what they would like to
have for the next one.
Eddie Grant and Ban Jansen, being the assistant cooks for the morning,
were soon helping Sunny Jim. Peg hovered near them, having first of all
hastened to where he had secreted his aluminum kettle which he brought
back to the kitchen department with considerable satisfaction, if the grin on
his face meant anything.
“Gave us the go-by last night, it seems, Dick,” he observed, as he
flourished the shiny article in which their rice had been cooked on the
preceding night.
“I hope we won’t be troubled any more by having our things disappear,”
was all Dick remarked, for somehow he did not feel altogether certain that
the crisis had passed by.
Just then the loud notes of the bugle sounded, for Harry Bartlett had
practised the various army calls and had them down to perfection, from the
“reveille” to the “assembly” and “taps.”
Once again the boys went through the customary manual drill, while
Mr. Holwell, ready for his morning bath, stood and watched the display
with considerable interest.
“I can see that you mean your boys shall get the full benefit of their
outing up here, Mr. Rowland,” he told the athletic trainer as all started down
to the brim of the lake to enjoy a brief plunge. “I can easily understand now
what wonderful benefit any lad is sure to get from a few weeks spent in one
of the many Y. M. C. A. camps spread all over this broad land, especially if
they are being conducted on the same principles you and Mr. Bartlett have
instituted here.”
“Oh! this is only a very small edition, sir,” laughed the other, who had
had considerable experience in Y. M. C. A. camps. “I’ve been in camps
where there were as many as a hundred and fifty boys and young fellows
coming and going all summer.”
“When you have time,” said the minister, eagerly, “I wish you would
tell me more about how these wonderful camps are conducted. As you say
our attempt is only a small beginning, but if all goes well next season we
can have this camp running for two months. Mr. Nocker has become greatly
interested in the matter, and offers to erect a few buildings up here, such as
an ice-house, a dining hall, and the like, though tents would still be used for
sleeping purposes.”
“I am delighted to hear that, sir,” said the athletic instructor, warmly.
“From what I have seen I believe this to be one of the finest movements
ever started to give boys the right kind of outdoor life under clean and
religious surroundings. They can have all the fun necessary, and at the same
time build up both their bodies and their minds in a healthy fashion. Now if
you will watch I can show you some of the work of our life-saving corps.
You will see that with such well-trained helpers there will be no danger of
even the most timid or awkward bather incurring any risk of losing his life.”
Mr. Holwell was deeply interested.
“Tell me more about the life-saving crew, and what requirements they
must be able to meet before they are fully qualified to serve as members in
good standing,” he asked the athletic director, as they stood, after coming
out of the water themselves, watching all that went on.
“I shall do so with pleasure,” replied the other, his eyes sparkling. Truth
to tell, that was the very thing he took the keenest interest in. “You see the
crew in one of the big Y. M. C. A. camps is really an auxiliary branch of the
United States Volunteer Life-saving Corps. To become a member a boy
must pass through a stiff test. This consists of swimming one hundred
yards, using three different strokes; swimming on the back without the use
of his hands; swimming one hundred yards, starting with his clothes on, and
removing them while doing it; diving into water about eight feet deep for a
ten-pound rock, and bringing it to shore; knowing how to handle a boat, and
being familiar with its different parts, as well as tying various sailor knots.”
Mr. Holwell looked surprised.
“Quite an education in itself, I should say,” he remarked.
“Oh! that is only a beginning,” continued the other. “The candidate must
show himself capable of rescuing a drowning person, and must actually
carry him to safety. He must be able to break a ‘death-grip’ so as to be in a
position to keep himself from being dragged down by a frantic victim of
cramps. He must also know the best way to resuscitate a person who has
apparently been drowned. When a young fellow can pass this strict
examination with flying colors he receives a certificate from headquarters,
and is entitled to wear the official badge.”
“And that whistle which you have just given three times, calling the
boys up out of the water—does that stand for anything in particular?” asked
the minister, as the entire party hurried to their tents to rub down and dress.
“Yes, indeed, sir,” he was told. “That is the emergency whistle when we
are in camp. Whenever it is sounded every life-saver runs for the shore,
ready for business. It is on this account that scores of big camps are held

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