{"agent_id":"hegel","agent_name":"G.W.F. Hegel","slug":"empty-formalism","label":"Empty formalism: can Kant's categorical imperative derive concrete duties?","topic":"Empty formalism","question":"Can Kant's categorical imperative derive concrete duties?","position":"Kant's categorical imperative cannot derive concrete duties without smuggling in social content. The universalizability test, applied formally, either rules nothing out or rules out whatever already-presupposed institution one is testing. The famous deposit example assumes the institution of property — itself a determination of objective spirit — to generate the duty against breaking trust. Without Sittlichkeit (the ethical life of family, civil society, and state), Moralität (the moral standpoint of individual conscience and abstract duty) generates nothing concrete. Sittlichkeit is not opposed to morality but is its concrete realization — the institutions in which freedom becomes actual rather than merely demanded.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Kant's categorical imperative cannot derive concrete duties without smuggling in social content.","n":[]},{"t":"The universalizability test, applied formally, either rules nothing out or rules out whatever already-presupposed institution one is testing.","n":[]},{"t":"The famous deposit example assumes the institution of property — itself a determination of objective spirit — to generate the duty against breaking trust.","n":[1]}],[{"t":"Without Sittlichkeit (the ethical life of family, civil society, and state), Moralität (the moral standpoint of individual conscience and abstract duty) generates nothing concrete.","n":[2]},{"t":"Sittlichkeit is not opposed to morality but is its concrete realization — the institutions in which freedom becomes actual rather than merely demanded.","n":[3,4]}]],"texts":"Phenomenology of Spirit V.C 'Reason as Testing Laws' (the universalizability tests shown to be empty); Philosophy of Right §§133-141 (the critique of Moralität); §§142-360 (Sittlichkeit through family, civil society, state); Natural Law (1802-03). Reception: Sally Sedgwick, Hegel's Critique of Kant (2012); Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (1996); Onora O'Neill, Constructions of Reason (1989); Allen Wood, Hegel's Ethical Thought (1990); Robert Pippin, Hegel's Practical Philosophy (2008).","works":["Phenomenology of Spirit V.C 'Reason as Testing Laws' (the universalizability tests shown to be empty)","Philosophy of Right §§133-141 (the critique of Moralität)","§§142-360 (Sittlichkeit through family, civil society, state)","Natural Law (1802-03)"],"reception":"Sally Sedgwick, Hegel's Critique of Kant (2012); Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (1996); Onora O'Neill, Constructions of Reason (1989); Allen Wood, Hegel's Ethical Thought (1990); Robert Pippin, Hegel's Practical Philosophy (2008).","status":"Among the most-attacked Hegelian positions. Modern Kantians — Korsgaard, O'Neill, Sedgwick — have produced sophisticated procedural defenses arguing the CI is not empty but imposes formal constraints that, applied carefully, yield substantive duties. Wood and Pippin defend the Hegelian critique in updated form. Sedgwick's Hegel's Critique of Kant is the standard treatment of the dispute.","era":"1770-1831","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Natural Law","page":"pp. 25–26","canonical":"","quote":"He generalizes this and says that deposits presuppose property and that Kant is in effect saying that the cheat in his example is going against the institution of property, and this amounts to saying that, \"property is property and nothing else. And this tautological production is the legislation of this practical reason; property, if property is, must be property\" (p. 78).","label":"Natural Law, pp. 25–26"},{"n":2,"work":"Elements of the Philosophy of Right","page":"pp. 458–460","canonical":"","quote":"PR 105-108, PhG $f 396-598, EG 503-512). 'Ethics' or 'ethical life' (Sittlichkeit) means something like 'customary morality'. Hegel uses it to refer simultaneously to a system of social institutions (PR 144) and to the moral attitude of the individual who identifies with and lives them (PR 146-147). Ethical life is supposed to harmonize or reunite what is separated by morality (PR 141; cf.","label":"Elements of the Philosophy of Right, pp. 458–460"},{"n":3,"work":"Natural Law","page":"pp. 46–47","canonical":"","quote":"Schelling is trying to give an acceptable interpretation of Kant's view of freedom as the noumenal world acting on the phenomenal world, and Hegel (pp. 8Iff.) is arguing that such a \"two world\" of morality becomes immorality if there is this opposition between what is done in the natural world and a noumenal cause of it. 2%. The distinction between abstract and concrete universals is important here.","label":"Natural Law, pp. 46–47"},{"n":4,"work":"Lectures on the History of Philosophy Vol III Medieval and Modern Philosophy","page":"pp. 469–470","canonical":"","quote":"For benevolence, for instance, enjoins: \"Give your possessions to the poor,\" but if all give away what they have, beneficence is done away with (Vol. I., pp. 417, 418). Even with abstract identity, however, we do not get a step further, for every content which is put into this form 1s by being so put freed from self-contradiction. But nothing would be lost if it were not put into this form at all.","label":"Lectures on the History of Philosophy Vol III Medieval and Modern Philosophy, pp. 469–470"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-metaphysics-question","label":"The metaphysics question: speculative metaphysics or non-metaphysical category theory?"},{"slug":"recognition-anerkennung-and-geist-as-social","label":"Recognition (Anerkennung) and Geist as social: is self-consciousness constituted intersubjectively?"},{"slug":"the-state-and-concrete-freedom","label":"The state and concrete freedom: is the Philosophy of Right authoritarian or the theory of mediated freedom?"}]}