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 practices1: “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”.2
Tugendhat’s charges do, in fact, appear to find support in some of Hegel’s statements. Hegel does say, for example, that “in Sittlichkeit … the independent conscience of the individual … [has] disappeared” (§152).3 He also asserts that trust, not reflection, is “the true, ethical disposition” (E §§514-15)4. At the same time, though, Hegel’s texts abound with passages that appear to support precisely the opposite view, namely, that ethical life preserves — indeed, gives full expression to — the rights of conscience upheld by Morality. He says, for example, that “conscience is … something holy and its violation a sacrilege” (§137A). More significantly, he repeatedly affirms that modern Sittlichkeit accommodates the right of individuals to be bound only by those laws and norms that survive the scrutiny of their own moral reasoning. At one point Hegel identifies “the subject’s highest right” — a right that is to be preserved within Sittlichkeit — as “the right to recognize nothing that I do not apprehend as rational” (§132).
These apparently contradictory remarks about the role of moral conscience in ethical life should make us wonder just what this phenomenon called “conscience” really is and how Hegel intends to incorporate it into his vision of the rational social order. This is simply to ask how the institutions endorsed by his social theory are supposed to accommodate the important fact that its members are moral subjects, capable of discerning for themselves what the good requires of them. In other words: precisely what rights and freedoms of conscience does a Hegelian social order provide for? My discussion of these questions will proceed in three stages. I begin by providing a more detailed account of what Hegel means by “moral conscience” and how he understands the “rights” that accrue to individuals as beings of conscience. Next, I examine the ways Hegel thinks ethical life accommodates the rights of conscience. Finally, I return to one of the objections commonly raised to Hegel’s view and attempt to determine what validity, if any, it has.
Central to Hegel’s conception of moral subjectivity is the idea that the source of moral authority is ultimately (and in a sense that needs to be further specified) internal to individuals rather than external to them. Moral subjects are free, or self-determined, in the very general sense that the moral principles they are obligated to follow come from themselves — from their own wills — rather than from a foreign source. The ideal implicit in this conception of moral subjectivity is realized when individuals are bound only by ethical standards that are, in some significant sense, “their own”. It is this ideal Hegel expresses when he writes that “ethical … determinations ought not to lay claim to human obedience merely as external laws or as the dictates of an authority. Instead, they ought to find assent, recognition — even justification — within one’s own heart, disposition, conscience, and insight” (E §503A). The relevance of this ideal to social philosophy is formulated in what Hegel describes as the highest right of moral subjects (§132), namely, that all laws binding the human will, including the prevailing laws and norms of social life, be recognized as good and affirmed as such by the individuals whose actions they govern.
It is often assumed that this ideal requires only what might be called the “inner affirmation” of the ethical dictates individuals are bound to follow. Thus, it might be thought that the only condition the social order must satisfy in accommodating the moral subjectivity of its members is that they subjectively identify with their social institutions in a sense that recalls how the citizens of ancient Greece (on Hegel’s understanding of it) related to their social order. Individuals who have this relation to their social order identify with their institutions in two distinct senses: first, they “identify” with the collective good of their social groups, regarding it as an integral part of their own good and hence as an end they freely embrace; second, they express and solidify their own identities as particular individuals by participating in social life — by carrying out their particular social roles — and by working to achieve the collective good. The thought here is that in subjectively identifying with their social institutions individuals are, at least implicitly, acknowledging those institutions as good. And so, in following the laws and norms that govern social life, they are bound only by ethical standards that they themselves affirm.
My project in this paper is predicated on the idea that subjectively identifying with one’s social institutions in this way does not by itself satisfy the requirements of moral subjectivity as Hegel understands them. This claim is reflected in the quotation cited earlier, where Hegel refers not only to the “assent” of social members but also to their “conscience” and “insight”. The most important element of moral subjectivity that Hegel finds lacking in the subjective identification characteristic of classical Greece is indicated in his remark that — with the exception of Socrates — the “Greeks had no conscience” (§ 147N).5
We can best understand what Hegel takes moral conscience to be by retracing his account of its historical development, beginning with one of his statements of Socrates’ contribution to the history of moral subjectivity:
It was in the time of Socrates that a moral standpoint first arose. The Athenians accused him of the crime of no longer following the laws of the fatherland and believing in his country’s gods — of no longer being so immediately ethical (sittlich). Socrates established the standpoint of inner reflection, of thinking over [for oneself] whether something is true. [His principle was] that the concept of good and evil, … is not immediately binding (gültig) in itself but … must first make its way through the interior of the human being (VPR4, 301).
The two hallmarks of the subjective attitude introduced by Socrates are said to be the absence of immediacy — to be “immediately ethical” is to accept the ethical practices of one’s society unreflectively — and the aspiration to think through social mores for oneself before accepting them as valid. Hegel’s point, then, is that subjectively identifying with one’s institutions as the Greeks did falls short of the ideal of moral subjectivity because it is compatible with the very “immediacy” between individuals and social practices that Socrates’ questioning of Athenian norms sought to dissolve. (As an example of this immediacy, recall Antigone’s statement asserting the inscrutable nature of ethical laws: “They are not of yesterday or today but eternal, and where they came from no one knows” (PhG, ¶ 437).)
The idea of moral conscience originated by Socrates finds further elaboration in the religious doctrines of Christianity, which Hegel takes to be most consistently articulated in Protestant theology. Part of the significance of the Lutheran Reformation is expressed in the following excerpt from Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of history:
Because the individual knows that he is filled with the divine spirit, all relations of externality fall away. There is no longer a distinction between priests and laymen; there is no class exclusively in possession of the truth …. Instead, it is the heart, the emotional spirituality of the human being, that is able to come into possession of the truth, and this subjectivity belongs to all human beings (PH, 416; XII, 495-6).
Two advances over the Socratic ideal of moral subjectivity are worth noting here. First, Luther, along with Christian theology more generally, grounds the moral authority of humans in their relation to an “absolute,” or unconditioned, being. It is only because humans can be “filled with the divine spirit” that they have access to moral truths and are able to render true judgments about the goodness of human norms and practices. On this view, the Socratic “standpoint of inner reflection” — the ability to discern for oneself the validity of ethical standards — requires access to a point of view that can furnish standards of the good that are unconditionally valid. While the inconclusive character of many Socratic dialogues might be interpreted as casting doubt on the existence of ethical standards that can survive the scrutiny of reason, Luther clearly holds that such standards exist and that human beings, by standing in the right relation to the divine, have access to them.
The second advance over Socrates’ idea of moral subjectivity is expressed in Luther’s pronouncement that the source of moral authority resides within every individual regardless of birth or earthly position. Thus, the link between the human and the divine is envisioned not as a relation between God and some select human individuals, nor between God and the human community as a whole. Rather, each individual has, at least potentially, a direct connection to the absolute and hence unmediated access to the true criterion of the good. In other words, each individual is a discrete, self-sufficient locus of moral authority.
It is in the Enlightenment — most notably, in Kant’s moral philosophy — that the idea of moral conscience is most completely articulated. The Enlightenment conception of conscience is, in part, a synthesis of the Socratic and Lutheran views. Luther’s emphasis on “emotional spirituality” as the basis of humankind’s connection to the divine gives way to the older Socratic idea that moral subjectivity depends not on feeling but on rational reflection, and to the related claim that such norms are morally binding only if they can withstand the scrutiny of reason. But the Enlightenment’s idea of what this reason consists in appropriates, in secularized form, three central ideas of Luther, namely: that there exists an ultimately authoritative truth in ethical matters; that such truth is in principle available to all individuals; and that attaining such truth requires adopting an “unconditioned” standpoint that abstracts from all merely particular points of view.
To all of this the Enlightenment adds a single, supremely important innovation of its own:
Luther won spiritual freedom [for humankind] … [by] establishing that the human being’s eternal destiny must be wrought out within himself. But the content of what is to be wrought out within him … Luther assumed to be something given, something that is revealed by religion. [In the Enlightenment] the principle was established that this content must be present to me, something I can inwardly convince myself of, and that everything must be referred back to this internal ground (PH, 441-2; XII, 523).
The significance of this Enlightenment tenet lies in the thought that the source of unconditional ethical standards resides, not in an external deity, but within human reason itself. It is not just, as Luther asserted, that all individuals have access to the truth in ethical matters, but the very source of that truth — the ground of our ethical standards — is also present within each of us. The aspiration Hegel is ascribing to the Enlightenment here is that the content of ethical standards not derive from something external to the beings who are subject to them. In the paragraphs that follow Hegel makes clear that what is required in order to satisfy this aspiration is not fully captured by the mere demand — implicit already in the Socratic view — that subjects be bound only by ethical standards they can recognize as authorized by reason. Formulating the ideal of moral subjectivity in this way leaves open the possibility that reason could be conceived of as something extrahuman — as, for example, in Plato’s equation of reason with the principles that underlie the cosmic order — with the consequence that the content of moral duty would remain merely given to, or imposed upon, the human being from without. For the Enlightenment, the ethical standards the moral subject is to recognize as rational must have an “internal ground,” one that (in a sense yet to be explained) comes from oneself.
But how, more concretely, are we to understand the idea that the content of ethical norms derives from something internal to the human being? It is helpful to recall here that Hegel finds the paradigmatic formulation of this position in the Kantian principle of autonomy, which locates the source of duty in an “internal ground,” namely, the will’s self-legislative capacity. According to Hegel, this account of moral obligation has the important consequence that “right and ethics, which earlier were merely imposed externally upon the human being in the form of a divine command, are now regarded as grounded in the … human will” (PH, 440; XII, 522). The concept Hegel places at the foundation of his own moral and social philosophy — “the free will that wills the free will” (§27) — is supposed to be an alternative way of expressing the core Kantian idea of autonomy and the concomitant claim that the content of ethical standards derives from principles internal to the human will. Hegel’s version of this Kantian strategy involves establishing the rational character of social institutions by showing them to be necessary for the realization of practical freedom (to be necessary conditions of the will’s achieving complete self-determination). Such a strategy makes the source of ethical standards internal to the human being because freedom is the essential character of humanity.6 Thus, the Enlightenment aspiration to find the content of ethical norms within the human being appears in Hegel’s thought as the view that in order to be genuinely binding upon human beings ethical norms must be recognizable by them, not merely as conforming to some possibly external standard of reason, but as promoting a distinctively human end — indeed, the highest of all such ends, self-determination.
Hegel’s understanding of the legacy of the historical development we have just retraced is summarized in his statement of “the [moral] subject’s highest right”:
Conscience expresses the absolute authority of … self-consciousness, namely, to know what right and duty are both within oneself (in sich) and as proceeding from oneself (aus sich), and to recognize nothing other than what it thus knows as the good; it also includes the claim that what it … knows and wills is in truth right and duty (§137A).
On Hegel’s view, then, four conditions must obtain if the rights of conscience are to be fully realized:
i) individuals are bound only by laws and norms they themselves consciously endorse as good;
ii) their endorsement of the ethical standards that bind them is mediated by their own rational reflection, which involves distancing themselves from prevailing laws and norms and evaluating them from a universal perspective;
iii) the ethical standards individuals come to endorse constitute a true representation of the good;
and iv) the goodness of those standards derives from the fact that they promote a value internal to the human will, namely self-determination.
Any doubt as to the centrality of rational reflection for this account of conscience is dispelled by noting that Hegel refers to these conditions as the “right of insight into the good” (§132A), where insight is unambiguously characterized as conviction grounded in reasons. This view is stated with perfect clarity in Hegel’s 1825 lectures on the Philosophy of Right, where he asserts that the subjective relation a being of conscience ought to have to ethical standards is “not merely a general acquaintance with the good”, rather, “I ought to have insight into the good, and insight is something more than mere acquaintance… . With reflection arises the demand that … I have insight into what is declared to be right and good, that I be convinced of its rightness and goodness [on the basis of good reasons]” (VPR4, 351-2).7
As readers of Hegel are well aware, this account of conscience and its rights is set out in Part II of the Philosophy of Right (“Morality”), before Hegel turns his attention to Sittlichkeit and the question of how social institutions are implicated in the realization of freedom. The textual location of this discussion raises an important question: Of what relevance is Hegel’s view of moral subjectivity to his account of ethical life? This question is a particular version of a general interpretive problem that arises everywhere in Hegel’s thought, namely: What status do earlier parts of the system have once they have been dialectically “superseded” (aufgehoben) by later ones? Applied to the case at hand: To what extent are the rights of conscience preserved and not simply negated within ethical life?
Let us begin with the issue of reflection and the charge that the attitude of trust Hegel imputes to social members is incompatible with adopting a nonparochial perspective from which one could ask whether the norms and practices of one’s social order are rationally justified. The first thing to observe is that many passages in Hegel’s texts straightforwardly contradict this charge, explicitly affirming that rational reflection on the goodness of one’s social institutions is to be preserved as a part of modern Sittlichkeit.8 Consider, for example, the following passage:
The good has many forms. It can be characterized, for example, as that which is allowed by law. I can know what is lawful, and my knowledge of it is merely the general cognizance that it is to be obeyed (daβ es gilt). A further kind of knowledge, however, is knowledge on the basis of reasons. In this case knowledge is called conviction. Higher yet is knowledge … based on the Concept [i.e., full philosophical understanding]. As a consequence of my moral right, I can demand that a thing be valid for me not merely as something required by law or as based on specific reasons; rather it ought to be shown to be rational in accord with the Concept (VPR2, 106; emphasis added).
If there is plenty of textual evidence documenting Hegel’s intention to preserve rational reflection within ethical life, it may be instructive to ask why so many of his interpreters have insisted on the opposite view. There are, I think, two reasons. First, it is easy to gain the impression that moral conscience is irremediably at odds with the subjective disposition Hegel ascribes to the members of Sittlichkeit. This is because the latter requires that individuals subjectively identify with their social institutions, while the former makes the apparently opposite demand that individuals’ attachments to their social roles be sufficiently loose to allow them to reflect on their social order from a detached, universal perspective. But this line of thought rests on a widespread misunderstanding of the sense in which Hegel claims that individuals’ membership in social institutions is constitutive of their identities. It is not Hegel’s intention to claim, as contemporary communitarians sometimes do, that the social roles individuals occupy exhaust their identities such that they are nothing more than bearers of the particular roles they occupy. Instead, the view that individuals subjectively identify with the institutions of Sittlichkeit comprises two more modest claims: first, that social roles furnish individuals with what they take to be their most important ends and projects, those that constitute their life-defining activity; and, second, that a substantial part of social members’ “sense of self” — their sense of themselves as individuals of “worth and dignity” (§152) — derives from the social recognition they receive from fulfilling their roles in ethical life. When ‘identity’ is understood in this limited sense, there is nothing in Hegel’s account of social membership that precludes the ability to distance oneself from one’s social roles in order to ask whether those roles, and the social order one inhabits, are rationally defensible.
A second reason Sittlichkeit is frequently thought to allow no space for rational reflection is that Hegel sometimes seems to say precisely that. We have already mentioned his claim that in Sittlichkeit conscience disappears (§152) and trust takes the place of reflection (E §§514-5). A further passage critics often point to is Hegel’s statement that members of Sittlichkeit do their duty “without … reflection” (E§514). A careful reading of this passage, however, shows that it does not contradict the view that Sittlichkeit accommodates the right of moral subjects to validate the ethical standards they embrace through reasoned reflection. What Hegel actually claims here is that members of Sittlichkeit “fulfil their duty without the reflection of free choice. They regard their duty as something that is their own and that has a stable being, and in this necessity they win themselves and their actual freedom”. Thus, what Hegel excludes from ethical life is not reflection simpliciter but what he calls “the reflection of free choice”. In neighbouring passages Hegel characterizes free choice (Willkür) as the capacity “to choose among inclinations,” and he connects it to a kind of reflection as follows: “The will … distinguishes itself from its drives and sets itself over and above their manifold content as the simple subjectivity of thought; in this way it is a reflecting will”. Thus, the reflection involved in the exercise of Willkür is dependent on the will’s ability to distance itself in thought from given inclinations — to stand above them, as it were — and to choose which of them to take up as “its own” as the basis for action. Thus, in saying that members of Sittlichkeit do their duty “without the reflection of free choice” Hegel means to be making a point about how they typically experience their own ethical action. The point is simply that when social members do what their roles as parents, professionals, and citizens require of them, they do not normally adopt a reflective attitude of the sort associated with free choice. That is, they do not normally “stand above” the contents of their will and regard their duty as something they might choose to do but might equally well choose not to. Instead, for a member of Sittlichkeit doing one’s duty is so intimately bound up with one’s sense of who one is — with one’s fundamental identity — that doing so appears more like a necessity (a necessity, given who I take myself to be) than an arbitrary choice. Nothing in this account of the everyday practical attitude of social members precludes their being able at times to step out of this unreflective frame of mind in order to pose the question definitive of moral subjectivity, namely, whether their social institutions are in truth worthy of their allegiance. While Hegel clearly thinks that stepping back from one’s inclinations and choosing to do one’s duty are not part of the everyday disposition of social members — imagine parents who regarded feeding their children as on a par with deciding which movie to see after dinner — he is most emphatically not a champion of a mindless compliance with social norms that never pauses to reflect on the social order and one’s place within it from the perspective of a moral subject.
Still, even if it is granted that ethical life accommodates moral reflection, the worries of Hegel’s liberal critics are far from answered. It is still possible to wonder whether Hegel’s view allows for, or attaches any importance to, the freedom to criticize one’s social order when reflection shows it to fall short of one’s moral standards. As Tugendhat formulates this worry, Sittlichkeit has no room to acknowledge “the freedom to … take a position in opposition to existing norms”.9 This is an important question that any discussion of the rights of conscience will need to take up, and liberals especially will want to know whether Hegel can answer it satisfactorily. The reason for postponing this question just now is that, although Hegel addresses it, he does not regard it as the most important issue his account of moral conscience raises for social theory. In order to do justice to the differences between Hegel and thinkers who fit more squarely within the liberal tradition, I shall first examine what Hegel himself takes to be the most important ways the rational social order accommodates the rights of conscience and only then turn to the questions liberal theorists typically regard as primary.
Understanding how Sittlichkeit accommodates the rights of conscience depends on recalling the four aspirations Hegel ascribes to moral subjects:
i) individuals are bound only by laws and norms they themselves endorse;
ii) their endorsement of those laws and norms is grounded in rational reflection;
iii) the ethical standards they endorse truly represent the good; and
iv) the goodness of those standards derives from the fact that they promote a value internal to the human will (self-determination).
The question I raised a moment ago focuses on the first of these conditions and asks what ought to be the case when it fails to be met, that is, when certain individuals do not endorse the laws and norms their society expects them to obey. Hegel’s primary concern, in contrast, is not how to deal with such discord when it arises but rather what a complete realization of moral subjectivity would look like and how the social order must be constituted in order to make the realization of that ideal more likely. Hegel’s central question, then, is whether a social order in which all of these aspirations of moral subjectivity were widely and nonaccidentally fulfilled is a coherent and realizable ideal and, if so, under what conditions. Rather than focusing from the start on how to respond when one of the four conditions is unmet, Hegel’s first concern is to ask whether the demands they represent are systematically compatible — whether (and how) it is possible for them to be realized within a single human society10.
Hegel thinks that the greatest potential for conflict lies in a tension between the first and third of the aspirations of conscience, namely, that one be bound only by laws and norms one endorses oneself and that one have access to the truth in ethical matters. This tension is what is at issue in the distinction Hegel draws between “true conscience” and “formal conscience” (§137+A). True conscience is the form of moral subjectivity that reconciles these two aspirations — it regards only its own ethical standards as authoritative, and those standards are also objectively good. Formal conscience, in contrast, is moral subjectivity insofar as it determines for itself what is good without regard to the content, and hence to the truth or falsity, of the standards endorsed. Hegel’s point is that the merely formal conscience does not completely realize the ideal of moral subjectivity, since subjects of conscience aspire not only to determine for themselves what is good but also to be right about the ethical standards they endorse. By extension, a society where individuals regarded prevailing laws and norms as good, but were mistaken in doing so, would not satisfy the demands of moral subjectivity. Those demands are met only when the laws and norms of existing social institutions are both good and recognized as such by its members.
Thus, the first condition a social order must meet if it is to accommodate the rights of conscience is that it in fact be good (and hence affirmable by true conscience). For Hegel, then, the single most important respect in which Sittlichkeit accommodates moral subjectivity is that its institutions are capable of withstanding the rational scrutiny of its members. This feature of the rational social order could be called its reflective acceptability.11 For Hegel, a social order meets the requirements of reflective acceptability when it realizes freedom in its various guises: personal, moral, and ethical (sittlich) freedom.
The second condition the rights of conscience impose on the rational social order follows from the requirement that social members be bound only by laws and norms they themselves endorse: if compliance with prevailing laws and norms is to be consistent with the ideal of determining one’s actions in accord with one’s own understanding of the good, then social institutions must not only be rational, they must also be widely apprehended as such by their members. A second requirement of the rational social order, then, is that its rational character be apparent to its members.12
It is time now to revisit the question whether Hegel’s view can recognize the right of social members to criticize their social order. In fact, there are two sets of questions here. The first concerns whether Hegel’s theory possesses the philosophical resources that would make some form of rational social criticism possible: Does Hegel’s judgment that the modern social order is good render all criticism of existing reality rationally impossible? And, if not, is the kind of identification with institutions required of social members compatible with their engaging in the forms of criticism his theory allows for? The second set of questions concerns whether Hegel’s theory can allow any political space for criticism of the social order by its members who remain unreconciled to its basic features. Most importantly, how ought the state to treat individuals who do not recognize as good the norms and institutions that Hegel’s theory takes to be fully justified?
The charge that Hegel’s position fails to recognize the freedom to criticize the existing social order comes closer to its mark than the other objections considered thus far. There are, for example, no passages in the Philosophy of Right that acknowledge the importance of social members having the freedom to engage in public discourse critical of their social institutions.13 To this it may be tempting to respond simply that Hegel is not interested in less than ideal cases (where freedom is imperfectly realized) but only in articulating the standards for a fully rational social order and in showing that the institutions of the modern world constitute such an order. But even if we grant this description of Hegel’s project (which is after all correct), we are still quite far from the conclusion that social criticism can have no place in his theory. In fact, the contrary is the case, and the truth of this is revealed by an obvious but frequently overlooked feature of Hegel’s theory, namely, the simple fact that the social order the Philosophy of Right lauds as “actual” (wirklich) nowhere exists in precisely the form in which it is depicted there. Despite his reputation as an apologist for the Prussian state, the institutions Hegel endorses are obviously not identical to those of 19th century Prussia. It is precisely here — in the disparity between real (existing) institutions and those that are actual in Hegel’s technical sense — that the possibility for social criticism is to be found. For Hegel’s idealized account of the modern social order provides us with the resources for seeing where existing institutions do not fully measure up to what they should be and for thinking about how they can be made to conform to their own rational principles.
That the critical potential of Hegel’s theory is so often overlooked is due in part to a natural misunderstanding of his claim that the aim of philosophy is to reconcile human beings with the actual world. But it is important to recognize that, properly understood, reconciliation is not incompatible with a type of social criticism that is directed at the reform, as opposed to the radical overhaul, of existing institutions. Criticism and reform are consistent with Hegel’s theory, insofar as they aim at transforming institutions so as to make them conform more faithfully to the rational principles already implicit in them. This is just to say, in Hegelian jargon, that the proper object of our reconciliation is actuality (Wirklichkeit), not existing reality (Realität). Actuality, as Hegel conceives it, results from comprehending the rational principles that inform existing reality and make manifest its inherent goodness. Applied to the social world, “actuality” refers to a rational reconstruction of existing social reality, one that clarifies and brings into harmony the basic principles underlying the various existing social orders that typify Western modernity. As such, actuality is a purified version of existing reality that is more fully rational than any particular existent social order but that is not for that reason independent of, or out of touch with, the existing world. This is not to saddle Hegel with an airy form of idealism that reduces actuality to “mere ideas” (or even “mere ideals”). Rather, the ideas (and ideals) that characterize the actual social order are already to be found, though in imperfect form, in existing institutions. Thus, the normative standards Hegelian social criticism brings to bear on existing reality are actual, and not “merely ideal,” in the sense that they are not externally imposed upon, but already belong to, the object of criticism.14
This point helps to explain how a certain critical perspective on existing social reality is compatible with the subjective disposition Hegel’s theory requires of social members. These two attitudes can easily appear to be in conflict, since finding one’s identity in one’s social membership requires an affirmation of one’s social order that seems to be incompatible with criticizing it. But now we can see that no such conflict exists, since the object of our affirmation as members of Sittlichkeit is not institutions as they presently exist but something like “our institutions as they aspire to be, almost are, and in principle could be (if only we worked hard enough to bring them better in line with their own ideals)”. There is nothing contradictory in thinking that an individual can both take her American citizenship to constitute a substantial part of who she is (in the sense required by Hegel’s theory) and to hold that in their present form American political institutions do not completely measure up to their own immanent ideals. What is required for this synthesis is that existing institutions come close enough to realizing their own ideals so as to be recognized either as genuine, albeit imperfect, embodiments of the actual (rational) social order or as on their way to becoming such.15
It is clear, then, that Hegel’s theory has the resources for regarding some forms of social criticism as a legitimate exercise of moral subjectivity. Why then does it appear otherwise? One reason is that Hegel goes to great lengths to express his opposition to the kind of critique for which his theory indeed has no place: radical social criticism. Radical critique can take two forms: the first involves a rejection of the basic values that existing institutions embody (or seek to embody), whereas the second accepts those values as worthy ideals but insists that existing institutions are incapable of realizing them and must therefore be replaced by new ones. An example of the first type of radical critique is the claim that the individualism fostered by civil society is itself an unworthy ideal, perhaps because it precludes the formation of genuine bonds to others, or because it distracts human beings from pursuing more important ends. An example of the second type is the charge that the free-market principles of civil society make it impossible for most of its members both to support themselves economically and to engage in meaningful, identity-constituting work.
It is easy to see that adopting a radically critical stance towards existing institutions conflicts with the Hegelian ideal of subjectively identifying with them. This point alone, however, does not establish the undesirability of radical critique, for it is possible to imagine cases where subjective identification with one’s social order can take place only by, in effect, relinquishing one’s status as a moral subject. If existing institutions are fundamentally bad — if they stand in the way of the realization of freedom — then social members who affirm them put themselves in conflict with the good and hence with their own (true) conscience. In other words, Hegel does not believe that radical social criticism is unwarranted in all circumstances. On the contrary, it is unwarranted only in the modern (Western) world, and this is because its three social institutions are, in basic outline, rational. In circumstances in which this is not the case, refusing to affirm the existing social order is a legitimate expression of moral subjectivity.16
An obvious question arises here as to the plausibility of Hegel’s claim that the modern social order does not merit radical critique. Rather than explore that issue here, I will simply try to clarify some of the implications of his view. What, more precisely, does it mean to say that Sittlichkeit allows no room for radical critique? It means, most importantly, that individuals who do not affirm social institutions that are in essence rational, or who inhabit a social order so bad that it cannot be rationally affirmed, fall short of realizing the full range of freedoms available to modern subjects. Since in both situations individuals experience the laws and norms that govern them as imposed from without, both are instances of unfreedom, or of alienation from the social world. No matter what the reason for such alienation, Hegel regards it as a lamentable falling short of the ideal of reconciliation. But apart from this judgment as to the unfree or alienated status of those who engage in radical critique, what does Hegel’s theory have to say about how a rational social order ought to treat those who fail to affirm its basic institutions? Does it attribute any importance to individuals having the freedom to communicate their dissatisfaction to others, no matter how alienated true theory might show it to be? This question leads us back to the second of the questions raised earlier, namely, how the Hegelian state will treat individuals whose consciences do not allow them to recognize as authoritative the laws and norms Hegel takes to be fully justified.
To this question Hegel’s texts offer, at best, conflicting answers. In several passages, all located in “Morality,” Hegel appears to assert that the merely formal conscience has no protected status within the rational state.17 Nowhere does Hegel suggest here that individuals ought to be guaranteed certain rights to disobey, or to express their opposition to, laws that his theory regards as justified but that they, as beings of conscience, cannot endorse.
A more nuanced picture emerges when we turn to those passages in “Ethical Life” where Hegel takes up concrete examples of conscientious dissent by considering the status of religious minorities, such as Jews, Quakers, and Mennonites. The first thing to be noted is that here Hegel explicitly recognizes something very close to the rights of religious conscience as upheld by orthodox liberalism: “the state can have no say in the content [of religious belief], insofar as this content relates to the internal dimension of representational thought” (§270A).18 Moreover, his support for such rights is explicitly grounded in his understanding of moral subjectivity (more precisely, in a respect for each individual’s right to determine for himself what is true in religious matters).19 Since these passages repeatedly draw attention to the distinction between “internal” belief and “external” action, it can easily appear that the rights of conscience Hegel recognizes pertain to belief but not to actions required by the laws and norms of ethical life. Yet Hegel’s statements clearly grant these minorities a degree of freedom not to comply with political duties that conflict with their religious beliefs:
A state that is strong because its organization is fully developed can adopt a more liberal attitude … and can completely overlook particular matters that might affect it, or even tolerate communities whose religion does not recognize their direct duties to the state (although this of course depends on the numbers concerned). The state does this by entrusting the members of such communities to civil society and its laws, and is satisfied if they fulfil their duties to the state passively, for example by substitution [of an alternate service] (§270A).
In saying that a well-constituted state ought to tolerate dissenting communities, Hegel stops short of claiming that conscientious objectors have a right to be exempted from the duties of citizenship.20 But what his view comes down to (or ought to, given his basic principles) is the claim that such dissenters have no unconditional right to be exempted from the duties the state normally imposes on its members. As the passage just cited indicates, there are certain circumstances — for example, when dissenters become too numerous — where no such exemption can rightfully be granted. This view must not be confused with one that advocates the toleration of dissenting minorities on merely prudential grounds (because doing otherwise might be too costly, or give rise to social unrest). Hegel’s view, in contrast, (or at any rate the view that follows from his own principles) endorses toleration on moral grounds but denies that those grounds imply an unconditional right to follow one’s conscience in defiance of the state.21 Hegel’s social philosophy is constructed around the idea that freedom has a variety of forms; (one of these is moral self-determination (determining one’s actions in accord with one’s own understanding of the good), another consists in subjectively identifying with one’s social roles and institutions). For Hegel this implies that some degree of value (and hence respect) must be accorded to the exercise of conscience regardless of whether the ethical standards one takes as authoritative are objectively valid. An individual who determines to act in accord with standards of the good that are false but nevertheless “his own” clearly fails to achieve the highest level of moral self-determination. Yet Hegel is committed to holding that such an individual achieves a degree of self-determination that, however incomplete, merits the respect of others and of the state in whatever ways are consistent with the systematic realization of freedom.22 The consistent Hegelian position on this issue, then, unites three claims: (i) conscientious dissenters ought to be accorded a right to public criticism of the social order and to noncompliance with laws that violate their understanding of the good; (ii) this right is grounded in their dignity as moral subjects rather than in prudential considerations; and (iii) this right can be overridden only when the state’s very existence, or some other compelling interest in freedom, is at stake.23
In response to the objection that Sittlichkeit allows no room for moral subjects to engage in conscientious criticism of the existing social order I have argued for two main points: first, that the sense in which Hegel’s theory requires individuals to find their identities in their social roles is compatible with adopting a substantive, though limited, critical stance with respect to the social world, namely, one that envisages the reform, though not the radical overhaul, of existing institutions; second, that the reason Hegel regards radical critique as undesirable is not that his theory places too low a value on moral subjectivity — requiring it to give way in any circumstance to whatever demands the state might make — but because he is convinced that a radical critique of modern social institutions would be mistaken and hence would entail the subjective alienation of individuals from a social order that was in fact essentially good.
The conclusion I mean to come to is that on this issue — at least at the level of basic principles — the differences between Hegel and orthodox liberals are less substantive than they seem, more a matter of degree and emphasis than deep disagreement.
Frederick Neuhouser
Cornell University
1 Ernst Tugendhat, Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1986), 311.
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), available in English as Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). (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. William Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971)); PH = Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, Werke, vol. 12; (in English: The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), cited by English (and German) page numbers); PhG = Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); VPR2 = Philosophie des Rechts: Die Vorlesung von 1819/20 in einer Nachschrift, ed. Dieter Henrich (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983); VPR4 = Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie, vol. 4, ed. Karl-Heinz Ilting (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1973). 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 Michael Hardimon in “Role Obligations,” The Journal of Philosophy 91 (July 1994), 348-54. 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”.