Abstract

Hegel’s “Philosophy of Spirit” applies two different notions of ‘social practice’ – one as a condition of possibility for intentional action and another one as the living actuality within which an action is initiated and takes place. Both notions go hand in hand with their own logically distinct form of normativity – social normativity and the normativity of right. Whereas the first one can already be understood from the standpoint of subjective spirit, the second notion is at home in objective spirit or Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie. Stressing this distinction has consequences not only for a more differentiated account on Hegel’s philosophy of action, but also for an interpretation of ethical life – which should not be equated with the first notion of social practice. In order to mark the importance of ethical life for Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie, the relevance of objectivity for objective spirit needs to be highlighted, which according to Hegel cannot be derived from a process of inner transformation of changing attitudes of the acting subject towards the norms of her action.