2 Some Theoretical Context of Hegelâs Moral Philosophy
Hegel treats moral philosophy as a genus comprising two coördinate species: ethics and justice, a conception which predominated from the Greeks through the nineteenth century (c.e.) and still prevalent on the European Continent, because many of the most basic conditions required for individuals to engage with ethical issues are social, political and legal; and conversely, one of the most vital tasks of any society is to empty the nursery and to populate the commons with able, responsible adults. Hegel agrees with the ancient Greeks that the best way to raise a virtuous child is within a city with good laws (Rph §173r). Recent historical experience should make this plain even to those most committed to the primacy of individual ethics over political philosophy.
Hegel realised that the standard distinction in social ontology between atomistic individualism and monolithic collectivism is not exhaustive. He developed an alternative, intermediate view, which may be called âmoderate collectivismâ, comprising three theses:
- Individuals are fundamentally social practitioners because everything a person does, says or thinks is formed in the context of social practices that provide material and conceptual resources, objects of desire, skills, procedures, techniques and occasions and permissions for action, etc.;
- What any individual thinks or does depends upon his or her own responses to his or her social and natural environment;
- There are no individuals â no social practitioners â without social practices, and vice versa, there are no social practices without social practitioners, that is, without individuals who learn, participate in, perpetuate and modify social practices as needed to meet their changing needs, aims and circumstances (including procedures and information).
Hegel argues that individual human beings and the social groups to which they belong are mutually interdependent for their existence and characteristics; both aspects are mutually irreducible and neither is primary. Hegelâs moderate collectivism supports the comprehensive conception of moral philosophy noted above and is consistent with âmethodological individualismâ, the thesis that all social phenomena must be understood in terms of individualsâ behaviour, dispositions and relations (Westphal 2003, §§32â37).
Hegel rejected open democratic elections for three basic reasons. First, such elections require a well-informed, sufficiently republican citizenship of a kind not found in Hegelâs day in Prussia, a period of intensive liberal reform of largely feudal conditions antedating the Prussian Restauration, which Hegel saw on the horizon but which occurred a decade after his death. Without that kind of citizenry, the mere procedural institutions of democratic elections inevitably produce illiberal, anti-republican and unjust outcomes due to tyranny of the majority (or of the vocal minority) or through demagoguery. Second, open elections do not ensure that each socio-economic sector of society is represented in the electoral process. Third, by basing representation on geographical districts rather than on socio-economic sectors of society, open elections divorce political life from civil and economic life, thus undermining the political process (Rph §303r). (Hegelâs alternative system of political representation is indicated below, §§54.4, 55, 57, and detailed in §§65â70.)
Hegel rejected the social contract model primarily because any social contract must be based on contractorsâ manifest beliefs, attitudes, preferences or feelings, etc., which alone can provide grounds for elective choice (regardless of whether the choice to contract is implicit, explicit, or hypothetical). Hence a tenable social contract model must meet three requirements:
- To identify a positive contribution of voluntary agreementâdistinct from justifying reasons as suchâto the identification or justification of basic social norms and institutions; (cf. OâNeill 2000)
- To identify such a contribution which does not reduce to group preferences or attitudes, thus conceding too much to conventionalism or to relativism;
- To provide adequate criteria or procedures to preclude individual social contractors from neglecting or denying relevant grounds of other-regarding duties.
If to the contrary there is no such constitutive role for elective choice in identifying or justifying norms of public conduct, including social principles, procedures, or institutions, then the justifying reasons for these latter carry the full justificatory burden and contractual choice is otiose (Westphal 2016a, §§29â34). Like other non-contractualist Modern natural lawyers â most prominently Hume (Buckle 1991; Westphal 2016a, §§10â17), Rousseau and Kant â Hegel accordingly distinguished the task of identifying and justifying basic norms of conduct as such from the task of justifying them to individual members of a society. The latter task involves bringing citizens to understand the results of the first task. Only this order of priorities can provide a just answer to the Euthyphro question (Euthyphro, 10dâ11a); constitutive appeal to whatever may be agreed is legitimate only within the domain of permissible, elective public policy. Agreement-independent principles of justice set the parameters of permissible policy, not vice versa.
An important task of any social philosophy is to determine the extent to which the requirements of enlightened self-interest coincide with moral requirement. Though this extent is large, by the nature of the case the coincidence is imperfect. Contractarian (or also âcontractualistâ) strategies for justifying basic social norms confront a severe problem justifying moral norms to egoists and to moral sceptics. However, if (as Hegel contends) basic norms of conduct can be identified and justified independently of any form of contractarian agreement, this provides a significant basis for reanalysing egoism and moral scepticism as failures of understanding, perhaps resulting from failures of moral education (cf. Green 1999). If Hegel is correct, any reasonably just society can require egoists or moral sceptics either to abide by its norms of conduct, to emigrate, or to face social sanctions (informal or legal, if necessary, coercive) for violating those norms.
Hegel agrees with Kant, against utilitarianism, that the right is prior to the good, though he also holds that fully achieving justice requires achieving the common weal (Rph §§114, 129, 130, 336). Hegelâs concern that Kantâs moral principles do not suffice to guide specific actionâthe infamous charge that Kantâs moral theory is an âempty formalismâ (Rph §135r)âaddresses an important though widely neglected feature of Kantâs moral philosophy. Throughout his moral writings, Kant insists that his system of âpureâ or âmetaphysicalâ moral principles requires for its application to human circumstances and action appeal to âpractical anthropologyâ, a systematic body of information regarding human capacities and incapacities for thought and action, due to our finite form of human agency or our circumstances of action. Though his examples and analyses provide much relevant information, Kant assigned âpractical anthropologyâ to an unwritten âappendixâ to his moral system. Yet on Kantâs own account, his a priori system of moral principles as such, without this âpractical anthropologyâ, is merely a system of principles devoid of implications for the human condition (TL §45; below, §29.2). Only by âschematisingâ the a priori principle of ethical obligation does this principle pertain to actual, occurrent cases of human (inter-)actions. A central, express task of Hegelâs analysis of âethical lifeâ (Sittlichkeit), the final, third part of his Outlines, is to provide the practical anthropology required to obtain determinate, justified, legitimate normative prescriptions, including principles, procedures and institutions, by using Kantâs basic normative principles, criteria and procedures. To do so Hegel pays unprecedented and unparalleled attention to how the modern market economy and a series of non-governmental authoritiesâtaken together, these constitute âcivil societyââcontribute to individual freedom (below, §§54â57, 61â63, 68â70).