The doctrine of objective spirit deals with subjectivity as well. This seems paradoxical only if one does not understand Hegel’s reshaping of the notion in the wake of Kant and the post-Kantians. As the doctrine of the concept in the Logic shows, for Hegel, subjectivity and objectivity are inseparable and must be thought of as moments of a primary “subject-objectivity” that is proper to what he calls the Idea.1 This definition obviously affects the theory of finite subjectivity as it is presented in the doctrine of subjective spirit. But it also affects objective spirit, which is inseparable from subjective spirit, the two combining together to form the sphere of “finite spirit”;2 this is why “we must not regard the distinction between subjective and objective spirit as a rigid distinction.”3 Thus, it is not surprising that subjectivity is not absent from objective spirit. It is even constantly present in it, in forms that extend and enrich the forms of subjective spirit: using the example of the objective figure of the subject that is the legal person in his or her constitutive relationship to an object owned, Hegel notes that
Here we see a subjective entity that is aware of itself as free, and, at the same time, an external reality of this freedom; here, therefore, spirit attains to being-for-itself, the objectivity of spirit receives its due.4
Thus, we can say that every level of objective spirit corresponds to a specific form of subjectivity engaged in a relationship to objectivity that itself is spiritual (e.g., not “natural”): legal personhood, moral consciousness, familial love, the “bourgeois” consciousness of members of civil society, the political subjectivity of citizens.
But precisely because it (re)surges within objective spirit, this subjectivity is fed by the objectivity of the world of spirit. It is my theory that within objective spirit, what carries and nourishes subjective consciousness is its institutional structuration. In other words, it is as an institution or a system of institutions—the sense of which must still be specified—that objective spirit brings forth the specific figures of subjectivity I have just listed. How? By giving birth to normative configurations, the institutions of objective spirit “manufacture” subjectivity. This obliges us to revise the conventional idea of Hegel as a fierce opponent of Kantian normativism. A distinctive feature of the Hegelian doctrine of objective spirit is that it includes an original theory of normativity and a conception of the forms of subjectivity it calls forth. I will establish this by looking first at Hegel’s critique of Kant’s moral philosophy and then at the positive aspect of his critique, the doctrine of Moralität (chap. 10). I will then turn to the Hegelian understanding of political subjectivity, an indispensable complement to the theory of political institutions (chap. 11). Finally, I will show how the complex relationship between subjects, norms, and institutions allows us to conceive an ethical life in the strong sense of the term (chap. 12).
1. See Enzykl, § 214, GW 20, p. 216 (Encyclopedia 284–85): “The idea can be grasped as . . . subject-object . . . because in it [the idea] all relationships of the understanding are contained, but in their infinite return and identity in themselves.” The term, as we know, is borrowed from Schelling (see Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, W 20, p. 430).
2. Enzykl, § 386, GW 20, p. 383.
3. Enzykl, § 387 Zusatz, W 10, p. 39 (Encyclopedia 26, modified).
4. Enzykl, § 385 Zusatz, W 10, p. 34 (Encyclopedia 21, modified).