Strictly speaking the book has two titles and no subtitle. The first edition of 1821 carries two complete title pages one after the other, and the familiar citation form with „oder“ between them is eighteen years younger than the book. In this edition the two are rendered Natural Right and the Science of the State in Outline and Groundlines of the Philosophy of Right; what the words of those titles mean is the subject of the sections below.
Two title pages
The first title page stands outside the pagination:
NATURRECHT
First edition 1821, first title page
UND
STAATSWISSENSCHAFT
IM GRUNDRISSE.
Zum Gebrauch für seine Vorlesungen
von
D. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
Ordentl. Professor der Philosophie an der Königl. Universität zu Berlin.
Berlin, 1821.
In der Nicolaischen Buchhandlung.
The second is page [I]:
GRUNDLINIEN
First edition 1821, second title page (p. [I])
DER
PHILOSOPHIE DES RECHTS.
Von
D. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
Ordentl. Professor der Philosophie an der Königl. Universität zu Berlin.
Berlin, 1821.
In der Nicolaischen Buchhandlung.
Both are complete, with author, place, year and publisher; neither is a half-title. The reason is that the book has two addressees. Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse, zum Gebrauch für seine Vorlesungen is the textbook title: it names the subject as the lecture course had been announced, and states the purpose along with it – exactly what the Preface opens with. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts is the trade title, and it is the one that got the counted position.
The third title: a divisional title
After the Preface and the table of contents there follows a third title page, and it is the shortest:
NATURRECHT
First edition 1821, divisional title (p. [1])
UND
STAATSWISSENSCHAFT.
No „im Grundrisse“, no author, no imprint – because it is not a title page but a marker inside the book. With it the front matter ends and the outline itself begins. The pagination shows as much: Preface and table of contents are numbered in roman ([III]–XXIV and XXV–XXVI), the divisional title stands on arabic page [1], [2] is left blank, and on page [3] the Introduction begins with § 1. The text ends on page 355. The divisional title needs no „im Grundrisse“: the outline starts here.
Why copies look different
The first title page is an unpaginated single leaf before the roman sequence – precisely the kind of leaf that binders reposition or cut away when rebinding. The collation formula of complete copies runs (2), XXVI, 355, (1) pages; but copies are also described as XXVI, 355, (1), where that leaf is missing. Anyone holding an original that begins with the Grundlinien and shows „Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft“ only after the table of contents therefore has no defective book, but the second most common normal case.
Where the form with „oder“ comes from
From the edition by Hegel’s friends. In 1833 Eduard Gans drew the two titles together into one – Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse – and dropped the divisional title. Ever since, one cites a title with a subtitle where Hegel’s book had two titles. The form is not wrong; it is simply younger than the book.
„Grundlinien“ — and why this edition says „Groundlines“
English editions have handled the first word in three ways. Dyde, Knox and White simply drop it, so that the book appears as The Philosophy of Right. Nisbet and Wood render it Elements, which catches the sense of foundational building blocks but can suggest separable parts rather than a continuous line of reasoning. Houlgate, revising Knox, uses Outlines, which is close in register but makes the book sound provisional.
This edition says Groundlines. „Groundline“ is an established English word for a foundation or basis, and its technical use points at what Hegel seems to mean: in descriptive geometry — developed shortly before he wrote — the groundline is the axis along which a three-dimensional form is projected onto a plane. A reference line, not a finished picture. The paragraphs are the guiding lines along which Hegel traces the concept of right into its actual institutional forms. The full reasoning, with the alternatives weighed, is set out in the translator’s note: A Note on the Translation: Why „Groundlines“?
„Im Grundrisse“ — in outline
The book is not a work but a guide. Hegel says so in the first sentence of the Preface: the immediate reason for publishing it is „the need to provide my students with a guide for the lectures that I deliver, in accordance with my office, on the Philosophy of Right“. The paragraphs are propositions to be noted down; the working out happened in the lecture room. That explains the terseness, which sometimes borders on discourtesy — and it explains why the transcripts are not an appendage but the missing half.
Here too the translation had to choose. Grundriss is the architect’s ground plan, the two-dimensional map of a completed whole — so, to stay with the architectural metaphor, Ground Plan would be the consistent rendering. This edition keeps the conventional „outline“ all the same, so as not to overburden the text with terminological changes; the choice is stated openly in the first footnote to the Preface. The reader should simply know that „outline“ here does not mean „sketchy“.
„Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft“
These are the two academic subjects into which the material then fell apart, and Hegel names them in order to force them together. Naturrecht was the doctrine of rational right, Staatswissenschaft the doctrine of the actual arrangement of the commonwealth. The book insists that the two cannot be separated: what is rational and does not become actual is not rational, and an arrangement that is not rational is not worth a science.
At the same time this title distances itself from the natural right of the tradition — from Hobbes, who starts from the state of nature, and from Kant and Fichte, who start from the autonomous individual. Hegel had taken this apart as early as 1802/03 in his essay on natural right.
„Philosophie des Rechts“
Recht in Hegel is wider than the lawyer’s „law“, and wider than the English „right“. It means every existence of freedom (§ 29), and that is why morality, the family, the economy, the state and world history belong to it. Whoever expects a textbook of positive law finds a book about the conditions under which there can be right at all.
On the translation. A Note on the Translation: Why „Groundlines“? · Preface, footnote 1 (on „Grundriss“ / „outline“) · Glossary, where the other contested terms are listed. – Literature. Gesammelte Werke, vol. 14,1, Hamburg 2009, which reproduces both title pages and the divisional title typographically and documents the pagination; vols. 14,2–14,3, Hamburg 2010–2011, with the editorial report on the genesis and the titles; the collation formulas (2), XXVI, 355, (1) and XXVI, 355, (1) from antiquarian descriptions of the first edition; Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Werke, vol. 8, ed. Eduard Gans, Berlin 1833, the source of the title form with „oder“; Karl-Heinz Ilting (ed.), Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie 1818–1831, vol. 1, Stuttgart 1973, on the prehistory of the book in the lecture course.