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Can Conscience be Hypocritical? The Contrasting Analyses of Kant and Hegel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Michel Despland
Michel Despland
Affiliation:
Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3G 1M8
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Extract

Both Kant and Hegel focussed their attention on the problems of self-knowledge and self-scrutiny. Both elaborated a carefully considered view of conscience and sought to wrestle with the moral threat of self-deception. Both believed that a solution of the problems in this area was decisive for their understanding of the moral life and the task of ethics. In his analysis Hegel came to formulate what he considered to be decisive criticisms of Kant. The purpose of this paper is to examine the contrasting views of the two philosophers and provide a context in which the merits of each can be assessed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 68 , Issue 3-4 , October 1975 , pp. 357 - 370
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1975

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References

1 Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (Beck, L. W. translator; New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1959) 20.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 19.

2 See Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960) 43, 147, 177, 180, 183.Google Scholar

4 The Categorical Imperative (London: Hutchinson, 1947) 138.Google ScholarPubMed

5 Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, 23. Kant also echoes the biblical notion of the tortuousness of the heart and “the duplicity which lies hidden in the depths of the heart.” See, for instance, On the Failure of All Attempted Theodicies: “Man manages to falsify his innermost sentiments before his own conscience.” A translation of this essay is found in Despland, M., Kant on History and Religion (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1973) 296.Google Scholar

6 Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, 124, 168, 172, 177–78.

7 Ibid., 72, 173–74.

8 Ibid., 178. See also The Doctrine of Virtue (New York: Harper and Row, 1964) 60–61: “I cannot err in my subjective judgement as to whether I have compared my action with my practical reason ( … ) in making the objective judgement.”Google ScholarPubMed

9 The Doctrine of Virtue, 61. As it analyzes conviction (and the expression of it), the essay On the Failure of All Attempted Theodicies makes a distinction between the material conscience, “the concern never to say something that is wrong,” and the formal conscience, which “consists in the consciousness of having maintained this concern in a given case.” See text on 294 of M. Despland, Kant on History and Religion.

10 Phenomenology of the Spirit (New York: Harper and Row, 1967) 514–48.Google Scholar Our interpretation follows that found in chapter 2 of Trilling, Lionel, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973). See especially 44–47.Google Scholar

11 Phenomenology, 641, 670.

12 Philosophy of Right, §§105, 132, 135, 137. Knox, T. M. translator (London: Oxford University Press, 1952) 75, 87, 89, 91Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., §140, 95.

14 Ibid., §140, 93–103.

15 Walsh, W. H., Hegelian Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1969) 57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, 161 note, 176.

17 The Doctrine of Virtue, 158; Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, 33.

18 Mozley, Univ. Sermons, 2. 34.

19 Phenomenology of the Spirit, 546.

20 See Plamenatz, J., Man and Society (London: Longmans, 1971) 2. 179–87.Google Scholar

21 W. H. Walsh, Hegelian Ethics, 55, 79.

22 See Singer, M., Generalizations in Ethics (New York: Knopf, 1961) 251–52.Google Scholar

23 This honesty is not that of Hegel's “honest soul.” It is characterized by a broken heart rather than by an integral consciousness. To false consciousness a Kantian will oppose honest consciousness, not true consciousness.

24 Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, 158.