Agon & Reconciliation: Ethical Conflict and Religious Practice in Hegel's Account of Spirit

Abstract

This dissertation is an account of how G. W. F. Hegel addresses the emerging issues of social ethics and cultural conflict in the <italic>Phenomenology of Spirit</italic> and about what he might have to teach us in our own social and historical context. In Chapter VI of the <italic>Phenomenology of Spirit</italic>, Hegel describes how conflicts over norms and authority emerge in different types of communities. He argues for the relevance of rituals and other social practices in confronting and overcoming these conflicts. This dissertation explicates Hegel's claim, implicit in Chapter VI of the <italic>Phenomenology of Spirit</italic>, about the priority of social practices in the institution of norms and normative authority. On my interpretation, norms and normative authority are generated and transformed through ongoing practices of agon and reconciliation. I argue that this is not the work of a god or cosmic spirit, as many interpreters of Hegel have suggested, but of ordinary human beings engaged in everyday activities. The dissertation extends this claim to contemporary debates in religion, ethics, and politics - debates about the nature of epistemic and normative authority, the varieties of ethical conflict, and the practices of contestation and reconciliation that sustain a religiously-diverse community over time.