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Hegelian Reflections on Agency, Alienation, and Work: Toward an Expressivist Theory of the Firm

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Abstract

Hegel’s practical philosophy has important insights for understanding the ethical role of the firm in modern society. From a broadly Hegelian perspective, the firm’s role in society is to facilitate freedom, that is, the concrete realization of rational agency. It does this by providing the institutional structures, norms, practices, and modes of discourse necessary for individuals to link their subjective aims with objectively valid societal aims, embodied in the firm’s purpose. Accordingly, I first present a Hegelian account of the link between action and social structure, before arguing that the firm, when it functions properly, enables individuals to express their capacity for rational agency within concrete social contexts. I then draw upon Paul Adler’s Marxist analysis of the development of organizational structures and processes to support the viability of a broadly Hegelian account of the firm within a contemporary economic context. I conclude by outlining a number of practical implications of this account, before explaining its implications for two prominent theories of business ethics, the MacIntyrean perspective, and the Market Failures Approach.

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Notes

  1. Hegel (2008: 227).

  2. Compare Aquinas (1981) ST I Q. 82 Art. 2. Ad 1, “The will can tend to nothing except under the aspect of good. But because good is of many kinds, for this reason the will is not of necessity determined to one.”.

  3. To fully articulate the sense in which sustainability is a valid reason for action, for Hegel, would require linking it with the institutional structures of one’s community, rather than merely viewing it as an abstract value (see Moyar 2021), though this is not particularly difficult considering the potentially catastrophic impact of unstainable practices on human life and communities, more generally.

  4. By “crusade, I am, of course, referring to the Medieval military campaigns.

  5. Rödl (2018: 100) says, “Explaining thought, we turn away from any given character of the thinking subject; we consider what she thinks alone. In this way, thought, the act, is objective: it depends on no given character of the subject, but on what she thinks alone.”.

  6. Hegel (2008: 41) says, “In having universality, or itself qua infinite form, for its object, [i.e., in making rational agency its aim] the will is free not only in itself but for itself also.”.

  7. In part, this failure stems from an anachronistic attempt to assimilate Hegel’s critique of pre-capitalist social structures, to the Marxist critique of capitalism (see Cole 2014).

  8. It should be noted that Hegel does not reject the role conscience but argues that it should be informed by objectively valid standards, concretely embodied within specific social contexts (see Moyar 2011, 2021).

  9. As Moyar (2017: 91) says, “A key part of the story of the reintegration of the particular in the universal is that within civil society itself there are what Hegel calls ‘corporations’… Deciding what would qualify as a corporation in Hegel’s sense is no simple task, but I do think that this demand to find a more universal sense within civil society itself is something we can draw on as we justify or critique our existing institutions.”.

  10. In a related passage, Hegel contrasts the worldly individual’s focus on personal aims with the “knight of virtue” (2019:188, 190), who eschews ‘worldly’ pursuits, favoring pure moral intentions. But Hegel argues that the pursuit of virtue disconnected from the social processes of the world, is itself merely an arbitrary abstraction, “only in the mind,” lacking reality.

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  1. California State University, Monterey Bay, Seaside, CA, USA

    Caleb Bernacchio

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Correspondence to Caleb Bernacchio.

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Bernacchio, C. Hegelian Reflections on Agency, Alienation, and Work: Toward an Expressivist Theory of the Firm. Philosophy of Management 21, 523–544 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-022-00200-9

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