Civil Society and its Discontents: Hegel and the Problem of Poverty

DIALECTICAL THINKING IN THE HUMANITIES

SPEAKER: Stephen Houlgate, Warwick University

This talk argues that Hegel sees in the corporations a solution to the problem of systematic poverty in civil society. Hegel understands such poverty to be caused by the “measureless” desire to maximise wealth and by the overproduction to which this desire leads. Corporations, however, moderate our desire for wealth by developing in their members an ethical concern for one another and by setting limits to the production of certain goods. The state also engenders a sense of common purpose within its citizens, but it does not make them ethical in their particular social and economic activity, as the corporations do. For Hegel, therefore, the principal solution to the problem of poverty lies not in the political state, but in the corporations.