The Tasks of Ethics

Abstract

Very few students of philosophy in the English-speaking world today have an accurate knowledge of even the main outlines of Hegel’s ethical theories, and this fact renders profitable discussion of these theories extremely difficult. It happens, however, that in his ethical thinking Hegel was continuously preoccupied with the views of Kant; the question what Kant got right in moral philosophy and just where he went wrong is one to which he returns again and again. To call Hegel a Kantian in his general philosophical outlook would certainly be mistaken: his implacable hostility to the whole Kantian enterprise of drawing a limit to the powers of reason precludes our taking that designation seriously. But to call him a Kantian in ethics, though of course a Kantian with a difference, is not altogether far-fetched. I therefore propose to introduce Hegelian ethics by means of a comparison with the parallel doctrines in Kant, doctrines which I can perhaps assume to be generally familiar to the reader.