Ethical Mediation in Hegel's Philosophy of Right

ASSALONE, EDUARDO FRANCISCO

Hegel-Studien

Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Lugar: Bochum; Año: 2021 vol. 55 p. 103 - 121

0073-1587

The present paper seeks to outline the concept of ethical mediation (sittliche Vermittlung) with a view to finding common ground in the divergent ways it has been read in Hegel´s Philosophy of Right. These are classified in four groups ranging from least to most general. First, I tackle ethical mediation as part of a global historical process whose goal is the reconciliation of the universal and the particular. According to this process, every social and political institution, inasmuch as it is rational, is also an ethical mediation. Second, I consider a narrower sense of ethical mediation, namely, as a twofold process of reciprocl mediation between the social and the political. Third, I present the interpretations of ethical mediation as a part of the ?syllogism of syllogisms that Hegel discusses in a passage of the Logic. Finally, the analysis of these syllogisms is extended to take in a broader argument concerning the internal structure of the State and the separation of powers. On the basis of this overview of the different readings of the Philosophy of Right, I conclude that the greater the precision with which ethical mediation is defined, the more restricted its scope. Yet these various attempts to reconstruct the concept should not be set off against one another as mutually and radically incompatible. On the contrary, they can be seen as four levels of meaning of ethical mediation, each less general and more precise than the last, and all perfectly compatible with one another.