Praxis Seminar Series 2025-26: Session 5

Jason Yonover

Yale University

Martin Luther King, Jr. and G.W.F. Hegel on Moral Progress 

4 November 2025, 17:00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+1)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

 

Abstract

I clarify King’s commitment to moral progress, especially via tensions between him and one of his most neglected interlocutors: Hegel. Both agree that moral progress necessarily obtains, and in key cases by means of pressure that must be exerted upon states of affairs that the world-historical actor hopes are on their way out. But at least as King reads Hegel—I show via a variety of overlooked materials, including unpublished and never-discussed papers—Hegel is above all too quick to accept that such rightful revolutionary progress can or even must be inhumane, whereby advance takes place in violent fits and starts. King meanwhile distinguishes an alternative commitment to nonviolence, which he proposes as the true means of achieving moral progress, though he forgoes a naïve optimism according to which things could then proceed without any tension at all. I show that elucidating his vision of something like a smoother ‘dialectic’ sheds light upon his ideas, and even the relevant philosophical issues more broadly.

 

 

This event is funded by Portuguese national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., within the project UID/00310, Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa