“Faust: Who are you then?
Mephistopheles: Part of that force which would
Do ever evil, and does ever good.
Faust: And that conundrum of a phrase implies?
Mephistopheles: The spirit which eternally denies!
And justly so; for all that which is wrought
Deserves that it should come to naught.”
· Faust, ‘Study,’ Lines 1334-1338
“It is a great service of Hegel to have assigned to modern morality its true position.”
· Karl Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’
While the entire body of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right has much to say to the contemporary world, and while, as a totality, it remains largely unexplored, the present focus is rather narrow. The concern here is exclusively on the transition from morality to Ethical Life, specifically the subsection ‘Good and Conscience,’ paragraphs 129 to 141.
Hegel defines ethical life as “the concept of freedom developed into the existing world.” (Par. 142) The ethical is the realization of “the good” as well as “the end” of self-consciousness, and what actuates its efforts. But this ethical life is more than the subjective form and the self-determination of the will. The Ethical Life is the “absolute good,” when both the objective and the subjective moments are present. (Addition, Par. 144) By contrast, “morality” is the form of the will in general on its subjective side. The moral point of view is “defective” because it is purely abstract (Addition, Par. 138) with the End reduced to an “empty good.”