Can anybody help me out with ‘what is sittlichkeit’? I could really do with an indepth answer. Also, how is it useful in a philosophical reflection on ethics?
I would REALLY appreciate any help anyone can give me.
Thankyou
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sittlichkeit
and for non German speakers:
translate.google.com/translate?h … D%26sa%3DG
-Imp
imp should get a distinction for all his quotes i think. ben can you put “master librarian” on his profile ?
Imp is great, but no one could do quotes like Polemarchus.
Aren’t appeals to authority fallacious though? Within certain conditions of course.
edwinajessel,
Perhaps this will help:
“Hegel goes beyond Kant…in making this requirement dependent on one’s recognition (or acknowledgment – Anerkennung) as a subject by other self-consciousnesses whom one recognises in turn. In short, one’s self-consciousness is in no sense direct, as it was for Descartes, for example. It comes about only indirectly via one’s recognising other conscious subjects’ recognition of oneself!â€
“Hegel’s discussion of spirit starts from what he calls “Sittlichkeit†(translated as “ethical order†or “ethical substanceâ€), “Sittlichkeit†being a nominalisation from the adjectival (or adverbial) form “sittlich,†“customary,†from the stem “Sitte†– “custom†or “convention.†Thus Hegel might be seen as adopting the viewpoint that since social life is ordered by customs we can approach the lives of those living in it in terms of the patterns of those customs or conventions themselves – the conventional practices, as it were, constituting specific forms of life. It is not surprising then that his account of spirit here starts with a discussion of religious and civic law. Undoubtedly it is Hegel’s tendency to nominalise such abstract concepts as “customary†in his attempt to capture the concrete nature of such as patterns of conventional life, together with the tendency to then personify them (as in talking about “spirit†becoming “self-consciousâ€) that lends plausibility to the traditionalist understanding of Hegel.
But for non-traditionalists it is not obvious that Hegel is in any way committed to any metaphysical supra-individual conscious beings with such usages. To take an example, in the second section of the chapter “Spirit†Hegel discusses “culture†as the “world of self-alienated spirit.†The idea seems to be that humans in society not only interact, but that they collectively create relatively enduring cultural products (stories, dramas, and so forth) within which they can recognise their own patterns of life reflected. We might find intelligible the idea that such products “hold up a mirror to society†within which “the society can regard itself,†without thinking we are thereby committed to some supra-individual social “mind†achieving self-consciousness. Furthermore, such cultural products themselves provide conditions allowing individuals to adopt particular cognitive attitudes. Thus, for example, the capacity to adopt the type of objective viewpoint demanded by Kantian morality (discussed in the final section of Spirit) – the capacity to see things, as it were, from a “universal†point of view – is bound up with the attitude implicitly adopted in engaging with spirit’s “alienations.â€
and,
“19th century German developments and disputes
Does the state provide new moral attitudes through the law that consolidate the citizenry (Fichte) or does it simply articulate (‘render self-conscious’) the morality already implicit in everyday life (Hegel’s Sittlichkeit)?
Fichte imagines that without law, civil society is a market place of competing atoms, whereas Hegel envisages civil society as a set of overlapping associations that are artificial extensions of the family
This debate opens up into the larger issue of the source of human equality: Is it something guaranteed only by the state through the law (i.e. no matter our social class, we are all equally citizens and equally obliged to defend the nation)? Or does the law simply articulate a natural equality among all humans (as in classical liberalism)? The former view reached its extreme with Hitler, the latter is now part of the German constitution.â€
and,
“Hegel’s response to these difficulties flows from his contrast between morality (Moralitä) and ethical life (Sittlichkeit). The alternative to abstract morality of the kind represented by Kant, in Hegel’s view, is for the formal principles of morality to be given content thanks to institutionalized ethical life represented by Sittlichkeit. Sittlichkeit thus resolves the indeterminancy inherent in the formal principles of Moralität in a way which is, he claims, itself rational. It can do this because, Hegel believes, customs and social institutions are themselves products of reason –reason as embodied in the logic of historical development. In other words, institutions are more than just a tie-breaker when the requirements of reason no longer serve to specific a particular action as right or wrong; they are themselves, in some historical sense, bearers of rationality.â€
Dunamis
this thread looks familiar
she asked the same on madphilosophers…
This topic is/was very detailed treated in “Morgenröte” by Nietzsche. My opinion is - and this looks maybe old fashioned - a society needs sittlichkeit in order run as a society. Society means living together under specific rules and laws. Some are made by the state via laws and controlled, others are agreements between humans, based on tradition, belief, education etc. and are part of our character etc. Sittlichkeit means making agreements in a society and control them as a society. We all do, control and profit from sittlichkeit. Lets say, sittlichkeit means respect “unwritten laws” and respect each other. I think, where sittlichkeit disappears, anarchism will break out in one or another strong degree. But this is only my opinion. I do not agree with Nietzsche in many points concerning sittlichkeit and its underparts. This means not, dat I do not like the critical dialogue with Nietzsche concerning this topic. Old Europe