Hegel on Second Nature in Ethical Life

Abstract

What does it take to be subjectively free in an objectively rational social order? In this book Andreja Novakovic offers a fresh interpretation of Hegel's account of ethical life by focusing on his concept of habit or 'second nature'. Novakovic addresses two central and difficult issues facing any interpretation of his Philosophy of Right: why Hegel thinks that it is is better to relate unreflectively to the laws of ethical life, and which forms of reflection, especially critical reflection, remain available within ethical life. Her interpretation draws on numerous parts of Hegel's system, particularly on his 'Anthropology' and his Phenomenology of Spirit, and also explores connections between his account and those of other philosophers. Her aim is to argue that Hegel has a compelling conception of the ordinary ethical standpoint which takes seriously both the virtues and the perils of reflection.

Life and Mind: Varieties of Neo-Aristotelianism: Naive, Sophisticated, Hegelian

“…She thinks it crucial to Hegel's notion of Bildung that he identifies it with the ‘attainment of a universal point of view’, by which she means the capacity to look upon one's cultural practices from a standpoint ‘from the outside’. See Novakovic (2017: 86, 102). My interpretation is critical of both readings of Hegel, because it describes Bildung as the concrete form that the actualization of a self-determining form of life takes, hence as the concrete form of the actuality of a generality that, as such, has no existence prior to this form of actualization.…”

Participative cultural productions of the oppressed: The master-servant dialectic through an Indian lens

“…Freedom and domination are persistent possibilities of human existence; we can only deal with them in determinate, non-absolute ways. Unlike in Heidegger and many later philosophers, we can notice in Hegel both the passive, prereflective and the active, reflective reception of culture inextricably interlaced with self-formation (see Novakovic, 2017).…”

Bad Habits: Habit, Idleness, and Race in Hegel

“…When Hegel says that the soul is here liberated from sensation he means that it is not captured by it, despite habit being the practice of shaping sensation itself, self-feeling itself. The crucial point is that the sensible content is ‘mine’ rather than ‘me’, as Andreja Novakovic puts it (2017: 35). Habit makes possible that very distinction between me and mine.…”

“…As Catherine Malabou puts it, ‘human “nature” is, for Hegel, always and already “second nature”’ (2005: 117). Andreja Novakovic, for instance, stresses that Hegel glosses freedom as actualized second nature in order to explore how the structure of reflection is ‘already present in what looks to be unreflective, such as habitual and customary participation’ (2017: 6). Simon Lumsden, for example, shows that the ‘appropriative’ relation to the body distinctive of habit does not signal entry into a ‘denaturalized spiritual sphere’.…”