Hegel: Ethics

Den tyske filosofen Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel har betydd så mye for vår forståelse av historie, modernitet, frihet og fremskritt at han garantert preger måten du tenker på – kanskje uten at du vet det selv. -/- Hva skjer når Hegels tanker møter vår tid? Det er spørsmålet, når den unge filosofen Sigurd Hverven tar med Hegel på en rundreise i vår samtid. Boka viser at sentrale hegelianske ideer – om frihet, anerkjennelse, historie, fremmedgjøring og kjærlighet – fremdeles er relevante (...) for å forstå brennbare spørsmål i vår egen tid. Samtidig bruker Hverven Hegels tenkning til å kaste lys over fenomener Hegel ikke kjente til, som velferdsstaten, smarttelefoner og feministiske og antirasistiske frigjøringsbevegelser. -/- Hegels tekster er beryktet for å være vanskelige, på grensen til det uforståelige. Men i denne boka blir Hegel forståelig selv for lesere uten store filosofiske forkunnskaper. Med biografiske detaljer fra Hegels liv, kombinert med slående eksempler fra vår tid, gjør Hverven det abstrakte filosofiske stoffet levende. Boka er samtidig en tilgjengelig innføring i Hegels filosofi, og en vidtfavnende aktualisering av denne tyske mestertenkeren. (shrink)

Hegel's lord-bondsman dialectic has been of especially great interest to progressive and radical Hegelians—broadly speaking, politically left-leaning interpreters of Hegel who object to certain social hierarchies and demand their abolition. They read Hegel as giving an account of how ‘lordship’ over others is an inherently unstable and unsatisfying social formation, even for its supposed beneficiaries. Marxists, feminists and post-colonial theorists have all found inspiration in Hegel's analysis of the lord and bondsman by applying it to concrete relations of oppression, such (...) as capitalism, patriarchy, or racism. In contrast, recent scholarship on Hegel's views on race and colonialism has cast doubt on whether his systematic political philosophy and philosophy of history can be of similar use to progressives. Hegel was undeniably a Eurocentric thinker, but philosophers like Robert Bernasconi and Alison Stone have convincingly shown that he was also a racist and a defender of colonialism. Crucially, however, few of the scholars who write on Hegel's pro-colonialism have analysed this feature of Hegel's thought in connection with the lord-bondsman dialectic. In this article, I argue for two connected theses. First, I argue that contrary to the hopes of some progressive defenders of Hegel, we cannot easily separate the lord-bondsman dialectic from Hegel's pro-colonialism. This is because Hegel himself appealed to the lord-bondsman dialectic to argue that colonial slavery educated its victims, and could therefore be temporarily justified. Second, I argue that this pro-colonial reading of the dialectic, though largely ignored by contemporary interpreters, was in fact recognized and embraced by a group of Hegelians in North America known as the St Louis Hegelians. They used the lord-bondsman dialectic as a basis for a qualified defence of pre-Civil War American slavery. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Background The Philosophy of Right : New Essays, New Insights Note Abbreviations References. -/- Hegel's Philosophy of Right presents a collection of new essays by leading international philosophers and Hegel scholars that analyze and explore Hegel's key contributions in the areas of ethics, politics, and the law. The most comprehensive collection on Hegel's Philosophy of Right available Features new essays by leading international Hegel interpreters divided in sections of ethics, politics, and law Presents significant new (...) research on Hegel's Philosophy of Right that will set a new standard for future work on the topic. (shrink)

The concept of “self-realization” plays a central role in philosophy, since it summarizes the idea that a good life is a flourishing life, that is, an existence in which a person makes the best of what she is. A long tradition has understood this in terms of actualizing one’s potential or fulfilling one’s highest and most worthy aspirations. The aim of this paper is to analyze Hegel’s Logic and Philosophy of Right, in order to show that they outline an alternative (...) and valuable account of self-realization that conceives of human flourishing as tied to the flourishing of the world. (shrink)

Here, I consider three issues in Jon Stewart’s Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World chapter on Hegel’s treatment of Chinese religions in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. First, I show how Stewart’s compilation of multiple courses into one unified entity hides the substantial promotion of its status in the 1831 lectures. Second, I contend that rather than identifying Hegel’s Chinese religion with the ancient Zhou practices as Stewart does, Hegel sees it as referring to state Ruism (...) up to and including Hegel’s time. Finally, I posit that the main challenge is distinguishing Hegel’s method of philosophical history from other forms of history and the consequences this has for evaluating the determinate religions. In the process, I argue for a broad dialectical interpretation over one committed to each step in Hegel’s treatment of these religions. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the Kantian idea that a rational life is a life of “mere form”—a life in which a “mere form” is the force or spring of action. I start by developing Kant’s practical notion of life—the capacity to be the cause of what one represents. In a second step, I investigate the way in which Kant characterizes a rational life—the capacity to act in accordance with the representation of laws and to determine ourselves by the mere form of (...) a practical rule. In the third section, I point to some of the attractions and some of the problems of such an account. I close by considering a Hegelian alternative: the notion that a rational life is not the life of “mere,” but of “absolute form.”. (shrink)

A tragédia de Orestes, escrita pelo tragediógrafo grego Ésquilo, influenciou decisivamente o pensamento ético-político de Hegel. Em seu ensaio sobre o Direito Natural (1802-1803), o filósofo alemão associa seu conceito de absoluto com sua interpretação da tragédia grega, ato com o qual expõe sua concepção da vida ética absoluta, dando continuidade à ideia que havia esboçado, no âmbito teológico, em "O Espírito do cristianismo e seu destino", i.e., a de que o destino e a justiça trágica forneceriam os termos de (...) uma alternativa aos conceitos jurídicos kantianos e cristãos de justiça. Mas, em "Sobre as maneiras de tratar cientificamente o direito natural", Hegel vai além. Ele demonstra que o gênero trágico apresenta uma concepção de ética e política que pode ser uma alternativa às concepções modernas do direito natural, o que permite a Hegel opor a representação trágica da unidade da vida ética absoluta ao dualismo e às dicotomias que estruturam as teorias políticas de seu tempo. Essa intuição da tragédia propiciou ao filósofo compreender a vida ética absoluta como o verdadeiro fundamento da ética e da política. Enquanto tal, ela pressupõe, necessariamente, todas as teorias do Direito Natural. Hegel denomina essa representação da unidade da vida ético-política como "a representação da tragédia da vida ética". A obra emblemática e talvez até mesmo inspiradora dessa compreensão do direito natural é "Eumênides", de Ésquilo, peça que encerra a trilogia "Oresteia". A partir dela, Hegel desenvolve, no capítulo intitulado “a ciência especulativa e o direito natural”, sua concepção trágica da vida ética absoluta. É que a tragédia de Orestes expõe o problema político que Hegel quer resolver: as relações entre o universal e o particular, o todo e as partes, o Estado e o indivíduo, etc. Além de explicitar o problema político, a obra de Ésquilo também expõe a solução do que Hegel considera ser o conflito absoluto, i.e., o jogo das oposições (universal/particular, todo/partes, Estado/indivíduos) que consiste na essência da vida ética e política. Tal solução se dá, na peça, com o julgamento do herói, Orestes, e a consequente pacificação das Erínias, transformadas em Eumênides. Esse movimento é a culminação da trilogia "Oresteia" e ilustra o tipo de reconciliação que Hegel procurava produzir com sua Filosofia do Direito: a (re)organização da totalidade ética. (shrink)

In the pages devoted to the ‘Idea of the Good’ in the Science of Logic and in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Hegel analyzes the relationship between practical rationality and reality, and in this way develops a form of philosophical analysis that today we would call ‘metaethical’. The aim of this paper is to explore this interpretative hypothesis, in order not only to shed light on extremely complex and still little studied texts, but also to demonstrate their possible contribution (...) to the contemporary ethical debate on the problems of realism and cognitivism. (shrink)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) developed a philosophy based on freedom within a wider philosophical system offering novel views on topics ranging from property and punishment to morality and the state. Hegel’s main work was the Elements of the Philosophy of Right (“PR”) first published in 1821. Many of his other major works include discussions or analyses connected to his social and political philosophy. He also wrote various political essays during his career, many of which have been translated (Hegel 1999). (...) His work has been a major influence on significant figures from Karl Marx to Charles Taylor and beyond. This entry provides an overview about how Hegel’s ideas have been debated and the core contributions from his PR followed by further readings. (shrink)

A review of Etica, Politica, Storia universale. Atti del Congresso Internazionale (Urbino, 24–27 ottobre 2018), edited by Giacomo Cerretani and Giacomo Rinaldi.

The contribution pursues two interrelated aims: the first one is to interpret the transition from Morality to Ethical Life in the "Elements of the Philosophy of Right" as a theory of moral justification; the second one is to show the meaning of this theory for contemporary philosophy. The essay thus seeks to turn to Hegel’s conception in order to shed light on the limits of the current discussion in moral epistemology and then to present a possible alternative. To this end, (...) Hegel’s text is confronted with the main theses of intuitionism, on the one hand, and Kantian constructivism, on the other, as the most prominent contemporary forms, respectively, of ethical foundationalism and coherentism. (shrink)

The chapter asks what is the source of 'human solidarity', understood as concern on the part of human beings for the well-being of other human beings as such, in Hegel and Marx. It first describes the emergence of the view that humans are 'species-beings' in Marx's writings. It then shows that this view is closely related to Hegel's view of human beings as conscious subjects who are rationally driven to become universally self-conscious.

The relation between normativity and reality represents one of the most important and challenging issues that metaethics has to deal with. Both Hegel and McDowell have faced the problem in an original way, by reaching philosophical positions that reveal interesting similarities. The core of their proposals, in fact, is the idea that both the extremes of ethical antirealism (for which norms are completely dependent on subjectivity) and strong ethical realism (for which norms are completely independent from subjectivity) provide unsatisfying answers. (...) My aim is to sketch some outlines for a comparison between Hegel’s and McDowell’s metaethical solutions, in order to consider their affinities and divergences. (shrink)

One of the strongest arguments that ethical non-cognitivism uses in its own defense is that according to which knowledge and will structure themselves as different “directions of fit”: while knowledge, in order to be correct, implies that the mind has to fit the world, the will, in order to be effective, requires that the world has to fit the mind. Non-cognitivists thus believe that moral judgments are expression of will alone, and not of knowledge, and cannot therefore be considered true (...) or justifiable. At the end of the Science of Logic, in the pages devoted to the idea of the true and the idea of the good, Hegel analyzes in details this kind of argument and shows its groundlessness: for Hegel it is not possible to separate will from knowledge without falling into complex aporias. Aim of the contribution is to shed light on those pages, still little studied today, and thus outline a possible alternative to the non-cognitivist ethical model. (shrink)

A review of Butler's first book. An English version has been posted.

In Understanding Moral Obligation, Robert Stern presents an interesting account of the history of ethics from Kant through Hegel and Kierkegaard. I argue that Stern in this account misinterprets Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Works of Love by reading them as presenting a Divine Command Theory of moral obligation, as a philosophical account meant to compete with those of Kant and Hegel. It mistakes, indeed subverts, Kierkegaard's purposes to read him as engaging in a philosophical dialectic in these texts. I (...) argue that Stern's reading renders Kierkegaard's contribution internal to a philosophical dialectic that Kierkegaard means to speak against, from a position expressly and resolutely external to it. (shrink)

This essay contributes to our understanding of the relation between the philosophies of Hegel and Sellars. While most treatments of this relation have focused on metaphysics or epistemology, I focus on ethics, and in particular on the formulation of moral agency. I argue that Hegel and Sellars arrive at a similar metaphilosophical rejection of individual moral agency in favor of conceptions of moral agency as the outcome of social mediation. To demonstrate this, I trace how Hegel and Sellars offer parallel (...) resolutions of the ‘Kantian paradox’: the apparent problem that, in Kantian ethics, moral agents must both freely self-legislate the moral law unto themselves and stand in a dutiful relation to the moral law as a necessary function of practical reason. Drawing Hegel and Sellars together in this way casts new light on Sellars’s understudied ethical theory and further evidences the contemporary relevance of Hegel’s moral philosophy. (shrink)

Hegel’s conception of Spirit does not subordinate difference to sameness, in a way that would make it unusable for a genuinely intersubjective idealism directed to a comprehensive account of the contemporary world. A close analysis of the logic of recognition and the dialectic of conscience in the Phenomenology of Spirit demonstrates that the unity of Spirit emerges in and through conflict, and is forged in the process whereby particular encounters between differently situated individuals reveal and establish the emerging character and (...) significance of the stances they uniquely occupy. (shrink)

For most readers of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel’s example of “Ethical Action” is taken from Sophocles’ Antigone. In fact, however, Hegel provides us with a trilogy of tragic examples. The first is Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos; the second, Aeschylus’s Seven against Thebes; Antigone is but the third. Further, just as a dramatic trilogy was followed by a satyr play among the ancients, ethical action’s final moment is taken from Aristophanes’ Ekklesiazousai. These four examples do not form a simple series where (...) each equally expresses the truth of ethical action. Rather, they are increasingly adequate to that truth. (shrink)

The creation of the University of Berlin in 1810 was the result of interaction between the state and philosophy, two human expressions whose relationship, at least since Socrates' death and Aristotle's exile, has tended to be problematical. That university, which became an important model for North American institutions of higher learning, was from the outset a state university; it was designed and run by the state, as opposed to what was previously the rule: institutions dependent on the Church or princes. (...) The bind, of course, is that this idea of a modern university, defined by its independence with regard to ecclesiastical and private interests, must henceforth depend on the state to guarantee its independence. This dilemma is already apparent in the philosophical ideas at work in the University of Berlin's early evolution. (shrink)

Paul Franco offers us an examination of Hegel’s political philosophy that will surely be welcomed by all scholars in the field. Most welcoming is Franco’s admonition at the very beginning that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right belongs to a select group of masterpieces in political philosophy, including Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Politics, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Rousseau’s Social Contract. As the literature on Hegel’s political thought continues to bloom, this will be all the more apparent the longer this trend continues.

Hegel’s “Anthropology” considers components of an agent’s practical identity that are not chosen but rather inherited: components such as the agent’s temperament, talents, and ethnic background. Through a discussion of habit and happiness, Hegel explores how these inherited traits can become part of the agent’s self-determination. I argue that this process provides a model for explaining how we are obligated within roles we do not choose—roles for instance within the family or as citizens of a state. Through evaluation of an (...) inherited role itself and assessment of her own place in it, the agent earns and eventually comes to own her actions within the role. In this way an inherited role, like an inherited trait, can contribute to an agent’s freedom. (shrink)

Hegel’s account of conscience at the conclusion to the chapter on morality in the Philosophy of Right has had more than its share of detractors. Theunissen tries to explain why the account is “so meager,” Findlay deems it “thoroughly scandalous,” and Tugendhat goes so far as to label it the pinnacle of a “no longer merely conceptual, but rather moral perversion.” Even commentators committed to rescuing Hegel’s discussion of conscience from such extreme reproaches agree that it is “one-sided” and “problematic.” (...) The source of this widespread conclusion about Hegel’s political incorrectness is not difficult to discern. In the wake of the nationalistic excesses and horrors of the last two centuries, there is an understandable suspicion about the motivations underlying claims that “the state cannot recognize conscience in its distinctive. form, that is, as subjective knowing”. When Hegel declares that the “formal subjectivity” of conscience, as the final achievement of morality, is “on the verge of turning into something evil”, he seems clearly out of step with the reigning liberal political traditions, traditions that regard the individual’s freedom to abide by his or her conscience as both an unassailable right and an inherent good. (shrink)

Against those who argue that Hegel despaired of providing a solution to the problem of poverty, I argue, on the basis of key dialectical transitions in Hegel's Philosophy of Right, that he held at least the following: (1) that the chronic poverty endemic to industrial capitalism can be overcome only through changes that must include a transformation in practices of consumption, (2) that this transformation must lead to more *sittlich* and self-conscious practices of consumption, and (3) that the institution best-suited (...) to enable the development of these more *sittlich* and self-conscious practices of consumption is the *Korporation*. (shrink)

The goal of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is to achieve absolute knowing. Minimally, knowing can be absolute only if it is unconditioned or unlimited; that is, only if it is not essentially contrasted with some other possible knowing—say, God's—or is not restricted such that it necessarily does not pertain to certain items—say, freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, or God. Knowing can be absolute only if these items, appropriately interpreted, are within its scope. However, if it can (...) be shown that human knowing is not limited or restricted in either of these two ways, it would then follow that we cannot contrast our conceptual scheme—human knowing as such—with the world, and, hence, we cannot even notionally contrast human knowledge of appearances with things in themselves. Initially, it is in this quite narrow sense that Hegel's project in the Phenomenology is to transform Kant's subjective or limited idealism into objective or absolute idealism by showing that items Kant took to be necessarily extrinsic to human knowing are intrinsic and constitutive of it. Thus, if we were to translate Hegel's dictum that the ground of science in general is "pure self-recognition in absolute otherness" back into Kant's lexicon, it would state that we achieve full apperceptive self-awareness, full categorial selfawareness of ourselves as knowers, only in the thing in itself. Within Hegel's own system, achieving the standpoint of absolute knowing is a necessary condition for doing logical science, and, by implication, the first part of the system as a whole, because only by demonstrating that the necessary conditions of human knowing cannot, even notionally, be contrasted with the world in itself is it possible to then work out a system of logical categories that are simultaneously categories of thought and categories of being. (shrink)

The essay aims to analyze the relationship between mind and body in the Hegel’s philosophy of subjective spirit. Through a rapid reconstruction of the influences of emerging empirical sciences, such as biology with his vitalist positions, physiognomy and phrenology, the essay aims to highlight not only the role that in the structure of Hegel’s view assumes the teleological vision derived from Aristotle, mediated by third Kantian critique, but also the epistemological significance of the Hegelian methodological attitude. Hegel rejects the attempts (...) to bring back the relationship mind-body to a dualistic view, and proposes a dialectic solution that goes beyond the rigidity of an attitude which is crushed both from a naturalist perspective as well as from an anti-naturalist one. This methodological approach may still offer an interesting contribution to the contemporary debate. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum and Seyla Benhabib have raised the question of how the Western subject might engage with the non-Western other in a non-imperialistic fashion. However, both of these feminist thinkers propose a universalist framework, consistent with Donald Davidson’s conclusions regarding the translatability of ”conceptual schemes”. Drawing upon the thought of G.W.F. Hegel and Walter Benjamin, I argue that the historically constituted subject that emerges in the wake of the Enlightenment affords an account of subjectivity that recasts the meaning of rationality (...) and thus the way in which translation should be understood. I shall argue, with Benjamin, that a linguistic conceptual scheme--in short, a world—needs translation in order to remain vital, and that genuine translation not only translates the other but transforms the self who seeks to translate. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to show that Hegel's concept of personal respect is of great interest to contemporary Critical Theory. The author first analyzes this notion as it appears in the Philosophy of Right and then offers a new interpretation of the conceptual relation between personal respect and the institutions of property and markets. In doing so, he shows why Hegel's concept of personal respect allows us to understand markets as possible institutionalizations of this kind of recognition, (...) and why it is compatible with a critique of neoliberal capitalism. He argues that due to these features Hegel's notion of personal respect is of great interest to theoreticians within the tradition of critical theory. (shrink)

The central aim of this article is to set out the essential elements of Hegel’s conception of evil. I demonstrate that Hegel understands evil primarily as a moral phenomenon. In particular, he identifies evil as a pernicious subjectivism and hypocrisy that undermines the social and institutional conditions for ethical action. An appropriate understanding of his conception of evil points to the centrality of trust to ethicality (die Sittlichkeit).

A lexical unit of meaning, or the concept, involves not just two moments, the rule and the following of the rule, but two reciprocally dependent moments. I argue that this links meaning to value. As a reciprocal relation, truth as normative is constituted by what Hegel calls ethical substance, which exists only between more than one consciousness, or, as Hegel would say, moments of consciousness. I read these two moments as the two shapes of consciousness that Hegel calls the master (...) and slave in the Phenomenology of Spirit. (shrink)

One of the reasons why there is no Hegelian school in contemporary ethics in the way that there are Kantian, Humean and Aristotelian schools is because Hegelians have been unable to clearly articulate the Hegelian alternative to those schools’ moral psychologies, i.e., to present a Hegelian model of the motivation to, perception of, and responsibility for moral action. Here it is argued that in its most basic terms Hegel's model can be understood as follows: the agent acts in a responsible (...) and thus paradigmatic sense when she identifies as reasons those motivations which are grounded in his or her talents and support actions that are likely to develop those talents in ways suggested by his or her interests. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel is widely considered to be one of the most important philosophers in the history of philosophy. This entry focuses on his contributions to political philosophy, with particular attention paid to his seminal work: the Philosophy of Right. A particular focus will be placed on Hegel’s theories of freedom, contract and property, punishment, morality, family, civil society, law, and the state.

Autor przedstawia krytykę praw metafizyki przedstawionych przez Immanuela Kanta w tzw. przedkrytycznym okresie jego twórczości. Zdaniem Kanta, prawa te składają się na tzw. Boży układ świata.

Hegel’s contextualization of ethics in history has often been understood as implying the possibility of “world-historical” justifications for unethical actions. Critics have seen this as a category mistake that violates the authority of the ethical sphere; defenders have argued that it represents one of Hegel’s most revolutionary insights, the idea that customary morality should not stand in the way of human liberation. In this essay, I argue that both of these reactions are based on failure to properly distinguish between rational (...) justification and contextual justification. Properly understood, Hegel’s practical philosophy is restricted to the former task; the authority to determine whether norms are binding in any given circumstance is retained by context-sensitive ethical judgment. (shrink)

Despite the bad press that retributivism often receives, the basic assumptions on which this theory of punishment rests are generally regarded as being attractive and compelling. First of these is the assumption that persons are morally responsible agents and that social practices, such as criminal punishment, must acknowledge that fact. Additionally, retributivism is committed to the claim that punishment must be proportionate to the crime, and not determined by such utilitarian concerns as the welfare of society, or the hope of (...) deterring other criminals. Because the most commonly discussed version of retributivism is developed from Kant's moral and legal theory, I will refer to it as Kantian Retributivism. Despite its appeal, Kantian Retributivism cannot provide a satisfactory response to a kind of case that is receiving increasingly serious consideration in philosophical literature. The case is this: Many crimes are committed by individuals profoundly disadvantaged by unjust social institutions, such as racism, classism, and/or sexism. If such individuals commit crimes, the retributivist is placed in a very difficult position: Either she must claim that the individual has willfully committed a crime and for that reason deserves punishment, seeming to ignore entirely the social background of the individual, or she can claim that the individual—in virtue of being disadvantaged by social injustices(s)—does not deserve punishment because such punishment would be unfair. I have argued elsewhere that neither strategy is tenable. (shrink)

Plato Tom Angier -- Aristotle Timothy Chappell -- Stoics Jacob Klein -- Aquinas Vivian Boland O.P -- Hume Peter Millican -- Kant Ralph Walker -- Hegel Kenneth Westphal -- Marx Sean Sayers -- Mill Krister Bykvist -- Nietzsche Ken Gemes and Christoph Schuringa -- Macintyre David Solomon.

In this article I seek to explain Hegel’s significance to contemporary meta-ethics, in particular to Kantian constructivism. I argue that in the master–slave dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit , Hegel shows that self-consciousness and intersubjectivity arise at the same time. This point, I argue, shows that there is no problem with taking other people’s reasons to motivate us since reflection on our aims is necessarily also reflection on the needs of those around us. I further explore Hegel’s contribution to (...) the debate about internal and external reasons. I end by arguing that we should understand reasons as historically constructed in the sense that who counts as an intrinsic bearer of value changes over time. I thus argue that the struggle for recognition is in fact the beginning of the long march toward the idea of recognition and the Kantian kingdom of ends. This march, however, is driven by the need to overcome injustice as it is instantiated at the beginning of history by the master’s absolute domination of the slave. (shrink)