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Ethical Life and the Demands of Conscience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

Frederick Neuhouser
Frederick Neuhouser*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Abstract

My aim in this paper is to investigate Hegel's claim that ethical life (Sittlichkeit) does not simply negate but rather incorporates, or preserves, crucial elements of the Enlightenment conception of moral subjectivity that Hegel associates with the standpoint of Morality (Moralität). More specifically, the part of Hegel's view I want to examine here is his claim that individual moral conscience (Gewissen) has its place within the rational social order as depicted in Part III of The Philosophy of Right, “Ethical Life”. There is a widespread perception among Hegel's liberal critics that his vision of the rational social order allows no place for the genuine expression of moral conscience. This is the view expressed, for example, in Ernst Tugendhat's recent charge that Hegel's view excludes the possibility of “adopting a rational perspective” on a society's prevailing norms and practices’: “Hegel does not allow for the possibility of a responsible, critical relation to the … state. Instead he tells us that existing laws have an absolute authority. The independent conscience of the individual must disappear, and trust takes the place of reflection. This is what Hegel means by the Aufhebung of morality into ethical life”.

Type
Hegel and Ethics
Information
Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 19 , Issue 1-2: number 37/38 , 1998 , pp. 35 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 1998

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References

1 Tugendhat, Ernst, Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1986), 311 Google Scholar.

2 Tugendhat, 315-16, translation amended. Tugendhat also makes the more radical (and more obviously false) charge that “Hegel's philosophy is consciously and explicitly the … justification of the existing order, regardless of how this existing order may be constituted” (317).

3 Numbers preceded by “§” without further bibliographic information refer to paragraphs of Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, vol. 7 of Hegel's Werke (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986)Google Scholar, available in English as Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Wood, Allen W., trans. Nisbet, H. B. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar. (Hegel's remarks (Anmerkungen) are indicated by “A,” his additions (Zusätze) by “Z,” his handwritten marginal notes by “N”. “§ 151+Z” refers to both paragraph 151 and its addition.) Other works of Hegel are cited as follows: E = Part III of the Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, Werke, vol. 10; (in English: Hegel's Philosophy of Mind, trans. Wallace, William (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971)Google Scholar); PH = Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, Werke, vol. 12; (in English: The Philosophy of History, trans. Sibree, J. (New York: Dover, 1956)Google Scholar, cited by English (and German) page numbers); PhG = Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, A. V. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; VPR2 = Philosophie des Rechts: Die Vorlesung von 1819/20 in einer Nachschrift, ed. Henrich, Dieter (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983)Google Scholar; VPR4 = Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie, vol. 4, ed. Iking, Karl-Heinz (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1973)Google Scholar. In all cases I have supplied my own English translation.

4 Tugendhat cites E §§514-15 in support of his claim that the reflection appropriate to moral subjectivity is excluded from Sittlichkeit (315). I discuss this passage in more detail below, but for now it is sufficient to note that although Hegel does identify trust here as “the true ethical disposition,” the reflection it is said to replace is qualified as “the reflection of free choice” (die wählende Reflexion). Since Hegel consistently characterizes choice (Wahl) as an incompletely rational form of willing (§14, E §§476-7) — equivalent, roughly, to selecting among a set of given options in accord with one's subjective preferences — the claim that the reflection of free choice is absent from Sittlichkeit cannot be taken to imply that the latter excludes all reflection, including that associated with moral subjectivity.

5 “It can be said of the Greeks in the first and true form of their freedom that they had no conscience; for them [ethical life consisted] predominantly [in] the habit of living for the fatherland without further reflection” (PH, 253; XII, 309).

6 Freedom of the will … is what makes the human being human; it is for that reason the fundamental principle of spirit” (PH, 443; XII, 524-5).

7 Although “on the basis of good reasons” (aus guten Gründen) does not appear in the particular passage cited, Hegel uses this locution at § 132A.

8 In addition to the passages quoted here see §147A, §268, and VPR2, 123-4, all of which unambiguously confirm that trust is compatible with higher forms of rational insight. Moreover §5 makes clear that reflection — the capacity to abstract from “every given determinate content” of the will, including the prevailing norms of one's society — is an essential element of the will, without which full freedom is unrealized.

9 Tugendhat, 311.

10 Hegel also takes moral subjectivity to be realized in Sittlichkeit in the sense that the social order, taken as a whole, embodies the features of a moral subject insofar as it is governed by its own general will directed at the universal good: “the state … knows what it wills and knows it in its universality, as something thought; consequently, it acts and functions in accord with known ends and recognized principles and in accord with laws that are such not only implicitly but for consciousness” (§270).

11 The concept of reflective acceptability is introduced and helpfully discussed by Hardimon, Michael in “Role Obligations,” The Journal of Philosophy 91 (July 1994), 348–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As Hardimon points out, a social role (or institution) can be reflectively acceptable even though it may not actually have been reflected upon.

12 This condition translates into a number of concrete requirements, including the political demand that the legislative process — the process through which the general will is constituted — be fully transparent to all citizens; also, the requirement that individuals have a basic understanding of how their social order works, the purposes of its three institutions, and how they fit together to constitute a complete and coherent whole.

13 One place we would expect to find such an acknowledgment is the discussion of the press's role within political society (§319+A). But here Hegel completely ignores the function a free press could serve as a forum for rational, critical debate. Instead he appears to defend freedom of the press (in a moderate form) only because it satisfies the need of individuals “to express even their subjective opinions concerning the universal” (§308A) and because the falsity, distortion, and derision that is likely to result from such freedom can do little damage in a well-constituted state.

14 To take an example from American democracy: the practice of “one person one vote” embodies an ideal of political equality that is imperfectly realized as long as political campaigns are financed by the “donations” of a few wealthy individuals or corporations. Thus, criticism of the existing order is possible in the name of ideals that already govern existing practices.

15 I would argue that a similar conception of reconciliation is at work in, and one of the central aims of, Rawls's political theory in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971). Though the Hegelian roots of that theory are seldom explicitly acknowledged, something like Hegel's position is implicit in the method of reflective equilibrium. For that method aims to bring to explicit consciousness the obscurely recognized principles of justice that inform contemporary practice, and doing so is intended to reinforce our commitment to (and affirmation of) them, even as we recognize that they are only imperfectly realized in the world we inhabit. Expressed in Hegelian language, the intended effect of Rawls's philosophy is both affirmation of “actual” political institutions and a recognition of how existing institutions can be brought closer to actuality.

16 Even in these circumstances Hegel's preferred response is withdrawal from the social world rather than critique or social activism (§138Z). This is no doubt due to his belief that fundamental historical progress is never the direct result of human planning but takes place behind the backs of human participants, via the ruse of reason.

17 For example: “… the state cannot recognize conscience in its distinctive form (i.e., as subjective knowledge) any more than subjective opinion … has validity within science” (§137A). “On the one hand, conscience is a holy place; on the other hand, it is not to be respected. It depends on whether its content is true, whether it contains the principles of objective duty” (VPR4, 362). “In general nothing is to be ceded (ist darauf nichts zu geben) when someone says in response to demands made of him by the state that it is against his conscience to fulfil them” (VPR2, 107).

18 See also Hegel's statement later in the same passage that “as far as doctrinal instruction is concerned, … the state should not only grant the Church complete freedom in such matters, but should also treat its doctrinal teachings with unconditioned respect, regardless of what they may contain, on the grounds that the Church alone is responsible for determining them” (§270A).

19 “[Religious] doctrine itself has its province within conscience and enjoys the right of the subjective freedom of self-consciousness — the sphere of inwardness, which as such lies outside the province of the state” (§270A).

20 The concept of toleration comes up again in a similar passage at VPR2, 107: “The Quakers do not take oaths because it is against their conviction; for the same reason they do not bear arms or remove their hats in front of others.… The state — the objective, right action — has complete priority here; it cannot be asked what my particularity says against it. So, for example, it is always a matter of toleration when the state endures Quakers.… At the same time, a state can be internally strong to the extent that it tolerates abnormalities of this kind within it. In general nothing is to be ceded when someone says in response to demands made of him by the state that it is against his conscience to fulfil them”.

21 In fact, few liberals would claim otherwise. Certainly not Rawls, who writes: “There is a temptation to say that the law must always respect the dictates of conscience, but this cannot be right;” Rawls (1971), 370.

22 Ascribing this position to Hegel requires nothing more than applying the same principles that inform his account of the nature and limits of abstract right (the rights of persons) to the case of moral subjectivity. For there, too, a form of freedom is at issue — choosing which of one's given desires to act upon — that falls short of complete self-determination but is nevertheless important enough to ground a system of rights that a rational social order must respect and enforce. The freedom that defines personhood bears an important similarity to the type of self-determination I am ascribing here to the merely formal conscience in that it, too, is independent of the will's actual content (the ends the person chooses as his own). In order for the person's ends to count as self-determined, and hence as prima facie worthy of others' respect, it is enough that those ends be freely chosen. This criterion is formal because it is indifferent to what one chooses; choosing an end suffices to make it “mine”. A further similarity between the two cases is that both generate only conditional rights. The rights of persons, like the rights appropriate to the merely formal conscience, can be overridden in those (rare) circumstances where they conflict with another, more compelling “right,” such as the social order's continued existence.

23 A similar condition is laid down by Rawls (1971), 220, when discussing the rights of intolerant citizens: “[an intolerant sect's] freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger”.