ABSTRACT
This chapter defends the thesis of social metaphysics as a basis for modern ethics in opposition to moral constructivism. I offer an interpretation of Hegel’s political and ethical thought that supports the thesis of a critical social metaphysics that can shape the moral agency of rational individuality and critical, rational reflection. If Hegel’s project is to have any salience for us today, it must address how the structure of the rational individual and the rational society are part of the same unified structure. It must also be able to provide for us a kind of practical reasoning with the capacity to grant us critical reflection on the prevailing social reality. As I see it, Hegel’s aim was not to provide us with another variant of ethical constructivism nor with a merely reflective form of practical reason. Rather, his philosophical project seeks to argue for objectively valid forms of the good and freedom that can be construed through constitutive (as opposed to regulative) concepts of rationality. As I see it, Hegel’s understanding of practical reason deals with the metaphysical structures of social reality that are both constitutive of and constituted by rational agents.
