Hegel’s analysis of “ethical life” in the Phenomenology of Spirit shows that we do not emerge in the human world as fully functioning adult human beings, but are characterized fundamentally by our belonging to a particular community with a particular self-understanding, one that we can never completely leave behind. In this paper I discuss this phenomenon, but I show also that these communities and the selves they support can never be taken to be unchangeable. Societies and selves also make themselves, and any form of social organization has to acknowledge and take shape around this self-determining force.
