The Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg im Breisgau, with the support of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie, hosted an International Conference on the notion of “wrong” (Unrecht) in Hegel’s mature philosophy and its role in rights, morality, and politics.
Held from 11 to 13 September 2025, the event took place within the framework of the Independent Research Group “Criminal Law Theory” and was organized by Simon Gansinger and Philipp-Alexander Hirsch. In their opening remarks, they introduced the conference topic and highlighted the challenge posed by Hegel’s philosophy: namely, to interpret the concepts of wrong and injustice as normative concepts, integrated within the realm of law rather than merely opposed to it.
In the morning session of 11 September, Angelica Nuzzo (CUNY Brooklyn) delivered a talk entitled Wrong: The Dialectic. She presented “wrong” as a dialectical concept that makes the actuality of right itself possible. Wrong appears not as contingent, but as constitutive of right: it has a negative function as a driving force, and is characterized by the logic of Schein and is revealed as nothingness through the dialectical movement of essence. In this view, right comes into being only in response to wrong.
Klaus Vieweg (Jena) presented The Beginning of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right – Un-Recht: Forms of “Violating” the Concept of Freedom. Focusing on the opening paragraphs (§§1–4) of the Philosophy of Right, he emphasized the distinction between the science of right, tied to the understanding, and the philosophy of right, grounded in reason. Wrong, in this framework, appears as inadequacy to the concept of right. Vieweg then turned to the free will (§§5–7) as the foundation of the philosophy of right. Wrong thus emerges as a violation of the concept, rooted in arbitrariness as subjective and particular will. Jochen Bung (Hamburg) spoke on Elements of the Philosophy of Wrongs: On Property Wrongs, Wrong Conscience, and the Wrongs of Sovereignty. He proposed an interpretation of right starting from a philosophy of wrong, focusing on three spheres: property, conscience and sovereignty. In property, wrong arises when ownership, taken as absolute, harms others and threatens society itself. In conscience, wrong can be turned into right. Finally, sovereignty appears as wrong when conceived in exclusive terms.
In the afternoon session of 11 September, Sabina Tortorella (Namur) delivered a talk entitled The Wrong in Law and Beyond: Forms of Injustice in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. She presented wrong as the manifestation of injustice, not merely as a legal violation but as the outcome of collisions within ethical life. For Tortorella, without wrong, neither law nor rights emerge. This yields a dual perspective: wrong as a transgression of law that demonstrates right’s binding force, and wrong as a condition of rightlessness that exposes the failure of ethical life. Ignacio Peña Caroca (Warwick) delivered a lecture entitled The Naturalistic Claim of §127 GPhR: Metaethical Implications from the Right of Necessity. He interpreted the right of necessity in Hegel not as a merely naturalistic right to life. It constitutes a moral permission – a genuine right – when it collides with property of another person, unlike in Kant’s view, which denies it as a right. For Hegel, human life itself asserts itself as a right against property: a limited violation of freedom is preferable to its total negation, namely the loss of life. Linda Lilith Obermayr (Vienna) was unable to attend.
In the morning session of 12 September, Matthew Delhey (Toronto) presented On Wrong Institutions: Hegel’s (Normative) Dispute with Gustav Hugo. His talk addressed the broader question of how judgments of wrong can be justified within the science of right. Delhey outlined Hugo’s central criticism of Hegel: namely, that Hegel privileged rational philosophy of right over positive law. Whereas Hegel sought to derive the concept of right independently of experience, Hugo regarded legal philosophy as only one component of the science of right.
Claudia Wirsing (Braunschweig/Münster) presented What, if Anything, Went Wrong with Roe v. Wade? A Hegelian Approach to Legal Norm Justification. She examined how legal norms enacted by legislation can be justified, and who determines what counts as right or wrong. Drawing on Brandom’s interpretation of Hegel, she presented his theory of “recollective rationality”, according to which norms are justified through reflection on their past successful application. Judges, in this view, are accountable to the attitudes of their predecessors in a process of reciprocal recognition. Wirsing concluded by raising several challenges to this position.
Caroline Wall (Boston) presented No Scars Left Behind: Hegel’s Account of Wrongdoing and Forgiveness. Drawing on Hegel and Brandom, she examined wrongdoing, apology, and forgiveness. Her analysis emphasized retribution as the erasure of crime, the role of conscience and choice, and the shifting meaning of an act when viewed externally (e.g., theft) or internally (e.g., providing for one’s family). She then discussed apology, confession, and forgiveness, understood not as denying the agent’s competence but as recognizing them as an equal, while also engaging with contemporary theories.
In the afternoon session of 11 September, Alan Brudner (Toronto) presented Crimes against the Person, the Subject, and the Individual: The Varieties of Wrong in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. He read the Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right as a progression from abstract to concrete agency: from wrongdoing against the person, based on minimal human capacities and a “thin” concept of free will, to wrongdoing against the subject, where the moral subject can determine content positively rather than merely abstracting from appetites, and finally to wrongdoing against the individual within ethical life.
Giulia Battistoni (Verona) presented Unveiling Hegel’s Morality: Subjective Will as the Foundation of Criminal Wrong, showing the relevance of Hegel’s Morality for criminal law. She discussed the three constitutive elements of action in Hegel’s terms – purpose, intention, and insight into the good – as corresponding levels of responsibility and imputation. These define the moral responsibility underlying criminal liability and thus play a key role in determining types of wrong and their corresponding punishment.
Thom Brooks (Durham) presented A Matter of Proportion: Hegel on the Unstable Wrongness of Crime over Time, challenging the common retributivist reading of Hegel’s theory of punishment. He examined passages from Abstract Right and Ethical Life, disputing contemporary interpretations and arguing that Hegel’s notion of retribution cannot be mapped onto its modern counterpart. Drawing also on Hegel’s Logic, Brooks showed that neither retribution nor deterrence alone can ground punishment, yet both remain essential.
In the morning session of 13 September, Sabrina Muchová (Prague) presented Ethical Life, Bann, and Art: On the Question of Wrong in Society in Hegel and Adorno. Her talk addressed the problem of wrong in society from both thinkers’ perspectives. In the first part, she examined how poverty opens a gap within civil society, producing various distortions. In the second, she outlined what she terms a “social utopia”: a society in which contradictions never fully disappear, and in which human rights – though central to social organization – must be understood in their ambivalence. Alan Norrie (Warwick) concluded with Hegel, Punishment, and Its Abolition, offering a critique of criminal justice. He argued that prison cannot serve as the main instrument of redistributive justice, since it fails to reform and instead stigmatizes offenders for life. Law, he suggested, should work beyond punishment. Norrie distinguished three forms of retribution – vindictive, vindicative, and validatory – claiming that while modern law mixes the first two, a more promising model would reconcile vindicative with validatory retribution.
The discussion was enriched by contributions from an audience of philosophers and jurists. Overall, the workshop showed that, through Hegel’s philosophy, the concept of wrong – though inherently negative – can be reintegrated within the framework of right. The talks revealed its many nuances across Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and its connections with punishment, responsibility, and attribution. At the same time, the variety of perspectives, from legal philosophy to social critique and contemporary theory, highlighted the continuing relevance of wrong as a key category for understanding law, justice, and ethical life today.
Below are some other photos of the event.
Giulia Battistoni
