‘Does Hegelian Ethics Rest on a Mistake?’,

Hegelian ethics is often said to involve an account of self-actualization based on a form of social holism, such that the individual's well-being is then bound up with the well-being of others, so that egoism must give way to altruism. However, H. A. Prichard famously argued that this sort of approach to ethics rests on a 'mistake', as this position still fundamentally grounds morality in self-interest, and he criticised the British Hegelians accordingly. This paper will consider whether this criticism is justified, or whether the Hegelian's claim concerning social holism can be given weight, but without any such apparently objectionable implication.