Spheres of Right and Wrong: Hegel’s Many Justifications of Punishment

For many readers of the Outlines of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel’s account of punishment is an exemplar of retributivism. However, there have been heterodox voices that associate Hegel’s argument with consequentialist and, more recently, with expressivist justifications of punishment. A growing number of scholars argue that, rather than offering one justification of punishment, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right paves the way for a “mixed” or “complete” theory.
On the face of it, the persistent diversity of these readings is puzzling. But there is an intrinsic reason why the Philosophy of Right induces competent readers to come up with seemingly incompatible interpretations. Hegel’s concept of right (Recht) is broader than positive law. Right is organised into hierarchically ordered spheres, such as civil society and the state, and so the normative treatment of wrong (Unrecht) depends on the specific sphere of right that is involved in the anullment of wrong. For example, legal justifications of punishment might not provide a good political justification, and vice versa. By providing superficially conflicting reconstructions of Hegel’s notion of punishment, contemporary scholarship unwittingly mirrors the multidimensional nature of rights, wrongs, and sanctions that Hegel traces in the Philosophy of Right.
This project offers a new approach to situating Hegel’s concept of punishment within his political philosophy, thereby giving fresh impulses to the political theory of punishment, within Hegel scholarship and to the debate at large.