C'est à Iéna, en 1803-1804, que Hegel élabore en détail, pour la première fois, un système complet de philosophie. Dans La philosophie de l'esprit, la troisième partie de ce système, il étudie la façon dont le concept de l'esprit, la conscience, se réalise. Langage, travail, lutte pour la reconnaissance constituent trois moments clés de cette analyse, que bien des lecteurs célèbres adoptèrent comme point de départ de leur propre philosophie. Du premier système de Hegel, il ne reste pourtant que des (...) fragments. Certains d'entre eux, récemment découverts, n'ont été publiés qu'en 1998. Tous sont raturés, barrés, repris de multiples fois. Témoignage éloquent d'astreinte conceptuelle, ils permettent de mieux comprendre pourquoi et comment Hegel, confronté à la philosophie de la nature et à la philosophie de l'art de Schelling, reprend la conception fichtéenne de la conscience - et élabore sa philosophie de l'esprit. Le lecteur trouvera ici la première traduction française, établie à partir de l'édition critique des Œuvres complètes, de tous les fragments de 1803-1804 sur la philosophie de l'esprit. Une étude critique, retraçant la genèse de cette philosophie et clarifiant le sens des termes principaux, complète le volume. (shrink)

Jurisprudence is the prudence of jus, law's consciousness and conscience. Throughout history, when thinkers wanted to contemplate the organisation of society or the relationship between authority and the subject, they turned to law. All great philosophers, from Plato to Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, Marx and Weber had either studied the law or had a deep understanding of legal operations. But jurisprudence is also the conscience of law, the exploration of law's justice and of an ideal law or equity at the bar (...) of which state law is always judged. Jurisprudence brings together 'is' and 'ought', the positive and the normative, law and justice. But after a long process of decay, legal theory is today characterised by cognitive and moral poverty. Jurisprudence has become restricted and academically peripheral, a guidebook to technocratic legalism and a legitimation of the existent. Critical jurisprudence returns to the classical tradition of a general philosophy of law and adopts a much wider concept of legality. It is concerned both with posited law and with the law of the law. All legal aspects of the economic, political, emotional and physical modes of production and reproduction of society are part of critical jurisprudence. This widening of scope allows a radical rethinking of the nature of rights, justice, sovereignty and judgement. A political philosophy of justice today must examine the political economy of law; transitions from Empire to nation; ideological and imaginary constructions through which we understand ourselves and relate to others; ways in which gender, race or sexuality create forms of identity that both discipline bodies and offer sites of resistance. Law's complicity with political oppression, violence and racism has to be faced before it is possible to speak of a new beginning for legal thought, which in turn is the necessary precondition for a theory of justice. Critical Jurisprudence offers an ethics of law against the nihilism of power and an aesthetics of existence for the melancholic lawyer. (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This book provides a new interpretation of the ethical theory of G.W.F. Hegel.

Hegel's central concept of the spirit evolved in these two works. An 87-page interpretation by Harris precedes the translations.

Hegel’s conception of Spirit does not subordinate difference to sameness, in a way that would make it unusable for a genuinely intersubjective idealism directed to a comprehensive account of the contemporary world. A close analysis of the logic of recognition and the dialectic of conscience in the Phenomenology of Spirit demonstrates that the unity of Spirit emerges in and through conflict, and is forged in the process whereby particular encounters between differently situated individuals reveal and establish the emerging character and (...) significance of the stances they uniquely occupy. (shrink)

La conscience africaine se voit trop souvent caractérisée par son immédiateté et son innocence. Un chef d'État français n'a-t-il d'ailleurs pas récemment déclaré aux élites intellectuelles africaines, à l'université de Dakar, que leur continent n'était pas assez entré dans l'Histoire? Au-delà de ces clichés, comment penser l'Afrique noire dans un monde où l'Occident a prétendu pendant plus de cinq siècles dominer tant les échanges commerciaux que les échanges d'idées? Dans une démarche à la fois anthropologique, historique et philosophique, Alfred Adler (...) répond à cette question en s'intéressant à l'oeuvre d'Hegel. Ce penseur a, en effet, été convoqué par de nombreux philosophes africains tant pour utiliser sa dialectique libératrice que pour réfuter son discours professoral sur l'Afrique qui pâtissait de ses préjugés. Revenir vers le texte hégélien afin d'en extraire la substance intellectuelle toujours vivante et stimulante en la confrontant à l'histoire de l'Afrique, en particulier les empires de Ghana et Songhay : tel est l'objet de cet ouvrage. En se confrontant à l'"essence" de l'homme africain selon Hegel et à l'idée qu'en Afrique, il n'y a pas de place pour l'éclosion des idées, Alfred Adler nous invite à théoriser une histoire et une conscience propres à ce continent. À l'Afrique, dès lors, de s'inventer un destin. (shrink)

Why these lectures? -- Hegel between the ancients and the moderns -- Divisions and topics in philosophy of subjective spirit -- Anthropology : slumbering spirit -- Animal magnetism and clairvoyance -- Dementia -- Phenomenology of spirit -- Reciprocal recognition, spirit, and the concept of right -- Recognition and self-actualization -- Psychology : theoretical spirit -- Spirit for itself : from the found to the posited -- Imagination, sign, memory -- Mechanical memory and transcendental deduction -- Psychology : practical spirit : (...) the synthesis of Kant and Aristotle -- The formalism of the psychology -- Unresolved issues : the unity of the philosophy of spirit -- Notes on the text and translation -- Introduction -- Anthropology -- Natural soul -- The dreaming soul -- Sentience -- Self-feeling -- Habit -- Actual soul -- Phenomenology of spirit -- Consciousness as such -- Self-consciousness -- Reason -- Psychology -- Theoretical spirit -- Intuition -- Representation -- Thought -- Practical spirit. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore possibilities for phenomenology beyond Hegel with respect to questions of conscience, guilt, and ethics. In the first section, I briefly introduce Heidegger’s phenomenology. The next section provides an interpretation of conscience in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Like Hegel, Heidegger claims that conscience states my guilt prior to any specific wrongdoings; Heidegger’s ideas around the ‘call of conscience’ are thus considered next. Building on differences and connections between Hegel’s and Heidegger’s phenomenologies of conscience, the final section (...) outlines implications for a phenomenologically responsive ethics. (shrink)

Pour penser l'effectivité, Hegel a convoqué l'expérience humaine dans sa dimension historique, religieuse, et culturelle. Le propos de cet ouvrage est d'examiner le processus par lequel s'élabore une théorie de l'agir dans la philosophie de Hegel. Les effectivités de l'esprit en mouvement permettent de concevoir la confrontation du sujet et du réel par la médiation de la culture, du droit, de l'art, et de la philosophie. Et La Phénoménologie de l'esprit nous semble constituer un jalon incontournable dans cette perspective. Le (...) mouvement dans lequel est engagé l'esprit dans son effectuation s'inscrit dans l'exigence de la réconciliation du concept et de l'histoire pour permettre à l'humaine condition de se donner des institutions effectives du sens. Il en est ainsi de la vie des peuples à travers la cité antique, les exploits de ses héros, ses poètes, ses comédiens comme producteurs de l'oeuvre universelle. Pour Hegel, l'individu est inscrit dans un contexte et dans une histoire, mais c'est par sa présence agissante et créatrice qu'il contribue à la vie de la cité et par conséquent à l'histoire universelle. C'est ce processus en tant que devenir-monde que notre réflexion se propose d'exposer à partir de la problématique du procès d'effectuation de l'esprit. (shrink)

The body of this paper is devoted to tracing out some aspects of the development of the idea of conscience in the Church of England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Surely, it may seem, a subject of limited interest to the readers of this journal! Yet I hope they will find otherwise. I chose to describe this phase of the history of conscience in the West because it illustrates a decisive shift in ideas about conscience which (...) has occurred in many Western cultures besides England's: the belief that the individual ought in many cases to seek the aid of others in forming his moral judgments gives way to the belief that he ought to be self‐reliant in such matters. A knowledge of this shift can advance the philosophical understanding of the idea of conscience and the work to be done in the comparative study of conscience ‘East‘and ‘West.'. (shrink)

In recent years, commentators have devoted increasing attention to Hegel’s conception of conscience. Prominent interpreters like Frederick Neuhouser have even argued that many points of contact can be found between Hegel’s conceptions of conscience and moral subjectivity and historical and contemporary liberalism. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of an under-examined 1830 addition to the Philosophy of Spirit concerning the relation between religion and the state which proves particularly resistant to the kind of liberal interpretation of conscience which Neuhouser (...) provides. I assess the significance of Hegel’s argument for the “inseparability” of ethical and religious conscience for liberal interpretations. I conclude by arguing that we can identify a kind of consistency between the Philosophy of Right and the later writings and lectures, but that Hegel’s conception of conscience is incompatible with contemporary political liberalism. (shrink)

Background: Ethical nursing practice is increasingly challenging, and strategies for addressing ethical dilemmas are needed to support nurses’ ethical care provision. Conscientious objection is one such strategy for addressing nurses’ personal, ethical conflicts, at times associated with conscience. Exploring both conscience and conscientious objection provides understanding regarding their implications for ethical nursing practice, research, and education. Research aim: To analyze the concepts of conscience and conscientious objection in the context of nurses. Design: Concept analysis using the method by Walker and (...) Avant. Research context: Data were retrieved from Philosopher’s Index, PubMed, and CINAHL with no date restrictions. Ethical consideration: This analysis was carried out per established, scientific guidelines. Findings: Ethical concepts are integral to nursing ethics, yet little is known about conscientious objection in relation to conscience for nurses. Of note, both concepts are well established in ethics literature, addressed in various nursing codes of ethics and regulatory bodies, but the meaning they hold for nurses and the impact they have on nursing education and practice remain unclear. Discussion and conclusion: This article discusses the relevance of conscience and conscientious objection to ethical nursing practice and proposes a model case to show how they can be appreciated in the context of nurses. Conscientious objection is an option for ethical transparency for nurses but is situated in contentious discussions over its use and has yet to be fully understood for nursing practice. Conscience is an element in need of more exploration in the context of conscientious objection. Further research is warranted to understand how nurses respond to conscience concerns in morally, pluralistic nursing contexts. (shrink)

La section des Principes de la philosophie du droit concernant « Le Bien et la conscience-morale » développe la dialectique de la subjectivité morale au sens strict. Il s’agit du procès par lequel le point de vue moral subjectif, dès lors qu’il se porte à l’absolu, conduit à l’impossibilité pour la conscience morale formelle de délivrer un critère réel de l’action, de sorte que Hegel déplace le Mal de son lieu traditionnel (le libre arbitre) pour en faire l’un des possibles (...) de la conscience morale elle-même. Trois points sont en outre à noter : 1. la fécondité maintenue, pour une part, de la moralité subjective, qui ne s’épuise pas dans le subjectivisme moral ; 2. l’originalité de ce passage au sein du corpus hégélien : la contradiction ne travaille pas ici la dualité de la conscience (Phénoménologie de l’esprit) ou de l’idée du bien (Science de la logique) et du monde, mais une opposition interne à la volonté, entre sa subjectivité immédiate et son essence abstraite; 3. le rapport Hegel-Kant qui se joue ici, car si la réception du kantisme par Fichte peut faire office de confirmation historique de la dialectique de la conscience morale, c’est au prix de deux déplacements décisifs, l’un opéré par Fichte, l’autre par Hegel lui-même. (shrink)

Paper given at the 20th Biennial Meeting of the Hegel Society of America, University of South Carolina, October 24-26, 2008 -/- The local problem of the soul-body relation can be grasped only against the global background of the relation between Nature and Spirit. This relates to Hegel's naturalism: the idea that there is one single reality - living reality - and different levels of description of it. This implies, moreover, that it is possible to ascribe some form of naturality (...) also to the social body of institutionalized ethical life. Hegel’s position can thus be characterised as a kind of aristotelian social naturalism: this, at bottom, is the combined meaning of the Hegelian theses that soul is the substance of Spirit, and habit its universal form. (shrink)

Richard Sorabji here presents a selection of his previously-published papers on four topics in ancient philosophy: two on the mind-body relation, nine on sense perception, and one each on moral conscience and on the will. The substantial introduction updates and interconnects the papers and fills out the picture by reference to other writings by himself and others, and to further thoughts. The picture of the four main topics shows that each continued to develop throughout the 1200 year course of (...) Ancient Greek Philosophy up to 600 CE. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Catherine Malabou : “Unbind Me” Judith Butler : What Kind of Shape Is Hegel's Body in? Catherine Malabou : What Is Shaping the Body? Judith Butler : A Chiasm between Us, but No Chasm.

De la certitude sensible au savoir absolu, la conscience est à l'épreuve d'un procès phénoménologique. Ce procès se déploie à travers une expérience se concevant en tant qu'effectuation d'un principe que nous avons défini comme un principe d'effectuation. Chaque figure de la conscience est un moment de l'effectuation du principe articulant la certitude et la vérité, le sujet et l'objet, l'immédiateté et la médiation, le singulier et l'universel. Il s'agit de la dialectique de la négativité qui s'opère comme une dynamique (...) de conversion du savoir le plus "immédiat" et le plus "abstrait" en savoir effectif. Des figurations denses rythment le mouvement d'autodétermination de la conscience dans son devenir conscience universelle et rationnelle. C'est cette odyssée de la conscience que nous avons explorée en partant de l'hypothèse d'un principe d'effectuation à l'oeuvre dans le philosopher hegelien, particulièrement dans La Phénoménologie de l'esprit. De la conversion de la certitude en vérité, résulte l'effectivité du savoir conceptuel comme ultime figure du procès phénoménologique de l'esprit. Mettre en relief ce processus à travers la succession dialectique des figures de l'esprit dans sa conscience, tel est l'objectif de cet ouvrage. (shrink)

In what we might call its particularly Christian manifestation, “guilt” denotes the feeling or fact of having offended, the failure to uphold an ethical code. Under such terms, “guilt” connotes negative consequences: shame, punishment, and estrangement. Yet, penetrating further into its meaning and value, one finds that guilt extends beyond this narrow classification, playing a productive, necessary, and ineluctable role for recognitive sociality. This paper examines guilt as it appears in Hegel’s thinking. I find that Hegel’s understanding of Schuld (guilt) (...) in the Phenomenology , undergoes a crucial development over the course of the chapter titled, “Spirit,” culminating in a robust understanding of guilt that represents not a hopelessly broken bond, but a bond that awaits its fulfillment, its very incompleteness exerting a palpable pull upon the guilty party towards its fulfillment. I examine three key moments in “Spirit”: Hegel’s treatments of Antigone , the French Revolution, and the confession and forgiveness of evil. By comparing these moments, I distinguish between “abstract guilt,” guilt that only brings about shame and punishment, and what we might call “determinate guilt”: guilt that brings about action, reminds one of her/his indebtedness to the other. Understanding the development of guilt from the beginning to end of “Spirit” provides an entryway into a discussion of the social and political relevance of Hegel’s conception of the subject as—in a certain sense—always already guilty. I go on to argue that guilt as indebtedness and responsibility only exists as embedded within an already recognitive social structure. Re-thinking guilt as responsibility is not, therefore, a call to a new objective a priori moral system. Rather, it invites us to think through our recognitive being-together in a way that shakes off its metaphysical fetters. Such an ethics of recognitive intersubjectivity is an infinite task—not in the futile sense of the “unhappy consciousness”—but in the sense that we are responsible for constantly understanding, critiquing, and reforming ethical commitments that can only be (understood as) ours. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Traditional Dilemma Beyond Mind‐Body Dualisms The Failed Remedies of Spinoza and Materialist Reductions Dilemmas of the Aristotelian Solution Hegel's Conceptual Breakthrough for Comprehending the Nondualist Relation of Mind and Body Limits of Searle's Parallel Proposal The Self‐Development of Embodied Mind.

Das Wissen, welches zuerst oder unmittelbar unser Gegenstand ist, kann kein anderes sein als dasjenige, welches selbst unmittelbares Wissen, Wissen des Unmittelbaren oder Seienden ist. Wir haben uns ebenso unmittelbar oder aufnehmend zu verhalten, also nichts an ihm, wie es sich darbietet, zu verändern, und von dem Auffassen das Begreifen abzuhalten.Der konkrete Inhalt der sinnlichen Gewißheit läßt sie unmittelbar als die reichste Erkenntnis, ja als eine Erkenntnis von unendlichem Reichtum erscheinen, für welchen ebensowohl wenn wir im Raume und in der (...) Zeit, als worin er sich ausbreitet, hinaus-, als wenn wir uns ein Stück aus dieser Fülle nehmen, und durch Teilung in dasselbe hineingehen, keine Grenze zu finden ist. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Hegel presents significant accounts of “conscience” (Gewissen) at decisive moments both in the early Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right. In spite of some important similarities between these accounts, they present deeply different, perhaps even inconsistent, understandings of the nature and value of individual conscience. Roughly, on the Philosophy of Right account, conscience is fundamentally something inward and individualizing, requiring transformation if it is to be integrated into the social institutions and practices that constitute modern “ethical life.” By (...) contrast, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, conscience is always already fundamentally social, entailing demands that individuals both realize their convictions in actions that are, in principle at least, available to others, and that they be able discursively to articulate, justify, and, in some cases, modify their convictions in relation to others. Drawing on this contrast between two understandings of the nature and value of conscience, I consider two models of the liberty of conscience. On the first model, the liberty of conscience fundamentally entails the need for the protection of an inward sphere over which institutions ought not to attempt to exercise coercive influence. On the second, the liberty of conscience entails acknowledging the discursive and social character of conscience, so that, while individuals should be entitled to a sort of moral autonomy, that autonomy entails an equal demand to be able to justify their convictions to others, and to respond reasonably to the claims that others make on them. I argue that Hegel’s concept of “spirit,” which suggests that selfhood is fundamentally a product of concrete relations among individuals, provides stronger support for the second model of the liberty of conscience. (shrink)

Hegel’s account of conscience at the conclusion to the chapter on morality in the Philosophy of Right has had more than its share of detractors. Theunissen tries to explain why the account is “so meager,” Findlay deems it “thoroughly scandalous,” and Tugendhat goes so far as to label it the pinnacle of a “no longer merely conceptual, but rather moral perversion.” Even commentators committed to rescuing Hegel’s discussion of conscience from such extreme reproaches agree that it is “one-sided” and “problematic.” (...) The source of this widespread conclusion about Hegel’s political incorrectness is not difficult to discern. In the wake of the nationalistic excesses and horrors of the last two centuries, there is an understandable suspicion about the motivations underlying claims that “the state cannot recognize conscience in its distinctive. form, that is, as subjective knowing”. When Hegel declares that the “formal subjectivity” of conscience, as the final achievement of morality, is “on the verge of turning into something evil”, he seems clearly out of step with the reigning liberal political traditions, traditions that regard the individual’s freedom to abide by his or her conscience as both an unassailable right and an inherent good. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to (...) be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This edition of a recently discovered manuscript provides the first full look at Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit. The lectures of 1827 go far beyond Hegel's previously published Encyclopedia outline, and provide a new introduction to the Philosophy of Spirit. Robert Williams's translation will stimulate interest in a neglected area in Hegel scholarship, but one to which Hegel himself attached special importance and significance.

The biopolitics of intervening directly in the body with drugs, genes, and wires have always been far more fraught than the issues surrounding the use of gadgets. This chapter explores the way that conscience apps and morality software are an underexplored bridge between the traditional forms of moral enhancement and the more invasive methods that we will develop eventually. It discusses the core elements such as self‐control, caring, moral cognition, mindfulness, and wisdom or intelligence. Critics of morality apps point (...) to the alleged inauthenticity and shallowness of behavior change when it is technologically assisted. But humans have long enlisted technology in the aid of moral enhancement, from visible markers of vows like rings and uniforms, to self‐ or state‐imposed castration. The forms of pharmaceutical and genetic modification of moral behavior currently being discussed as forms of “moral enhancement.”. (shrink)

„Der sittliche Wert eines Menschen beginnt erst dort, wo er bereit ist, für seine Überzeugung sein Leben zu geben.“ [The moral worth of a human being emerges when she is willing to give her life for her convictions] - Henning von Tresckows -.

In this summary I introduce the interpretive framework for Hegel's Conscience and then provide an overview of the book’s six chapters.

There is a phenomenology of the body worked out implicitly in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, in which the full implications of a rejection of a dualistic conception of self and body are articulated. A concept of body can be derived from Hegel's analysis of life, according to which the body is the phusis, hexis and logos of the self, that is, it is the qualitatively determinate conditions--hexis--of un-self-conscious comportment to the world in and by which a (...) situation is constituted which allows immediate satisfaction for the self-conscious will--phusis--and which expresses the pre-reflective commitments of the self--logos. This is a dynamic concept, and its dialectic is one side of the dialectic of selfhood which is the explicit theme of the Phenomenology of Spirit. In its dialectic, the body develops through stages in which each one of these moments in turn takes precedence. The three stages are the natural body, the institutional body, and the self-communicative body. ;Chapters 1 and 2 develop the adequate concept of self-conscious selfhood by analyzing, respectively, Chapter IV, Section B, "Freedom of Self-Consciousness," and Chapter V, "Reason." Chapter 3 develops the concept of body in relation to self-consciousness based on an analysis of the sections of Chapter IV, "Self-Consciousness" which deal with "Desire," "Life" and "Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness," and considers natural embodiment. Chapter 4 analyzes Chapter VI, "Spirit," to develop the notion of institutional embodiment. Chapter 5 analyzes Chapter VIII, "Absolute Knowing," to develop the concept of self-communicative embodiment. ;The conclusion of the Hegelian phenomenology of the body is that self-conscious selfhood can only be adequately embodied by a situation in which the totality of its otherness constitutes a living system of signs, the very life of which is the process of coming to self-understanding as such a system. The dialectic of body is the process of the body's overcoming of its own naturalness, and the bringing of itself to self-consciousness as mind. (shrink)

The trajectory of the “Anthropology” section of Hegel’s Encyclopedia brings us from the uncultivated, natural soul which humans share with non-human animals, to the point where it becomes an individual subject, ready to become the “I” of the “Phenomenology” section. Much of this entails the transformation of the body from something purely determined by nature to being a home for spirit as it freely relates itself to the world. The “Anthropology” thus dwells on the theme of liberation from nature. (...) Especially in the Zusätze and in the 1827/8 Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit, Hegel notes that that cultivation is associated with minimizing the effects of natural determinations on one’s body. Insofar as nature is associated with particularity and reason with universality, it may seem as though idiosyncratic embodiments are incompatible with the kind of mastery of the body Hegel envisions. At the same time, given that the focus of the “Anthropology” is on the development of the soul rather than the matter of the body itself, there may be a range of compatible bodily possibilities. This raises the question of how much the body and its comportment ought to correspond to an ideal, and what the implications may be for those humans whose embodiment marks them out (in Hegel’s system) as closer to nature. Are there limitations to embodiments that may be appropriated and claimed as my own? Since coming to own our natural determinations is an ongoing process throughout a lifetime, despite the location of the “Anthropology” in the Encyclopedia, it is important to consider the role of our free decision-making in the transformation of our body. Attending to the story of the body within the “Anthropology” helps us to appreciate it more fully as a crucial link between the Philosophy of Nature and the rest of the Philosophy of Spirit. (shrink)

The ethical theory discoverable in Hegel’s writings assigns, on Dean Moyar’s reading, an important role to the idea of conscience. Hegel’s discussion of conscience presents a theory of practical reasoning which requires that one be able to nest the particular purposes that motivate one’s actions in the objective purposes that have normative status insofar as they prevail in the institutions of modern ethical life. Those norms are legitimized by the fact that the institutions in question, most especially the state, predicate (...) themselves on their recognition of the rights of the particular individual. Individuals are not simply passive in relation to ethical, institutional norms. Individual moral deliberation plays a key role in the ethical development of society. Nonetheless, the norms that the state requires the individual to recognize do seem to be, in the last analysis, beyond appeal. Hegel makes, and Moyar presents, a powerful case for this position. Nonetheless, pacifist arguments present this position with a serious challenge. (shrink)

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A study of shifts in scientific strategies for measuring the living body, especially in dynamic systems theory: sheds light on Hegel's concept of measure in The Science of Logic, and the dialectical transition from categories of being to categories of essence; shows how Hegel's speculative logic anticipates and analyzes key tensions in scientific attempts to measure and conceive the dynamic agency of the body. The study's analysis of the body as having an essentially dynamic identity irreducible to (...) measurement aims to contribute to reconceiving the body, in a way that may be helpful to overcoming dualism. (shrink)