An exposition of the idea of justice in its relations to socialist and communist ideology

As indicated by its title, the itinerary of this thesis consists in the task of tracing the dialectical movement of the concept of justice, (which analysis itself follows the highest phases in the progression of the concept of will), and then, as this concept becomes relatively determinate, in establishing its relationship to the historically emergent ideologies of socialism and communism. Whilst declining to espouse Hegel's wider thesis that the entirety of objective reality, inclusive of the laws of natural science, is an externalised construction or creation of mind or spirit (which alone is ultimately real), I adopt a modified version of Hegel's thorough-going idealism. According to my view, firstly, natural forces are, to some extent at least, capable of being consciously understood and directed according to human purposes; and secondly, there are indeed forces and processes which have their origin in conscious human behaviour, in the form of competitive interaction, but which frequently assume an immediate appearance of external and even hostile necessity. This position enables me to interpret the history of human society as an ongoing dialectical interaction of mind with itself, in its articulated conscious form on the one hand, and its externalised, objectified form on the other, and to conclude that the Highest and perfect form of human society is that which succeeds in resolving this opposition. Further, it follows that the development of justice runs parallel to the wider movement of social advance, since justice, that is, a system of universal, general rules for the regulation of the activities of competing self-interested agents, is the primary means by which this resolution is effected. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)