If Hegel's analysis of property suggests that such an institution functions as an objective expression of free will that is generated arbitrarily, where the particular and common wills involved agree contingently, then his analysis of wrong [Das Unrecht] gives us a precise sense of the ways in which willing strictly in terms of particularity has the perpetual possibility of violating the very principle of rightness and, therefore, freedom as realised within the domain of abstract right. Hegel's analysis of wrong as instantiated under the category of crime makes explicit limitations that permeate the domain of right to this point in its development. That is to say, there is a way in which, at the level of right, one might act in accordance with the universal principle of right or, conversely, one might not. The latter possibility is what Hegel analyses by way of various modes of wrong which, in turn, make overt the negation that resides immanently within the domain of abstract right, the ways in which this institution violates the contours of its own internal development. While the collapse is generated by way of spirit's activity as right, Hegel, nevertheless, assigns significance to the natural, immediate dimension of personhood involved in that collapse. Hence, he connects crime and nature. We intend to substantiate this claim presently in order to critically read Hegel on this point, highlighting not only how it propels the analysis forward to a more comprehensive perspective from which to consider the development of right, but also critically engaging Hegel in this context, stressing important problems that follow from such a framing of crime.

Playing on the distinction between Schein (show or semblance) and Erscheinung (appearance), Hegel seeks to illuminate the essential difference between the registers of contract (common agreement between two property owners) and wrong. He writes:

Whereas contract offers what we might call a partial insight into the realisation of the concept of right, wrong operates, contradictorily, as an expression of right that simultaneously negates right.