Ethics in Progress, 2022, Volume 13, Issue 1

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    Table of contents
    (UAM, 2022-07-28)
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    Topoi of Classical German Philosophy in Progress. A Thematic Issue Dedicated to Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz
    (UAM, 2022-07-28) Adolphi, Rainer; Scaglia, Lara; Rockmore, Tom; Nowak, Ewa
    Preface by the Editors to the special thematic volume dedicated to the memory of Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz.
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    Reality or Appearance of Ethical Life? Hegel’s Analysis of the Market Economy
    (UAM, 2022-07-28) Honneth, Axel
    The article attempts to show that Hegel’s concept of “civil society” is characterized by a deep ambivalence about the value of the new market economy. On the one side, Hegel believed that the economic system represented by “civil society” succeeded like no other in simultaneously giving free reign to the desires of individual subjects and integrating them into a stable structural framework (I). On the other side, Hegel’s reflections are growingly overtaken by doubts as to whether, in light of its self-destructive tendencies, the market system can be as successful in guaranteeing individual freedom as he first envisaged it to be (II). In the course of this essay, it will ultimately become clear that Hegel’s attempt to redefine “civil society” reveals considerably more conceptual indecision and inner conflict than one might have suspected from the great system builder.
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    Hegel’s Concept of Right
    (UAM, 2022-07-28) Horn, Christoph
    This article examines the foundations for the legitimacy of law from the perspective of Hegel’s philosophy. In a first step, Kant’s justification of law is discussed, as Hegel takes the Kantian model as a central point of (critical) reference. Then, in the Section 2, I discuss Hegel’s reasons for rejecting the main strategies of justification of the legal order: natural law, contractarianism and legal positivism. This is further followed by a discussion of the meaning and scope of Hegel’s contextualism, according to which there can be no practical normativity without a certain historical embedding. Finally, I describe a more traditional met-aphysical reading (supported among others by Kevin Thompson) that I consider to be the correct solution, contrasting it with Honneth’s theory of recognition and Bran-dom’s pragmatism.
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    “Consciousness in Its Own Self Provides Its Own Standard”. Hegel and the Spirit as a Process of Thinking
    (UAM, 2022-07-28) Waibel, Violetta L.
    Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit develops not only the idea of absolute knowledge but also the notion of an inner criterion [Maßstab] of the spirit. The inner criterion or norm of knowledge is what, in the end of the speculative process, appears as the form of absolute knowledge. Experience and inner criterion are responsible for the development of the consciousness that has to become itself. Becoming and absolute, temporality and timelessness are the substance that becomes and is subject. The actuality of this method of analysis of spirit will be shown and discussed in this essay.
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    The Topicality of Hegel’s Concept of “Bildung” for Our Liberal Society
    (UAM, 2022-07-28) Zovko, Jure
    In the following article, I will explain Hegel’s definition of modernity from the point of view of his understanding of “Bildung,” since this is a fundamental and newly relevant theme of Hegel’s philosophy nowadays. “Bildung” can be transliterated as education, but may also be interpreted as a general formative or developmental process, or cultivation (culture, respectively). With the term “Bildung” Hegel also refers to the formative self-development of the mind, its coming to individual as well as collective flourishing. The objective spirit manifests itself in the culture of humans. However, education in the sense of “Bildung” does not take place primarily through the transmission of information, values, norms, etc. by the teacher, but through “experience” [Erfahrung], which signifies the conflicting process by which a spiritual being discovers its own identity or self, while at the same time striving for self-consciousness, which is in the process of self-discovery. Through education, the human mind develops its capacity for understanding, reflection and judgment, and thus overcomes its natural intellectual, spiritual, normative, aesthetic, etc., poverty.
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    The “Unhappy Consciousness”. A Paradigm of Reason’s Speculative Power
    (UAM, 2022-07-28) Scaglia, Lara
    One way to address the question concerning the nature of reason consists in inquiring rational anxieties such as the tension between changeable and unchangeable. The yearning of the particular towards the universal, the iterative, interminable quest of the thinking is namely something which seems to be proper of many systems of classical German philosophy (but not only). In this paper I want to consider this problematic focusing on the figure of the unhappy consciousness which is perhaps the clearest expression of this tension and use it to approach Hegel’s account on speculative reason. After recalling – in the first section – the figures which precede the unhappy consciousness, I will address the question concerning the historicity and universality of the development of the consciousness, asking if it is the case that the unhappy consciousness belongs only to a particular historical age (and needs specific historical preconditions) or if it expresses a general feature of reason or of human experience. In the second and the third sections, namely, I will try to defend this second interpretation by showing that the unhappy consciousness not only is central in Hegel’s system and is re-echoed in several figures of the Phenomenology of the Spirit but it is also central in other philosophical systems. For instance, as I will show in the fourth section, Kant’s ethical thinking could be read under the light of the unhappy consciousness, whose unsatisfied yearning towards the universal is the expression and source of the speculative or metaphysical thinking.
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    Hegel’s Concept of Action between Deflationary Approaches and The Science of Logic
    (UAM, 2022-07-28) Tereshchenko, Yuliia
    The research in this paper attempts to outline the connection between Hegel’s concept of action and the contemporary philosophy of action. Hegel’s concept of action has some features in common with the ideas of analytical philosophers, and might open unexpected integration of these different philosophical traditions, which would contribute to the development of both of them. A brief overview of ways to comprehend Hegel’s concept of action (from Taylor to Brandom) shows that the cause of ambiguous understandings of this concept lies in the complexity of Hegel’s approach. The following article highlights the tension between “deflationary” interpretations and the complexity of Hegel´s original approach. Further, by revisiting the Section “Teleology” in Hegel’s Science of Logic, the article illustrates how deflationary interpretations of human action can be improved, so that they are topical for both contemporary practical philosophy and the philosophy of action, beyond the unnecessary split between analytical vs. continental philosophy. Such concepts as “purpose” and “mediation” become crucial, as they have sociological and normative extensions in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, as discussed in the last Section of this article.
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    Lies, Lies, and Lies. On Truth, Dishonesty, Deception, and Self- Deception
    (UAM, 2022-07-28) Löhrer, Guido
    My considerations are typological in nature. A lie is a disingenuous assertion made to another person with the intent of deceiving the other person into believing both that the assertion is true and that the liar believes it to be true. This definition is morally neutral. It requires a further, moral judgment to determine whether a lie is a good or a bad thing, or whether, in specified circumstances, a lie is morally right or wrong. However, what if the truth is not only occasionally contaminated but lies are spread en masse in order to make the addressees question their ability to judge or to induce collective self-deception? Beginning with small-scale use of lies, related variants of dishonesty – especially large scale, propagandistic uses of lies – are conceptually characterized and evaluated. Lies can be systematically distinguished via their purposes.
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    Cross-Cultural Reflections on Citizen’s and Mankind’s Moral Identity as a Foundation of Community with a Shared Future
    (UAM, 2022-07-28) Yang, Shaogang
    Citizens’ moral identity is not only reflected on the individual level, but also in terms of belongingness, community, and even cosmopolitanism. It is the basic demand of a community with a shared future in morality. Moral identity is closely related to moral behavior, and the study of moral identity can predict one’s moral behavior. Community is the cultural basis of citizens’ moral identity. To study citizens’ moral identity in the community can also enable one to predict people’s moral behavior in that community. At present, the construction of a community with a shared future still lacks a species moral identity generally recognized by all cultures and countries. In order to achieve that goal, we must strengthen cultural inclusion, advocate and practice species moral identity of a community with a shared future. Species moral identity is based on the existence of humankind as a species with autonomous identity, so it is necessary to establish the mechanism of cultural respect and equal discussion, and to strengthen the construction of the species moral identity. Only in that way can we accomplish the mission of establishing species moral identity. In the following paper, I will advocate for these ideas with Kant’s and Marx’ thoughts.
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    Social and Institutional Dimensions of Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition (by Marcin J. Byczyński, 2021). A Book Review with a Contextual ‘Surplus’
    (UAM, 2022-07-28) Nowak, Ewa
    The review addresses the recent monograph Social and Institutional Dimensions of Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition by Marcin J. Byczyński (Łódź University Press, Jurisprudence Series, Vol. 17/2021, pp. 1–273). Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz was the external reviewer of the doctoral dissertation which gave rise to the book. The essential contributions of this book are discussed against the background of former and pioneering recognition research from the Polish context, including this by Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz and Marek Siemek. In addition, they are supplemented by Hegel’s three rights of freedom and further vital themes. This provides the following review with a contextual ‘surplus.’ Byczyński’s monograph considerably advances an important Warsaw-Poznań research strand and is notable for its originality among the books devoted to Honneth’s Theory of Recognition.
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    The Aesthetic Implications of Fichte on Feeling
    (UAM, 2022-07-28) Lohmann, Petra
    The article discusses the connection between art and emotion in Fichte’s work and its contemporary reception by the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. For the latter, not only selected architectural theoretical studies but also Schinkel’s ideal architectural designs are consulted. Schinkel knew Fichte personally and held him in high esteem. This is evidenced by some of Schinkel’s verbatim references to various forms of the Wissenschaftslehre and its sub-disciplines, as well as his extremely precise transcripts of lectures around the Berlin versions of the Wissenschaftslehre (around 1800). Schinkel was not only interested in the political and religious implications of Fichte’s theory of a cultural history of humankind, but his engagement with Fichte is also characterized above all by the theory of consciousness. This aspect plays a central role in the article. In recourse to the aesthetic emotion of the mind, a main concern of Fichte’s philosophy is to be placed in the horizon of architecture, which manifests itself in these questions: how does one convey a realisation in such a way that the recipient reconstructs it almost independently and it becomes a practical value for him as a criterion for his orientation in life? And furthermore – related to the research discourse on Fichte, which has only recently taken note of his aesthetic position and in particular his comments on architecture – how can this model of cognition be applied in his work from an architect’s point of view? In the investigation part on Fichte for this, first the feeling is reconstructed within the framework of the scientific-systematic philosophy as the reason of consciousness, in order to show with it the instance of the question relevant for Schinkel about the pedagogical effectiveness of a life-practical cultivating architecture. In the examination section on Schinkel, it is shown how Schinkel, in the horizon of Fichte, undertakes a determination of the relationship between feeling and ratio, with which he, for his part, establishes architecture as an instrument of cultivation.
Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
Biblioteka Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
Ministerstwo Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego