Actualization of Rational Self-Consciousness: Society

B. The Actualization of Rational Self-Consciousness through Its Own Activity (§347-396)

Hegel now moves to the level of society. The individual self-consciousness is discussed in a progression of roles/relations to society. In the first the individual lives within the socially acceptable - a shallow form of living in an ethical manner (§349). The self-consciousness may, at some point oppose some social customs (it seems, when his desire disagrees with them, and he realizes that the social customs are not within his nature but imposed on him). This individual chooses to act selfishly, or for his own good only, perhaps to knowingly obstruct the functioning of society (§360-363). The desire or will becomes a law of a kind, but is unfulfilling in its individualism (§364-366).

As the self pursues this goal of orienting itself to the "law of the heart," it is frustrated by the realization that not each individual's desires and wills conform. If the self then attempts to make its own law a universal one, it comes full circle, realizing that what it means to do hear is what societal customs also meant to do: attain universality (§376). Hegel then runs this same description, associating the "law of the heart" with virtue and the social customs with the "way of the world."