C A T E G O R I A L T H E O R Y AND P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y

TERRY PINKARD
Georgetown University

One of the central issues currently animating political theory is that of

deontological vs. utilitarian or ~teleological" theories. The consensus seems
to be that there is no possibility of reconciling the two into the unity of one
theory, that both theories answer conflicting and equally strong intuitions in
equally good ways and that no coherent unification of them is therefore
possible. 1
In this regard, another look at the kind of program which Hegel attempted
to carry out in political philosophy might be helpful. If for nothing else, Hegel
is known in the Anglo-American philosophical world as the person who
always tried to unite opposites. This fact - along with Hegel's not exactly
lucid style of writing - has led sometimes either to bizarre interpretations or
total neglect of his theory. Although his penchant for uniting opposites has
most often been interpreted as a denial of the law of non-contradiction (and,
similarly, as a wholehearted approval of contradiction itself), there is an-
other, less pejorative interpretation of Hegel's program. This would see him
not as flouting the law of non-contradiction but as being simply the most
thoroughgoing philosophical compatibilist of the philosophical tradition; he
was always trying to show that many apparent contradictions among alter-
native categorial schemes were only that: apparent contradictions. Just as
many philosophers have tried to show that the apparent contradiction be-
tween freedom and necessity is only illusion (i.e., that freedom and necessity
are compatible notions), Hegel tried to show that a whole host of similar
contradictions - e.g., between the actual and potential infinite, mind and
body, etc. - can be resolved, provided that one orders and expands one's
categorial framework correctly. In fact, Hegel's whole dialectic can be seen as
such an attempt. Given this program, it would be surprising if one did not find
any such attempted resolution of some set of apparent contradictions in
Hegel's political philosophy. Some are, of course, obvious, like that between
individual liberty and an organic state, and have been handled in some detail
by Hegel's commentators. 2 But the attempted resolution of the conflict
between utilitarian (or, more broadly put, teleological) and deontological
theories has been overlooked by most commentators. 3
Although Hegel would not have put the issue in such modern terms, it is not
an anachronism to interpret him as wanting to execute such a project. The

J Value Inquiry 105-118 (1980) 0022-5363/80/0142-0105 $ 2.10.

9 Martinus NijhoffPublishers by, The Hague. Printed in The Netherlands.
106 TerryPinkard

historical relations of his philosophy to Aristotle's, Rousseau's, Kant's,

Fichte's and the English political economists such as Adam Smith would
alone justify such a reading. Besides his concern with reconciling apparent
opposites, there is also his oft-quoted remark that "philosophy is its own time
grasped in thought," and historically in Hegel's time as in ours one of the
central questions of political theory has been the reconciliation of an abso-
lutist insistence on individual rights with the more utilitarian insistence on the
priority of the general welfare. Hegel's solution to this dilemma was to
construct what I shall call a two-stage or two-tiered theory, viz., to claim that
deontological and teleological theories apply at different categorial levels -
teleological theories apply at the level of what Hegel calls civil society and
deontological theories apply at the level of the state.
Nevertheless, the suspicion may still linger that any such treatment of
Hegel is too anachronistic to be a treatment of Hegel. To resolve that issue
completely would require a close textual reading of Hegel's Philosophy of
Right and would be far longer than this paper. Instead, what I will attempt to
do will be to offer the outlines for a reenactment of Hegel'sprogram and not to
offer a commentary on Hegel's philosophy. I propose, that is, to outline a
piece of Hegelian political theory and not to provide an exposition of Hegel's
political theory. To do so, my strategy will be to follow Hegel's own way of
proceeding as evidenced in the Philosophy of Right. First, there is a sketch of
what constitutes willing and, specifically, valuational willing. Second, there is
an attempt to show how willing from a personal point of view is com-
plemented by an account of willing from a moral point of view. Finally, to
show how this latter account involves one in a doctrine of what will be called
social categories. The first locus of the discussion will be the fundamental
ethical notions of the right and the good. The good will consist of (roughly)
those objects which it is rational for people to desire; the right will consist of
that set of principles which specify what actions may and may not be
performed in pursuit of one's good (the principles, that is, which put con-
straint on the satisfaction of desire). The second locus of discussion will be
Hegel's claim that a doctrine of morality (Moralitdt) requires a complemen-
tary doctrine of"customary" ethics (Sittlichkeit). It must be stressed, though,
that the major point of this paper is not to give an account of Hegelper se but
to argue for a program for thinking about ethical and political theory which
should stand on its own (although its lineage to Hegel's own specific theory
should be obvious).

We may begin by making what may seem to be obvious points about the good
and not the right. The first question of moral theorizing is: what is the best life
to lead? This is not an arbitrary starting point, because without this rather
Socratic question one could find little point to the institution of morality and
moral theorizing. Principles of ethics must be at least partly consequentialist
 Categorial Theory and Political Philosophy 107

for the simple reason that morality concerns at least in part principles
constitutive of leading a life worth living (i.e., principles defining the human
good). Moral reflection and moral reasoning take place, after all, within the
ambit of people concerned not only with the justifications of particular
actions but also of kinds of characters and with whole forms of life. Without
such a background, there would be little rhyme or reason to the institution of
morality and thus no real impetus to moral reasoning at all. Moral know-
ledge must involve therefore not only our intellectual but also our "sensual"
faculties. This perhaps obvious point, however, has some interesting con-
sequences.
To see what these consequences might be, we must first reflect on what it
means to be a person (or "subject", in the language of German idealism). In a
well-known argument, Strawson comes to the conclusion that "person" is a
primitive notion, denoting that kind of entity to which both physical and
psychological predicates can be applied. Strawson's account is, however, for
our purposes too short-sighted. Non-person entities such as dogs, cats,
porpoises and apes can also reasonably be said to take both psychological and
physical predicates. One of the distinguishing predicates which only persons
could be said to take are the moral ones. r The former, psychological and
physical predicates, are indeed necessary but not sufficient conditions for
ascriptions ofpersonhood. The conjunction of the three is, however, sufficient
(note also that the first two are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the
ascriptions of the third). To be a moral agent is not merely to be a physical
entity with a capacity for being in certain psychological states; it is also to be
an entity which can reason appropriately about this,, i.e., which can make
moral judgments. Reasoning alone is, of course, not constitutive of being a
moral agent. To be a moral agent is not merely to have certain intellectual
predicates ascribable to one but also to have certain "feeling" predicates also
thus ascribable. This can be articulated through the notions of a moral subject
and a moral object. A moral object is something about which it may be proper
to have a moral concern; moral objects are those things which have some
capacity for feeling, at least in the sense of being able to suffer. Dogs, e.g., may
be moral objects because they have the capacity for suffering. But dogs are not
moral subjects, for they lack the capacity to reflect on their actions and reason
about them. (Roland Pucetti has noted, for example, that we have a society
for the prevention of cruelty to animals hut not one for prevention of cruelty
among animals.) s To be a moral agent is thus not merely to be capable of
suffering but also of something else, viz., reasoning in a certain way. It follows
from all this that anything which is a moral subject must also be a moral
object, but not conversely, since to be a moral agent entails being an object of
moral concern but being an object of moral concern does not entail being a
moral agent. Morality, therefore, as an institution among moral agents
necessarily involves the faculties of the intellect and of sensibility, and this
perhaps makes it plausible to claim that moral reasoning involves therefore
both our logical faculties and our full sensibility.
In order to get a handle on moral reasoning in this sense, we should perhaps
108 Terry Pinkard

consider what we might call proto-moral reasoning. We can imagine a non-

social individual (one, so to speak, in the "state of nature") reasoning about
the satisfying life. His or her reasonings would take the forms of hypotheti-
cals: if I want to lead a satisfying life, than I must do X in circumstances Y.
The person, we can say, makes certain valuations. Values would be those
principles which the agent finds definatory of the good life; systems of values
would be those things which when combined with certain factual judgments
would yield judgments of the form, "one ought to do X." Valuations can be
expressed thus as forms of willings. Following a suggestion made by several
recent authors, we can construe willings as semi-judgmental episodes repre-
sented by turning factual propositions into statements of intention. (This also
follows Hegel's suggestion that willing is a form of thought.) 6 Thus, "I will
that - p " is "I would (that - p is the case)." "That - p is the case" is, more-
over, logically equivalent to, "'p' is true," and therefore, "I would (that - p
is the case)" -- "I would ('p' is true)." Valuings are thus represented as,
"Would (that - p is the case)," i.e., "Would ('p' is true)." For example, "I
hold it valuable that the door is open" = "Would ('the door is open' is true)."
When combined with certain factual judgments, valuations lead to willings.
That is, when a person values that something be the case and believes it to be
possible that it be the case and believes that his or her doing some action will
bring it about that the desired state of affairs is indeed the case, then an act of
willing occurs. Of course, not all valuations lead to willings -e.g., "would 'I
be younger' be true" does not (outside Ponce de Leon's belief in the fountain
of youth) lead to any willing. To value something is thus not necessarily
to be disposed to act on it.
But what makes all this only proto-moral reasoning and not full-blown
moral reasoning is partially because although the person is going through a
set of practical reasonings concerning the satisfying life (that is, engaging in
valuational reasoning concerning the good), he or she is doing it only from
what has been called apersonal point of view. That is, although the person is
reasoning concerning the good, that person is not reasoning according to the
right. The principles of the right would constitute those moral constraints on
actions which are necessary to achieve one's good (although this is not a full
definition of the "right"). Constraints on those actions would be unin-
telligible if there were only the personal point of view. Proto-moral reasoning
would have no place for such principles. Full-blown moral reasoning involves
not just personal valuation but something greater; it involves a consideration
on the part of one moral agent of other moral agents. We can phrase this by
saying that to value from a moral point of view is to value as a member of a
community and not merely solus ipse. It takes the form not of: "I would 'p'
were true" but the form of: "I as one of us would that ('p' were true)."
What exactly is a "consideration of other agents" which gives "something
greater" to moral reasoning? Morality as a code of conduct may be taken to
be strategies for interpersonal relations based not on force but on the giving of
reasons, v This is not to say that all moral codes rest on some worked out
philosophical theory which justifies them; reference to the Bible or the Koran
 Categorial Theory and Political Philosophy 109

may also count as reasons for moral conduct. Nevertheless, the aspect of
reason-giving is crucial to morality, for it is this that makes people moral
subjects and not merely moral objects. If this is true, then "consideration of
other agents" is consideration of them not just as moral objects (i.e., not
merely as capable of sufferings and enjoyments) but also as moral subjects, as
rational agents. That is, respect for theJreedom of others is essential to moral
reasoning. Without a respect for the freedom of the other agent, one is not
respecting him or her as a moral subject, a reason giver (note how one can be
morally concerned about animals as moral objects without being concerned
about them as moral subjects). Respect for others' freedom is thus not merely
one value among others but the supreme value of moral reasoning at all.
Consideration of another agent therefore involves consideration of them as
reason givers (i.e., as autonomous rational agents), and the "something
greater" of moral reasoning is the respect of other agents' freedom. The
minimal principles of the right follow from this basic condition of respecting
others' freedom. Thus, universalization - or willing from the point of view of
the community - is built into the notion of having a moral position. A
community is minimally constituted by people thinking of themselves as "one
of us," and this is cashed out in ethical terms as thinking of the other as equally
moral subject. To will morally is to will from the point of view of the
community of moral subjects - although, it must again be stressed that this is
only as yet a formal and not really a substantive condition. Morality as a
strategy for interpersonal relations among people seeking the satisfying life,
which eschews force and relies on reason - giving must incorporate this min-
imal notion of a community of finite rational agents. To will as "one of us"
means to will in terms of(possibly)justifying one's actions and so on to others
of one's community.
It must be stressed that this is as yet only the minimal account. It does not
specify, for example, how this respect for freedom is to be concretely fleshed
out. Moreover, it is conceivable that a society might freely decide to renounce
much of its freedom. Whether a society would or not would depend on how
highly freedom was valued. For example, in the institution of marital fidelity,
couples freely decide to renounce their freedom vis.d-vis other possible sexual
partners, holding (presumably) that the gains in personal emotional security
outweigh the loss of freedom. To say that respect for freedom is the supreme
value of moral reasoning is not to say that it is the only one, or that it cannot
be renounced in part. To decide how much and what kind of freedom is
valuable rests on arguments concerning the good life. (It will be argued later
in this paper that this is crucial to an understanding of rights and the interests
they protect).
Although this is not the full account of such reasoning, it nevertheless
allows us to see how moral reasoning involves both our faculties of logical
reasoning and of our full sensibility. The conceptual link between these
faculties is found in the notion of a circumstance or a situation (something to
which notably the phenomenologists have paid special attention). Moral
claims have minimally the form of hypothetical imperatives willed from the
110 Terry Pinkard

point of view of the community: "I as one o f us will that I do X in circum-

stances Y in order to Z." The notion of a circumstance or situation is thus
crucial in an understanding of moral reasoning. "Circumstance," "sit-
uation," and "context" are three terms playing roughly the same role in such
reasoning and are part of the grounds why such reasoning cannot be fully
"theorized." A situation is not merely a collection of atomic facts; a set of
facts becomes a situation by virtue of some human presence or lack thereof.
To recognize a situation as being one of a certain kind most always involves a
kind of practical skill, a know-how rather than a know-that. Contexts (es-
pecially moral ones) are specified against a largely ambiguous background of
human needs, desires and purposes; they are "organized" against this back-
ground. It is this notion of situation which is built into moral rules which so
radically "individualizes" moral universalization. The ability to disam-
biguate situations and to recognize circumstances as being relevantly the
same thus depends on an understanding (however implicit) of human desires
and so on, and this understanding is largely a practical, "subjective" one. It
involves, that is, an understanding of human sensibility.
Besides this particular kind of involvement of our sensibilities in moral
reasoning, there is also the more basic kind of involvement of our sensibilities
in the understanding of what a satisfying life is. This involves an understand-
ing of human wants and needs - that is, of one's fellow persons in the
community - and is analogous to other aspects of human reasoning which
involve our sensibilities. Putnam has noted that, e.g., wine tasting is not a
theoretical science but an art ("practical knowledge" in Putnam's terms)
because "the criterion of successful cooking or of a successful wine is a satisfied
human palate - and not just any palate at that. ''8 Moral reasoning without
any reference to human needs and wants but with only a blind gaze directed
towards the "rules" would be, as Hegel pointed out, the moral reasoning of the
fanatic and the terrorist.9 If moral reasoning has this minimal structure which
has been outlined, then it follows that some understanding - in a non-trivial
sense - of a community is already at work in it. Therefore, even at this basic
level, an (albeit partial) understanding of Sittlichkeit - of communal ethical
notions - is involved.

II

Were the story to end here, an obvious objection could be raised, indeed one
which would be immedi.ately apparent to anyone who had only an in-
troductory course in ethics. Moral valuations and moral willings have so far
been characterized as having an intersubjective form: "I as one o f us would
that - - . " It should be obvious that, in so far as the story has yet been told,
one could fill in the blank with almost anything (if n o t just anything at all!),
and hence everything would be possibly moral. What now has to be shown is
that some particular values follow from this minimal analysts. An axiologi-
cal doctrine must be added.
 Categorial Theory and Political Philosophy 111

One way of doing this would be if there was some established consensus in
the community as to what constituted a satisfying life. Then one could argue
that if certain values are intrinsic to attaining what everyone would acknow-
ledge is a good life, it would be irrational to will anything else. While in some
earlier, simpler, and more cohesive form of society, this may have once been
possible, it is nowadays apparently no longer so. A more contemporary way
out of the dilemma would be something like Hare's claim that the content of
the moral valuation or willing must be universalized, and that only fanatics
would take exception to certain kinds of universalizations. Neither of those is
the Hegelian approach. This latter approach wauld attempt to see if any
concrete values can be shown to follow from a Hegelian style of analysis - i n
particular, if there are any features of finite rational agents which would
justify an axiological doctrine.
To do this, the notion of respect for others' freedom must be filled out.
Specifically, this must be done by seeing what arguments can be given for the
value of freedom (in Hegelian language, to see how the idea of freedom in its
immediacy is concretely determined). These arguments hinge on what the
good life is taken to be, since it is plausible to maintain that such freedom as is
necessary for leading the good life will be the freedom that ought to be
respected. In order to pursue this latter proposal, we might ask what specifi-
cally is involved in the notion of a satisfying life. The key notions in this
regard are that of forming and shaping one's character and that of happiness
in roughly the sense of Aristotle's eudaimonia. Happiness in this sense is
enjoyment and is not the prime object of desire (as apparently somebody like
Hobbes would have it) but is "unimpeded operation," that is, it is what we
experience when we achieve what it is that we desire. Aristotle and, more
recently, Kenny have argued that the ultimate objects of desire are activities
or states. 1o People engage in performances of various kinds which result in
their being in various states; many of these states become capacities. Thus,
certain performances (drills, listening to tapes, etc.) result in certain states
(e.g., the state of having a speaking knowledge of German) which are capa-
cities (the capacity of being able to speak German). These capacities are
"practical" in character; they are skills ("know-how") which a person ac-
quires. Various activities then become exercises of these acquired capacities. If
the ultimate objects of desire are these capacities or activities, then enjoyment
would be the attaining and exercising of those capacities.
A character may be said to be partially a system of capacities (i.e., abilities)
ordered in some fashion. We thus both Jorm and express our character by
acquiring certain capacities (Jorming our character) and exercising these
capacities (expressing our character). The enjoyment of our own character is
therefore that experience which we have when we achieve the formation of the
character which we desire to have (which involves valuation), and when we
exercise that character which we desired to achieve. One's character is in this
regard something that is both an end in itself and a means to other ends, and is
something which we in part make ourselves. (The sense in which character is
an end in itself requires far more elaboration than can be given to it here. One
112 Terry Pinkard

of Heidegger's basic insights is his characterization of human reality - which

he designates as Dasein - as being that of an entity which is concerned with its
own being, i.e., is concerned with how it is for it, qua individual, to be. This is
roughly equivalent to shaping one's own character. Thus, the shaping of one's
character is - if this view is correct - the primary object of desire for people
and a point of reference in terms of which we can interpret many other desires
as specifications. The full explication of this assertion is the whole set of
analyses found in Being and Time - of which an analysis would require
obviously at least another paper.) In order to shape one's own character
adequately, one must have some knowledge of the "elements" to be shaped
(in this case, one's talents, etc.) just as one has to have some knowledge of
wood and its dispositions in order to craft a chair. Crafting a character (both
as an end in itself and as a means to a satisfying life) thereby involves not a
knowledge of "external" elements but a self-knowledge which requires at
least some disciplined self-reflection. That this involves close interaction with
one's social setting may be assumed as a fact of both commonsense and
academic psychology and sociology. It also involves a practical knowledge of
our own sensibilities.
Following from the value of shaping and expressing one's character would
be the value therefore of community. What kind of value, however, would a
community be? The kinds of things which individuals can value can be of
three kinds: (1) those things valued as means to ends; (2) those things valued
as ends in themselves; (3) those things valued as both ends in themselves and
as means to other ends (e.g., health, which is both an end in itself and a means
for obtaining other ends). The only end in itself, we shall assume, is a person's
leading a satisfying life. From a purely personal point of view, those things are
valuable which are means to an individual's leading a satisfying life. Thus,
from a purely personal point of view, institutions and even the community
itself would be justified only as means to that individual's maximizing his or
her own good (something to which a libertarian position comes close).
What would be the justification not from the personal point of view but
from the moral point of view? The plausible answer is that institutions would
be justified only as providing the means for members of the community (not
just me) being able to lead satisfying lives, and the community itself would be
justified only as allowing its members to lead satisfying lives. To paraphrase a
well-known adage, we could say that people come together to live in com-
munities in order not just to live but to live well.
We can now introduce a distinction of goods. Personal goods are those
necessary for a given individual's being able to procure those specific things
which the individual values. Human goods, on the other hand, can be defined
as those goods which are necessary to any individual's leading a satisfying
life; community, we shall suppose, is indeed one of those goods. This latter
assertion rests on the psychological observation that one could no more have
a real awareness or grasp of one's own good apart from communal arrange-
ments than one could have real thought without language, however con-
ceptually distinct the two notions in both cases might be. If this proposition is,
 Categorial Theory and Political Philosophy 113

true, then, as Hegel held, contractarian theories (at least of the Hobbsian-
Lockeian variety, Rawls being a special case) are ruled out, at least as ethical
theories, for such contractarian theories must have non-communal indi-
viduals as their objects of theorizing. Since non-communal individuals, how-
ever, could not valuate or will from the communal standpoint, contrac-
tarian theories must of necessity fail if the above propositions are accepted.
All of this may seem fairly straightforward and without significant impli-
cations until one considers one of the fundamental human goods as that of the
institution of moral rights (as distinct from legal and institutional rights). A
right in general we shall take to be an entitlement to something; to say of
someone, S, that he or she has a right to X is to say that S is entitled to X. "To
be entitled to X" means that it would be wrong for S not to have X. As
entitlements, rights can give rise to claims against others when those others
deprive one of that to which one is legitimately entitled.
The notion of moral rights provides the conceptual bridge between the
concepts of the personal good and the moral good and between the individual
and the community (it is a "mediating concept" in Hegelian terminology).
The notion of moral rights is conceptually linked with the notion of human
interests. A being may be said to have an interest if it has some good of its own
and can be said to have an (at least potential) concern for that good. To claim
that something is a moral right is to single out some interest or set of interests
as fundamental to persons. From a "social" standpoint the institution of
rights may be seen as a protection of certain fundamental interests of the
members of the community; from the "personal" standpoint, the institution
of rights is one which embodies these fundamental interests necessary for
one's leading a satisfactory life. A community without a notion of rights would
be one which recognized no fundamental interests of its members which
deserved protection. If a person seeks to lead a satisfying life in social
relations with others, then that individual would will that there be an in-
stitution of rights (given the above outlined structure of practical reasoning)
which would protect his or her interests. Latter day Hegelians like T. H.
Green apparently meant something like this when they spoke of a "common
good"; 11 rights, something necessary for an individual's leading a satisfac-
tory life in the contingent circumstances of social organization, are possible
only in a community having some notion of a common good, i.e., of what
counts as a fundamental human interest.
One can perhaps make sense of much of the traditional debate concerning
"natural" or :'human" rights in light of this idea. The notion of rights is
relative to that of interests; where communities and societies differ in regard
to what they take to be fundamental interests, they will differ in what they
regard as fundamental moral rights. But what they take to be fundamental
interests will be determined by what vision they have of human nature. To see
people in a somewhat Marxist way as essentially producers will lead to a
different view of interests and rights than if one sees them as, say, beings
which try to express certain kinds of psychological states. Thus, the concept of
rights may be the same throughout history, but it should not be surprising that
114 Terry Pinkard

the conceptions of rights change historically as the views of human nature

change. 12 Hegel himself noted this when he claimed that the modern age is
characterized not only by an insistence on community welfare but also on
individual freedom ("subjective freedom," in his terms). The value of freedom
will thus be reflected in the society's choice of which rights to liberty will be
enforced. The kinds of freedom which will be respected will be those which
allow for human "flourishing" (to use a contemporary term). The basic
interest in the autonomous expression and development of one's character
will thus - on the Hegelian style view expounded here - be one of the
fundamental interests protected by certain political liberties (i.e., certain
rights).
The concept of moral rights is thus the mediating term between the
personal and the moral good. Rights are possible only in communities with
some notion of a common good, and reasoning about them thus requires
valuations from a "we" standpoint. But they are protections of the personal
good. The institution of rights is thus the conceptual link between individuals
willing their own good and willing common goods. The concept of rights
embodies the conceptual passage from the good to the right. This is of course
different from Hegel's own specific understanding of this conceptual passage,
but it is in the spirit, if not the letter, of Hegelian theory since the notion of
rights as here outlined on a "communal ethic," a "common good," i.e., a
doctrine of Sittlichkeit which embodies some conception of a "zone" of
fundamental human interests.

III

Having finished the sketch for an axiological section, we can on reflection see
that what is incorporated into moral reasoning by allying it with such notions
as community and the notion of moral rights is a fuller distinction between the
right and the good. The common good implies certain elements of the right
(construed as principles for actions which put constraints on our desires, i.e.,
constraints on following only our own good), for the common good would be
impossible without such restrictions. Without at least a minimal notion of
restraint on individual interests, the common good would be unrealizable.
Now, however, the notion of social groupings must be itself fleshed out.
(Again, this will be an explication of the spirit, although not the letter, of the
passage in Hegel's Philosophy of Right from Moralitgit to Sittlichkeit). Can
anything interesting be said philosophically about such groupings which
would be relevant to moral theory? The question is one of what we might call
social categories. By this is meant not just humdrum empirical classifications
(such as "exogenous kinship groups"). Social unities are formed in part by
bonds of awareness between people (whether of each other or of shared
institutions and conventions) and by the beliefs which those people have
about what constitutes the institution in question. If that is granted, then one
might well ask if an analysis of such social unities in terms of the logical
 Categorial Theory and Political Philosophy 115

possibilities involved in such networks of awareness is possible. Intuitively,

this seems plausible: one could distinguish, e.g., between a social unity
constituted by the members each being aware of a code and various signals but
never actually seeing one another (a kind of secret society) and one con-
stituted by continuous interaction among the members (say, a football team).
We could call these categorial distinctions, for the possibilities involved in
such networks of awareness would be the possibilities of various kinds of
social unities (although, of course, the traditional distinction between the a
priori and the empirical which, say, a Kantian might make with regard to
epistemological categories would not hold with regard to social categories).
Nevertheless, whatever plausibility there might be for a program of con-
structing such categories, the question would still remain open as to the
significance of such a construction for ethical consideration. However, it was
for precisely those ethical reasons that Hegel proposed such a construction.
Hegel is, however, not the only one to employ social-eategorial distinctions to
justify ethical points. Rawls, e.g., does something similar when he argues that
utilitarianism unjustifiably carries over the principles of choice for indi-
viduals to the principles of choice for societies. The point is categorial, in our
sense. Rawls, for example, says, "if we assume that the correct regulative
principle for anything depends on the nature of that thing, and that the
plurality of distinct persons with separate systems of ends is an essential
feature of human societies, we should not expect the principles of social
choice to be utilitarian."13 Unhappily, Rawls does not pursue this categorial
point further. The significance of such a Hegelian style of categorial philo-
sophy for ethics may be considered by looking at what we can on reflection
take to be Hegel's reasons for pursuing such a program. We may then finally
see how Hegel proposes to harmonize utilitarian and deontological themes.
It is in the part on Sittlichkeit ("Ethical Life," as Knox translates it) in the
Philosophy of Right that Hegel introduces his social categories (ignoring for
purposes of exposition the section on criminal law in the earlier section).
There the crucial distinction for our purposes is between civil society and the
State; the point will be that one cannot understand this categorial distinction
without a reference to the related notions of the right and the good. Civil
society is an association of private individuals bound together for purposes of
self-satisfaction; it is, in other words, an association of individuals for the
purpose of each pursuing or securing his or her own good. In civil society,
there is no essential relation to others but only an instrumental relation; were
it possible, e.g., to replace people with machines which served the same
purpose, nothing essential would be lost from the standpoint of individuals in
civil society. The model f o r civil society is thus the market (indeed, Hegel
patterned it on his reading of English economists, particularly Adam Smith).
The justification, on the other hand, of the category is that it expresses a
possible social unity which embodies the idea of the good; it is that association
whereby people are linked by their individual rational desires for certain
objects. It thus embodies the notion of "subjective freedom," of freedom to
pursue one's own good.
116 Terry Pinkard

But a theory which utilized only this category would be incomplete as a

theory, for as it stands it expresses no adequate constraint on desire, i.e., no
adequate conception of right. For that the state is needed. The Hegelian state
may be conceived of as a political community, that is, ideally a community of
equals who discuss together - either directly or through representatives - for
the purpose of setting social policy. Being political, the category of the state
expresses an essential unity among people; for the purposes of political
discourse, people could hardly be replaced by machines. The function of the
state is therefore to be the embodiment of the principles of the right. It passes
and enforces laws which put a constraint on the satisfaction of individual
desire; it might also be said to be responsible at least partially for maintaining
certain conditions necessary for items like a public sense of justice (by
providing family assistance programs and so on), i.e., for providing the
conditions for an adequate Sittlichkeit for its members. Civil society, of
course, of necessity must incorporate some such institutions within itself, for
practical necessity dictates that people must join cooperatives, unions and the
like to further their own interests and thus learn to constrain their desires
according to the dictates of the group to which they belong; but these
groupings can only partially embody the right, since they are by definition
"interest groups." In civil society there could be only prudential and not
moral restraints; an adequate sense of justice (Sittlichkeit) could not arise. 1
It is only in a democratic state that the principles of the right as codified in a
system of justice can be achieved. Laws (ideally speaking, of course) should
embody this sense of right, but laws are passed and enforced on the level of the
state (the political community), not on the level of civil society. Apolitical and
not just a social community is necessary if the principles of the right and the
good are to be adequately realized.
Hegel's harmonization of utilitarian and deontological themes may be thus
viewed as follows. What Hegel is proposing in this categorial treatment of the
problem is what we may call a two-tiered theory. The two "tiers" are re-
spectively civil society and the state. Utilitarianism is a kind of theory which is
appropriate to the categorial level of civil society; there questions of the
general welfare and such are both appropriate and have predominance, for on
that categorial level the good and the maximization of the good is the central
focus. But deontology applies on the level of the political community (the
Hegelian state) as a principle of right putting constraints on the actions of
members of civil society. The state, e.g., is justified in Hegelian terms in
interfering with interactions on the level of civil society such as the market
where such interference is necessary for political ends (in the Hegelian sense),
such as protecting rights. An explanation of some of the conflicts in our
intuitions about these two kinds of theories may be therefore found in the fact
that individuals live in both spheres. The metaphor of the "tiers" is appro-
priate since political community can be seen to "rest" on civil society as a
"lower tier." The categorial levels of civil society and the state are two tiers of
human political and social life Which correspond to different intuitions about
what is good and right for people. We might thus put Rawls' earlier men-
 Categorial Theory and Political Philosophy 117

tioned point in a different way: whereas the principles o f choice for in-
dividuals m a y be extended to being the principles o f choice for societies, they
m a y not be legitimately extended to be the principles o f choice for political
communities. F o r most issues o f policy, utilitarian reasoning will be sufficient.
But for a full blown m o r a l c o m m u n i t y to exist, there must be also a level o f
political community, i.e., an association o f individuals rationally discussing
what constraints can legitimately be put on such "societal" reasoning.

IV

This constitutes at least in outline what I take to be the philosophically

sound aspects o f the Hegelian perspective on political theory. It obviously
shares m a n y points with other kinds and systems o f political thought; for
example, the notion o f valuational willing is neither original to Hegel n o r is it
restricted just to the Hegelian perspective. W h a t is, however, novel is the
"dialectical" connection between the more restricted a c c o u n t o f moral re-
asoning and the doctrine o f social categories and the h a r m o n i z a t i o n o f
utilitarian and deontological themes. I f the Hegelian idea is correct, then the
necessary c o m p l e m e n t to a doctrine o f moral reasoning is one concerned with
the rationality o f basic types o f orderings o f people. M o r a l theory would
require, that is, a categorial political philosophy o f the kind which Hegel
attempted to give.

NOTES

1. Tom Nagel, "War and Massacre," Philosophy and Public Affairs l (1971-1972, pp. 123-144.
2. Charles Taylor, Hegel (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975).
3. The exception is Klaus Hartmann. Cf. his comments on Hegel in his book, Die Marxsche
Theorie (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1970). Hartmann interprets Hegel as a categorial
philosopher who "mediates the Aristotelian notions of entelechy, the Fichtean notions of
right and the English national economist's notions in his doctrines" (p. 99). The presentation
of the Hegelian perspective being offered here is in the same spirit as Professor Hartmann's
reading of Hegel's specific doctrine.
4. This point about persons is taken from Roland Pucetti's Persons (London: MacMillan,
1968).
5. Cf. Pucetti, ibid., p. 10.
6. The following reconstruction is based on Wilfred Sellars' account of willing in W. Sellars,
Science and Metaphysics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), pp. 151-174. For a
similar treatment, cf. Anthony Kenny, Action, Emotion and Will (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.:
Humanities Press, 1963). For Hegel's construal of this, cj~ G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der
Philosophic des Rechts (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1955); English translation by T. M. Knox
(London: Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 226. "The will is rather a special way of
thinking, thinking translating itself into existence, thinking as the urge to give itself exis-
tence."
7 This view, especially the view on the role of respect for freedom, has been suggested to me by
H. T. Engelhardt. One finds a similar view of moral positions being ones based on reason
118 Terry Pinkard

giving in Ronald Dworkin's critique of Lord Devlin. Cf. Ronald Dworkin, "Liberty and
Moralism" in his book Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1977), pp. 240-258. (This piece was originally entitled "Lord Devlin and the Enforcement of
Morals".) The point is generally a Kantian one and is taken over by Hegel, who saw the
development of moral philosophy as a working out of the principle of freedom.
8. Hilary Putnam, "Science, Litei'ature and Reflection," New Literary History VII (1976), p.
484.
9. Cf G. W. F. Hegel, Phiinomenologie des Geistes (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1952), pp.
414-422; English translation by J. Baillie: Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind (London:
George Allen & Unwin, 1961), pp. 599-610.
10. Cf. Kenny, op. cir.
11. Cf. T. H. Green, Principles of Political Obligation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1967).
12. In Hegelian language ; the ldea (Idee) of rights has been embodied in more or less incomplete
forms in history.
13. J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 29.
14. Hegel speaks of "corporations" as belonging to the realm of civil society but as playing a
mediating function between civil society and the state.
15. Rawls, op. cir., p. 528.

Editor: A l a s t a i r H a n n a y
INQUIRY F o u n d i n g a n d C o n s u l t i n g Editor: A r n e N a e s s

Volume 22 (1979), No. 4

Are Luddites Confused? Dan Lyons
The Centrality of Problem-Solving John Kekes
The Roots of Epistemological 'Anarchy' Nancy J. Nersessian
Sherlock, Holmes - Philosopher Detective Wulf Rehder
Making Sense of History: Skagestad on
Popper and Collingwood M. Hurup Nielsen and
Jeremy Shearmur
Volume 23 (1980), No. 1
Democracy, Elitism, and Scientific Method Paul Feyerabend
Science, Reason, Knowledge, and Wisdom:
A Critique of Specialism Nicholas Maxwell
Creative Product and Creative Process in
Science and Art Larry Briskman
Epistemological Relativism in its Latest Form Harvey Siegel
Siegel on Kuhnian Relativism Gerald Doppelt
A New Science of Criticism Price Charlson

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