Hegel's Theory Of Morality

1. Introduction

In this essay, I will attempt to extract lessons about freedom from Hegel’s treatment of morality in the Philosophy of Right. Before examining Hegel’s critique of conscience, I will briefly outline the transition from abstract right to elucidate the importance of morality for Hegel’s system. I will conclude by remarking about the characteristics of freedom as put forward by Hegel.

2. Freedom as self-determination

Hegel’s introduction delineates two basic requirements for the will’s achieving freedom: attaining one’s ends, and acting voluntarily. This rudimentary concept is the view of freedom pertaining to the domain of abstract right. Freedom, as described by the two fundamental conditions, does not consist in the refusal

The denial of moral authority, asserts Hegel, need not entail extreme subjectivism. The right of the subjective will, this moral self-determination, is itself qualified by the right of the rational. ‘The right to recognise nothing that I do not perceive as rational is the highest right of the will.’ Rationality is a constraining frame which even my reflection in conscience must conform – the issue of conformity will re-appear . There surfaces an epistemological worry: whatever the phenomenological powers of my belief, they cannot guarantee its truth. Put simply, my reflection can get things wrong. How can one know that conscience does, in fact, speak

Considered within morality, conscience lacks objective content, around which the determination of the truth or falsity of its believes could revolve. ‘Conscience is therefore subject to judgment as to its truth or falsity, and its appeal solely to itself is directly opposed to what it seeks to be – that is, the rule for a rational and universal mode of action which is valid in and for itself.’ Conscience is ready to mistake its subjective certainty – its being strongly convinced and hasting to conclude the truthfulness of its convictions – with objective certainty, where the certainty of the rightness of a principle is established on the basis of its correctness. Failure to distinguish where distinctions are due, the inflated subjectivity of moral reflection, reduces the morality of conscience to individual caprice, contingency of the particular will. Conscience is merely subjectivity’s absolute inward certainty of itself; that is: a certainty which amounts to nothing more than a pretence and fancy; a certainty which is no more than the self’s certainty of the self, with no bearing on actuality. Conscience is the innermost voice of the self, ‘the deepest inner solitude [...], a complete withdrawal into the