Commentary on Hegel's Freedom and Exaltation of The State

Hegel's Thought in Europe Currents, Crosscurrents and Undercurrents, Lisa Herzog (Ed.), Palgrave, 2013, 2013

In the works of Kant (1724–1804), Fichte (1762–1814), and Hegel, German idealism effected a philosophical revolution in its new conceptions of reason, and of reason’s practical role in legislating for morality and politics. The central tenet of Hegel’s idealism is the unity of thought and being, a processual unity secured by the historical realization of reason in the world. Hegel’s philosophy provided a self-conscious comprehension of this unity and its expressions in existence. In his Philosophy of Right (1820–1821), Hegel had asserted that the real is rational, and the rational is real;1 but this is a speculative claim, affirming both identity and non-identity. Its ambiguity had serious exegetical consequences for Hegel’s students and followers. The reality or effectiveness of reason could be understood to signify an ongoing historical process, still burdened with contradictions and insufficiencies that must be purged away in the course of further development. Alternatively, Hegel’s claim might appear to confer rational legitimacy on the existing political and social order. The question is the extent to which the prevailing forms of religion, politics and society satisfy the demands of reason and freedom, and how are these standards themselves to be understood and defended? The Hegelian heritage split in response to these questions.

According to Hegel, the development of consciousness is determined by God the absolute and the process of development must be rational and necessary, which provides little room for individual's freedom. However, like other philosophers, due to the consideration on the problem of retribution of ethical responsibility to individuals, Hegel tries to argue that individual's freedom is still compatible with his deterministic philosophy of history. However, based upon Kosch's interpretation of Kierkegaard's two senses of freedom, this paper argue that under Hegel's philosophy of history freedom is impossible. For under Hegel's philosophy he must deny the individual's freedom as capacity to form intentions that are independent from determination by prior events (including mental states), and therefore individuals cannot posit choices on their own. However, without the ability to posit choices, individuals cannot have real freedom. Therefore individual's freedom is incompatible with Hegel's philosophy of history. If we think individual's freedom really exist, than we must reject Hegel's philosophy. This paper only argues that the Hegel's philosophy must imply there is no individual freedom, instead of proving the existence of individual's freedom or denying the system of Hegel's philosophy.

REASON AND STATE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL (Atena Editora), 2024

With this article we intend to demonstrate the relationship between the State and Reason in the view of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. To do this, we will address the Hegelian conception of the State and the interaction of this institution with the individual and civil society. Added to this, we will try to observe how the State, interpreted by Hegel, adjusts to the particular aspects of each nation and, especially, to the rationality that it incorporates. We will deal with Hegel's conception of the individual and his existence within a rational State and how individual freedoms are recognized and manifested (that is, the role of the individual in this institution, including the rights and duties of the citizen). This study is essentially bibliographic and, for this, we focus on his relevant Hegelian works Philosophy of History (1999) and Hegel's Principles of the Philosophy of Law (1997).

History of Political Thought, 2024

Hegel saw freedom not primarily as a property of the individual’s will, but of a totality (from which individual freedom is metaphysically derived). This aspect of Hegel’s political theory stemmed from his attempt to construct a state that could foster a renewal of Christian spirituality. This project had to confront the fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire, which Hegel attributed to the self-interestedness of its component parts. This historical case for the priority of the whole over its parts, however, was soon supplanted by a philosophical argument for a political totality whose freedom entailed its subordination of conflicting parts within itself.

Contemporary Philosophy. A New Survey. Vol. 12. Philosophy of Justice, 2015

For Hegel, right is inextricably tied to free will, which he sees as an expression of spirit. His Philosophy of Right 1 locates the foundation of right exactly in freedom and spirit. Many have viewed this coupling of right and freedom with spirit as problematic. Hegel has for a long time -at least since Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty" -been interpreted as a representative of positive freedom (being directed by a "true self") and linked to a totalitarian idea of the state. Recent contributions have to a large extent freed Hegel from such charges, focusing on how the freedom of the individual is not only compatible with participation in society, but also realized through it. 2 The state is not understood as the "march" of some god external to human history. 3 Terry Pinkard's recent Hegel's Naturalism is an example of such a view: "Spirit" is not an independent, supersensible being directing history from the beyond, 4 but is the collective and individual agency of self-interpreting organisms. 5 Axel Honneth goes further in his Das Recht der Freiheit, a reconstruction of Hegel's Philosophy of Right in a way suitable for the contemporary mind: Honneth throws the idealist, monist concept of spirit completely overboard. 6 Why was Hegel so concerned with spirit and why are we so concerned with distancing ourselves from it?

2012

The introduction ( § §1-33) to Hegel's Philosophy of Right is the key to the work's structure, its argumentative strategy and it functions as a foundation for Hegel's practical philosophy in general. Its explanatory potential is best realised by situating it within the systematic context of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences and the Science of Logic. This interpretative strategy reveals that for Hegel, the true site of agency is 'the concept' and that particular individuals and their arbitrary activity are at best the concept's 'appearance'. This does not render their activity 'false' but describes how willing and freedom are 'for us' as self-conscious subjects that confront an external world. For Hegel, 'true' freedom in the sense of 'self-determination to itself' resides with the universal and singular concept that negatively unites itself with its objectivity to form what he calls the 'Idea of the will' or 'right'. This interpretation contradicts the mainstream of contemporary Hegel scholarship since its proponents either deny the reality of the universal concept as agent or absolutely differentiate between the concept's activity (subjective action) and its objective reality (norms, institutions). This prevents the interpreter from appreciating that it is Hegel's concept that is manifest in form of particular willing subjects and their socio-political context. Since most commentators associate 'activity' or 'freedom' primarily with particular subjects, their notions of freedom are, by Hegel's standards, either empty and fail to describe actual willing or they fall short of the standard of 'true freedom', viz. 'self-determination to itself' because their agents' freedom depends on something that differs from the agents. 1 The present commentary argues that such a dilemma can be avoided by an interpretation that attributes agency to Hegel's concept. By determining itself to be Idea, the universal concept determines itself (as subject) to itself (as object) and rational agency and rational institutions are grasped as aspects of the same entity. This is what Hegel calls the unconditioned Idea of right or 'objective freedom'.

Hegel Bulletin

Hegel Bulletin, 2015

Hegel’s Philosophy of Right responds to two dichotomies. One is between the freedom of rational thought in its practical application and the givenness of natural impulses and desires. Against Kant Hegel argues that pure reason alone cannot determine the content of any maxim or principle of action. Thus Hegel must find a way in which the content of natural needs and impulses – the only source of content for maxims of action – can be transfigured into contents of rationally self-given principles and maxims. Hegel also responds to the dichotomy between the individual agent and the social whole within which agents act. Hegel argues that this dichotomy is specious because human beings are fundamentally social practitioners and because neither social practices nor individual agents have priority over the other. There are no social practices without social practitioners and there are no social practitioners without social practices. Hegel’s response to this second dichotomy allows him to respond to the first one as well. The elaboration and specialization of natural needs and desires through exchange relations and the social division of labor transfigures the contents of those needs and desires into collectively self-given ends. The social practices producing this transfiguration and meeting these ends form the contents of implicit principles of right. These implicit principles are collectively self-given because they result from the social practices collectively developed to meet these needs. Only acts that are executed and accepted by an agent are free acts. This strong condition requires that an agent’s intentions correspond to the actual nature and consequences of his or her act. Since the aims, the principles, and the means of action are fundamentally social, these strong constraints entail that free action is possible only within a community which makes known its structure and the role of its members within it and their contribution to it, so that its members can act on the basis of that knowledge. Hegel’s theory of the state is a theory of a communal structure that makes such explicit, free action possible. In briefest compass, Hegel holds that laws are legitimate only insofar as they codify those practices that have been developed in order to achieve human freedom, and laws are obligatory only insofar as they are necessary for achieving human freedom. Hegel’s government is designed to codify and promulgate such laws. Hegel’s legislature is designed to make known to the citizens at large, through their corporate representatives, that laws have such a basis and how individual roles and actions fit within the community as a whole.