Kierkegaad’s Criticism of the Absence of Ethics in Hegel’s System
Kierkegaad’s Criticism of the Absence of Ethics in Hegel’s System

Summary/Abstract: Although Kierkegaard is often hailed as one of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century, he seemed, at least in the early part of his intellectual career, not to have understood the technical use of the concept of actuality or „Wirklichkeit” in the German philosophical tradition. To be sure, he was not the only one to misunderstand this usage; there was considerable confusion surrounding Hegel’s famous statement from the Philosophy of Right in 1821, „What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational.” This had been given so many negative interpretations that Hegel felt himself obliged to explain it again when he published the second expanded edition of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences in 1827. The formula was taken by some to be a straightforward defense of the social and political status quo and was thus seen as a justification of all forms of existing oppression. This is of course not what Hegel meant with this admittedly paradoxical formulation. [...]

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