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.(5) The laws and constitution of a country must be clear 232 Hegeland coherent, intelligible to the understanding of everyone alike(§211R).Although Hegel strongly endorses the principle of subjectivity,and although he uses it to justify all these liberal values, he stillregards it as deeply problematic.The chief problem with the prin-ciple in his view is that it is too abstract, i.e.it does not give aneffective criterion or concrete guidelines about which beliefs oractions to endorse.The principle is purely formal because it iscompatible with any content; any law or belief could satisfy it(PR §§136 8, 140).It does not tell us, therefore, which laws orbeliefs to accept, only that whatever laws or beliefs we acceptshould agree with our reason or conscience.In other words, theproblem with subjectivity is that it can be false or wrong.We knowthat a decision or belief is right or wrong, Hegel argues, only fromits content, from what it decides or what it believes (§137).For thisreason, Hegel argues, it is also necessary to recognize the comple-mentary right, which Hegel calls the right of objectivity (§132).Theright of objectivity claims that the decisions and opinions of sub-jectivity must be correct, i.e.they must have the right content.Justhow we determine the content of the right of objectivity we willdetermine in the next section.Such are, in very condensed outline, Hegel s basic agreementsand disagreements with both liberalism and communitarianism.But the most important question remains: Is it possible to uniteinto a single coherent conception those aspects of liberalism andcommunitarianism that Hegel wants to preserve? There is an obvi-ous point of friction: What if the state s concept of the commongood is not acceptable to some individuals, or even the great major-ity of them? If the synthesis rests upon force alone, the right of thestate to compel the individual to obey, then it will be artificial andcontrived.There are two strategies to resolve this problem.One is to say thatthere is really no possibility of a conflict between the state s concep-tion of liberty and that of its citizens if the state is sufficiently Hegel s Theory of the State 233democratic; then the state s conception of the common good willrepresent nothing more than the will of its citizens.Another is toreduce the conception of the common good down to nothing morethan the self-interest of the individuals who compose it.Since theaim of the state is to guarantee the freedoms of the market place,and since it does nothing more than ensure the opportunity for every-one to share in the goods of civil society, there is no real conflictbetween the state and liberty after all.Both strategies suffer from serious shortcomings.The chiefproblem with the first, as we shall soon see, is that Hegel s state isnot entirely democratic.The main difficulty with the second is thatHegel s conception of the common good is much more substantialthan the totality of the interests of the individuals who compose it.Hence Hegel holds that for its security, the state must sometimesask the individual to act contrary to his private interest (§324);and he maintains that the unregulated pursuit of private interestcan in some cases undermine the common good, which it is thepurpose of the government to define (§232).Furthermore, hisobjective conception of the good means that something has valid-ity regardless of whether people assent to it or not (§§126R,258R).Whether or not Hegel s synthesis is successful ultimatelydepends on how he attempts to satisfy and balance the rights bothof objectivity and of subjectivity.To understand his attempt, wemust take a closer look at his theory of the institutions and powersof the modern state.Before we do this, however, we must considerone of Hegel s central and characteristic concepts: ethical life(Sittlichkeit).ETHICAL LIFEThe concept of ethical life plays a pivotal role in the Philosophy ofRight.The exposition of this concept comprises more than half ofthe work, overshadowing the parallel parts on abstract right andmorality.The concept is so crucial because it formulates Hegel s 234 Hegelfundamental social and political ideal: the synthesis of thecommunity with the individual.But if the concept is important, it is also obscure.The problemsbegin with translation.The German word Sittlichkeit has no exactEnglish counterpart.It sometimes has the connotation of morality;but its meaning can be broader, including all aspects of humanconduct.The term has a specific reference to manners, to standardsof politeness and decency, as well as to what is customary andtraditional (as in the adage Andere Länder, andere Sitten ).The term canrefer to the whole way of living and acting of a person or people.Itis in this broader sense that Hegel uses it.He first conceived ofSittlichkeit as a translation for the ancient Greek ethos , which con-notes the manners, morals and whole way of life of a nation orpeople (II, 504/159)
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