Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T15:10:46.962Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 13 - Hegelian Social Pathology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2022

Frederick Neuhouser
Affiliation:
Barnard College, Columbia University
Get access

Summary

Chapter 13 examines Hegel's understanding of animal and mental illness and extrapolates from them an account of social pathology. Social pathologies should be understood not only in terms of impaired functioning or as imbalances among functional spheres but also as ways in which society fails to enable its members to relate to life in the mode of freedom, including: social practices becoming indistinguishable from processes of mere life; social impediments to realizing practical selfhood, such as inadequate sources of recognition or the generation of infinite, unsatisfiable desires; and ideology that involves a mismatch between what social members do and what they take themselves to be doing in their practices. The form of immanent critique found in Hegel's account of bondsman and lord is presented as a promising solution to the problem of providing an ethical justification of social norms that avoids reducing the morality to mere functionality for social reproduction.

Type
Chapter
Information
Diagnosing Social Pathology
Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim
, pp. 312 - 344
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×