Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-zzh7m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T09:33:43.877Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hegel and the Ontological Critique of Liberalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Alexander Kaufman
Alexander Kaufman*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Contemporary communitarians argue that a proper consideration of ontological questions of identity and community forecloses deontological liberalism as a viable option, since deontological liberalism cannot ground a sufficiently strong form of immediate identification with the ethical life of the community. Hegel's ethical theory constitutes perhaps the most fully realized account of such identification. Yet, I argue, Hegel's ethics does not require the strong form of immediate identification required by communitarians. My analysis emphasizes the strands in Hegel's account which suggest that a weaker form of identification, reconcilable with deontological liberalism, can plausibly ground a stable form of civil society. In particular, Hegel's notion of patriotic trust is designed to ground both a direct and a reflective relation between individuals and their ethical and political tradition. Hegel's analysis anticipates and offers insights to supplement recent accounts of trust as a form of social capital.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 91 , Issue 4 , December 1997 , pp. 807 - 817
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1997

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.)

References

REFERENCES

Avineri, Shlomo, and de-Shalit, Avner, eds. 1992. Communitarianism and Individualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Devlin, Patrick. 1965. The Enforcement of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dunn, John. 1990. Interpreting Political Responsibility. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1977. Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Elster, Jon. 1979. Ulysses and the Sirens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Etzioni, Amitai. 1995a. Rights and the Common Good. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Etzioni, Amitai., ed. 1995b. New Communitarian Thinking: Persons, Virtues, Institutions and Communities. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.Google Scholar
Forster, Michael. N.d. Hegel's Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Fukuyama, Francis. 1995. Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Gambetta, Diego, ed. 1988. Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gauthier, David. 1988. “Hobbes's Social Contract.” In Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes, ed. Rogers, G. A. J. and Ryan, A.. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Glendon, Mary Ann. 1991. Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Hardimon, Michael O. 1994. Hegel's Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardin, Russell. 1991. “Trusting Persons, Trusting Institutions.” In Strategy and Choice, ed. Zeckhauser, R.. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hart, H. L. A. 1961. The Concept of Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hart, H. L. A. 1963. Law, Liberty and Morality. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. [1821] 1991. Elements of the Philosophy of Right (PR), ed. Wood, A.; trans. Nisbet, H.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. [1827] 1975. Hegel's Logic: Part One of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (EL). Trans. Wallace, W.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. [1827] 1971. Philosophy of Mind (PM). Trans. Wallace, W.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. [1807] 1979. Phenomenology of Spirit (PG). Trans. Miller, A. V.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. [1816] 1969. Science of Logic (SL). Trans. Miller, A. V.. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International.Google Scholar
Hook, Sidney. 1970. “Hegel Rehabilitated.” In Hegel's Political Philosophy, ed. Kaufman, W.. New York: Atherton Press.Google Scholar
Hyppolyte, Jean. [1946] 1974. Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. Cherniak, S. and Heckman, R.. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Kelly, George A. 1978. Hegel's Retreat from Eleusis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Knox, T. M. 1970. “Hegel and Prussianism.” In Hegel's Political Philosophy, ed. Kaufman, W.. New York: Atherton Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Michael. 1989. “Sandelian Antiliberalism.” California Law Review 77(05): 539–51.Google Scholar
Parkinson, G. H. R. 1985. “Hegel's Concept of Freedom.” In Hegel, ed. Inwood, M.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Paul, Ellen Frankel, Miller, Fred D. Jr., and Paul, Jeffrey, eds. 1996. The Communitarian Challenge to Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pippin, Robert. 1989. Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pitkin, Hanna F. 1967. The Concept of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert D. 1995. “Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital.” Journal of Democracy 6(01):65–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, Robert D. 1996. “The Strange Disappearance of Civic America.” American Prospect 24(Winter):34–49.Google Scholar
Sandel, Michael J. 1984. “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self.” Political Theory 12(1):81–96.Google Scholar
Sandel, Michael J. 1989. “Moral Argument and Liberal Toleration: Abortion and Homosexuality.” California Law Review 77(05): 521–38.Google Scholar
Sandel, Michael J. 1996. Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schacht, Richard L. 1972. “Hegel on Freedom.” In Hegel: a Collection of Critical Essays. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1975. Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1979. Hegel and the Modern State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1989a. “Cross-Purposes: The Liberal Communitarian Debate.” In Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Rosenblum, N.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1989b. Sources of the Self. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1995. “Liberal Politics and the Public Sphere.” In New Communitarian Thinking: Persons, Virtues, Institutions and Communities, ed. Etzioni, A.. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.Google Scholar
Tribe, Laurence H. 1988. American Constitutional Law, 2d ed. Mineola, NY: The Foundation Press.Google Scholar
Westphal, Kenneth. 1993. “The Basic Context and Structure of Hegel's Philosophy of Right.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Beiser, F. C.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Robert R. 1992. Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen W. 1990. Hegel's Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar