Chapter 8 - Ethical life, morality, and the role of spirit in the Phenomenology of Spirit

Summary

The Spirit chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology poses two important and related interpretive challenges. The first is to account for the fact that the chapter opens with a discussion of ethical life and concludes with a discussion of morality, a reversal of the order in which Hegel treats these themes in the Philosophy of Right. The second is to account for the fact that the Phenomenology includes a Spirit chapter at all, given that it has often been judged to make no contribution to the central project of the work. The two challenges are related because any interpretation of the relationship between ethical life and morality will be constrained by the role accorded to the Spirit chapter in the Phenomenology as a whole.

Several prominent readings of the Phenomenology conclude that the central project of the work is complete before the Spirit chapter even begins. Robert Pippin argues that the primary task of overcoming skepticism is accomplished at the end of the Self-Consciousness chapter, that the Reason chapter explains and refines but does not substantively extend this accomplishment, and that the remainder of the book presents forms of spirit failing to recognize and enjoy the fact that skepticism has been overcome. Michael Forster argues that the project of the Phenomenology continues through the end of the Reason chapter, and that the Spirit chapter is appended to give a provisional presentation of aspects of the system that Hegel went on to develop in the Encyclopedia.