Ethics and society

Hegel's ethical thought does not dissolve ethics in sociology or reduce it to politics, but social relationships and institutions do play an important role in the way Hegel's theory grounds ethical standards on the self-actualization of spirit's freedom. Ethical duties and principles rest on universal reason, but they must also be the principles of an actual social order. The actual is always rational, but no existing social order is ever wholly actual. In its existence, the rational Idea of an ethical order is always to some extent disfigured by contingency, error, and wickedness. The present social order must be measured not by a timeless standard but by its own immanent Idea, simply because “in the most recent time, the perfection of the Idea is always the highest” (VPR 4: 717). There is plenty of room in Hegel's ethical theory for criticism of the existing order as an immature or imperfect embodiment of its own Idea.

Hegel's ethical thought has an outward, social orientation. Its theory of personal morality stresses particular situations and social relaltionships, and finds the good will only in outward actions and results, not in empty, unactualized intentions. Hegelian morality treats the subject as a thinker, and holds inward earnestness to objective standards of Tightness. Because moral action takes place in the objective world, Hegelian ethics sees the moral worth of agents as delivered over to the laws and contingencies of that world.