Hegel's Rabble: An Investigation into Hegel's Philosophy of Right

Description

Drawing on insights from thinkers such as Badiou and Nancy, this book examines Hegel's conception of 'the rabble' in order to reconstruct his political philosophy. It identifies and explores a crucial problem in the Hegelian philosophy of right that strikes at the heart of Hegel's conception of the state.

Frank Ruda is a Research Associate at the Collaborative Research Centre on Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits at the Free University of Berlin, Germany.

A remarkably incisive and powerful intervention into to question of the relationship between philosophy and politics. Taking the supposedly marginal notion of the "rabble" from Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Ruda elevates it to the status of a proper, yet paradoxical philosophical category. Paradoxical, because it marks a fundamental irritation of philosophy by politics, and calls for the transformation of the former. Relating this transformation to the passage from Marx to Hegel, Ruda revisits this passage from a highly original and non-standard perspective, allowing for important contemporary philosophical debates of politics to resonate in it. An extremely compelling and original philosophical work, it is on its way to becoming a classical reference in future philosophy-politics debates. -- Professor Alenka Zupancic, Institute of Philosophy, Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Art, Slovenia Hegel's Rabble offers the first systematic analysis of this most symptomatic and intractable figure in Hegel's philosophy, and through its reformulation of the relation between impoverishment and empowerment - the relation that leads from Luther's pauper to Hegel's rabble to Marx's proletariat - Ruda's book explodes the illusions that still mystify the contemporary valorization of 'civil society', and reframes our whole understanding of poverty, class, and the revolutionary pursuit of equality. -- Peter Hallward, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University London, UK Ruda reads the minor theme of the rabble in Hegel's Philosophy of Right with the same care and insight as Derrida on the family or Kojeve on the master-slave dialectic. Particularly interesting is his analysis of the two rabbles so often in the news today: the poverty rabble, so-called "hippies," "rioters," and "scum," and the luxury rabble, the financial capitalists who wreaked havoc on the world economy with their reckless gambling and speculation. No philosophical work is more relevant for understanding the contemporary crisis. -- Aaron Schuster, Fellow, Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin, Germany Hegel's Rabble: An Investigation in to Hegel's Philosophy of Right is a fascinating book and essential reading for anyone interested in the reception of Hegel in the decades after his death. -- Jason Wakefield * Avello Publishing Blog * Ruda's account is commendable both for its philosophical depth and its political commitment.... this fresh take on Hegel's Philosophy of Right offers a welcome rebuke to its more recent apologetic reconstructions... * Jacob Blumenfeld, New School for Social Research * Frank Ruda's Hegel's Rabble takes up a crucial theme in Hegel's political philosophy, in a study at once intensely focused in its analysis of this conceptual and social anomaly, and wide-ranging in its exploration of the way the figure of the rabble sheds new light on aspects of Hegel's thought - matter, the will, necessity and contingency - beyond the Philosophy of Right and the sphere of objective spirit. -- Jason E. Smith Through his admirably detailed exegesis, Ruda argues that the unsolved problem of poverty reveals the defectiveness of the ideal of freedom animating all of Hegelian philosophy. This is obviously a major claim, and consequently the book will be of interest to Hegel scholars and students of modern political thought more generally... The book will also be of interest to students of contemporary left-Hegelian theory. -- Matt S. Whitt * Theory and Event *