Abstract

This article presents a detailed analysis of Hegel's concept of Labour in the First Philosophy of Spirit 1803/04. Departing from a discussion of the general framework of this part of Hegel's speculative philosophy, the significance of labour and tool for the realization of the consciousness of the individual is analysed. It is shown that Hegel's concept of labour, as a form of praxis and tool which serves as an existing medium between man and nature, overcomes the classical opposition between poièsis and praxis. Nevertheless, Hegel does not identify labour and praxis, as Marx does in his German Ideology. Consequently, the role of labour in the people is discussed, as being a result of the struggle for recognition. In the people labour becomes something communal, which implies that labour and production create a massive system of community and mutual dependence. Hegel recognizes explicitly that the results of this process are by no means totally positive. A group of people, viz. the factory-workers, are condemned to a dehumanizing and unvalued type of labour and to poverty. Because of this, they cannot be full members of the people, and therefore Hegel calls them a class instead of an estate. It is shown that the core of this problem is not so much a matter of poverty, but a lack of recognition. Hegel's awareness of the structural impossibility of the labour of factoryworkers gaining recognition as human and valuable to the people is one of the most important factors that led him to his famous distinction between civil society and state in the Philosophy of Law