Hegel on Ethics, the State and Public Policy: Comparisons with Immanuel Kant and Utilitarianism

Drawing on a wide range of Hegel’s writings, this book analyses the Hegelian position on ethical action. This position is systematically compared with that of Immanuel Kant, the comparison emphasizing Hegel’s insistence on a morality grounded in an ‘ethical’ context which essentially refers to the state rather than the agent’s private will. The argument proceeds to the relationship between the state and the various components of civil society, and to the interaction between the state and the individual, and feeds into the debate regarding Hegel’s status in relation to Utilitarian Ethics and liberalism. This book carries further the researches published in A History of Utilitarian Ethics and Immanuel Kant and Utilitarian Ethics and will be of interest to readers in the history of political economy, political science, philosophy and ethics.