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  • Chapter 12 - Hegelian Social Ontology II: The Living Good

  • Frederick Neuhouser, Barnard College, Columbia University
  • Book:
    Diagnosing Social Pathology
    Published online:
    07 October 2022
    Print publication:
    27 October 2022, pp 281-311

  • Summary

    Chapter 12 examines Hegel's characterization of human society as the "living good," which expresses his version of the analogy between societies and organisms. For him the analogy implies that societies both incorporate processes of life (in carrying out the activities necessary for material reproduction) and possess the same structure as biological life (that of a "self-positing" subject, which maintains itself by positing "contradictions" internal to itself and then negotiating them so as establish its own identity). Hegel also insists on the differences between life and social being: the presence in social life of self-consciousness and the capacity for freedom. Thus, societies are normatively and functionally constituted living beings that realize the good via specialized, coordinated functions, which, unlike the activities of organisms, are infused with ethical content deriving from their potential to be consciously self-determined. Analyzing Hegel's master–slave dialectic illustrates these ontological claims.