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Hegel's Ethical Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

Stephen Houlgate
Stephen Houlgate*
Affiliation:
De Paul University
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Abstract

It is often assumed that Hegel's philosophy contains no practical dimension, no doctrine of how human beings should live, but is concerned exclusively with showing that human existence, as the product of reason, is already fully rational. As a consequence, even though Hegel's social and political thought (which is set out mainly in his Philosophy of Right) has been the subject of extensive and detailed study over the years, few commentators have ever tried to develop a Hegelian ethical theory to place alongside those of Aristotle, Kant and Mill. In his book, Hegel's Ethical Thought, Allen Wood has set himself the task of remedying this situation and, in my view, has succeeded in producing one of the most thoughtful, informative and provocative accounts of Hegel's Philosophy of Right to date.

Wood's achievement is extraordinary. He offers a coherent and sophisticated account of virtually all the major elements of Hegelian “objective spirit”, including freedom, happiness, recognition, right, property, punishment, morality, conscience, civil society, poverty, the state and history; and in the process he engages Hegel in a fascinating and highly instructive dialogue with a whole host of thinkers, including Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Fichte, J F Fries and J S Mill, in a way that exceedingly few commentators have succeeded in doing (or have even tried to do). As a result, I believe that Wood has shown conclusively that Hegel is an ethical theorist who is every bit as sophisticated as Aristotle, Kant and Mill, and whose contribution to ethical theory can no longer continue to be disparaged or ignored (as is largely the case) by contemporary students of the subject.

Type
Symposium on Allen W Wood's Hegel's Ethical Thought
Information
Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 13 , Issue 1: number 25 , Spring/Summer 1992 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 1992

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References

1 Wood, Allen W, Hegel's Ethical Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp xxi + 293, Pb £11.95. Unless otherwise indicated, all page references in the text are to this bookCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See Avineri, S, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972, pp 147–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Plant, R, Hegel An Introduction, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983, pp 225–32Google Scholar.

3 I have made an attempt to shed some light on the way in which the various concepts of freedom are derived from one another in the Philosophy of Right in chapter three of Freedom, Truth and History. An Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy, London and New York: Routledge, 1991 Google Scholar.

4 Hegel, G W F, Werke in zwanzig Bänden, edited by Moldenhauer, E and Michel, K, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969ff, X, 15 [§379 A]Google Scholar.

5 See Hegel, , Werke in zwanzig Bänden, VII [Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts], §220. Hereafter cited in text as PR Google Scholar

6 Hegel, G W F, Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie. 1818-1831, edited by Ilting, K-H, 4 Vols, Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1974, IV, 175Google Scholar. Henceforth cited in text as VR

7 Hegel, G W F, Philosophie des Rechts Die Vorlesung von 1819/20 in einer Nachschrift, edited by Henrich, D, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1983, p 196 Google Scholar. Henceforth cited as PRH

8 Hartmann, K, “Towards a new systematic reading of Hegel's Philosophy of Right ”, in The State and Civil Society. Studies in Hegel's Political Philosophy, edited by Pelczynski, Z A, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, p 120 Google Scholar.

9 For a somewhat more detailed analysis of Hegel's views on poverty and its solution, set Freedom, Truth and History, pp 104-19.

10 See also PRH, p 206, and Freedom, Truth and History, p 118.