In Hegel's Rabble, Frank Ruda identifies and explores a crucial problem in the Hegelian philosophy of right that strikes at the heart of Hegel's conception of the state. This singular problem, which Ruda argues is the problem of Hegelian political thought, appears in Hegel's text only in a seemingly marginal form under the name of the "rabble": a particular side-effect of the dialectical deduction of the necessity of the existence of state from the contradictory constitution of civil society. Working out from a thorough analysis of this problem and drawing on contemporary discussions in the work of such thinkers as Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy and Slavoj Zizek, the book proceeds to re-examine and reconstruct Hegel's entire political project. Ruda goes on to argue that only by re-thinking this problem of 'the rabble' in Hegel's thought - the only problem Hegel is able neither to resolve nor to sublate - can the early Marxian conception of 'the proletariat' be properly understood. The book closes with an Afterword from Slavoj Zizek.

Frank Ruda is a Research Associate at the Collaborative Research Centre on Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits at the Free University of Berlin, Germany.

Table of Abbreviations \ The Politics of Negativity by Slavoj Zizek \ Introduction: From the Rabble to the Proletariat \ 1.Luther and the Transfiguration of Poverty \ 2.Pauper-Rabble: The Question of Poverty \ 3.The Emergence of the Rabble from the Un-Estate of Poverty \ 4.Transition: From the Poor to the Rabble \ 5.Pauper-Rabble \ 6.Luxury-Rabble vs. Poverty-Rabble \ 7.The Formula of Infinite Unbinding: "This is the rabble" or: Resentment-Rabble and Absolute Rabble \ 8.The Lost Habit: Elements to a Hegelian Theory of Laziness/Foulness \ 9.Without Attitude? Rabble and State \ 10.Without Right, Without Duty - Rabble, Right without Right or: Un-Right
\ 11.To Will Nothing or not to Will Anymore: The Rabble as Will and Presentation? \ 12.The Sole Aim of the State and the Rabble as Un-organic Ensemble \ 3.Conclusion: Hegel's Rabble - Hegel's Impossibility \ 14.Coda: Preliminary Notes Concerning Angelo-Humanism and the Conception of the Proletariat in Early Marx \