Who Brings Ethical Life into Being? Social Movements, the State, and the Unfulfilled Promise of Hegelian Ethical Life

Abstract

Sittlichkeit (ethical life), as conceived by Hegel, does not represent a stable achievement of the modern state, but an ideal that collapses under the weight of its own internal contradictions. Drawing on Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right, the analysis demonstrates how civil society—far from being a mediating sphere—generates systemic poverty, alienation, and exclusion that the state fails to resolve through legal or institutional mechanisms. This failure reveals a fundamental flaw in Hegel’s theory: the assumption that rational institutions can harmonize particular interests with universal principles without confronting material inequality and power asymmetries. The persistence of these contradictions necessitates the emergence of social movements not as external disruptions, but as direct responses to the collapse of Sittlichkeit. From feminist struggles against patriarchal exclusion to anti-racist protests and environmental campaigns, collective action arises precisely where the state’s ethical claims break down. These movements expose the gap between formal rights and substantive justice, challenging the illusion of reconciliation that underpins Hegelian idealism. By integrating Marxist critique and social movement theory, this study reframes social movements as symptoms and agents of Sittlichkeit’s structural failure. It concludes that far from embodying ethical totality, the Hegelian state contains unresolved antagonisms that render Sittlichkeit unstable and incomplete. The article thus contributes to political theory by demonstrating that the contradictions within Hegel’s state theory are not incidental, but constitutive—driving both the collapse of ethical life and the rise of collective resistance.