Darrel Moellendorf

“Will which is actually free is the unity of theoretical and practical spirit.” So opens the section of Hegel’s Encyclopedia known as “Free Spirit.” This text as well as both its immediate textual predecessor “Practical Spirit” and the introduction to the Philosophy of right comprise the mature Hegel’s attempt to give an account of freedom of the will, and mark a full departure from the Kantian standpoint on the matter. While Kant sees the evidence of freedom of the will in the moral ought, Hegel contends that the evidence lies in the actions of individuals within certain social arrangements.

Habermas asserts that his discourse ethics rests on two main commitments: (1) Moral judgments have cognitive content analogous to truth value; and (2) moral justification requires real-life discourse. Habermas elaborates on the second claim by making actual consensus a necessary condition of normative validity. I argue that Habermas's two commitments sit uneasily together. The second entails that his cognitivism is revisionist in the sense that it must reject the law of the excluded middle. Moreover, Habermas's argument in defence of the need for real-life discourse is unconvincing and his derivation of the principle which requires consensus is fallacious