The Role of "Morality" in Hegel's Theory of Action

Michael Quante has successfully shown that the “Morality” section of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right provides an account of the cognitive conditions that must be satisfied for the imputation of actions. In this essay, I argue that Quante’s picture of these conditions is misleadingly cropped, obscuring the fact that the specific cognitive conditions Hegel places on agency are much stronger than has been recognized, and of a different kind. This suggests a much different interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy of action, one that treats action not as a psychological matter, but as conceptually linked to responsibility in a juridical and moral sense.