Crime as Negatively Infinite Judgement in Philosophy of Right

Hukuk Felsefesinde Negatif Sonsuz Hüküm Olarak Ceza

Türker ARMANER

At the outset of Philosophy of Right, in the second section of the first main chapter entitled as “Abstract Right”, Hegel defines crime as “negatively infinite judgement”.¹

In this presentation, I shall attempt to evaluate the notion of “crime” in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right throughout the dialectical process manifested in Hegel’s logical system.

It must be noted that, in Hegel’s system, there are two usages of “negativity” and again two usages of “infinite”; that is to say, both can be used either in the affirmative or in the pejorative sense, and here Hegel uses these terms in the latter context. Crime, Hegel goes on, is to be annulled not because it produces evil, but it is the infringement of right as right.²

An earlier argument in the same text claims that “right is by definition freedom as Idea”.³ We must clarify the peculiar treatment of the term “Idea”, by capital “I”, in Hegel’s system: “The subject-matter of the philosophical science of right is the Idea of right,” says Hegel.⁴ Philosophy, according to Hegel, has to do with Ideas. Idea, in Hegel’s framework, is definitely not a concept, not a representation, not a subjective mental entity. Concept is one aspect of the Idea, its form in a sense, but certainly not identical with it.⁵ Idea is the unity of the concept and the determinate existence, that is, form’s actual content -so to speak. Thus an Idea, in the strict sense of the word, is the synthetic unity of the concept and its actualization in the external world. The Idea of right is defined as freedom, considered both the concept and the adequate realizations of it.

In the same way, the principle of right (Recht) becomes the law (Gesetz) when, in its objective existence, it is posited (gesetzt),⁶ i.e. when thinking makes it determinate for consciousness and makes it known as what is right and valid; and in acquiring this determinate character, the right becomes positive law in general.⁷ And the State, the ultimate synthesis in the dialectical path of the realization of right for Hegel, is the actuality of the ethical Idea.

In the Science of Logic, Hegel relates Idea to Truth and claims that, the Idea is truth in itself and for itself -it is the absolute unity of the concept and objectivity.⁸ The Idea is the Truth; for Truth is the correspondence of objectivity with the concept. Everything actual, in so far as it is true, is the Idea. Nothing can subsist, if it were wholly devoid of identity between the concept and the reality.⁹ The Idea is the unity of subject and object, of the ideal and the real, of the finite and the infinite.¹⁰ The Idea is essentially a process, because its identity is the absolute and free identity of the concept, only in so far as it is an absolute negativity and for that reason dialectical.

The first form of the Idea, the immediate Idea is Life.¹¹ The second form is that of mediation or differentiation, Idea in the form of knowledge, which appears under the double aspect of theoretical and practical.

The mental and the physical world are thus related to each other in the framework of Idea. And the further step taken by Hegel is to transform the subjective will into an Idea: The will, which is only implicitly free is the immediate or natural will; will finds itself in the course of nature. That is what Hegel forbids; because it is the freedom of the abstract will,¹² that is, the freedom of a person related only to him/herself. And this is the subjective will, residing in its subjectivity from where crime arises. For crime (Verbrechen), according to Hegel, is not differentiated in contrast to another but as related to itself.

“Man, pursuant to his immediate existence within himself, is something natural, external to his concept.”¹³ If we comment on this; avoiding to be an Idea might pave the way to be a criminal.