Equity in a severe style: the phenomenology of spirit, conscience and critical legal thinking

The outline of a critical approach to equity can be found in Hegel’s 5 Phenomenology of Spirit. For Hegel, equity is essential to the articulation of the moral subjectivity of market actors. Equity as ‘moral conscience’ must be located within the concept of objective spirit as an authentic way of grasping the complexity of a normative order and its location in a broader socio-economic context. However, following Gillian Rose, the claim to ethical order made by 10 bourgeois market society is profoundly problematic. Rose’s argument points towards a study of the relationship of equity and ‘the market’ as the misrecognition of ethical community; an insight that suggests a more extended critical Marxist approach to equity might be possibl