Hegel's statement that self-consciousness is realized in ethical life starts from the awareness that non-reactive immersion in the social community is no longer possible for modern man than his time. From Hegel's perspective, ethical life is created within the culture and practices of an individual's social community. “Ethical life is a system of norms and customs belonging to a social body, made up of spheres of social interaction and interdependence in which all individuals are inserted”. (Philosophy of Law, III: Ethical Life.) More importantly, the individual must follow that ethical life and thus contribute to society himself. Ethical life is a stage of self-consciousness towards which Hegel sees the individual of Hegel's time living within himself and building over the course of his life. Hegel would claim that the moral individual will not try to dissociate himself from this, for his own benefit. He argues that reason manifests itself in the benefit of the individual rather than the social. By this he means that while previous forms of government and other institutions were based on a sense of community, modern government has dialectically adapted to the individualism of modern life. Some mentalities of modern life were considered dangerous to the well-being of society as a whole. These center on the ideal that people might be motivated by selfishness. Hegel turns this idea on its head, arguing instead that the selfishness of the individual allows each person to pursue their own freedoms and their own life by helping to build a cultural system - ethical life - that benefits the whole society. In this way, members of an organized social group resemble permutations or...... middle of paper ......es the recognition of humanity outside of norms, which are so commonly created by inequality. An alternative life for the modern individual described in these theories appears to be a moral life, outside of an ethical life. If Hegel believes that morality is the action of choosing between paths to find the right, and that ethical life is a stage of beneficial self-consciousness towards which the individual of Hegel's time is seen by Hegel to live and move without thinking of dissociate, then it should be entirely possible to pursue freedom and happiness outside of a culture or society. Works Cited Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Arnold V. Miller, and JN Findlay. Phenomenology of the spirit. Oxford [England: Clarendon, 1977. Print. “Philosophy of Law, III: Ethical Life”. Notes of sparkle. Network. 20 September 2005. http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/hegel/section6.rhtml