Hegel's Conscience

by Moyar, Dean

• ISBN13: 9780195391992
• ISBN10: 0195391993
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-04-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This book provides a new interpretation of the ethical theory of G.W.F. Hegel. The aim is not only to give a new interpretation for specialists in German Idealism, but also to provide an analysis that makes Hegel's ethics accessible for all scholars working in ethical and political philosophy. While Hegel's political philosophy has received a good deal of attention in the literature, the core of his ethics has eluded careful exposition, in large part because it is contained in his claims about conscience. This book shows that, contrary to accepted wisdom, conscience is the central concept for understanding Hegel's view of practical reason and therefore for understanding his ethics as a whole. The argument combines careful exegesis of key passages in Hegel's texts with detailed treatments of problems in contemporary ethics and reconstructions of Hegel's answers to those problems. The main goals are to render comprehensible Hegel's notoriously difficult texts by framing arguments with debates in contemporary ethics, and to show that Hegel still has much to teach us about the issues that matter to us most. Central topics covered in the book are the connection of self-consciousness and agency, the relation of motivating and justifying reasons, moral deliberation and the holism of moral reasoning, mutual recognition, and the rationality of social institutions.

Author Biography

Dean Moyar is Associate Professor of Philosophy, The Johns Hopkins University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Note on Citations and Abbreviations	p. ix
Introduction	p. 3
Hegelian Ethics?	p. 3
Interpretive Parameters	p. 8
Hegel's Problem	p. 11
Self-Consciousness and Agency	p. 15
First-Person Authority and Responsible Action	p. 16
Conscience in History	p. 23
Immanent Negativity	p. 28
Negativity and Ethical Content	p. 33
A Performative View of Practical Reason	p. 38
Motivating and Justifying Reasons	p. 43
The Reasons Identity Condition	p. 44
Internal Reasons and the Knight of Virtue	p. 47
The Implicit Universality and Objectivity of Internal Reasons	p. 53
Freedom and the Appeal to Reason	p. 56
Conscience and Motivating Reasons	p. 61
The Ambiguity of Conscience	p. 68
The Complex Reasons Identity Condition	p. 74
Holism and Detachment	p. 81
Subjectivism and Detachment	p. 82
Self-Expression and Interpretive Authority	p. 87
The Holism of Conscience	p. 93
Abuses of Holism	p. 100
Autonomy as Non-Detachment	p. 106
Deliberation and Justification	p. 111
Moral Conflict	p. 112
Law and Value	p. 119
Moral Reflection and Skepticism	p. 124
Conscience as Judgment	p. 129
Fallibilism and the Externality of Judgment	p. 135
The Disjunctive Inference	p. 138
Mutual Recognition	p. 143
Recognition and the Moments of Action	p. 145
Valuing the Purposes of Conscience	p. 150
The Language of Conscience	p. 155
Ethical Purposes and the Value of Humanity	p. 159
Humanity and the Mutual Recognition of Forgiveness	p. 163
Objective Spirit and the Transition to Ethical Life	p. 166
Practical Reason in Ethical Life	p. 173
The Family	p. 175
Civil Society and the Need for Conscience	p. 180
The Legal System	p. 185
The State and the Individual	p. 191
Sovereignty and Deliberative Processes	p. 197
Our Actuality	p. 207
Bibliography	p. 209
Index	p. 215
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