Hegel and Shakespeare on Moral Imagination

10. Negation of the Negative Infinite Judgment vs. Sublation of It: Punishment vs. Pardon in The Philosophy of Right and Henry VIII

Chapter 10 Negation of the Negative Infinite Judgment vs. Sublation of It Punishment vs. Pardon in The Philosophy of Right and Henry VIII Part I. Is The “Play” of History Necessarily Tragic? Our discussion of the role of the negative in The Philosophy of Right showed that negation as a moment of sublation is essential to the development of society. Lukács holds that for Hegel, evil is the moment that continuously pushes the status quo to overcome itself: There can be no end to it.2 Lukács claims therefore, that for the young Hegel, the final shape of ethical life is tragic.3 We must investigate whether Lukács’ Marxist reading of Hegel’s externalities is the final story.4 According to Hegel, there are forms of sublation that help society to redeem itself. The questions then become whether we must always pass through tragedy on the way to such redemptions or whether there is a final form of redemption after which no more tragedy needs to be passed through, or again, whether a standpoint arises in which tragedy occurring on one level is not tragic on another level. To begin answering these questions, let us look at social redemptions in The Philosophy of Right. Social Redemptions: Punishment and Pardon According to Hegel, there are means of nullifying criminal and evil diremptions in the social will: These antisocial acts are either punished or pardoned. Both are accomplished through ethical institutions. In other words, according to 225 226 Hegel and Shakespeare on Moral Imagination Hegel, punishment and pardon are the internal acts of an organically developed, rational community of individuals. Punishment Is Restitution of Rights for the Criminal and for the State Hegel asserts that punishment of crime is the nullification of the diremption of will from the good.5 It occurs on the side of the criminal and on the side of the State. Both criminal and State, before punishment, are one-sided. The criminal requires judicial punishment in order to make him recognize the social web of laws governing rights. Punishment is a negation of the negation that crime is. It benefits the criminal because it reasserts the universal against what has become separated from it. When the right against crime has the form of revenge . . . , it is only right implicit, not right in the form of right, i.e. no act of revenge is justified. Instead of the injured party, the injured universal now comes on the scene, and this has its proper actuality in the court of law. It takes over the pursuit and the avenging of crime, and this pursuit consequently ceases to be the subjective and contingent retribution of revenge and is transformed into the genuine reconciliation of right with itself, i.e. into punishment. Objectively, this is the reconciliation of the law with itself; by the annulment of the crime, the law is restored and its authority is thereby actualised. Subjectively, it is the reconciliation of the criminal with himself, i.e. with the law known by him as his own and as valid for him and his protection; when this law is executed upon him, he himself finds in this process the satisfaction of justice and nothing save his own act.6 (This movement from being revenged upon to being punished is the movement Claudius did not get to make.) The nullification occurs equally on the side of the State. Not only is the State one-sided before the punishment, the State is one-sided before the first crime (of any type of crime). The first crime reveals the State’s one-sidedness. Left unpunished, the State is divided against itself (in and through the criminal ). The alienation in and through crime is necessary to prevent the State from being merely implicit, unmediated, unconscious, immediate universality. The State is only truly itself once it has overcome the possibility of its being a mere show of unity. Once the State’s one-sidedness is revealed, the contradiction is resolved by addressing the crime by devising laws that adequately deal with the problem and by addressing the perpetrator by means of punishment. The universal thereby comes back to itself out of its own implicit (now realized ) alienation. 227 Negation of the Negative Infinite Judgment vs. Sublation of It Crime and the punishment of crime are supposed to wake us from the immediacy of abstract right to our moral selves. In righting...