Content area
Full text
ALZNAUER, Mark. Hegel's Theory of Responsibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. x + 220 pp. Cloth, $95.00-Alznauer begins his study by citing Hegel's striking claim that the capacity for responsibility {Schuld), which Hegel equates with the knowledge of good and evil and knowledge of the will itself as either good or evil, is the "absolute destiny of human beings." As the destiny (Bestimmung) of mankind, responsibility is both "our essential nature" and our vocation-"a social and historical achievement." Alznauer's work unpacks this twofold claim by investigating: (1) the state of being responsible-what it means to be responsible for an action-and (2) the status of responsible agency-who is responsible and why.
Alznauer's philosophically rigorous and exegetically meticulous account of Hegel's theory of responsibility turns on five interconnected theses: (1) an expressive notion of freedom as being-with-oneself; (2) that responsibility depends not on a causal capacity but on a cognitive one, namely, that one have a certain kind of knowledge of one's own activity; (3) that an agent have a specific self-conception as essentially free, the attainment of which depends on (4) one's being "regarded as a responsible agent," which requires (5) that one be a member of an actually existing, particular state.
As Alznauer notes, his study intersects with two themes central to recent scholarly literature on Hegel's practical philosophy-freedom and action. Regarding these themes, Alznauer makes two essential points. First, the kind of freedom action presupposes is a "consciousness of freedom, knowing yourself as rights-bearing person," and, second, action in the strict sense is responsible action. By restoring the intimate connection between Hegel's concept of action and his theory of responsibility, Alznauer is able "to recover the true...