Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
k. The tenth trope mainly concerns ethics and is related to manners,
customs and laws. What is moral and legal is likewise not such; for
what is here considered to be right is elsewhere held to be wrong. The
attitude of Scepticism in this regard is to show that the opposite
of what is maintained as valid law holds equally good. As regards
the ordinary understanding respecting the validity of this and that
maxim, _e.g._ that the son has to pay the debts of his father, the
ultimate and indeed only ground lies in its being said that this is
true in its immediacy, for it holds good as law or custom. As against
this the Sceptics likewise prove the opposite, saying for instance,
that the son has, indeed, to undertake the debts of the father by the
law of Rhodes; but in Rome he does not require to do so, if he has
renounced his claim on the paternal goods.[205] As in the existence
of what is determined, which is held to be true because it is, the
opposite is shown to exist; so in the case of laws, if their ground
is that they are in force, their opposite can be demonstrated. The
natural man has no consciousness of the presence of opposites; he lives
quite unconsciously in his own particular way, in conformity with the
morality of his town, without ever having reflected on the fact that he
practises this morality. If he then comes into a foreign land, he is
much surprised, for through encountering the opposite he for the first
time experiences the fact that he has these customs, and he immediately
arrives at uncertainty as to whether his point of view or the opposite
is wrong. For the opposite of what held good to him holds equally good,
and he does not possess any further ground for his practice; so that
since the one holds good equally with the other, neither holds good.