Love and Politics: Re-interpreting Hegel

4. The Historical “Failure” of Ethical Life: A View from within Hegel

THE HISTORICAL “FAILURE” OF ETHICAL LIFE: THE SPLIT BETWEEN LOVE AND THE WILL IF HEGEL’S ETHICAL LIFE is meant to describe an arena of deeper moral edification and unity in the life of the modern, secular individual, an elaboration of the knowledge of love at the level of the political, in a manner that can be reconciled with reflective thought and individual freedom, then we must ask what has happened historically to such an existence. For surely Hegel’s ethical life, conceived in this sense, has attained only a partial materialization. And we can see this partiality quite clearly at both the level of subjective experience and at the level of objective institutional structures. The Subjective Level At the level of subjective experience, of conscience, conviction, and political culture generally, it seems reasonable to suggest that most individuals in Western , liberal democracies have attained a certain level of moral consciousness as Hegel describes it in his discussion of civil society. There is a powerful commitment to the principles of abstract right, the rights of the individual to private property, to choice of their own vocation, to make their way in what Hegel calls the “system of needs” through the power of their own decision. And this is a commitment that individuals hold not only for themselves, out of mere self-interest, but as a strongly held conviction on the basis of all individuals as equal rights bearers. Alongside this is the tremendous respect for and commitment to a system of justice that will safeguard such rights for all. 95 4 The Historical “Failure” of Ethical Life A View from within Hegel Beyond this, and in spite of current attacks from the right, there remains a widespread recognition of the need for a welfare state of some sort to prevent individuals from falling into conditions of abject poverty. Thus to a certain point at least we can see the attachment to particular moral principles in the consciousness of the citizens of contemporary Western, liberal democracies. In spite of what might be seen as a partial realization of Hegelian ethical life at the subjective level, however, the development of modern society has stopped short of Hegel’s ideal of unity. Hegel had anticipated that individuals would, in and through the expression of self-interest in the system of needs and the institutions that govern it, gradually come to transcend their individualistic standpoint and develop a deeper sense of how their fates are bound to one another. Historically, however, where individuals feel secure in the preservation of their abstract rights to pursue their own interests, there tends to be an excessive focus on the private and the particular as the chief truth and reality of the individual, rather than on the interests of the community as a whole. The public realm tends to be seen as an arena wherein the fundamentally competitive interests of groups and individuals are played out. Indeed, the very notion of a common interest that could unite individuals and transcend the merely private realm seems foreign to the consciousness of many. This has been the chief concern of republican and communitarian critics of liberal culture and thinking. The swing to the right in so many liberal democratic countries can be seen partly as a symptom of this atomistic way of thinking, a viewing of things according to the idea of individuals as separate and self-interested and in terms of the abstract conception of right rather than in terms of welfare or in terms of a larger notion of the common good. Concomitant with this has been the increasingly prevalent notion that contributing to the community as a whole entails doing “charity work.” There does remain a widespread commitment to the idea of finding one’s vocation, which for Hegel implicitly puts one into a class identity that constitutes the essential basis for transcendence of the merely private. But vocation tends to remain an individualistic conception that does not entail any moral and political obligations toward one’s fellows. Furthermore, for much of the working class, work continues to be a dehumanizing activity rather than a source of self-realization. Nor does this reality, in North America at least, seem to foster a working-class consciousness. Most individuals tend to remain focused on their own selfish situation and regard their true existence, as Marx suggested one hundred fifty years ago, as outside their working hours (Marx 1978:74). The difficulties of securing meaningful employment, where they might gain...