Commentary on the Philosophy of Right, Chapter 20
Historical Precursors and the Specifically Modern Form of Morality
Here too the double caution from I.8 must be applied, and it is especially important here, because modern morality as self-reflexive inwardness — the form that Hegel goes on to develop — is a specifically modern production, whose precursors were structured differently. What is general is that human beings measure their actions against standards of what is good to do; in every society such standards exist, and in every society people examine their actions against them. What is specifically modern is the form in which these standards no longer appear as external prescriptions (divine commandment, estate-based duty, canon of virtues), but instead have their place in the reflected inwardness of the subject — as a conscience that knows from itself and gives account of itself before itself.
Four stations can be briefly marked, without going into the details of the history of morals.
Ancient virtue ethics (Aristotle above all, but also the Stoics and Plato) determines good action not from inwardness but from the successfully lived form of life. What is to be done follows from what it means to be a good human being — and being a good human being means possessing and exercising the virtues, within a form of life determined by the polis. Good action is not primarily the correct choice in the individual situation, but the practiced habit. Inwardness exists, but it is embedded in the context of virtue; it is not an independent authority set against the form of life.
The Christian Middle Ages (Augustine, Aquinas) discover inwardness in a new way — as the relation of the soul to God. Augustine’s Confessions is the paradigmatic form: a self-dialogue of the subject with itself before God, in which the inner self is examined. This is a genuine deepening compared to ancient virtue ethics; but the inner self remains related to God, shaped by him, measured against his commandments. Conscience is the voice of God within the human being, not the voice of reflected subjectivity as such. The standards remain objectively given — through scripture, through tradition, through church doctrine.
The Reformation (Luther in particular) shifts the weight. Sola fide, sola scriptura — the individual subject comes to God directly, without ecclesiastical mediation; conscience becomes the authority before which the subject is responsible. The formula attributed to Luther, “Here I stand, I can do no other” — a matter of tradition, not attested in the records of the Diet — is the birth formula of modern conscience-morality. But even here the standards still lie outside conscience — in scripture, in revelation. Conscience is an organ of reception and examination, not itself a source.
The Enlightenment and Kant accomplish the decisive step. In Kant, the moral law is no longer given from outside — by God, by tradition, by a doctrine of virtues — but arises from the reason of the subject itself. The categorical imperative is the form in which reason gives itself its own law. With this, self-reflexive inwardness is established as the source of morality; conscience is no longer merely the voice of an authority, but the will’s self-examination before its own rational standard. It is precisely this form that Hegel unfolds in the following sections in the movement purpose — intention — conscience. This is the modern morality, not a timeless determination.
The distinction between genesis and validity is instructive here. Genetically, modern conscience-morality arose from a long movement — from Augustine through the Reformation to Kant — that is unthinkable apart from the specific religious, political, and social conditions of Europe. It was not universally present. In terms of validity, however, it has a justification that reaches beyond its historical genesis: if the human being is taken seriously as a thinking, rational being, then he must be expected — and granted the right — to answer for his actions before his own rational conscience. Recognizing the subject as a thinking being demands recognizing inwardness as a legitimate moral authority. That the form in which this recognition historically arose is specifically European does not exclude the possibility that the matter at issue reaches further.
The Hegelian treatment of morality that now follows therefore does not develop the general concept of a historically invariant morality, but rather modern morality in its reflected form. It follows from this, too, that morality in this form can stand as a sphere of its own validity alongside abstract right — a position that was not possible in this way in earlier forms of life, because there what we think of as morality and what we think of as right had not come apart from one another in the same manner.