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10 Cardozo L. Rev. 857 (1988-1989)
Hegel's Ambiguous Legacy for Modern Liberalism

handle is hein.journals/cdozo10 and id is 875 raw text is: HEGEL'S AMBIGUOUS LEGACY FOR MODERN LIBERALISM Charles Taylor* I am going to try to put together a rather long argument of con- nected issues concerning Hegel's contribution to modem liberalism, but more particularly to a set of issues concerning the relation be- tween law and politics that is central to modem liberalism. I think the interest partly lies in their connection. Hegel's contribution to modem liberalism is complicated, ambivalent, and double-sided. There is something very important in it, and also something poten- tially disastrous. I want to start from a very common distinction that is often made in political theory about the priority of the right over the good or the good over the right. A word of explanation of this hermetic language, which may be familiar to some but not entirely clear to others, is in order. We can pick it up first of all as a discussion of the nature of moral theory. There has been a powerful movement in modem times, from about the seventeenth century, to replace ethics which are grounded on the concept of the good, with ethics that are grounded on a concept of right. Let us take Aristotle as our starting point for ethics grounded on the good. In Aristotelian ethics, the key concept is a notion of the good life towards which we ought to aspire: the kind of life that is good for human beings. The issue of what is the right thing to do at any given time is determined for ourselves in terms of this prior, more fundamental, and more important concept of the good life. The right thing to do is that which will contribute, to put it simply, to the good life in any given situation. For a variety of reasons, in the modem period we have a widespread, and widely rami- fying movement against not only Aristotle as such, but against this whole structure of thought. Let me just mention some of these argu- ments quickly, because they keep surfacing. One argument derives from a set of reasons involving epistemology, or with a sense of moral skepticism. We are not as certain as Aristotle was about what a good life is. This is a contentious or uncertain matter, and we cannot base anything solid on it. That is an epistemological argument. * Professor of Philosophy and Political Science, McGill University. This Essay is adapted from the Keynote Address delivered at the Hegel and Legal Theory Symposium, March 27-29, 1988, at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. Copyright © 1989 by Charles Taylor.

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