La moralidad en Hegel y los conceptos jurídicos de dolus indirectus y culpa

In the last thirty years, Hegel’s action theory has been at the center of the debate among European and Anglo-American scholars, interested in the questions of human agency and of the agent’s responsibility, showing its relevance from both a moral and a legal perspective. However, the studies that have identified purely legal elements in Hegel’s practical philosophy have mostly focused on the Hegelian doctrine of crime and punishment within Abstract Right, or on the role of the court of law within civil society. The present contribution aims instead at bringing out some of Hegel’s relevant reflections in the juridical field present in the Morality section of the Elements of the Philosophy of Right: the focus will be, in particular, on the concept of dolus indirectus, whose presence and conceptuality can be found in Hegel’s text, as well as in the student’s notes relating to the Lectures on the Philosophy of Right, as well as in the elaborations of Hegel’s direct students, Karl Ludwig Michelet and Eduard Gans (2); on the concepts of culpa and negligence (3), showing how Hegel’s text presents examples of illicit acts which can be traced back to these concepts. In this way, Michelet’s claim that Hegel’s Morality is precisely that ground on which the doctrine of both moral and legal imputation is based will also be corroborated.