Philosophy of Right

Hegel's 1820 treatise on right, morality, ethical life, and the state — arguing that freedom is realized through rational institutions (family, civil society, state) and that the state is the highest embodiment of ethical life — including the famous preface line 'The real is the rational and the rational is the real.'

Develops the most sophisticated account of social freedom — that freedom is not freedom from social relations but freedom through rational social institutions — and the distinction between morality (abstract duty) and ethical life (Sittlichkeit: the actual customs and institutions through which freedom is embodied).