The purpose of this paper is to tease out a (democratic) structural social contract from the negotiation between self-consciousnesses’ within the passages of the Phenomenology of Spirit. This phenomenon (of social contraction) is not explicitly stated within the Hegelian framework, but upon closer inspection of the quality of self-consciousness to exist in and for itself based upon “the fact that, it so exists for another” (111) leads credence to the formulation of a Hegelian social contract. The methodological approach by Hegel towards the realization of Spirit (as the point of contraction of the Universal) runs through the objectification of another self-consciousness. This initial point of contact, through metaphysical realization is the moment “self-conscious is faced by another self-consciousness; it has come out of itself (ibid). It is via this relationship between humanity which originates the medium to set forth the constraints of the nature of the object. Concurrently, the object of our study, a being that is another self-conscious, enacts the same method, creating a “double movement of two-self consciousnesses” (112). Upon the very next sentence is the greatest merit to a Hegelian Social Contract as he states, “each sees the other do the same it does: each does itself what it demands of the other, and therefore also does what it does only in so far as the other does the same” (ibid). This conscription of actions, or rather the limits of freedom, creates a system of negotiated governess (originally) between humanity to become amongst humanity. This sharing of spirit allows forth the subject to oscillate between the object as being a subject in the subject’s own right, cementing the cohesion of subjects, is the double-movement which implicitly creates the boundaries of the constraints of society via contraction of subjectivity.

The crossover of subjectivity becoming objectivity is the greatest confusion scholars have with Hegelian terminology; it is this participle of (Hegelian) theory which ‘inverts’ itself wherein lies the zenith of Hegelian thought. The understanding of this inversion creates within the subject the realization of the object becoming subject, in such that the object is subject of the shared spirit amongst the self-consciousnesses. This realization comes post-hoc of the realization of the subject’s own objectification, in a sense, the realization of a social contraction of the nature of human via the “middle spacing” of self-consciousness. The realization of the other as a being animated through spirit allows for the imperative categorization of the human into a democratic political state. Why democratic? Due to the nature of the other being of the exact same constraint of consciousness, it is limited by exactly what the subject limits the object to be, with the object being itself (in addition to the fact that it is spirit) it creates the limited unlimitedness of social contraction of the other into itself. This inversion of the other onto oneself creates the framework for a social contract. This “recognition of themselves as mutually recognizing one another” (ibid) is the core principle of both Hegelian thought of self-consciousness and spirit and also is the fundamental principle to the base of any social contractual theory, all-be-it Hobbesian, Rosseauian, or Lockean (and everything in between). The foundational piece of democratic social contract is the contraction of the agency of the human to be found in any such human capable of humanity, as such, the negotiation of the humanity originating between to become amongst humanity (in this Hegelian sense).

To bring about a conclusion to this brief expose on the matter of a Hegelian social contract is to understand the (negotiated) categorization of self-consciousnesses’ on the objectification of the subject, and the inversion of the subjectification of the object. This “middle-space’ of which is ‘created’ allows for a medium to be brought forth to a create a “pale” of sorts for one to be under. This duality folded onto itself creates forth society, particularly a democratic society, in such that the value and identity of each member is that of the equal-disposition of the universal spirit, sharing the very same fabric of cosmological identity. Therein lies the zenith of Hegel’s political thought, the notion of the merging of the plural consciousnesses into one, the democratic political state. Thereby, Hegel’s theorem can be stated to envision within it the very foundations of a democratic social contract, through the inversion and recognition of the other as being oneself.