ABSTRACT
G. W. F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit provides a timely tonic to the irresolute adventures in anti-foundationalism, for what Hegel presents in the work is an immanent critique of foundational justification in all its shapes. Hegel’s analysis of Abstract Right and Morality in the Philosophy of Right makes clear why ethical community cannot be absolutized, showing how agents cannot exercise any rights of community membership unless they are already recognized as owners and moral subjects. The standard for conduct in a naturally determined ethical community consists in the preexisting communal bonds, which directly contain the correspondence of the substance of the community and the particular activities of its members, who reproduce it by following their prescribed roles. The validity reflection internal to a natural ethical community can be seen to lead to this new configuration insofar as the given particulars of its roles and boundaries get sacrificed as the universal result of the incipient conflicts to which it is subject.
