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Pecca Fortiter for the Sake of Morality? Making Sense of Wrong in Hegel’s System of Right*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2014

Alexander T. Englert
Alexander T. Englert*
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins [email protected]
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Abstract

The goal of this paper is to clarify the role ‘wrong’ plays in Hegel’s system of right, as both a form of freedom and the transition to morality. Two approaches will be examined to explore wrong in practical philosophical terms: First, one could take the transition to be descriptive in nature. The transition describes wrong as a realized fact of the human condition that one inherits from the outset. Second, one could see it as prescriptive. Actual wrongdoing would be essential for the subject’s progression to becoming moral. Though both are most likely the case, emphasis is given to the latter since it represents the actualization of potential. Furthermore, it will be suggested that wrong plays a similar role as that which alienation does in the Phenomenology of Spirit; both bridge the will as abstract personality with the moral point of view.

Type
Articles
Information
Hegel Bulletin , Volume 35 , Issue 2: Moral Philosophy , October 2014 , pp. 204 - 227
Copyright
© The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2014 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to express my gratitude, first, to Dean Moyar who commented on earlier drafts and challenged me to make my ideas clearer. Second, I wish to thank Eckart Förster whose guidance led me to passages that proved of great use in refining my ideas. Finally, I am thankful for the comments of an anonymous reviewer who spurred me to reflect more deeply on my position and who inspired significant improvements in the final draft.

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