Hegel's theory of moral action, its place in his system and the 'highest' right of the subject

Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, July, 2007 by David Rose

One way to characterize this is to say that the justification of one's good or end involves one in the activity of reason-giving and this activity is, for Hegel, inherently social. Affirming what is substantially right and good is not a matter of external, transcendental standards independent of one's peers, but rests on their recognition of the content of one's will in terms of articulated and shared categories of right. (22) There are no constraints on a will which justifies a good or a purpose to itself, one is able to convince oneself that anything may be good (PR [section]140 R). Reasons for action require a degree of objectivity for Hegel and this is based on reasons being a justification for all men who share my way of life rather than just for me; that is, an actual reason rather than just wilfulness and, contrary to Kant, one's role, situation and circumstances all constitute reasons for behaviour. In offering reasons, the agent knows if they are good reasons if he can convince others. It follows from this that the agent's description of his intention must harmonize with the other's interpretation of the act. A man unaware of the way in which a certain act will be interpreted, that is how his reasons for action will be reconstructed (the tourist abroad) is not responsible for any offence caused (although he may still be held culpable). (23) Reciprocally, the agent is only fully free when he is aware how his action will be interpreted. The will of others contained in one's own will is this shared scheme of interpretation in and through which we reconstruct intentions.

The rational reformulation of the initial determinations of action (PR [section] 113) occurs in a later paragraph which reduces the dialectical trinity to a new symmetry of subjective and objective aspects:

   The right of intention is that the universal quality of the action
   shall have being not only in itself, but shall be known by the
   agent and thus have been present all along in his subjective will;
   and conversely, what we may call the right of the objectivity of
   the action is the right of the action to assert itself as known and
   willed by the subject as a thinking agent (PR [section] 120).

Here we find that self-ascription of intentions, or the right of knowledge ([alpha]), is combined with the necessary element of modern moral freedom ([beta]) into the 'right of intention' such that the agent will only be held responsible for those actions deliberately brought about by his or her own will, thus ruling out external causality, neurotic behaviour, coercion, deception and false consciousness. However, in order to recognize one's intentions as 'good' or 'rational' requires the reformulation of ([gamma]) into the 'right of objectivity'. An action is--independently of the protestations and affirmations of the agent him or herself--to 'stand in for' or 'represent' the will of the agent in the 'outer' world, just as the word uttered in language is assumed to be a sincere representation of the thought and will of the speaker who is present. If the agent wishes to be understood as a free moral agent, then he or she must be aware that an action requires a commitment to the medium through which others will understand it. So, in order to affirm one's freedom, there must exist a minimum level of expectation which must be met. If the subject's acts are to be the expression of inwardness, then he must be certain that the other is going to reconstruct them faithfully. Both actor and interpreter must, therefore, share a common understanding of the way in which acts are to be rendered intelligible.