Hegel’s Objections to Kant’s Moral Theory

Hegel has a problem with abstract right. The whole point of his investigation is to show that if abstract right were the only thing, we could not even understand it or the very thing we are reflecting on. Hegel will argue that this is a problem because it allows for the possibility of doing wrong and this wrong requires a correction. As long as all we have is abstract right, the only way I can conceive of this correction is revenge and this results in a regress wherein we are both hurting each other endlessly. For Hegel, this regress reveals a need for something else and he argues that the only way to stop the regress is the idea of the moral standpoint. The only way to stop the regress of revenge is for some third party to judge who the disinterested party is. By contrast to Fichte who says that he can develop the philosophy of right completely independently from morality, Hegel presents the philosophy of the right in such a way that reflection on abstract right leads to our understanding of why we need to have morality. Hegel criticizes Kant’s theory of morality by raising a famous formalism-charge against Kant wherein he argues that if the moral principle is, as Kant says it is, a merely formal principle, then it would appear that the theory will not work because I can never get to concrete determinations about what I ought to do. However, Hegel also praises Kant for being the first person to adequately capture the truth of the moral standpoint. This praise is crucial to understanding Hegel’s project as his purpose of the book is not to completely show that Kant is wrong, but to show the limitations of morality itself. For this to work, it must be true that the Kantian theory that Hegel criticizes actually captures the truth of morality. It is only by understanding why the moral standpoint, which Hegel introduces as the only thing which saves abstract right itself, is contradictory that we can understand the main goal of the book which is to establish the idea of ethical life as the unity of abstract right. Hegel does not want to say that Kant presents a false theory about morality. Hegel is instead arguing that the problem he has in view when he talks about Kant captures an actual practical pathology. This is something we know from the inside in the perspective of being an agent who thinks about the question “what should I do?” In the Master Slave Dialectic, Hegel captures an aspect of what self consciousness is which is the desire to dominate or subjugate. Like the master slave dialectic, here too, Hegel is trying to capture something which we are all struggling with: the idea that the moral standpoint is on its way to collapse into evil. Hegel’s project then is not just to argue against Kant, but to show why Kant’s argument captures something that is intrinsic to us insofar as we are moral thinkers. 

The initial presentation of the moral standpoint, which Hegel distinguishes from ethics, is that morality is a refuge to the inner or a merely subjective point of view. This is initially puzzling because Kant’s concept of morality is not supposed to be subjective. However, Hegel’s way of referring to morality as subjective or as a refuge to the inner is connected to the idea that the moral standpoint is one where the good only appears as what I ought to do and this is precisely what Kant was saying. Insofar as the moral standpoint is only apprehended by me as what I ought to do rather than an account of what is actual in any practice, it has existence only, not in the objective world, but only in the realm of thinking about what ought to be. This is what Hegel means by subjective. A central claim of Hegel’s is that we only understand the idea of such an absolute demand in light of what he calls ethical life or concrete institutions like the nuclear family, civil society and its rules, and the political state. What Hegel is trying to show, and what is presupposed at each moment, is that the thing we are investigating is dependent on and derivative to ethical life. From the perspective of ethical life, morality appears as a sickness. It appears as something that is lacking a proper unity of the subjective and the objective and for this reason is a disorder. Nevertheless, Hegel also says that even though morality is derivative and a disorder, we need to study morality before we are able to study the proper or healthy order. Hegel frames this as needing to understand sickness before understanding healthy life because a properly healthy animal or human being needs to have a way of dealing with sickness, an immune system, and one only acquires an immune system by getting sick as a child. In order to properly understand a healthy being, one already needs to have an account of the way in which an animal deals with being in disorder. The same applies here: we can only understand healthy ethical life by first considering morality, something that is one sided and therefore a sickness or disorder, because only then can we understand the healthy version as its own achievement, our realization of freedom. 

Hegel’s argument that we should first consider morality as a sickness is correlated to a connected claim about the inevitability of the sickness in the development of right. Just as children need to get sick in order to develop healthy immune systems, there is an equivalent claim Hegel makes about the disorder that he calls morality which he claims is connected with evil. Hegel talks about evil as, in some sense, being necessary. This is initially puzzling because Hegel says that evil is what ought not to be. However, Hegel also says that evil has to do with a certain diremption or rift within the will and that this rift will inevitably occur and has to occur in the development of proper right because this diremption is what distinguishes the human being from non-rational animals. Hegel’s claim is that the kind of evil in the moral standpoint is necessary and has to happen in order to develop proper freedom. However, Hegel is clear that while this evil is necessary, one cannot remain stuck at this level. Hegel argues that what Kant captured best, the moral standpoint, is catastrophic because it is the other side of evil but it is at the same time necessary for the development of proper freedom which we get when we turn to ethical life. 

If morality is a sickness, the question arises of what, according to Hegel, is left to do if it is true that this refuge to the inner will inevitably collapse into evil. Hegel will argue that the moral standpoint is one sided precisely because of what is already contained in Kant’s definition of what morality is. Namely, that morality is the kind of perspective wherein the good appears as an imperative or demand. That perspective is structured by the opposition between what ought to be and what actually is. Insofar as the good is not known as actual but only as to be realized, the good, in Hegel’s terms, will be subjective rather than belonging to what actually is and in this sense objective. In this way, the moral point of view is the relation of what ought to be, the demand, and opposed to objectivity as its only existence. Precisely because there is the opposition between what's in my mind and what is real and actual, the moral standpoint is a standpoint of finitude because, in this perspective, self consciousness or the will does not understand itself as uniting the merely subjective and the objective. Because it is just focused on what ought to be, it would follow that, so defined, morality is just describing something that, by definition, cannot be understood as actual. If morality is focused on what ought to be, it can never understand what is. For the same reason, Hegel will say that this is a contradiction because morality introduces an end, a norm that is to be realized, while at the same time saying that the realization of that end or the actualization of that norm cannot be understood in this perspective. Subjectivity and objectivity are here being related only as contradictory and the whole of the reflection on the moral is a processing of this contradiction which can never be resolved in the moral standpoint. 

Hegel argues that the moral standpoint, the standpoint of what we call conscience, is bound to turn into evil. Conscience, as formal subjectivity, consists in being on the way of turning into evil. Hegel argues that morality and evil have their common root in a certain kind of self certainty. Namely, the kind of self certainty that Kant captures in his account of the moral standpoint. In its one sidedness, the moral standpoint is, at the same time, an explanation of in what sense evil is necessary. Hegel’s argument begins with the idea that, properly understood, the moral standpoint is, just as Kant said, merely formal. Hegel argues that, for this reason, it is abstract or not determined with respect to any substantial content. As long as we understand it in that perspective, what is left to duty is just abstract universality. Hegel’s second step is to say that because of this, the principles of morality lack content. Since the moral standpoint lacks content, the content must be provided by the particular subject. Even if this is just an implication of the moral standpoint being formal, being abstract universality, then all the content that determines which specific things I ought to do, must come from a particular subject, from me. The particularity falls within subjectivity. If it is me as this particular that provides all the content of what morality demands, this is the same idea as putting myself as this particular above the law. But putting myself above the law is precisely what Kant would call self-conceit and this is the very idea of evil. This is the abstract structure of the argument: making one’s arbitrary will the law is precisely what the evil person does.

Within the dialectic of Hegel’s Outlines of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel gets to morality by solving a problem that arose in the abstract right: the regress of revenge. Further reflection on what the moral standpoint really is, considered in detail, reveals that morality presents another version of the same difficulty on a higher level. Abstract right was a discussion of property: I have to put my will into things. The idea of contract is the idea that I have to unify my will in order to exchange things with others. The problem with contracts is that it makes space for wrong because when two people enter into a contract, they both have their subjective interests that they pursue and for which the contract seems helpful. When I exchange something, I have some purpose which is served by acquiring what I have gotten via exchange. Since this unity of the will depends on the particular subjective interest of the parties, there is always the possibility that despite knowing what the two parties agreed upon in the contract, one of them breaks the contract and doesn’t do what was agreed upon and this would be a wrong. The topic of the wrong introduces a further way in which the will or self consciousness thinks about itself in relation to a law which it might break. For the same reason, Hegel argues that there needs to be a further kind of action because the order of right cannot let the wrong stand. 

Hegel argues that the negation of right must itself be negated because if the order of right is to be actual, it cannot let the apparent actuality of the wrong stand. It must prove that it is true and actual, so it needs to do something. When we strictly understand that the only concepts we have in abstract right are property and contract and the individuals, then the only thing that can be done is individual retribution. The problem is that part of the logic of individual retribution is that we overreact. However, even if my retribution were equivalent to the wrong I suffered, the problem is that, in engaging in retribution, I am claiming to be able to make the judgment of what constitutes an equivalent form of retribution. The fact that I take myself to be in the position of being the judge will itself be an offense to you. Hegel will say that this offense will then require a further act of retribution which will lead to the infinite regress of revenge. What solves the regress of revenge is when the judgment about retribution is not made by someone who is an interested party but from the standpoint of a disinterested party who judges the matter objectively. This is the abstract definition of the moral standpoint. 

Now that Hegel calls for a disinterested party, questions regarding reflections on motives become the central topic. Something which now becomes the case but which was not the case in abstract right is that my wellbeing now becomes a positive topic in the reflection of right. Whereas abstract right was all about prohibitions, saying that as long as you don’t interfere with the freedom of others then wellbeing is not a consideration, the idea of welfare adds that my wellbeing now becomes a positive topic. This leads o a question about the possible collision between the regime of abstract right or of property and the idea of welfare and Hegel calls this the right of need. This is the idea that if I am about to die of hunger, the fact that this apple is yours and not mine becomes irrelevant. Once we get the idea of welfare, there can be collisions between the order of abstract right and the idea of welfare thought in morality and once we have this conflict, a question arises of how we solve it. There must be a principle which helps us understand when a need counts as urgent. In light of these possible conflicts between abstract right and welfare, Hegel introduces the idea of the good as the demand to find a way to resolve this conflict between the property regime and the need for welfare. For the same reason, the good introduced in this way is initially abstract. It is simply whatever would be the abstract idea of the solution to be found for the resolution of such conflicts. 

The subjective side of this abstract idea of the good is the idea of conscience. From this, Hegel gets the highest principle of morality: the subjective right to only regard as valid what I understand as rightful. This was Kant’s claim: what morality demands is that I act from duty and this requires that I only accept as a valid claim on me what I can understand as justified. This leaves space for the possibility of error. It holds that I have the right to recognize nothing as a valid demand except for what I myself take to be rational, but as long as we still have the idea that there is an objective order, what I take to be justified might turn out to be unjustified. This standpoint, where nothing but my reason can be the source of the necessity that I accept, is precisely what Hegel praises Kant for as the highpoint of the moral standpoint. Hegel calls this the standpoint of the modern world because he holds that the modern world is one where you don’t accept any given order simply as valid. It is only by understanding your own activity of reason as that which is the ultimate source of necessity that you really take on the moral standpoint. The reasons Kant gives for rejecting any appeal to authority is precisely this thought. 

Hegel, in the account of what morality is, shares Kant’s claim that the source of all necessity must be the autonomy of the will, but he thinks that it is precisely once we see this that we also see the limitation of this step because the highest moral principle becomes nothing but the idea that I only accept what I understand as true or universalizable. Therefore, the moral standpoint is merely formal and devoid of content. One might think that one can get some list of duties from applying the test of universalization, but Hegel argues that this is not possible. Strictly understood, the moral standpoint is just the empty formalism that says that duty must be done for duty. While duty means that the action must be universalizable, the mere appeal to the idea that my maxim must be universalizable does not give me, according to Hegel, any substantive duties. Hegel argues that unless I have already determined the concepts that I bring to the universalization procedure, nothing follows from it. For example, I cannot ask a question about when it is okay to take things unless I already bring the concept of property. Without already bringing concepts to the universalization procedure, the principle of universalization alone will not lead me to any contradictions. Insofar as no substantive duties can be deduced from it, when we do not have a further account of where I get these concepts from, then the only way to think about the source of the content of my judgments about what ought to be done is my own particular will. However, this is making my individuality or particular subjectivity to be the law for everyone. What was a radical insight by Kant about the relationship between autonomy and morality turns out, when it is all we can think, to undermine the very idea of morality and leads to nothing but making myself the one who is above any other rule. According to Kant’s own definition, the vanity of thinking I am the one who can judge it all is the way in which morality collapses into evil. Now, Hegel argues that what is needed is an account of the concrete content of duties that regulate how we are to properly live with each other. This needs to be more concrete than the moral standpoint and at the same time cannot be something that I appeal to as a given because this would be to accept authority. It must be developed out of the reflection on the proper way to realize freedom in concrete forms of living together. This is the task of what Hegel calls the ethical life. 

While Hegel makes several compelling critiques of Kant’s moral theory and the ways in which it fails to solve the problem of understanding what one actually ought to do, there are several potential objections to Hegel’s critique of Kant. A Kantian rebuttal to Hegel’s critique is that Hegel misunderstood or misinterpreted Kant’s project and perhaps even ignored crucial features of the Kantian system. For example, Kant does attempt to provide different formulas with the purpose of bringing the concept of morality into a more concrete realm and not just a purely abstract or rationalist one. While Hegel presents Kant’s view as the simple idea that one lives ethically when free from contradiction to a formula, a Kantian might argue that this presentation of Kant’s theory is reductive and unrepresentative of the nuanced way in which Kant did care about and consider the importance of our practical contexts and social realities in moral considerations. Another objection is the idea that Hegel is redefining morality as something which is inherently hypothetical and completely free from any content but that Kant himself did not define morality this way. Therefore, Hegel is unfairly critiquing Kant using a definition of morality which Kant himself would not have accepted. This objection suggests that the Kantian would disagree with Hegel’s claim that Kant’s formula lacks any content such that no contradictions or substantial duties could ever arise. However, Hegel might respond to these objections by pointing out that Hegel’s entire system entails that he in fact agrees with Kant’s concept of the moral standpoint and that Hegel is merely treating Kant’s work as an unfinished step in the right direction. It may be that Kant and Hegel’s work are in fact more similar than might first appear, and it may also be the case that Kant himself was in some sense attempting to highlight a practical pathology and tendency towards evil in his own formulation of the categorical imperative. While there are many potential objections to Hegel’s criticism of Kant, Hegel is successful in presenting powerful difficulties with the Kantian system.