The Sociologist’s Eye: Reflections on Social Life, by KaiErikson, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. 432 pp. $35.00 (paper). ISBN: 978‐0‐300‐10667‐1.

2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 915-917
Author(s):  
Matthew Hancock
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Yale University

Hegel’s Philosophy of Freedom. By Paul Franco. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999. 391p. $35.00.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-206
Author(s):  
Peter J. Steinberger
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Life ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Ethical Norms ◽  
Philosophy Of Right

In a sense, these two books, bearing almost identical titles, could not be more different. Patten's work is a narrowly focused study of those passages in Hegel (primarily in the Philosophy of Right) that deal explicitly and pointedly with the idea of freedom. He proposes a "civic humanist" interpreta- tion of Hegelian freedom. Such an interpretation is designed to make sense of what Patten calls the "Sittlichkeit thesis," according to which ethical norms are composed of, or otherwise reducible to, duties and virtues embodied in the central institutions of modern social life. Franco's work is much broader in scope. It offers a commentary on the entirety of the Philosophy of Right and argues, plausibly enough, that Hegel's political philosophy is fundamentally a philosophy of freedom. It briefly situates that philosophy in the context of Hegel's immediate predecessors (Rousseau, Kant, Fichte) and reviews Hegel's own intellectual develop- ment, but its main goal is to show how Hegelian arguments about abstract right, morality, and ethical life constitute an account of what it means to be free.

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