In the place of the traditional sequence ascending from culture (acquisition) to philosophy (reflection), and then to wisdom (meditation) — where the progressive internalisation of exteriority is valued — Hegel substitutes a different path (also geographical-historical). This path leads from (oriental) wisdom, in which the spirit originally gathers itself into its solitary emptiness, on through (Greek) culture, which gives it form as determined through the exchange of diverse collective modalities of world mastery, to philosophy, in its germanic completion. The differentiated identity of philosophy in its Germanic conclusion (systematic at last) accomplishes the interiority of wisdom found within cultural alienation, by going beyond both, as does real life.

This paper tries to show that the idea of a right of the criminal to being punished, which founds and legitimizes Hegel's retributive conception of justice in his Philosophy of Right, is closely linked in fact with the way he used to think about the tragic in his early writings. Moreover, in the light of Schelling's reading of the tragic conflict aroused by the affirmation of freedom, in the Letters on Criticism and Dogmatism, it will be possible to investigate what this substantial background, thus interfering with law, concretely means for the question of Justice.

The following paper is not a literal exegesis of Hegel's æsthetics, but rather the attempt to encounter his æsthetics from a philosophical perspective which considers the æsthetic experience as intuition of finitude. From this perspective our purpose is to indicate the contemporary philosophical relevance of Hegel's æsthetics by underscoring some elements of it which can help us to rethink the relation between æsthetic experience and the subject in his interaction with his world. The question of this essay is: how can æsthetic experience be a substantial experience for the modern subject?