'What is Real is Rational': The Socio-Critical Claim of Hegel's Chiasmus

The Preface of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right contains one of the most famous, and even more so, infamous aphorisms in the history of philosophy: „What is rational is real And what is real is rational.“ „Was vernünftig ist, das ist wirklich; Und was wirklich ist, das ist vernünftig.“ The aim of this paper is to move beyond the facade created by a one-dimensional reception of this aphorism to uncover its critical significance. At its core, the argument proposed is quite straightforward: That the clasped identity between rationality and reality expressed in the aphorism—which I will refer to as a chiasmus—must be the starting point of a theory and praxis of liberation and thus holds immense socio-critical potential that has largely been overlooked in previous interpretations.