Value, Fact and Concrete Ethics

Abstract

In ‘The Spirit of Christianity ’ the shortcomings of morality are to be overcome through membership of the Christian community, in which individuals lose their particularity and yet gain an enhanced sense of purpose. In Hegel’s mature philosophy the same general view is taken, but the role of the church is now filled by the state or, as Hegel sometimes expresses it, ‘the nation’ (das Volk). It is the nation or the state which constitutes the ultimate unity which must be presupposed if the actions of individual men and women, including their moral actions, are to be made intelligible. For men are, fundamentally, social beings, and the nation or the state is the true social whole.