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Why did Hegel think moral duty needs the concrete institutions of society?

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Fragment of a Roman fresco showing Socrates seated and draped in a white robe, with Greek text above, on a red background with visible cracks. — Philosophical anthropology Socrates, Roman fresco, 1st century bce; in the Ephesus Museum, Selçuk, Turkey.

For Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, moral duty requires concrete social institutions because he believed that human nature is shaped by the society in which one lives. He argued that Immanuel Kant’s formal moral principles were "empty formulas" that lacked specific content.12

Hegel sought to overcome the modern division between individual conscience and self-interest by proposing an "organic community" where an individual's identity is intrinsically linked to the collective. In this framework, the content of one’s moral duty is determined by one’s specific position in society—such as being a parent, citizen, or professional—a concept often referred to as "my station and its duties".12

By embedding morality within the practices and institutions of a rationally justified state, Hegel believed he could reconcile the modern freedom of the individual with the communal harmony once found in ancient Greece. He argued that these institutions provide the necessary substance for ethical life, preventing the autonomous subject from falling into the anarchy or isolation he associated with modern bourgeois society.123