In our moment when shared ethical languages seem impossible and where associational life is in decline, this reading and discussion group aims to investigate several related questions: What conditions do ethics require? Is it possible to create a shared ethical world that is neither oppressively exclusive nor so capacious as to be meaningless? Is ethics even a useful register through which to discern "a good life" or are they dependent upon other social/material questions? Readings will be decided by participants but will include Hegel, Marx, Lazarus and Macintyre. For the first session, we will establish orienting questions and begin discussing Hegel's Philosophy of Right: the Preface, and Introduction.