Knox -Hegel's Attitude to Kant's (Kant.1958.49.1-4.70)

8/11/2019 Knox -Hegel's Attitude to Kant's (Kant.1958.49.1-4.70)

1/12

HEGEL S

ATTITDE

TO

KANT S

ETHICS

by T. M.Knox, St. Andrews

In

bis

L ectures on theHistory of Philosophy

1

), Hegel described

himself

s a

Lutheran? with

no

less justice

he

might

have

claimed

to b e

f

in

ethics

2

),

a

Kantian. It

is t rue

that

bis orthodoxy may be suspect in

theology and ethics

alike,

and

there

may now seem to be an air of paradox

about the

assertion

that Hegel was essentially a K ant ian in

ethics.

Never-

theless,

this

is the paradox which I propose to defend.

The Charge that Hegel had no ethics was made against him in

bis

own

lifetime (W.XVIII.XX) and has often been repeated. What he

published

on

the topics

whidi

Kant discussed at length in

bis ethical

works is small in

bulk, but the fundamental reason for this seems to me to be that he was

substantially in agreement with Kant and had nothing new to say on the

subject. The

general

impression that Hegel was not a Kant ian in ethics

arises

from

concentrating to o much attention on bis commoner criticisms

of Kant and too little on their context and

drift.

He Tisually indicates that

bis criticisms are secondary

by

going

out of

bis

way to pay a

t r ibute

to

K ant s u nd yin g m erit in ethics

3

).

The criticisms

often

do not

affect

the

substance of Kant s doctrine, b ut only details, and more frequently still

the

object

of

Hegel s attack

is the insufficiency of

morality

s such, not

of

K ant s view

of m orality, or the

contradictions

in

m oral experience itself,

not in K ant s Interpretation of it. Hegel s quarrel with Kant was not that

Kant

was mistaken about niprality but that he did not clearly Supplement

bis

teaching with

a

doctrine

of Sittlichkeit.

This general thesis I propose to

argue

by considering (a)Hegel s clear

devotion to Kant in bis

early

writings and the ground of bis revolt against

bim,

(b )

those

passages in Hegel which might b e adduced against m e,

namely bis

chief

published criticisms

of K ant s ethics, and (c) his

concep-

tion of Sittlichkeit which in substance is not so far removed from K ant s

way of thinking

s

is sometimes supposed.

Werke

XIII.

89. I quote, from

Glockner s edition,

the volume and

page

of the original edition.

~

,

2

) I use the word

in

its ordinary English

sense.

Where I have

occasion

to

allude

to Hegel s own

distinction

between Moralitt and Sittlichkeit l use the

German words.

3

) Hegel deplored

the

neglect

of

Kant

by his contemporaries (W.

XVII. 238.

cf,

III. 52). He

never

minimised his own debt to Kant s

philosophy: was

brought up on it (Letter to Duboc, 30 July 1822).


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With the exception of Th. L.Haering, to

whose

monumental work all

students of Hegel are indebted, readers ofHegel's

Theologische

Jugend-

Schriften

have

found

in the

papers written

at

Berne

the dominating

in-

fluence of

Kant. Hegel

had studied the

three Critiques

at

Tbingen

and he

resumedtheirstudy

at

Berne

in 1794,but his main

interest

until

1800

was

concentrated on religion and

theology,

history and politics; and

although

it was

Kant

who stimulated him to

write iii Berne,

the Stimulus

came

not

from the Critiquesbut from the essay on

Religion

within the

Sounds

of

>Reason alone

Hegel's

writings

in

17956

4

),

are

inspired

almost

entirely

iby

this

essay.

Religion,

Kant

maintained, is, on its

subjective

side, the

knowledge

of

all our duties

s

divine

commands

(Pt. IV.

l,

ad

iniL).

Revealed religion

would hold

that

ourduties are

dutiesbecause they

are divinely

command-

ed,

but a

natural

or rational religion recognises that duty is the law of

man's

own reason, sothatman does not need to have it revealed to him

or

to be

provided with

any

motive

fo r

observing

the

mora l

law

over

and

iabove

reverence fo r

the law

itself.

A

rational

religion,

while

not

required

for morality,mayneverthelessbe implied by it and be an aid to it by the

strengthening of our moral

motives through

the idea of God s amoral

lawgiver. Kant proceeds to consider what religious beliefs

oan

be

justified

by reason unaidedand tocarry on apolemic against allattemptstobase

faith on a

special revelation,

on

historical

facts

or on miracles,s

well

s

against the tyranny

of

priests

and the

fetishism

of

religious

observances,

s if any acts could be pleasing to God

except

the fulfilment ofmoral

duties The Christian religion should be purified of dross by rational

criticism,andKant goeson toshowhowsomeof itsleading doctrines

can

be reinterpreted

s

rational instead of s given

or

positive or statutory.

In particular,

"Christianityhas

the great advantage over

Judaism

of being

presented to us s issuing

from

the

mouth

of its

first teacher s

a moral

religion, and hence, being thus intimately associated with reason, could

be disseminated to all ages and all pupils by reason alone, without any

historical learning

Pt.

IV.

1.

I. ad.

fin.).

Hegel accepts

all this. The fragment

printed

in Nohl pp. 6071 fre-

quently eciioes Kant's phraseology and repeats his illustrations. The

im -

portant point is that

Kant's

essay on Religion

1792)

presupposes the

ethical

doctrine expounded in the Critiqueo f Practical Reason 1788), and

Hegel is

following

Kant in both religion and ethics.

Kant

had suggested

thatan attempt to harmonise the

teadiing

ofJesuswith the

holiestteaching

of

reason

was not

only

a

possibility

but

bounden duty (Pt.

II.

2),

and

Hegel set

himself

to

this

task by

writing

a life ofJesus, exhibiting him

s

a

human moral teacher proclaiming

a

doctrine wholly

in accordance

with Kant's ethics. Presumably sudi a document mightbe regarded s

contributing to the moral education of

mankind

by being the scriptures

of

a new rational religion. In any event,Hegel

took

painswithhis task,

4

) Theologische Jugendschffen Nohl)

f

pp. 60213,

71


3/12

though

the

result

of

discharging

the

duty laid

on him by his

master may

eventually havehelped to convince himthat

there

was somethingwrong

with the enterprise.

In a similar spirit ofdiscipleship he wrotehis

essay

on the Positivity

the

Christian

Religion,in order to answer the question: Granted that,

s Kant averred, the teaching of Jesus was in

conformity

with pure

reason, how is it that the teaching of orthodox Christianity has become

so authoritative and

positive ?

In

both oftheseessaysthe problem is Kantian: their

background

is the

Kantian distinction between the positive law of legality and the natural

or

rational law of

morality:

and their spirit is Kantian,s isshown espe-

cially by the conclusion of the

second

essay (Nohl, 2112) where the

Christian

religion s taught by the Churdi is said to

afford objective

motives whichare not the lawitself,i. e. ispositive and notrational.Both

essays rest

on

Kantian doctrine about

religion,

about

the

teaching

of

Jesus, and

about morality, but

the

significant thing

for

Hegel's develop-

ment is that the essays subject this doctrine to the

test

of history. Kant

had not

taken history seriously enough,

and in ef fec t he

admitted

s

much

when he said that a moral use may be

made

of anhistoricalstatement in

Scripture without considering what the author's meaning was: historical

knowledge which

has no universally

valid moral bearings belongs

to the

adiaphora (Pt.LIV., fn.ad. fin.).

Between

the

Kantian essays

and The Spirit of

Christianity

1798)

there

is a

gulf

so

wide that

the

later essay,writtens

it is

with suchassurance,

such

passion, and such independence of mind, may seem at f i rs t

s

if it

could

scarcely have come

f rom

the same pen. When he wrote this essay,

Hegel had come to believe that Kant was wrong not onlyabout the teach-

ing of

Jesus

and the

spirit

of the

Christian religion,

but

about religion

altogether.-He

had discovered that moral experience (about which,

s

he

continued to believe, Kantwas right)was onething,religiousexperience

(about

which

Kantwaswrong) another; thatJesuswas areligious teacher,

not

merely

a

moral

one?

and

that

an

historian's

eye was

needed

to

discern

alike

the

meaning

of

Christianity

and the

deficiencies

of

orthodoxy.

What was it that produced the revolution inHegers thinking between

what

Ihavecalled the Kantian essays and all his later works? Like other

revolutions it was not unheralded. Even in the Kantian essays there are

occasional

hints

of a

more original

line of

thought.

But

what

was it

that

led

Hegel

to

develop them,

to reorientate his

thinking,

to

renounceKants

guidance in religion,and toproduce work in a newspirit

altogether?

Some

would answer:

the

influence

of

Hlderlin.

The

answer

is

unsatis-

factory

because it would

still

be necessary to ask what it was that made

Hegel so susceptible to that influence at that

time.

The two men had

been friends for ten years at least, and

although

Hegel's poemEleusis,

addressed

to

Hlderlin,

has

been quoted s evidence that

he

shared

his

friend's

romantic

and pantheistic ideas in August 1796, it is perfectly

clear

f rom

Hegel's other contemporary writings that what

the

poem

expresses is the spiritof the addressee and not of the

author.

Contrastit,


4/12

H

^ o fo r example, with

the

almost exactly

contemporary

diary ofbis tour in

V.the Bernese Oberland

5

). Thepoemis anearlyexample of

Hegel's

remark-

J{able skill in adopting another's point o f view and accurately describing

? i v ,

what isseen f rom it. In thediary hespeaks in propria

persona:

inEleusis

^.;, the mask he wears is Hlderlin's.

^

The

revolution

in

Hegel's thinking

came

abou-t

because, during

bis f i rs t

i e

:

two

years in

'unhappy Frankfur t

1 6

f

in

order

to eure

himself

o f melan-

diolia,he

worked

withallbis

energies

at

Greek literature

and

philosophy,

^ . r s well s at

history

and

politics,

and

theh brought

the

result

of

these

Ji

studies

to

bear

anewon the

reinterpretation

of the life andmessageof

f

Jesus.

| The root o fHegel's entire difference f rom Kant lies in this reorienta-

ition

of his

thought

in

Frankfurt. Kant

was not

much

interested

in the

Greek philosophers, and he wasmoredevoted to physical sciencethanto

history, although his essay on the latter topic showedhow alert his uni-

,

yersal

mind was to the

importance

of a new and

growing discipline.

But

henceforward

every

one of Hegel's

m a j o r

works

is

a history,

and his

philosophy owes s much

to

Plato

and

Aristotle s

to

Kant.Itwas, how-

lever, his religious insight bove all that separated him f rom Kant.His

early theologiQal writings have been called antitheologicar by an acute

critic

7

),

but this is only partly just. All these writings, especially the

later

of

them,throb with

a

religious conviction which

is

absent

f rom

Kant's

cautious

essay.

They

attack

orthodoxy

indeed, in terms similar to

those

used

by

Kant

and many other

writers

of the Aufklrung but

what Hegel

wishes

to

substitute

for

orthodoxy

is not a dry

rationalism

but a living

religious faith, carried out in practice in a

rationally

ordered

social

com-

munity.

The

basis

of

this faith

is a

doctrine

of the HolySpirit The spirit

of man,

his reason, is the oandle of the

Lord,

and its powers are thus not

subject to the

limitations which Kant

had

placed

on

them

in the first

Critique.Doubtless

these limitations

left

room

for

faith,

but unfortunately,

in

Hegel's view,

not

only

fo r

a

rational

faith

founded

on the

postulates

of

practical reason,

but also for the whole panoply of

orthodoxy,

s the

Tbingen theologians

had

quickly realised. Hegel's

eirenicon

between

faith and

reason thus depends

on

regarding reason s

free f rom

limitations,

and

it is because the self-legislating reason ofKant's ethioal works has

this

f reedom that

Hegel

never renounced their leading

principles.

II

But

was

Hegel

not a

constant

critic of the

second

Ctique?

His

published

criticisms

of Kant's ethics are directed against this workalone

amongst

Kant's writings

on the

subject,

and the chief of

them must

now

be

examined.

Haering, who

mentions

everything eise, omits this diary: nor, so far

s

I know, has any other writer on

leusis

seen that the diary is the

best commen-

tary on it.

e

Letter to

Sinclair,

mid-October

1810.

7

W - A .

K aufmann

in

Philosophiert

Review

1951,

p.

460.


5/12

In

the

essay

on the

Scientific Ways of

Treating

Natural LawHegel's

argument

is:

Kant

argues correctly

that

practical

reason

is

concemed

with

th e

form

of

moral

action, the

correspondence

of the

form

of our

maxim

with

the

universal mo>ral law

of

duty.

The inference, however,

ought

to

be

that practical reason should content itself with saying what duty

in

general

is and

ought

not to try to

provide

a touchstone for

recognising

whatact is adutyon aparticular occasion, for Kanthadheld (K.d. .

V.

A.

589) that while pure reason could

say whait truth is in general, it

could not

provide

a test of the

truth

of any

given Statement

of

fact.

But

in relation to practical

reason,

Kant

fal ls

todraw the same

inference,

and

he

attempts (vainly,

in

Hegel's view)

to

give guidance

in

practice

by

telling us to act so that the maxim of our action can hold good s a

principle of universal

legislation;

and the commonest understanding, he

holds,

can

readily discern what

form

of

maxim

is

adapted

for

this

pur-

pose: for if Iprbpose to appropriate a deposit which is in my

hands

and |

whoseownerhad died without leaving any evidence of it, I must askmyself

whether I can legislate that everyone may deny a deposit ofwhichno

one can

produce

a

proof ,

and I

soon

see

that

I cannot. The law

would

annihilate itself,

because

if it

existed there would

be no

deposits. Hegel

points out that the argument s stated lacks cogency. ^What the non-

existence of deposits contradicts is not reason

or

the universal law, but

the

existence

ofother,

equally specific

and

limited, social

and

legal insti-

tutions,

and

only

on

some undisclosed assumption about

the

worth

of

these will

a law

leading

to the

non-existence

of

deposits

be

morally

inadmissible on

Kant's principles

(W . I. 349ff.). The

criticism,

so far s it

goes,

issound,and it is not the

least

of

Professor

H. J.

Paton's Services

to

Kant ian scholarship that he has brought out

clearly

what Kant's

assump-

tions are

8

), and expounded the totality ofKant's'ethical

teaching

and not

merely those isolated aspects

of it

which Hegel

and many

critics have

selected

for

examination.

In any event Hegers criticism here

touches

one aspect only of Kant's

doctrine and not its main principles. His

final

point in this essay is one

that he repeated

later

(W . v. 320 ff. Cf.

234, Zusatz :

moral

effort

aims

at its

own

cancellation, so that the moral will remains finite, despite

the

universality

of the

moral

law

which

it

issues.

The aim of

moral action

is to

remove

evil; but if it

succeeds there

is no

longer

any

need

for it;

diarity

constantly endeavours to remove the occasion for its exercise.

As the Dialectic of the Critique of Practical Reason

shows,

Kant was not

unaware of the

problem.

But the important point is that Hegel is not

questioning Kant's theory

of

moral experience?

he is

accepting

it and

simply

arguing that there must be a higher, experience in

wihich

its con-

tradictions

are

transcended.

The two other explicit criticisms of Kant which require attention are

those

in the

Encyclopaedia

54 and the

Philosophie des Rechts,

135.

These

are

likewise based essentially

on

passages

in the Critique

l

Practical Reason. They take no account of the Metaphysik der Sitten;

8

) The Categorical Imperative pp. 149157.

74 .


6/12

and nowhere in

Hegel s

writings, .so fa r s I know, is

there

*any reference

al all, even implicit,t the GrundlegungderM etaphysik

der

Sitten

The

Grundlegung was published

when

Hegel was fifteen and it is not

impos-

sible that he ignored it altogether. This is un for tuna te , for

Kan t s

concep-

tion

of a

Kingdom

of Ends,

expounded

more

fully

in

that

eesay than

in his

later works, must have

interested

him, even if he may have thought it

difficult

to reconcile with some of the Statements in the second Critique

which

come in for

most

of

his criticism. Kant

has

always suffered

f rom

critics

who have failed to

realise

that he waswont to expound hisviews

gradually,beginning on a

foun dation

of common sense, an d then

modifying

Jiis starting

point bit by bit; butHegel at

least

ought to have

sympathised

with

this

method and adjusted his criticism accordingly. But thetarget of his

criticisms was precisely those elements in Kan t s doctrine which had been

most

popularised

by

Fichte

an d

which therefore

had become commonplace

in the literature of

Hegel s

own day;

these

criticisms of his appeared

(1821 and

1827) between

30 and 40

years af ter

the

publication

of the

second Crilique Nowhere does Hegel

profess

to expound

Kan t s

ethics

s

a

whole

9

]

or to subject the

whole

of his writings on this subject to

detailed examination.

Nevertheless,itmustbe admitted that in these passages in hispublish-

ed

works, Hegel

is less

than

fa ir to Kant ,

unless

he

uses Kan t s

name

simply to describe certain views which his contempcraries had come to

regard

s

the kernel of his master s teaching. The brden of

Hegel s

criticism is that although Kant was right to emphasise the pure

uncondi-

tioned self-determination of the will s he root of duty, he could n ot

extract

f rom his formulae an y

doctrine

of determinate

duties, Thus

he

had to

throw away

all he had

gained

in

superseding eudaemonism by

reducing

ethics to an empty

formalism

and the pieaching of duty for

duty s sake.

Inorder to justify this

criticism

a

critic

would

have

to plead

that Hegel

was

dealing only with

the

second Critique that

he was

attadiing great

importance

to

Kant s

own

preference

for

the

first

formulation

of the

categorical imperative,

and

that

he was

taking some

of

Kant s Statements

a t their face value without considering their context or what

modification

they

received in other contexts. The

plea

would be an admission that

justice was not being done to the many-sidedness of Kant s doctrine, but

it

would

be

doing less than justice

to

Hegel s attitude

to

Kan t s ethics

to

suppose that these criticisms

represent

it adequately. To discover what

his attitude is, it is necessary to look at other passages in Hegel where

the

relation between

the mora l

consciousness

and the

religious,

and

be-

tween

Moralitt

an d

Sittlichkeit

comes to the fore, an d others again

(un~

published in his lifetime) in whidi he expounds his own moral doctrine.

) The History of

Philosophy

might have been expected to contain such an

exposition, but the second Critique is the only one of Kant s ethical writings

whidi

it mentions.

Hegel s

criticisms

there

are in

substance

s imar to

those

summarised

in the

following paragraph.

.


7/12

III

In the

Enc. Logic

234

there

is adirect transition from morality, ex-

pounded

mainly

s

Kant

had

expounded

it, to

religion;

it is in the

latter

that the contradictions of the

f o r m e r

are resolved. The same is

true

in

the

Phenomenology

where

Hegel

Sketches, s he didlater in the Philoso-

phie des Rechts 140, the

dangers

to

which

an ethical

iridividoialism

may

be

exposed if ,

ignoring th e

complexities

o f

Kant's

teadhing, it emphasises

the individual's

mo ra l convictions alone.

But in

Enc. Phil.

d.

Geistes

50 8 ff. and in Phil.d. Rechts th e

transition

is

from morality

to

Sittlich-

keit

while religion is ahigher sphere

still.

The

difference between these

two transitions, however,

is more apparent than real, because the

diaracteristicallyHegelian conception of

Sittlichkeit

is religious in essence

and

is intelligible

only

if its religious origin and

background

is kept in

view.

Although this

conception is not explicitly taught by Hegel until 1817

(in the first

edition

of the Encyclopaedia , it is

foreshadowed

in someof

the Jena writings fifteenyears earlier, and it has its

roots

in his thinking

when he was writing

The

Spirit

of

Christianity in 1798 and liberating

himself from th e preponderating influence ofKant's view of religion.

Hegel's problem in

this

essay is to expound the

nature

and signi-

ficance of the moral teaching of

Jesus.

He begins by contrasting it with

th e

Mosaic

law

and the

teaching

of

Kant (Nohl,

262266).

The

Mosaic

lawhe

regards

s a set of

arbitrary commandswhich

might beissuedby a

master to aslave.Hetakes it for granted,

like

a

good

pupil of

Kant, that

this

heteronomy

of the human will is

below

the moral

level.

Against

purely objective commands Jesus

set

something totally -alien

to

them,

namely

the subjective in

general ,

i. e. not human

passivity

and slavery

but a unified ideal life

confirmed

-and expressed in deeds. W e might

have expected h im , Hegel writes (i. e. if we were Kantians, convinced

by the

Religion

essay)

f

to show that any ought,

qua

a product of reason

s the capacity for universality, loses its positivity and heteronomy, so

that the thing commanded is

revealed

s grounded in an

autonomy

of

the

human

will'.But by

this line

of

argument, positivity

is

only partially

removed.

Kant had contrasted the slavery of obedience to

ritual

com-

mands with

th e freedom of the man who

listens

to his own c o m m a n d of

duty.But the difference is

really

between tw okinds o fslavery;

tihe former

has his lord outside himself while the latter carries his lord in himself,

yet is at the

same time

his own

slave.

One whowished to

restore

man's

humanity

in its

entirety could

not

possibly

have

taken

a

course like

this; for the individual would be torn against

himself ;

the cleavage

between inclination

and

reason would

not be healed.

What

Hegel

is

saying here

is not that

Kant's

analysis of

duty

and

moral experience is mis taken, but that there is an experience of a differ-

ent

kind which

'transcends it. In the

Kantian conception

o f

virtue

the

Opposition

between universal

and

particular

remains, the one s

master

th e

other

s

mastered.

Jesus

Supplements

th e deficiency of the law

r

or

fulfils it, by a

unification

of law and inclination in love? or s Hegel


8/12


9/12

o f

the

truth of the human will...

Love

is itself away above mora l con-

siderations:Mary anoints Christ instead of giving to the

p o o r

r

and Christ

approves .

For Kant, however, this sphere above morality is beyond the

reach

of

human reason,

and

man's will

can

never become

the

holy will

in

which

there

is a complete coincidence between inclination and

law;

while for

Hegel

the

scope

of

reason

is

wider

and

man's ability

to rise

above morality is greater. In his view it is open to man to

rise

above

the

moral experience typified

by

ought

there

is

amorallaw

and man

ought to school himself to obey it to the is , the experience in which

man

lives the law instead of being tmder it

12

). Against all attempts

to base morality on sentiment, or to

justify

the subjective dictates of

anindividual

conscience, however unschooled,Hegel always

uses

Kantian

arguments. But, although he accepts the cleavage between Law and

Morality which

is

vital

to the

Metaphysik

der

Sitten

he

believes

he can

point to human experiences in which this cleavage is overcome and a

higher synthesiscan and ought to be achieved.

Amongst

the experiences which Hegel might adduce are marriage and

a man's attitude

to his

Professional calling (Letter

to

Niethammer,

10 October

1811).

The basis o f a

true

marriage (i. e. of a marriage

whidi exemplifies

Sittlichkeit)

is not

love

s a

romantic feeling (for that

may

perish

and

the marriage will be dissoluble) no r ,

s

Kant had supposed, a contract,

but a

fusion

o f

love

and

duty

in a

reverence

for an

eternal ideal.

The

parties are then so devoted to their

union

that the individuality of both

is

transcended

in a

living relationship wherein duties

are

fulfilled without

any

thought

o f them. Inclination and law are perfectly coincident Phil,

d.

Rechts.

161

ff.).

A

similar coincidence

may

occur

in the life o f a

Professional man,

s

it doubtless did in Hegel's o wn experience of his Professional work. A

mein utterly devoted

to a

cause

or an

Institution does

not

spare himself;

his day to day

duties come before

him

s

the

ordinary routine

of his

affairs

and he

carries them

o ut

selflessly,

cheerfully,

devotedly.

His in-

clinations chime

in

with

his

duties

so

that

he

fulfils

them

single-mindedly?

there is no tension, no awareness o f Oppos ing inner forces'. There may

well

be no

consciousness

o f

ought

1

'

at all

until

his

strength

fails and

he is tempted of the

devil

to

idleness,

or

until courage sinks

and he feels

God- forsaken.

Moreover,

his

devotion

to his

cause,

or

Institution,

is not

merely the bringing into being o f what ought to

existj

his activity,

animated

by this

devotion,

is at the

same time

the

existence

of the

cause,

the maintenance of the Institution.

'Ought'

1

has given place to is .

Mere devotion to a calling,

however,

is. not enough; there

must

be

devotion to an ideal of goodness which transcends it. Hegel is trying to

describe

an

experience which

is

moral

and

more ,

not an

experience with-

out a

moral content. Hitler

may

have

had

devotion such s

has

just

been described,*but that does no t exempt him f rom moral blame. The

point of

Hegel's

teaching, and we have seen that there are similar hints

12

) E. Weil in Deucalion 5 (Neuciiatel,

1955)

p.

106.

78


10/12

inKant , isthat it is theloveof God.which transforms the moral

conscious-

ness

ofIhe individualand makes.it possible

for him

to rise to the fusion

of

inclination

and

law

in

devotion

to a supra-individual

end.

Although Kan t

w asprepared to see in thelove of God

Ihe complement.

of

duty

r

nevertheless,

in the

Professional devotion which

has

just been

described

he

saw

tw o dangers: Suppose that such a devotee were asked

whether

he did what he did because he enjoyed it or because it was

bis duty. He might reply that he did it

from

mere love oforder. In that

event

he wouldbe

thinking

that he was above the thought of duty,

like

a volunteer, s if he wanted to do of his ow n pleasure what he needed

;n o

command to do.This would be to forget the discipline ofreason and

to pretend to be

sovereign

in the

Kingdom

of Ends, not merelya subject

in it. On the other

band,

he

might reply that

he did his

work

for the

love

of God, in

fulfilment

of

God's will.

In

that event,

he

might

be claiming

holiness,

a perfect

purity

of

will

and disposition, and

this would

be a

self-conceit readily leading to a religious fanaticism. The only safe route

for

man to follow is to recognise his finitude and hislimitations and take

the moral law s the only guide in his conductThe proper moral con-

dition whichhe can and outjht to attain is virtue, not holiness

13

).The

argument

is typical of

Kant's 'caution

andhumility.

It

might

be

possible

to be less

cautious without being

less humble,

if it be less caiutious to accept more of the Gospel than Kant did. Hegel

did accept

more,

but he may not have been humble

enough.

In criticising

the passage in the Critique oi Practical Reason

from

whidi I have just

been quoting, Hegel points

out

(Nohl,

p.

267) that Kant's exegesis

of the

Gospel command Love God, and they neighbour s thyself res-ts on

taking this command out of its religious context and treating it s a

merely moral precept. And we have already seen how Hegel, by writing

a Life of

Jesus

on Kantian lines, had come to realise that

Kant

w as

mistaken in

endeavouring

to twist the moral teaching of

Jesus

into the

teadiing

of the categorical imperative. To this insight Hegel held fast.

He clings also,

s

has already been said, to his doctrine of the

Holy

Spirit, The

Kingdom of God iswithin you .He can thus hold that when

man elevates

himself

to the

Christian

religion orto the

philosophy which

expounds explicitly the contentofthat religion,the

chasm

between trans-

cendence and imm anenceisbridged,and he attainsunityandlivessingle-

mindedly Enc. 234,

Zusatz)

in the rational order which is

from ever-

lasting toeverlasting and inwhich all men find fll satisfactionby living

its

laws.

In other words this ethical liie

u

is the Kingdom of God on

earth.This

is the key to

Hegel's

conception

of

Sittlichkeit.

For Kant the Kingdom ofEnds remains an

ideal?

but fo r Hegel it is

being

progressively

actualised in the process of

history.

along

with

the

progress

of the human spirit. Plato's Republic describes the rational

order

in the

form

in

which

it was

actualised

in

Greece

and so

portrays

the essential

substance

of Greek moral and political

life

(W .VIII. 17).

Since his day

f

owing

chiefly

to the Christianrevelation,man has

advanced

K.p.V.

PL l

III,

von den Triebfedern der

r.p.V.,

ad fin.

79.


11/12

in

self-knowledge;

in particular he has come to recognise himself s an

individual, s

a self-legislating

moral

will. The forms of his social

life

have changed accordingly; his deeper

knowledge

of himself is also a

deeper knowledge of what the rational social order, or Kingdom of

Ends

is. And

this knowledge Hegel expounds

in the

third

part

of the

Philosophie des

Rechtswhere

the

state described

is no

existing state

but

the rational

substance

ofpolitical life in the world ofHegel's day. Thus

far has consciousness

advanced

(W. IX. 546). Further advances willreveal

new

aspects

of the

ideal,

and

pari passu

the

ideal will

be

actualised

anew in a higher form still. Deeper

self-knowledge

is at the same time

a deeper knowledge of the will of God -and it is.achieved step by step

along with the

further

realisation of God's purpose on earth. Hegel's

conception

of

Sittlichkeit

might thus be described s a philosophical

distillation

of a religioois

insight into

the

Kingdom

o f

God.

The

Kingdom

of Ends is not an ideal

towards

which we ought.to struggle

ad

infinitum

without ever reaching it; it is already present s the rational essence of

social and political

life,

so that, given religious

faith

or philosophical

insight, we can live within it here and now.

Nevertheless

it seems plain that it is for religious

faith

-alone that

ought

gives

place to is , and

then

only fitfully. Hegel seeks to out-

soar the limitations ofhuman life and to live in arealm where all conflict

has been

overcome,

but can he succeed? Consider,

for

example, one of

the

contradiotions

which

he finds in

moral experience;

the

categorical

imperative isUniversal, while,a given duty is particular, and there may

be difficulty in deciding what precise act here and now is our duty,

because duties m ay

confliot Enc.

508).

Kemt

did not overlook the

problem, but his treatment of it is more

bold

than convincing: Two

opposite

rules

cannot be necessary at the same time, but if it is a duty

to act

according

to one of them it is

then

inconsistent

with duty

to act

according to the other; i t follows that a conflict of duties is in-

conceivable

14

). Even if it be granted that one act and one only is m y

duty

in a

given

Situation,

so

that

one

rule

and one

mle

only

is

necessary

therein, Ka n t is not telling us how on his principles we ought to decide

in a given Situation which of two maxims, both conformable to the

categorical imperative, we are to adopt if t h e Situation is such that we

cannot act on

both,

though it is situations of this kind which give rise

to the most

acute

moral perplexity, It may be

held

that the task of a moral

philosopher

is to say

what duty

is and not to

teil

me

what

my

duty

is

here and now, but is this answer open to Kant who said that no far-

reaching penetration

is

required

to

discover what

my

duty

is: I

have

but

to ask

myself

whether I can will that my

maxim

should also be a uni-

versal

law?

15

).

The difficulty may be

specially acute

for

Kant

who may

have over-

emphasisedthe

place

of

,rule or

law in

ethics.

But it may be

asked whether

the difficulty is.^ny less acute

for

Hegel. In a

perfect

world the conflict

of duties which is characteristic of moral experience m ay disappear, but

14

) Metaphysik

der

Sitten

Pt.

l.Einleitung in die Md.S.,

IV.

)

e.g. Grundlegung section I, and K.p.V. I. I. 4.


12/12

even

if

marriage

and a

Professional oalling provide instances

of an ex-

perience in

whidi law

and inclination coincide and the

thought

of

duty

vanishes, m ay these

tw o

spheres

not conflict? In this imperfect

world

emergencies

occur

-and in one of

them

Professional duty may have to

be

sacrificed

on the

altar

of

marital

duty

r

or

vice versa.

In

such

an emer-

gency is vanishes -and ought reappears.

Hegel

knew

this perfectly

well,

even if

his published writings often

give

a different

impression.

His

conception

ofSittlichkeitderives, I

have

been arguing, from

the

essay

on The

Spirit

o

Christianity,

and the final

sentence of

that

essay reads (Nohl, 342):The fate in this world of the

ideal which Jesus taught is that Church and State

r

worship and life,

piety and virtue,

spiritual

and mundane action, can never dissolve into

cne .

In

other

words,

the

fusion of

morality with religion

in a

higher

sphere

of Sittlichkeit

remains

an

ideal.

The

saint

and the

philosopher,

however

confident

their

faith or profound

their

insight,

are

still

human

beings, and the world in which human beings

live

is not the world of

Hegel's Wirklichkeit but the

imperfect

and often

irrational world

of

ReaJifi.

However happy Hegel

was in his family

circle

or in his

pro-

fessional

work

r

however well ordered his

life

in these spheres, however

secure

his religious faith and however

unruffled,

in his study, his

philo-

sophic calm, the world of

Realitt

pressed hardly

enough

on him when

he left his study for the University ofBerlin and

found

himself involved

in difficulties

with colleagues

s

unloving

s

they were irrational. When

more than one

privat-docent

of his

acquaintance

was

dismissed

by the

government

s

politically suspect, Hegel was far

from

resigned and far

from inactive.

And his

action

was on the

plane

of Moralitt. In the

last

resort Sittlichkeit

remains for him just s rnuch an ideal s the

Kingdom

of

Ends

did for Kant , and it is an

ideal

of the

same sort,

one

with

a

religious basis. No doubt the ideal was present in the real world

s

its

essential

substance,

but

could

Kant

not

have s-aid

the

same about

the

Kingdom of Ends, which after all was not merely a far-off divine event

but an

operative

ideal

in the

midst

of

human society? Hegel

might

say

that Kant,

like

Moses,

only

saw the

promised land,

while he

himself

lived in it As

philosopher

or

believer

he may

have done,

but in

practical

ffairs

and in education he was well enough aware that

imperfection

existed

and ought to be

11

removed. Kants ethics

had not

been

trans-

cended,

still less

discarded;

This is nowhere more clear than in Hegel's educational practice, it

is

here that

his

dependence

on

Kant's ethics

is

most obvious

and most

complete.

When

his fiancee had to be

taught that happiness

was not

man's

diief

aim,

he addressed a long letter to her

which,

s

Glckner

Hegel, L

309)says would

do

honour

to

any Kantian .

As

Rector

of the

Gymnasium

a t Nrnberg,

he

taught philosophy

to his

pupils,

and his

lecture notes have

survived.

The seyenty printed pages (W.

XV IIL

376)

summarising

his instruction to the JuniorClassonLaw,

Duty,

andR eligion

contain the longest and the

clearest

exppsition which he has provided

of his ethics. But for their conciseness they might almost have been

written

by the

author

of the

Metaphysik der Sitten

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Knox -Hegel's Attitude to Kant's (Kant.1958.49.1-4.70)

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