Bad Habits: Habit, Idleness, and Race in Hegel

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Rocío Zambrana
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Life ◽  
Second Nature ◽  
Philosophy Of Right

Abstract Recent discussions of Hegel's conception of second nature, specifically focused on Hegel's notion of habit (Gewohnheit), have greatly advanced our understanding of Hegel's views on embodied normativity. This essay examines Hegel's account of embodied normativity in relation to his assessment of good and bad habits. Engaging Hegel's account of the rabble (Pöbel) in the Philosophy of Right and Frank Ruda's assessment of Hegel's rabble, this essay traces the relation between ethicality, idleness and race in Hegel. In being a figure of refusal in its affirmation of idleness, the rabble disallows the progressive revision of the project of modernity central to Hegel's philosophy. Hegel's discussion of the rabble is thus key to assessing the production of race within Hegel's notion of ethical life.

scholarly journals Die Kunst der zweiten Natur und die andere Natur der Kunst

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-361
Author(s):  
Thomas Khurana
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Life ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Second Nature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Understanding ◽  
First Nature ◽  
Point Of Reference

Abstract This contribution traces an aesthetic shift in the concept of second nature that occurs around 1800 and raises the question as to what role art might play in a culture that already conceives of itself in generally aesthetic terms. The paper recalls Kant’s rejection of habit as a proper realization of ethical life and shows that in his third critique, Kant proposes a second nature of a different kind. To realize ethical life as a “second (supersensible) nature”, we cannot confine ourselves to mere habituation but require a different type of second nature that is exemplified by the work of art. The paper asks what role art may adopt in an aestheticised culture arising from the success of such an aesthetic understanding in the wake of Kant, from Schiller through to Nietzsche. It argues that art redefines its role by taking not first nature but the second nature of ethical life as its main point of reference. Art thus reconceives itself as a self-reflection of our second nature. The paper discusses three models of such self-reflection: the aesthetic estrangement, the beautiful completion, and the dialectical renegotiation of our second nature.

Ethical Life and the Demands of Conscience

1998 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 35-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Neuhouser
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
The State ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Critical Relation ◽  
Philosophy Of Right ◽  
The Individual

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 practices’: “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”.

The Role of Modern Irony in Hegel's Philosophy of Right

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 127-138
Author(s):  
David James
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Life ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Romantic Irony ◽  
Philosophy Of Right

In what follows I shall attempt to explain why Hegel includes an account of modern, or Romantic irony in the Philosophy of Right, even though a discussion of this type of irony might be thought to belong more properly to the realm of aesthetics than to a work which deals with ethical and political issues. I shall identify two main reasons for the inclusion of modern irony in the Philosophy of Right. The first reason is a fairly obvious one, and I shall therefore not spend much time on it. The second reason is, however, far less obvious, since it concerns a problem with modern irony which Hegel does not make explicit in his brief account of modern irony in the Philosophy of Right. I shall nevertheless argue that Hegel elsewhere provides us with the resources that are needed for identifying this problem with modern irony. We shall see that the problem in question is one that serves to undermine the modern ironist's claim to be absolutely free, thus showing the need for an alternative account of freedom, such as Hegel's theory of ethical life (Sittlichkeit), which in the Philosophy of Right directly follows his remarks on modern irony.

The Problem of Nature in Hegel's Philosophy of Right

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Simon Lumsden
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Philosophy Of Right ◽  
Objective Structures ◽  
External Powers ◽  
At Home

Abstract The notion of being-at-home-in-otherness is the distinctive way of thinking of freedom that Hegel develops in his social and political thought. When I am at one with myself in social and political structures (institutions, rights and the state) they are not external powers to which I am subjected but are rather constitutive of my self-relation, that is my self-conception is mediated and expanded through those objective structures. How successfully Hegel may achieve being-at-home-in-otherness with regard to these objective structures of right in the Philosophy of Right is arguable. What is at issue in this paper is however to argue that there is a blind spot in the text with regard to nature. In Ethical Life the rational subject's passions and inclinations are brought into the subject such that she is ‘with herself’ in them; with regard to external nature no such reconciliation is achieved or even attempted. In Abstract Right external nature is effectively dominated by and subsumed into the will and it is never something in which one is with oneself. It remains outside the model of freedom that Hegel develops in the Philosophy of Right. There is something troubling about this formulation, since it excludes nature from freedom, but also something accurate, as it reflects the unresolved attitude of moderns to the natural world.

Beautiful City, Lawful Empire, Rational State

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-110
Author(s):  
Will D. Desmond
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Ancient Ethics ◽  
Philosophy Of Right ◽  
The Many ◽  
Beautiful City ◽  
Innovative Concept

Hegel’s exposition of the ‘rational’ state in The Philosophy of Right draws on ancient ethics, politics, and history, and cannot be fully understood without reference to his Lectures on the Philosophy of History. This chapter seeks to explore the many ‘moments of antiquity’ in the Philosophy of Right, when ancient practices or ideas infiltrate Hegel’s more abstract analysis of ethico-political phenomena. It does so by following the tripartite division of the Philosophy of Right: for example, the analysis of property in ‘Abstract Right’ is incomplete without appreciating Hegel’s response to ancient forms of slavery and the Roman ‘law of things’; the second section on ‘Morality’ is primarily Kantian, yet is also implicitly in dialogue with Socratic thinkers for its evaluation of virtue, the Good, and conscience; finally, Hegel’s innovative concept of ‘Ethical Life’ is significantly indebted to his understanding of the Greek and Roman families, ancient constitutional arrangements, and Justinian’s Code. Turning from these and other ‘moments of antiquity’, the chapter then offers a more continuous presentation and evaluation of Hegel’s understanding of Greek and Roman histories, explaining how his concept of the ‘beautiful’ Greek polis and ‘lawful’ Roman empire were for him the two historically necessary stages in the development of the modern ‘rational state’.

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