Download Hegel on Conscience:

Hegel on Conscience:
E§503A “ethical...determinations ought not to lay claim to the obedience of the human being
merely as external laws or as the dictates of an authority. Instead, they ought to find assent,
recognition, or even justification in his heart, disposition [Gesinnung], conscience, insight, etc.”
§EPR132 The right of the subjective will is that whatever it is to recognize as valid should be
perceived by it as good...
R
The right to recognize nothing that I do not perceive as rational is the highest right of
the subject...
True versus formal §EPR 137 True conscience is the disposition to will what is good in and for
itself; it therefore has fixed principles, and these have for it the character of determinacy and
duties which are objective for themselves. In contrast to its content - i.e. truth - conscience is
merely the formal aspect of the activity of the will, which as this will, has no distinctive content
of its own.
§EPR 137A “Conscience expresses the absolute authority of subjective self-consciousness, namely
to know what right and duty are both within oneself [in sich] and as proceeding from oneself (aus
sich), and to recognize nothing other than what it knows as the good; it also includes the claim
that what it thus knows as the good; it also includes the claim that what it thus knows and wills
is in truth right and duty.”
§EPR 137A “The state cannot recognize the conscience in its distinctive form, i.e. as subjetive
knowledge, any more than science can grant any validity to subjective opinion, assertion, and the
appeal to subjective opinion.”
§147 (Notes - not in English edition) The Greeks had no conscience. “they were] unable to give
an account; [they had] no conscience, no conviction - [their affirmative stance was] unmediated by
reasons.”
“It was in the time of Socrates that a moral standpoint first arose. The Athenians accused him of
the crime of no longer following the laws of the fatherland and believing in his country’s - of no
longer being so immediately ethical [Sittlich]. Socrates established the standpoint of inner
reflection, of thinking over whether something is true. [His principle was] that the concept of
God, of good and evil... is not immediately binding [gültig] in itself but, in order to be
recognised, must first have made its way through the interior of the human being.” VPR4 301
For the good will is something particular, based on the morality of the individual, on the
conviction and interiority. The very subjective freedom, which constitutes the absolute basis of
our state and our religious life, could only manifest itself to Greece as a destructive principle.
The Greek spirit was not far away from subjectivity (interiority) but had to attain it; but
subjectivity led to the demise of the Greek world, for the constitution of the Greek world was
not commensurate with this side of things and unfamiliar with it, because subjectivity was not
present. Of the Greeks in the first and true form of their freedom we can assert that they had
no conscience. The habit of living for the fatherland, without further reflection, was the
dominant principle among them. They did not know the abstraction of the state, which for us is
what is essential; their purpose was the living principle of the fatherland: this Athens, this
Sparta, this temple, these altars, these ways of living together, this circle of fellow citizens these
manners and customs. to the Greek, the fatherland was a necessity without which he could not
live.” Lectures on the Philosophy of History, part II, chapter 3, The Political Work of Art.
G.W.F.Werke XII 309
Hegel On The Antigone
“Thus there is immanent to both Antigone and Creon, exactly that against which each turns, so
that each is gripped and shattered by something intrinsic to their own sphere of existence. (15
549)
“The collision between the two highest ethical powers is enacted in plastic fashion in that
absolute exemplum of tragedy, Antigone...Creon is not a tyrant, but an ethical power just as much
as Antigone. Creon is not wrong; he claims...that, the law of the state, the authority of
government should be preserved, and that punishment follows its transgression. Both these
sides realize only one of the ethical powers, has only one of these as its content. This is the
one-sidedness, and the meaning of eternal justice, is that both do wrong because they are onesided, and thus both do right.” (17, 133)
Hegel on Antigone (the character)
Phenomenology of Spirit Sophocles’ Antigone acknowledges them as the unwritten and infallible
law of the gods. “They are not of yesterday or today, but everlasting/ though where they came
from, none of us can tell.” They are. If I inquire after their origin and confine them to the point
whence they arose, then I have transcended them;...§437
The ethical consciousness must, on account of this actuality and on account of its deed,
acknowledge its opposite a its own actuality, must acknowledge its guilt. “Because we suffer,
we acknowledge we have erred.” §470
“If this be pleasing to the gods, we acknowledge, that since we suffer, we acknowledge we have
erred.” (18, 509)
Antigen’s words
“If this be pleasing to the gods, we acknowledge, that since we suffer, we acknowledge we have
erred. If, however, the error lies with my judges, I could wish them no fuller measure of evil
than they do, unjustly, to me” The Antigone in Sophocles: the Plays and Fragments tr. R. Jebb,
Cambridge, CUP, 1906, p. 166.