Sections 132 and 137 of Hegel's Outlines of the Philosophy of Right are, like most other sections, very rich. The main aim in these sections is to arrive at a clear definition of conscience, as well as the distinction between formal and true conscience.
These sections fall under the "morality" section. Morality is Hegel's name for a purely subjective subject. In other words, a moral subject is a subject which has as its contents subjective contents only. I will come back to what this means later. Meanwhile, I would first like to highlight two key terms in these sections.
Insight and Principles
The first is insight. This figures prominently in section 132. On Hegel's usage of that term in this context, insight is a collection of reflections on a subject-matter. For example, when I gain insight into whether stealing is morally permissible or not, I only come to have an insight into something which is externally related to stealing. In other words, by coming to see more the morality of stealing, I do not gain any insight into what stealing is objectively. Hegel says this unambiguously: "This right of insight is distinct from the right of insight in respect of action as such" (§132). Insight is a special kind of knowledge, a knowledge whose subject-matter is something subjective.
The second is principles This is the key term of section 137. Hegel thinks that principles are essentially objective, as opposed to subjective. For Hegel, objectivity is always defined as a negation of subjectivity. In the context of these sections, something is subjective if it exists as a relation only to itself, i.e. to something subjective. For example, insight is subjective in so far as it only relates to subjective reflections concerning an action. In comparison, insight becomes objective, and thus knowledge, when its subject-matter comes to include something which goes beyond the self-relation of the subject. A comparison of the following two propositions would clarify this distinction.
(1) Stealing is morally wrong because it is morally wrong to harm someone else.
(2) Stealing harms someone else.
(1) is subjective, because it does not tell us anything about the real effects of stealing. It only tells us how a subject judges stealing, and why the subject judges so. In comparison, (2) is objective, because it tells us something true about stealing regardless of what the subject happens to think about stealing.
For Hegel, principles are objective in the sense that (2) is objective. That is, if I know something about a principle, I also know something objectively true about an action. For example, assuming that we already have some knowledge of what private property is, a proposition such as the following counts as knowledge of the objective.
(3) Stealing is a violation of the principle of private property.
Here, the proposition expresses my knowledge about something objective in the act of stealing, because the proposition asserts the relation between a universal principle and an action whose nature is defined in terms of that principle.
It might be difficult to grasp the metaphysical status of principles according to our common sense distinction between nature and mind. After all, unlike physical or psychological harm, a violation of a principle does not seem to appear in space and time. Nonetheless, common sense also tells us that principles do have more than just spatio-temporal reality. The best way to understand what a principle is for Hegel is, I suggest, the following.
A principle is that part of a universally shared and known thought which has no spatio-temporal extension.
The key here, I think, is to not confuse the subjective-objective distinction with the mind-nature distinction. Principles are mental kinds, but they are not "subjective" in the sense that morality is subjective. The existence of principles presupposes the existence of at least one subject, but a principle is not merely a relation of one subject to itself. This is the metaphysical difference between insight and principles.
Formal and True Conscience
Formal conscience is related to principles but does not have principles as its content. Hegel is unambiguous about this too when he writes that "conscience lacks this objective content and so its character for itself is that of infinite formal self-certainty" (§137). Compared to this, true conscience is "the disposition to will what is good in and for itself. It therefore has fixed principles and these are for it determinations and duties that are objective for themselves" (§137). This distinction can be understood as two interpretations of a particular kind of proposition. This kind of proposition combines insight (i.e. reflections on an action) with knowledge of principles (i.e. what an action is according to a principle.) For example, the following proposition.
(4) Paying taxes upholds the principle of public good. Therefore, paying taxes is good.
The first sentence is a piece of knowledge. Without upholding the principle of public good, paying taxes would not be the payment of taxes. Rather, it would instead become a payment of money, or perhaps a making of an investment. The tax-ness of the tax is introduced when the act of paying money is combined with a particular principle. Therefore, the proposition genuinely gives an objective determination to the action.
The second sentence does not tell us what paying taxes is. Rather, it tells us what the subject thinks about paying taxes. It is therefore an insight in the sense defined above.
In true conscience, I take it that the "therefore" is expressed objectively in my disposition. This plays out like this. I pay taxes. Then, one day, a Socratic friend comes along and asks me what it means for me to pay taxes, and why I pay them. I feel puzzled, because I do not have much to say about what it means to pay taxes. If anything, I merely think that someone out there, perhaps the government, knows it, but I also feel that there is no need for me, specifically, to know that meaning. So I reply to my friend, "Look, I don't know, but they say that paying taxes helps the public." Here, I essentially tell my friend that I have objective knowledge of what paying taxes means. Now if I have true conscience, then I let that follow by: "that's why they say it's good, and I guess I agree because I pay taxes." Here, I am telling my friend that he should look at my disposition rather than listen to my subjective reflections.
In comparison, formal conscience only allows the subject to let the "therefore" hold subjectively. That is, while I have knowledge of the principle which determines the payment of taxes as such, the principle has not yet "seeped into" my disposition and therefore my actions. Therefore, I might or might not pay taxes while believing nonetheless that (4) is true.
In section 137, Hegel is chiefly interested in describing what formal conscience is. However, in order to do so, Hegel feels the need to compare it to true conscience. This comparison allows Hegel to comment on the "ambiguity" of the concept of conscience.
The ambiguity in connection with conscience lies therefore in this: it is presupposed to mean the identity of subjective knowing and willing with the true good, and so is claimed and recognized to be something sacrosanct; and yet at the same time, as the mere subjective reflection of self-consciousness into itself, it still claims for itself the title due, solely on the strength of its rational content which is valid in and for itself, to that identity alone. (§137)
This passage seems to suggest that formal conscience is a
misunderstood true conscience. However, since knowledge makes a real difference in the case of mental kinds (i.e. knowing that
x makes something
x just in case that something belongs not to nature but to mind,) formal conscience is real too. The subject already has that disposition which corresponds to the true version of his conscience. Yet, due to his relating only to himself as an individual, the subject misses his disposition and instead thinks that his insight alone is what counts as essential to his conscience. In this way, the subject has formal conscience.
Thoreau's Refusal to Pay His Poll Tax
Hegel's discussion in sections 132 and 137 of conscience sheds much light on how to understand the philosophical content of Thoreau's 1849 lecture on civil disobedience. The lecture is passionately and eloquently delivered, yet its main thesis or its arguments are not very clear. It first needs to be put in the context of Thoreau's being jailed for one year due to his refusing to pay the poll tax. By refusing, Thoreau was protesting against the U.S. invasion of Mexico. The lecture is a defense of why Thoreau thinks he did the right thing.
Thoreau's lecture appeals to conscience. Specifically, Thoreau challenges the view that the majority is always right. He thinks that the majority rules not because it is always right but rather because it is "the strongest" (6). This is not necessarily true, as the "real" majority, the slaves and the poor, had no right to vote. Rather, Thoreau would have been more accurate if he simply said that the strongest rules because they are the strongest. In any case, Thoreau's main point is that conscience provides a higher justification than majority vote. Moreover, Thoreau correctly points out that something being legal does not make that something good (7).
These distinctions fit well into Hegel's distinction between principles and insight. The right of conscience which Thoreau is asserting is essentially the right of insight, that is, the right of determining the rightness or wrongness of an action according to one's subjective reflection on that action.
Moreover, Thoreau makes the connection between supporting a government and supporting the principles which that government upholds. Thus, Thoreau writes that he would not like to be associated with the U.S. government because the U.S. government upholds slavery (in 1849, of course) (8). And how does Thoreau know that slavery, qua principle, is wrong? Because his conscience tells him that it is so.
Thoreau furthermore evokes the distinction between formal and true conscience when he criticizes his fellow countrymen who say they are against slavery but who do nothing. "There are thousands who are
in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing" (10). It is clear why the opinion of these men hardly make them conscientious. Thoreau focuses on what they are disposed to do, rather than what they say, in evaluating whether they really have a conscience.
It is easy to read Thoreau's lectures as a string of truisms. It is easy to see Thoreau as merely expressing what Gandhi would later say, namely, "be the change you wish to see." In a sense, that is what it means to have true conscience, even according to Hegel's definition. However, that is philosophically not satisfactory. The more difficult questions must be asked against these truisms.
Let's say that the following proposition expressed Thoreau's judgement.
(5) Paying the poll tax upholds the U.S. government's principle that invasion is good. However, I think that invasion is wrong. Therefore, I refuse to pay my poll tax.
The first sentence expresses knowledge of something objective - namely, what it means to pay the poll tax - while the second sentence expressed Thoreau's subjective insight into the moral status of that action. The third sentence indicates that Thoreau has advanced to true conscience, that is, is trying to make his subjective will one with the objective principle.
The subject has an absolute right to have whatever insight it wants. Therefore, it is senseless to ask whether it is true that Thoreau thinks that the invasion is wrong. If Thoreau, as a subject, thinks so, then it is so.
Now Thoreau may be wrong with regards to what it means to pay the poll tax. Hegel's analysis shows that this is one of the places where conscience can go wrong. That is, if conscience is not based on the knowledge of something objectively true about the action in relation to a principle, then the conscience is misplaced. Let us assume for the time being that Thoreau is not mistaken here, and that paying the poll tax really does help the U.S. invade Mexico.
The most interesting part is the third sentence. Implicitly, Thoreau is still assumed as the one who takes credit for doing the right thing. That is, it is Thoreau's individual conscience which disposes him toward acting in that manner. In a subtle way, this is what Thoreau presupposes when he says, for example, "break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine" (14).
However, in true conscience, one's disposition is already constituted by objective principles. Therefore, there is something else going on in Thoreau's refusal to pay the poll tax which Thoreau fails to articulate explicitly. That is to say, Thoreau's action already contains a principle which can be universally known and be acted upon by all others in the U.S. When the machine stops, the source of the counter friction will fuel a different machine.
Unlike present struggles, Thoreau's own struggle has played out in history, and so we do have the material necessary for understanding what that counter friction was about.
