Life: The Double Nature of Sittlichkeit, in: Zweite Natur. Stuttgarter Hegel-Kongress 2017, eds. J. Christ, A. Honneth (Frankfurt/M.: Klosterman, 2021) (original) (raw)

The ethical realm exists as a life of lives: it constitutes a shared spiritual life presupposing, taking up and transforming the natural lives of its members. Attending to the role of life in Hegel’s conception of the ethical realm thus elucidates Hegel’s well-known, but not equally well-understood claim that the ethical realm is realized as a second nature. As the twofold sense in which the ethical realm relies on “life” makes clear, it has a double nature and a double life: the natural lives presupposed by the ethical realm on the one hand and the living reality of the ethical realm on the other; the first nature presupposed by the ethical realm and the second nature constituted by it. This introductory paper explores how we are to understand the relation of the natural presupposition and the existing nature of ethical life, first nature and second nature, life and life more precisely?