Georg W.F. Hegel: Moralität und moralische Weltanschauung (German Edition)

In the lowest form it is "being", higher up it is "life", and in still higher form it is "mind". The only thing always present is the process das Werden. We may, however, call the process by the name of "spirit" Geist or "idea" Begriff. We may even call it God, because at least in the third term of every triadic development the process is God.

The first and most wide-reaching consideration of the process of spirit, God, or the idea, reveals to us the truth that the idea must be studied 1 in itself; this is the subject of logic or metaphysics; 2 out of itself, in nature; this is the subject of the philosophy of nature ; and 3 in and for itself, as mind; this is the subject of the philosophy of mind Geistesphilosophie. Passing over the rather abstract considerations by which Hegel shows in his Logik the process of the idea-in-itself through being to becoming, and finally through essence to notion, we take up the study of the development of the idea at the point where it enters into otherness in nature.

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In nature the idea has lost itself, because it has lost its unity and is splintered, as it were, into a thousand fragments. But the loss of unity is only apparent, because in reality the idea has merely concealed its unity. Studied philosophically, nature reveals itself as so many successful attempts of the idea to emerge from the state of otherness and present itself to us as a better, fuller, richer idea, namely, spirit, or mind. Mind is, therefore, the goal of nature. It is also the truth of nature. For whatever is in nature is realized in a higher form in the mind which emerges from nature.

The philosophy of mind begins with the consideration of the individual, or subjective, mind. It is soon perceived, however, that individual, or subjective, mind is only the first stage, the in-itself stage, of mind. The next stage is objective mind, or mind objectified in law, morality, and the State. This is mind in the condition of out-of-itself. There follows the condition of absolute mind, the state in which mind rises above all the limitations of nature and institutions, and is subjected to itself alone in art, religion, and philosophy.

For the essence of mind is freedom , and its development must consist in breaking away from the restrictions imposed on it in it otherness by nature and human institutions. Hegel's philosophy of the State, his theory of history, and his account of absolute mind are perhaps the most often-read portions of his philosophy due to their accessibility. The State, he says, is mind objectified. The individual mind, which on account of its passions , its prejudices , and its blind impulses is only partly free, subjects itself to the yoke of necessity—the opposite of freedom—in order to attain a fuller realization of itself in the freedom of the citizen.

This yoke of necessity is first met within the recognition of the rights of others, next in morality , and finally in social morality, of which the primal institution is the family. Aggregates of families form civil society , which, however, is but an imperfect form of organization compared with the State. The State is the perfect social embodiment of the idea, and stands in this stage of development for God Himself. The State, studied in itself, furnishes for our consideration constitutional law.

In relation to other States it develops international law ; and in its general course through historical vicissitudes it passes through what Hegel calls the "Dialectics of History". Hegel teaches that the constitution is the collective spirit of the nation and that the government and the written constitution is the embodiment of that spirit.

Each nation has its own individual spirit, and the greatest of crimes is the act by which the tyrant or the conqueror stifles the spirit of a nation. War , Hegel suggests, can never be ruled out, as one can never know when or if one will occur, an example being the Napoleonic overrunning of Europe and its abolition of traditional Royalist systems. War represents a crisis in the development of the idea which is embodied in the different States, and out of this crisis usually the State which holds the more advanced spirit wins out, though it may also suffer a loss, lick its wounds, yet still win in the spiritual sense, as happened for example when the northerners sacked Rome — Rome's form of legality and its religion "won" out in spite of the losses on the battlefield.

A peaceful revolution is also possible according to Hegel when the changes required to solve a crisis are ascertained by thoughtful insight and when this insight spreads throughout the body politic:. If a people [ Volk ] can no longer accept as implicitly true what its constitution expresses to it as the truth, if its consciousness or Notion and its actuality are not at one, then the people's spirit is torn asunder.

Two things may then occur. First, the people may either by a supreme internal effort dash into fragments this law which still claims authority, or it may more quietly and slowly effect changes on the yet operative law, which is, however, no longer true morality, but which the mind has already passed beyond. In the second place, a people's intelligence and strength may not suffice for this, and it may hold to the lower law; or it may happen that another nation has reached its higher constitution, thereby rising in the scale, and the first gives up its nationality and becomes subject to the other.

Therefore it is of essential importance to know what the true constitution is; for what is in opposition to it has no stability, no truth, and passes away. It has a temporary existence, but cannot hold its ground; it has been accepted, but cannot secure permanent acceptance; that it must be cast aside, lies in the very nature of the constitution. This insight can be reached through Philosophy alone. Revolutions take place in a state without the slightest violence when the insight becomes universal; institutions, somehow or other, crumble and disappear, each man agrees to give up his right.

The "ground" of historical development is, therefore, rational; since the State, if it is not in contradiction, is the embodiment of reason as spirit. Many, at first considered to be contingent events of history, can become, in reality or in necessity, stages in the logical unfolding of the sovereign reason which gets embodied in an advanced State. Such a "necessary contingency" when expressed in passions, impulse, interest, character, personality, get used by the "cunning of reason", which, in retrospect, was to its own purpose.

We are, therefore, to understand historical happenings as the stern, reluctant working of reason towards the full realization of itself in perfect freedom. Consequently, we must interpret history in rational terms, and throw the succession of events into logical categories and this interpretation is, for Hegel, a mere inference from actual history. Even in the State, mind is limited by subjection to other minds.

There remains the final step in the process of the acquisition of freedom, namely, that by which absolute mind in art , religion , and philosophy subjects itself to itself alone. In art, mind has the intuitive contemplation of itself as realized in the art material, and the development of the arts has been conditioned by the ever-increasing " docility " with which the art material lends itself to the actualization of mind or the idea.

In religion, mind feels the superiority of itself to the particularizing limitations of finite things. Here, as in the philosophy of history, there are three great moments, Oriental religion , which exaggerated the idea of the infinite, Greek religion , which gave undue importance to the finite, and Christianity , which represents the union of the infinite and the finite. Last of all, absolute mind, as philosophy, transcends the limitations imposed on it even in religious feeling, and, discarding representative intuition, attains all truth under the form of reason.

Whatever truth there is in art and in religion is contained in philosophy, in a higher form, and free from all limitations. Philosophy is, therefore, "the highest, freest and wisest phase of the union of subjective and objective mind, and the ultimate goal of all development. The far reaching influence of Hegel is due in a measure to the undoubted vastness of the scheme of philosophical synthesis which he conceived and partly realized. A philosophy which undertook to organize under the single formula of triadic development every department of knowledge, from abstract logic up to the philosophy of history, has a great deal of attractiveness to those who are metaphysically inclined.

But Hegel's influence is due in a still larger measure to two extrinsic circumstances. His philosophy is the highest expression of that spirit of collectivism which characterized the nineteenth century. In theology especially Hegel revolutionized the methods of inquiry.

The application of his notion of development to Biblical criticism and to historical investigation is obvious to anyone who compares the spirit and purpose of contemporary theology with the spirit and purpose of the theological literature of the first half of the nineteenth century.

In science, too, and in literature, the substitution of the category of becoming for the category of being is a very patent fact, and is due to the influence of Hegel's method. In political economy and political science the effect of Hegel's collectivistic conception of the State supplanted to a large extent the individualistic conception which was handed down from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth century. The first is the Lutheran sect Pietism, to which Kant's parents subscribed.

Pietism emphasised honesty and moral living over doctrinal belief , more concerned with feeling than rationality. Kant believed that rationality is required, but that it should be concerned with morality and good will. Second is the political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose work, The Social Contract , influenced Kant's view on the fundamental worth of human beings. Pojman also cites contemporary ethical debates as influential to the development of Kant's ethics. Kant favoured rationalism over empiricism, which meant he viewed morality as a form of knowledge, rather than something based on human desire.

Natural law the belief that the moral law is determined by nature and intuitionism the belief that humans have intuitive awareness of objective moral truths were, according to Pojman, also influential for Kant. Rejecting any form of coercion or manipulation, Habermas believes that agreement between the parties is crucial for a moral decision to be reached.

Hegel's Aesthetics

It also formulates a rule by which ethical actions can be determined and proposes that ethical actions should be universalisable, in a similar way to Kant's ethics. Habermas argues that his ethical theory is an improvement on Kant's ethics. Kant distinguished between the phenomena world, which can be sensed and experienced by humans, and the noumena , or spiritual world, which is inaccessible to humans. This dichotomy was necessary for Kant because it could explain the autonomy of a human agent: For Habermas, morality arises from discourse, which is made necessary by their rationality and needs, rather than their freedom.

The social contract theory of political philosopher John Rawls , developed in his work A Theory of Justice , was influenced by Kant's ethics. To achieve this fairness, he proposed a hypothetical moment prior to the existence of a society, at which the society is ordered: This should take place from behind a veil of ignorance , where no one knows what their own position in society will be, preventing people from being biased by their own interests and ensuring a fair result.

Rawls dismissed much of Kant's dualism, arguing that the structure of Kantian ethics, once reformulated, is clearer without it—he described this as one of the goals of A Theory of Justice. He proposed that, while Kant presented human freedom as critical to the moral law, Sade further argued that human freedom is only fully realised through the maxim of jouissance. Nagel has been highly influential in the related fields of moral and political philosophy.

Supervised by John Rawls , Nagel has been a long-standing proponent of a Kantian and rationalist approach to moral philosophy. His distinctive ideas were first presented in the short monograph The Possibility of Altruism, published in That book seeks by reflection on the nature of practical reasoning to uncover the formal principles that underlie reason in practice and the related general beliefs about the self that are necessary for those principles to be truly applicable to us.

Nagel defends motivated desire theory about the motivation of moral action. According to motivated desire theory, when a person is motivated to moral action it is indeed true that such actions are motivated — like all intentional actions — by a belief and a desire. But it is important to get the justificatory relations right: But it is the reason that does the justificatory work of justifying both the action and the desire. Nagel contrasts this view with a rival view which believes that a moral agent can only accept that he or she has a reason to act if the desire to carry out the action has an independent justification.

An account based on presupposing sympathy would be of this kind. The most striking claim of the book is that there is a very close parallel between prudential reasoning in one's own interests and moral reasons to act to further the interests of another person. When one reasons prudentially, for example about the future reasons that one will have, one allows the reason in the future to justify one's current action without reference to the strength of one's current desires.

If a hurricane were to destroy someone's car next year at that point he will want his insurance company to pay him to replace it: The strength of the reason ought not to be hostage to the strength of one's current desires. The denial of this view of prudence, Nagel argues, means that one does not really believe that one is one and the same person through time. One is dissolving oneself into distinct person-stages. O'Neill argues that a successful Kantian account of social justice must not rely on any unwarranted idealizations or assumption.

She notes that philosophers have previously charged Kant with idealizing humans as autonomous beings, without any social context or life goals, though maintains that Kant's ethics can be read without such an idealization. Conceiving of reason as a tool to make decisions with means that the only thing able to restrain the principles we adopt is that they could be adopted by all. If we cannot will that everyone adopts a certain principle, then we cannot give them reasons to adopt it. To use reason, and to reason with other people, we must reject those principles that cannot be universally adopted.

In this way, O'Neill reached Kant's formulation of universalisability without adopting an idealistic view of human autonomy. From this model of Kantian ethics, O'Neill begins to develop a theory of justice. She argues that the rejection of certain principles, such as deception and coercion, provides a starting point for basic conceptions of justice, which she argues are more determinate for human beings that the more abstract principles of equality or liberty.

Nevertheless, she concedes that these principles may seem to be excessively demanding: In his paper The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories , philosopher Michael Stocker challenges Kantian ethics and all modern ethical theories by arguing that actions from duty lack certain moral value. He gives the example of Smith, who visits his friend in hospital out of duty, rather than because of the friendship; he argues that this visit seems morally lacking because it is motivated by the wrong thing.

After presenting a number of reasons that we might find acting out of duty objectionable, she argues that these problems only arise when people misconstrue what their duty is. Acting out of duty is not intrinsically wrong, but immoral consequences can occur when people misunderstand what they are duty-bound to do. Duty need not be seen as cold and impersonal: She argues that, seen this way, duty neither reveals a deficiency in one's natural inclinations to act, nor undermines the motives and feelings that are essential to friendship.

For Baron, being governed by duty does not mean that duty is always the primary motivation to act; rather, it entails that considerations of duty are always action-guiding. A responsible moral agent should take an interest in moral questions, such as questions of character. These should guide moral agents to act from duty.

Hegel presented two main criticisms of Kantian ethics. He first argued that Kantian ethics provides no specific information about what people should do because Kant's moral law is solely a principle of non-contradiction. To illustrate this point, Hegel and his followers have presented a number of cases in which the Formula of Universal Law either provides no meaningful answer or gives an obviously wrong answer.

Hegel used Kant's example of being trusted with another man's money to argue that Kant's Formula of Universal Law cannot determine whether a social system of property is a morally good thing, because either answer can entail contradictions. He also used the example of helping the poor: For Hegel, it is unnatural for humans to suppress their desire and subordinate it to reason.

Immanuel Kant - Wikipedia

This means that, by not addressing the tension between self-interest and morality, Kant's ethics cannot give humans any reason to be moral. German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer criticised Kant's belief that ethics should concern what ought to be done, insisting that the scope of ethics should be to attempt to explain and interpret what actually happens. Whereas Kant presented an idealized version of what ought to be done in a perfect world, Schopenhauer argued that ethics should instead be practical and arrive at conclusions that could work in the real world, capable of being presented as a solution to the world's problems.

Because he believed that virtue cannot be taught—a person is either virtuous or is not—he cast the proper place of morality as restraining and guiding people's behavior, rather than presenting unattainable universal laws. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche criticised all contemporary moral systems, with a special focus on Christian and Kantian ethics. He argued that all modern ethical systems share two problematic characteristics: Although Nietzsche's primary objection is not that metaphysical claims about humanity are untenable he also objected to ethical theories that do not make such claims , his two main targets—Kantianism and Christianity—do make metaphysical claims, which therefore feature prominently in Nietzsche's criticism.

Nietzsche rejected fundamental components of Kant's ethics, particularly his argument that morality, God, and immorality, can be shown through reason. Nietzsche cast suspicion on the use of moral intuition, which Kant used as the foundation of his morality, arguing that it has no normative force in ethics.

He further attempted to undermine key concepts in Kant's moral psychology, such as the will and pure reason. Like Kant, Nietzsche developed a concept of autonomy; however, he rejected Kant's idea that valuing our own autonomy requires us to respect the autonomy of others. Under the Kantian model, reason is a fundamentally different motive to desire because it has the capacity to stand back from a situation and make an independent decision. Nietzsche conceives of the self as a social structure of all our different drives and motivations; thus, when it seems that our intellect has made a decision against our drives, it is actually just an alternative drive taking dominance over another.

This is in direct contrast with Kant's view of the intellect as opposed to instinct; instead, it is just another instinct. There is thus no self-capable of standing back and making a decision; the decision the self-makes is simply determined by the strongest drive. For an individual to create values of their own, which is a key idea in Nietzsche's philosophy, they must be able to conceive of themselves as a unified agent.

Even if the agent is influenced by their drives, he must regard them as his own, which undermines Nietzsche's conception of autonomy. Utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill criticised Kant for not realizing that moral laws are justified by a moral intuition based on utilitarian principles that the greatest good for the greatest number ought to be sought.

Mill argued that Kant's ethics could not explain why certain actions are wrong without appealing to utilitarianism. Virtue ethics is a form of ethical theory which emphasizes the character of an agent, rather than specific acts; many of its proponents have criticised Kant's deontological approach to ethics. Elizabeth Anscombe criticised modern ethical theories, including Kantian ethics, for their obsession with law and obligation.

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As well as arguing that theories which rely on a universal moral law are too rigid, Anscombe suggested that, because a moral law implies a moral lawgiver, they are irrelevant in modern secular society. He further challenges Kant's formulation of humanity as an end in itself by arguing that Kant provided no reason to treat others as means: Roman Catholic priest Servais Pinckaers regarded Christian ethics as closer to the virtue ethics of Aristotle than Kant's ethics.

He presented virtue ethics as freedom for excellence , which regards freedom as acting in accordance with nature to develop one's virtues. Initially, this requires following rules—but the intention is that the agent develop virtuously, and regard acting morally as a joy. This is in contrast with freedom of indifference , which Pinckaers attributes to William Ockham and likens to Kant. On this view, freedom is set against nature: There is no development or progress in an agent's virtue, merely the forming of habit. This is closer to Kant's view of ethics, because Kant's conception of autonomy requires that an agent is not merely guided by their emotions, and is set in contrast with Pinckaer's conception of Christian ethics.

A number of philosophers, including Elizabeth Anscombe [68] , Jean Bethke Elshtain [69] , Servais Pinckaers [70] , Iris Murdoch [71] , and the Catholic Encyclopedia [72] , have all suggested that the Kantian conception of ethics rooted in autonomy is contradictory in its dual contention that humans are co-legislators of morality and that morality is a priori. They argue that if something is universally a priori i.

On the other hand, if humans truly do legislate morality, then they are not bound by it objectively, because they are always free to change it. This objection seems to rest on a misunderstanding of Kant's views since Kant argued that morality is dependent upon the concept of a rational will and the related concept of a categorical imperative: Furthermore, the sense in which our wills are subject to the law is precisely that if our wills are rational, we must will in a lawlike fashion; that is, we must will according to moral judgments we apply to all rational beings, including ourselves.

That is, an autonomous will, according to Kant, is not merely one which follows its own will, but whose will is lawful-that is, conforming to the principle of universalizability, which Kant also identifies with reason. Ironically, in another passage, willing according to immutable reason is precisely the kind of capacity Elshtain ascribes to God as the basis of his moral authority, and she commands this over an inferior voluntarist version of divine command theory, which would make both morality and God's will contingent. Kant and Elshtain, that is, both agree God has no choice but to conform his will to the immutable facts of reason, including moral truths; humans do have such a choice, but otherwise their relationship to morality is the same as that of God's: Kant believed that the shared ability of humans to reason should be the basis of morality, and that it is the ability to reason that makes humans morally significant.

He, therefore, believed that all humans should have the right to common dignity and respect. For example, a researcher who wished to perform tests on patients without their knowledge must be happy for all researchers to do so. Medical research should be motivated out of respect for the patient, so they must be informed of all facts, even if this would be likely to dissuade the patient. He argues that there may be some difference between what a purely rational agent would choose and what a patient actually chooses, the difference being the result of non-rational idiosyncrasies.

Although a Kantian physician ought not to lie to or coerce a patient, Hinkley suggests that some form of paternalism - such as through withholding information which may prompt a non-rational response - could be acceptable. She proposed that a woman should be treated as a dignified autonomous person, with control over their body, as Kant suggested. She believes that the free choice of women would be paramount in Kantian ethics, requiring abortion to be the mother's decision. Cohen believes that even when humans are not rational because of age such as babies or fetuses or mental disability, agents are still morally obligated to treat them as an ends in themselves, equivalent to a rational adult such as a mother seeking an abortion.

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• Kantian ethics - Wikipedia.

Kant viewed humans as being subject to the animalistic desires of self-preservation, species-preservation, and the preservation of enjoyment. He argued that humans have a duty to avoid maxims that harm or degrade themselves, including suicide, sexual degradation, and drunkenness. He admitted sex only within marriage, which he regarded as "a merely animal union".

He believed that masturbation is worse than suicide, reducing a person's status to below that of an animal; he argued that rape should be punished with castration and that bestiality requires expulsion from society. Sexual harassment, prostitution and pornography, she argues, objectify women and do not meet Kant's standard of human autonomy. Commercial sex has been criticised for turning both parties into objects and thus using them as a means to an end ; mutual consent is problematic because in consenting, people choose to objectify themselves.

Alan Soble has noted that more liberal Kantian ethicists believe that, depending on other contextual factors, the consent of women can vindicate their participation in pornography and prostitution. Because Kant viewed rationality as the basis for being a moral patient —one due moral consideration—he believed that animals have no moral rights. Animals, according to Kant, are not rational, thus one cannot behave immorally towards them.

Ethicist Tom Regan rejected Kant's assessment of the moral worth of animals on three main points: First, he rejected Kant's claim that animals are not self-conscious. He then challenged Kant's claim that animals have no intrinsic moral worth because they cannot make a moral judgment.

Regan argued that, if a being's moral worth is determined by its ability to make a moral judgment, then we must regard humans who are incapable of moral thought as being equally undue moral consideration. Regan finally argued that Kant's assertion that animals exist merely as a means to an end is unsupported; the fact that animals have a life that can go well or badly suggests that, like humans, they have their own ends.

However, Christine Korsgaard reinterpreted Kantian theory to establish that animal rights are implied by his moral principles. Kant believed that the Categorical Imperative provides us with the maxim that we ought not to lie in any circumstances, even if we are trying to bring about good consequences, such as lying to a murderer to prevent them from finding their intended victim. Kant argued that, because we cannot fully know what the consequences of any action will be, the result might be unexpectedly harmful.

Therefore, we ought to act to avoid the known wrong—lying—rather than to avoid a potential wrong. If there are harmful consequences, we are blameless because we acted according to our duty. However, this new maxim may still treat the murderer as a means to an end, which we have a duty to avoid doing. Thus we may still be required to tell the truth to the murderer in Kant's example.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. Transcendental idealism Critical philosophy Sapere aude Thing-in-itself Schema A priori and a posteriori Analytic—synthetic distinction Noumenon Categories Categorical imperative Hypothetical imperative " Kingdom of Ends " Political philosophy. Schopenhauer's criticism German idealism Neo-Kantianism.