community to keep aloof from the earnest questioning concerning moral conduct, the nature of the state, the rights of labour and property, and in general the relation between the individual and society. And in these days we are forced to listen to some one, be he a newspaper editor, a street orator, or a politically minded acquaintance, who is eager to add his authority to that of the law and the prophets, and to instruct us on all questions of right and justice. Everyday experience often makes it possible for one to detect the general bearing of Hegel’s argument in this sphere, even when his expressions are unusual; for, after all, Hegel too was a good citizen and lived in the common atmosphere.
At the same time there is much that may be strange to us in Hegel’s view. Judgements of his, with which the plain man concurs, are linked up by Hegel with logical and metaphysical doctrines which seem very remote from the point at issue; and as one reads one finds out gradually that the short introduction to the Philosophy of Right is a substitute for a very large scheme of thought in which there are examined many important principles which one is apt to assume uncritically from time to time as occasion arises.
This book is intended to help any one who chooses ethical philosophy as his point of attack in the study of Hegel, and feels the need of some extraneous aid, greater than that which Hegel supplies in the introduction to the Philosophy of Right. It does not profess to say all that can or should be said on Hegel’s ethics by way of exposition, but it endeavours to develop the main content of that section of the philosophy in such a manner that its relation to the whole and the principles on which it rests may become apparent.
I do not intend to discuss the development of Hegel’s thought; my desire is rather to present it in its mature form. It will be well, therefore, to state here at the outset where that mature view is to be found, and on what works and in
