| Hegel's work is often taken to have little to contribute to contemporary ethical theory. In contrast to his predecessor Kant, Hegel does not address many of the standard topics in ethics in a systematic way. Is this a sin of omission or a sign of a more serious problem? Some readers have supposed that Hegel has little to add to debates in ethics. I argue that this understanding of Hegel overlooks significant insights in his work that engage in new and interesting ways with contemporary ethical debates. I focus on a central and ongoing debate in ethics concerning reasons for action. Do normative reasons hold for all agents, just in virtue of being rational? I argue that there are resources in Hegel's work for developing a new and distinctively Hegelian account of reasons for action.;Hegel's ethical thought merits closer examination because it proposes a conception of agency that takes seriously the idea that we are fundamentally social beings. The assumption underlying both Kantian rationalism and Humean anti-rationalism is that we can theorize about the normative significance of reasoning and desiring without taking actual social contexts into account. This assumption is precisely what Hegel calls into question. Our conceptions of agency and the good, Hegel argues, are socially-constructed rather than timeless and unchanging.;I develop a specifically Hegelian version of reasons internalism, the claim that an agent's reasons for action must be within the reach of his or her interest and understanding. The Hegelian contention is that fundamental self-understandings provide frameworks within which we reason, desire, make and evaluate normative claims. But these self-understandings are not timeless or universal; rather, they develop in response to specific problems in previous frameworks. If normative space is framed by basic self-conceptions that vary across social contexts, then what we are capable of recognizing as a reason also varies across social contexts. Reasons for action are, on this view, relative to our shared frameworks of understanding. I contend that this Hegelian account preserves important insights from both rationalism and anti-rationalism by reformulating those insights in light of the idea that we are fundamentally social beings. |
