The module aims to provide an in-depth examination of and critical engagement with one of the best-known and controversial works in the history of social and political philosophy, Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right, and to show how this work provides the basis for the Marx's critique of the modern liberal-capitalist state as an alienated form of life.

Particular attention will be paid to the various types of freedom that Hegel identifies and to his attempt to situate personality and moral subjectivity within a modern form of ethical life, (Sittlichkeit), so as to reconcile individualism with the human being's social nature.