Modern Corporations and Hegel’s Ethical Corporation

Abstract

Written about 200 years ago, the early quote of Hegel shown above demonstrates that Hegel’s philosophy remains timeless. But such a claim would be highly un-Hegelian because in Hegelian terms philosophy is always linked to time. Hegel has warned us against what he called Zeitgeist. In Hegel’s understanding, as expressed in his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Zeitgeist denotes something like ‘the spirit of the time’ or ‘the spirit of the age’. It is a general cultural, intellectual, ethical, philosophical, and political climate within which certain writings and philosophies – along with a general ambience, morals, socio-cultural directions, and moods associated with an era – take place. Zeitgeist combines the German word Zeit [time] with Geist [spirit]. Zeitgeist remains best known in relation to Hegel’s philosophy of history (Houlgate 2009). Nevertheless, the origins of the concept of Zeitgeist go back to one of Hegel’s predecessors: Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803). In 1769, Herder introduced the word Zeitgeist into German (spirit of the age). For Hegel Zeitgeist means that one is aware of one’s time but reflects critically on it in order not be asphyxiated by the spirit of that particular time and historical period. In an almost classical form of Hegelian dialectics, Hegel asks us to overcome something to which we are bound. This includes a thesis [Zeitgeist] and an anti-thesis in the form of reflection and overcoming of the Zeitgeist.