Dietro le quinte dell’eticità: normatività e disposizione soggettiva nella Fenomenologia dello spirito

Abstract

The article aims at reading the chapter on Reason of the Phenomenology of Spirit according to the hypothesis that it can be interpreted as a genealogy of the concept of ethical life. I interpret these pages by understanding consciousness as subjective spirit and substance as objective spirit, as if what is at stake is how the subjective spirit relates to the laws of the ethical world and the gestation of what in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right is presented as the subjective pole of ethical life, the Gesinnung. I turn first to the opening paragraphs of chapter VB in which Hegel outlines the concept of ethical life, underlining the difference between ancient and modern ethos. I also read the following pages as the exposition of a series of figures corresponding to three modes of relation of self-consciousness with respect to ethical substance and therefore to three positions of self-consciousness with respect to normativity. Finally, I show how Sache Selbst is the result of common action and how normativity no longer appears as the result of an abstract concept of Reason. In conclusion I focus on the end of the chapter, where Hegel discusses the conception of law and cites Antigone as sittliche Gesinnung.