The Story of our Freedom
Hegel’s theory of the objective conditions of subjective freedom interpreted by Charles Taylor and Theodor Adorno
Master thesis
Student: Willemijn van den Geest Supervisor: Johan Hartle Second reader: Maarten Coolen
Contents
Contents...2
Introduction...5
1 Telling a story...9
Introduction...9
Towards knowledge and identity...10
Hegel’s dialectical method...10
The human subject: a unity striving to realize itself...13
Self-consciousness through dependence...14
Slavery, Reason and Spirit...16
Freedom and the state...19
The Will...20
Being different...23
History...26
Conclusion and discussion...28
2 Rewriting the story...31
Introduction...31
Modernity...32
Moral sources...35
Moral ontology...35
Frameworks and what it means to lose them...37
Relations with the good...39
Historical frameworks: remembering the times past...41
Hegel in our time...45
The way to Spirit...45
Hegel’s freedom under pressure in late modernization...48
The human situation...50
Freedom and responsibility...53
Conclusion and discussion...55
Introduction...57
Negative dialectic...58
Adherence with Hegel and Taylor...58
Non-identity...61
Rescuing the particular...64
The individual and the state...64
Weltgeist...69
Dialectics of history...72
Freedom as the concrete resistance to oppression...76
Conclusion and discussion...78
Conclusion...80
Three stories...80
Where life is most ardent...83
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period,
that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Introduction
To live in ambivalent times. To experience a certain amount of freedom, but to feel radically unfree at the same time. It is a contradiction that has manifested itself throughout history. Hegel, writing his Phenomenology of Spirit against the backdrop of the roaring voices of the French Revolution, also took an ambivalent stance towards his times. In the Outline of the Philosophy of Right as well as in the Phenomenology Hegel exposits a sharp vocabulary of criticism as, in his eyes, the Revolutionary idea of liberty was one-sided and extreme and entailed a conception of negative freedom in which the only goal concerned a fury of destruction as to get rid of the existing institutions, purely generated by a longing for the absence of restriction.1 However, in the preface of Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel also expresses the hope that this period enhanced:
… it is not difficult to see that ours is a birth-time and a period of transition to a new era. Spirit has broken with the world it has hitherto inhabited and imagined, and is of a mind to submerge it in the past, and in the labour of its own transformation. Spirit is indeed never at rest but always engaged in moving forward .2
The ambivalence that characterized his time was something that was of use for Hegel as he was convinced that human history would work its way through conflict in dialectical movement as to come to the point where Spirit would come to itself and freedom was obtained. Hegel’s philosophical undertakings – and his work the Philosophy of Right in particular – can be seen as part of the project to come to an understanding of what it means to be a modern individual. Understanding, as we will see, can be interpreted here as equal to freedom as we can only become truly free if we come to an understanding of what and who we are. It is this thesis, the progress of the consciousness of freedom that has been put under pressure by the unfolding of history.
Our current time can be considered according to the same ambivalence. On the one hand, western societies considers themselves as relatively free. The unlimited growth of technological developments gave us the feeling that we live in a time of great advancement. The democratic arrangement of western society and its institutions engender feelings of superiority towards less ‘free’ societies. At the same time, late modernization has brought us
1 Norris, Andrew, The Disappearance of the French Revolution in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (2011). APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper, p. 1
new difficulties. The bureaucratization of society and the increase of instrumental reason have turned society into a playfield of capitalist hegemony. Instrumental reason has brought forth a mindset that tends to ignore the fact that some of the achievements of modern society should be cherished for their intrinsic value. The bias towards the economic gain overlooks the particular circumstances of elements of ordinary life, as every part of society can be captured in terms of efficiency and profit.
The fact that late modern individuals have difficulties with the concept of freedom is discussed in the second chapter. As a contemporary Hegelian, Charles Taylor discusses the way in which modern individuals struggle with their identity. Looking at modernity, according to Taylor, can be seen as a cure for the sickness of our distorted modern identity and can give power to our ideas of freedom and self-realization. According to Taylor, modernity can be seen as a fundamental turning point in history. But the disenchantment of the world has engendered an identity that has become difficult to articulate. For Taylor, losing the ‘divine framework’ in which we lived our meaningful lives, has affected us in a way that hasn’t been properly understood so far. This resulted in feelings of ‘being lost’ on the map, losing grip of our moral orientations. At the same time it has brought forth an unbalanced emphasis on concepts of authenticity and self-determination that has resulted in an ‘atomistic’ organization of society, in which individuals are merely focused on self-preservation and have become pawns on the playfield of a highly economized and bureaucratized civilization. For Taylor, these emphasizes are the result of a one-sided interpretation of what modern freedom has brought us.
According to Taylor, in order to see what the real gains of modernity are, we have to cultivate different interpretations of these achievements in order not to lose ourselves in the current tendencies of egocentrism, ethnocentrism and atomism. We have to start telling different stories, we have to reinvent our identity. It is a similar project as the one that Hegel undertook. Discovering what it means to be a modern individual means being able to articulate our moral orientations and where they came from in order to give these an existence in reality. When we change the narratives we tell ourselves we will learn what history has brought us.
Can we see history as a form of progress? Often, it feels unnatural to speak of progress when history and present feel like a decline. In our own environment the idea of progress has been put under pressure. The march of terroristic groups have penetrated western society and put
question marks on feelings of progress. And also looking back in history can engender a feeling of decline. The by Hegel formulated sentence of history as ‘a slaughter bench’, bringing many lives to sacrifice, tends to mark our view of the past. It is against this background that Theodor Adorno considered ideas of freedom and history. Having the second World War in mind, the idea of history as progress seemed like a failure in his eyes, in the light of the catastrophic turn history took. Adorno’s time was the ‘winter of despair’ in the route of freedom. Being occupied with the power of ideology and the battlefield this had left, Adorno was highly skeptical towards ideas of progress and towards considering history in the way that Hegel and Taylor advocate. As will be remarked, for Adorno, the question of freedom is not about telling a story of history, it is about the present, as freedom can only be acquired by putting the individual against the concrete historical situation of the time.
Three different times that are highly ambivalent have brought forth three different stories of freedom. Therefore, to write about freedom is to look at history. To tell stories, to remember. For Hegel, remembering entails the moment wherein previous stages are captured in a new concept. The dialectical movement is one that reconciles two stages into a new totality. But this new totality entails a better understanding, a moment of truth, but at the same time it entails a remembrance of these two contrasting moments that fought each other in the first place. Taylor, while leaving Hegel’s dialectical movement and the idea of the all-encompassing Spirit aside, adopts this idea of history moving forward. According to Taylor, our job is to tell the right stories, to train ourselves in remembering. Remembrance of the past is to understand what is has brought us and to live our lives according to these memories. To grasp what our identity entails, is to tell the right story of history, to remember the right things. In a different way, remembering is an important value for Adorno as well. Telling stories of history is a dangerous exercise as the danger of telling the wrong stories is lurking. Adorno holds that we must bear in mind that the danger of stories lies in the mind of the people as history and society exercise influences on us that we are not aware of. Telling stories therefore bears the risk of prioritizing the wrong aspects that lead to ideology and repression. Living in the presence, actively mediating our freedom with the present, is remembering the times past. But it is the remembrance of suffering that can tell us what our freedom is means in the present.
This thesis entails the endeavor to tell a story of our freedom. It finds a way through history from Hegel’s thesis of the progress of the consciousness of freedom, to modern identity and
its struggling in opposition to a different story of freedom with Adorno. Telling this story of freedom will demonstrate how difficult the conception of our freedom is. Taylor and Adorno, both departing from Hegel, show different interpretations of Hegel’s idea of freedom. Comparing them therefore, will give new significance to our current conception of freedom that has become so difficult to grasp. Describing two interpretations of Hegel’s thought will therefore tell us something about the way in which Hegel’s concept of freedom can have significance for our time. Can we still be Hegelian about our freedom? The three different stories will hopefully reveal some of an answer to that question.
Making a comparison between the notions of freedom of these three philosophers is a walk through memory lane: it forces us to look at history with different eyes, to see what history has meant in the past and to explain what it means in the present. The quest for modern freedom is thus asking questions about history. The narratives we have come to tell to ourselves, the meaning of these narratives and maybe an invitation to rewrite these narratives. We will learn that a certain way of looking at history has implications for looking at the present, as the historical component of freedom becomes an important difference in the way Taylor and Adorno interpret Hegel’s conception of freedom. Remembering the times past is a difficult task, as Proust himself maintained that the remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.
1 Telling a story
It is the process of its own becoming, the circle that presupposes its end as its goal, having its end also as its beginning; and only by being worked out to its end, is it actual. 3 Introduction
This chapter tells the story of our freedom as it was constructed by G.W.F. Hegel. It is the story of this thesis as well as it is Hegel’s conception of freedom that the other chapters are compared with. This story therefore, functions as a mirror, as the other parts come to be reflections of this first story of freedom.
Telling this story begins where it ends: the ultimate freedom of the subject. In Outlines of the Philosophy of Right, it was Hegel’s goal to provide a notion of freedom and a principle of the state that was specifically based on the free individual. And it is this aspect that makes his theory a modern one. However, Hegel was not the first one to come up with a theory based on individual freedom. His idea of freedom was built on the theories of his predecessors – Kant and Fichte, but also Aristoteles – and in this light his theory was a further development of a concept of freedom with a specific focus on the individual. Kant, exploring the possibilities of human freedom, made a case for the freedom of the subject that was based on reason and autonomy. Fichte posited the principle of the ‘I’ as having an awareness of its own freedom which is active in constituting the world and our practical action in it.4 From Aristotle, Hegel adopted the idea of self-realization towards happiness with the actualization of reason. The distinctions Hegel makes in writing a theory of freedom that is based on these ideas, contains a takeoff from Kant’s idea that morality can be conferred to moral laws. Hegel is convinced that morality should not be focused on the question of how things ‘ought’ to be, but how things are. Morality therefore, should always have a practical component as it is linked to the practical dimensions of the subject giving shape to its live; it is therefore not to be seen as an ‘empty , formal law’, but should contain a concrete practical content. Hegel distances himself from Fichte as well as he proposes the idea that the subject doesn’t acquire freedom only through a self-indulgent focus on the sensuous impulses of but through a focus on reason and external reality as well.
3 G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977, p. 10.
4 A.W. Wood, ‘Hegel’s ethics’ in Cambridge Companion to Hegel, F.C. Beiser (ed.), Cambridge University Press, USA, 1993, p. 213.
Hegel comes to the conclusion that Spirit’s freedom consists, not in remaining in the position that is separate from otherness, but in mastering this otherness and making it one’s own.5 The consequence of this is autonomous action that doesn’t separate itself from empirical motivation. Rather, it entails action in which the empirical motives are themselves the expression of the reason of the subject. Furthermore, this means that social institutions and social environment are not restrictions to the subjects freedom but, when rational, actualizations of the subjects freedom. Performing duties then is no restraint but a vehicle for our self-actualization.6
This is the main point that will be explored in this chapter. The relation between individual and the other, and the relation between the subject and the social institutions and ultimately the relation between subject and Spirit. To understand what these relations imply, several aspects will be taken into consideration. We will start with a short introduction of Hegel’s thought, to clarify the theoretical framework in which his notion of freedom is embedded and to become acquainted with the structure of Hegel’s thought. The introduction will be focused on his dialectical thought as well as the notion of the Spirit as the identity of identity and non-identity. Both the dialectical movement and this notion of Spirit will become important for the discussion of Adorno in chapter 3. Subsequently, Hegel’s theory of self-consciousness will be explored in a rendition of the parable of the master and the slave. For Hegel, freedom is only to be obtained through the self-consciousness of the subject. The master-slave parable serves as a valuable tool for exploring the nature of this self-consciousness as well as to get acquainted with the intersubjective and practical dimension of Hegel’s thought that becomes so important in his notion of ethical life in the state. Both Hegel’s focus on the practical dimension of thought and freedom and his emphasis on intersubjectivity are important for the comparison with Taylor and Adorno. The second part of this chapter will be the application of these principles in the theory of the state. According to Hegel, the state functions as the only possible guarantee for the coming to itself of Spirit and subject, that is, freedom. The composition of the state and Spirit, will have implications for Hegel’s conception of history, which will be discussed in the light of the following chapters.
5 Cambridge companion, p. 218/219 6 Ibid., p. 219.
Towards knowledge and identity Hegel’s dialectical method
For Hegel, absolute knowing is equal to the realization of freedom and it is therefore an important step in coming to understand his constitution of the subject and its freedom. In Science of Logic and the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel sets out his theory of absolute knowing as the realization of unity through opposition. Hegel believes that the process of knowing provides the subject with a ‘body of knowledge’ in which all the previous steps have led to the point where the subjects attains absolute knowledge.7
The dialectical method of thinking is based on the idea that each concept or idea, everything we experience, turns out to be self-contradictory; it always searches for its opposition. The idea of contradiction provided the basis for Hegel’s method of dialectical thinking and speculative reason, that serves as a ground on which most of his work is built. In Science of Logic, Hegel explains the structure of this process in three moments of logical reality. According to Hegel, the understanding of a concept is about recognizing the necessary conflict of determinations within themselves.8 As such, the difference between two terms contains two moments: being opposed to each other, the terms fall apart. But as it turns out, the fact that they exist separately from each other, being two sides of one difference, in fact implies that they are not only opposed to each other but determined by each other as well.9 In this sense, every concept is self-contradictory because it evokes its own opposite.10 Accordingly, the separation between the two concepts exists only in the connection between the two and therefore, at the same time, it seeks a unification. Hegel considers the element of negativity as the rational element of experience, a moment that forces us to search for a more acceptable judgment. Therefore, the rational implication of this negativity implies a ‘new truth and a refinement in our conceptualization of the object that ultimately refuses the identity of experience.’11
7 T. W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics (hereafter ND) (transl. E.B. Ashton), The Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc. New York, USA, 2007, p. 30.
8 G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic (hereafter: SL) (transl. A.V. Miller), H.D. Lewis (ed.), Humanity Bookds 9
thpr., 1998, p.46.
9 G.W.F. Hegel, SL, p. 431.
10 In SL: ‘One is the positive, the other the negative, but the former as the intrinsically positive, the latter as the intrinsically negative. Each has an indifferent self-subsistence of its own through the fact that is has within itself the relation to its other moment; it is thus the whole, self-contained opposition. As this whole, each is mediated with itself by its other and contains it. But further, it is mediated with itself by the non-being of its other; thus it is a unity existing on its own and it excludes the other form itself.’ (p. 431)
The dialectical process is not to be understood as an empty formal logic. According to Hegel, …to achieve scientific progress … is the recognition of the logical principle that the negative is just as much positive, or that what is self-contradictory does not resolve itself into a nullity, into abstract nothingness, but essentially only into the negation of its particular content.12
The point where the two separating determinations are connected and transcended, is the moment of knowledge. The connecting activity of reflection of reason and the transcendence above those determinations that is an insight into their conflict, ‘is the great negative step towards the true Notion of reason.’13
The dialectical process of moving towards reason is moved by the moment where the two separations are united in a sublation (Aufhebung). Aufhebung does not mean a disappearance into nothing, but the result of a mediation. It is a result with a particular content that bears a higher understanding of the oppositions it expresses. Aufhebung in this sense means both to preserve, to maintain, and to cause to cease, to put an end to.14 In the grasp of this truth of speculation the free subjectivity ultimately overcomes all his oppositions to nature, society and God. 15 The moment of Aufhebung can be seen as the formation of a new totality, that at the same time is not something entirely new. Unity therefore exists as a unity of both identity and non-identity as it bears with it the original contradiction as the remembrance of the past. We will learn that Hegel aims at the same kind of unity when it comes to the whole, life and history and Spirit.
According to Hegel, the process of knowing necessarily lies in experience, which is ‘the dialectical movement that consciousness exercises on itself’.16 Experience, in Hegel’s eyes, has a rational structure that strives to overcome incompleteness in thought and oppositions. The process is about the subject coming to understand its environment and in the end coming to recognize itself as a part of the whole.17 Experience therefore, means consciousness and the process through which the experienced elements are processed, is judgment. O’Connor explains that this means placing elements of experience together under the categories of
12 G.W.F. Hegel, SL, p. 54. 13 Ibid., par. 44
14 Ibid., p. 107
15 C. Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Great Britain, 1979, p. 15. 16 T.W. Adorno, ND, p. 30.
17 B. O’Connor, Adorno’s Negative Dialectic – Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical Rationality, MIT Press, Massachusetts, USA, 2004, p. 31.
concept and object. Knowledge therefore, is both dynamic and historical, and the ultimate point of understanding is reached when identity and non-identity are united in the notion of Spirit, which is the moment of the ‘identity of identity and non-identity’.18
In the following text these different types of contradictions and the unity of those contradictions will be explored; first the dynamic, changing form of knowledge, which is due to the fact that consciousness plays a role in knowledge and therefore, in interaction is capable of change. The second part will focus on the historical dimension of knowledge: the part where reason, Spirit, comes to itself through the living subjects in the state, in relation to the development of consciousness and freedom.
The human subject: a unity striving to realize itself
Hegel’s theory of the subject was built both on the idea of the unity with nature that unfolds as human life develops (the Aristotelian forms) 19 and the idea that this unity of human nature is seen as a form of expression20. The combination of these two elements led Hegel to speak of ‘realization’: the subject is regarded as an expressive unit that develops towards self-realization. Hegel describes this as an ‘organic substance’:
The organic substance as inner is the simple, unitary soul, the pure Notion of End or the universal, which in its partition equally remains a universal fluidity, and therefore appears in its being as the action or movement of the vanishing actuality; whereas the
outer, opposed to that existent inner, subsists in the quiescent being of the organism.21 Hegel points out that the inner form of the organic substance, expresses its being in action and movement. This is means that the human consciousness always seeks to externalize itself, to express itself through its body in movement or language and culture. Spirit, in reverse, does the same. It seeks to express itself through the human subject, which leads to the embodiment of infinite Spirit in finite substances. It follows that he expression of Spirit and its development are externalized in reality in the way of action and movement of the subject. The externalization is an important aspect of Hegel’s theory of self-realization because the human organism in this way can be seen as a developing unity, that maintains a certain form through these changing conditions. Throughout life and history, the human consciousness
18 B. O’Connor, p. 31 19 C. Taylor, 1979, p. 3, 16.
20 C. Taylor, Hegel, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975, p. 81 something which could not be known in advance
develops itself according to the process of speculative reason towards the point where man truly comes to Reason, the Idea, that is, freedom. Through trial and error and in free inventing, man comes to recognize itself to be the embodiment of the Spirit and the other way around, the Spirit comes to itself in Reason. Taylor points out that all beings are in this sense in a line of development that reaches it summit in the human subject. This doesn’t only apply to the line of continuity between animals and humans, but also in the line of ourselves; our vital and mental functions, life and consciousness.22 This means that according to dialectical development the human being as a totality must, besides being continuous, at the same time be seen as discontinuous. It is a new totality as the result of the contradiction between man as animal and man that is different from animals. Such a unity works towards self-realization in a certain form, it involves the overcoming of oppositions in a dialectical manner that can be seen as progress. This hierarchy reaches its peak in conscious subjectivity, just as the development of human culture and history reaches its peak in the understanding, in Spirit.23 Self-consciousness through dependence
it is only through staking one’s life that freedom is won24 The human subject, as we have seen, is the expression or embodiment of Spirit. Spirit is therefore not to be understood as a disembodied cosmic consciousness, but as a shape of human consciousness. It is consciousness that knows itself to be the embodiment of reason.25 But consciousness at first does not know itself as identical with universality, Spirit. This identity, consciousness and nature having the same rational structure, is something the consciousness has to come to. In the fourth chapter of Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel describes the specific process through which human consciousness develops itself towards Reason, according to the ‘scene of recognition’, the parable of the master and the slave. First, the individual is the immediate object of ‘I’, an object to which it is not neutral but has a ‘passionate connection with’26 as opposed to the objects that are not a part of this self-consciousness. The subject, fully occupied with absorption inby itself, uses the differentiation with the other objects as means to deepen the sense of itself. Doing so, the subject eventually comes to an ‘understanding’ of itself, which is the most immediate form of self-consciousness
22 C. Taylor, 1979, p. 19. 23 Ibid., p. 19.
24 G.W.F. Hegel, PS, p. 114.
25 S. Houlgate, An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, UK, 2005, p. 78
and which corresponds with being a person.27 But, something else is needed to come to a confirmation of the self-consciousness, and that is recognition. Because the self is a being who depends on external reality, it can only come to itself if it discovers a reality that could undergo a negation. This would have to be a negation without self-abolition. Therefore, the basic desire for self-consciousness has to be found somewhere else28: self-consciousness has to see its identity confirmed by another self-consciousness.29 According to Hegel, fully realized self-consciousness is only to be found where such recognition is mutual; where two consciousnesses ‘recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another’.30
When the self-consciousness is faced by another self-consciousness, it comes out of the state of existing in and for itself, the immediate form. Facing the other, the self-consciousness loses itself, because it finds itself in another being. As a result, the self-consciousness has replaced the other: it sees the other not as an essential being, but finds itself in it. Similarly, the other self-consciousness also replaces the other with itself, and through this comes back to itself. Therefore, this movement from one self-consciousness to another has a ‘double significance of being both its own action and the action of the other as well.’31 As a result, each sees the other doing the same as it does itself. This corresponds with the stage where each of them recognizes itself as mutually recognizing the other.
Now, the ‘other’ also exists as a self-consciousness and therefore doesn’t serve the function of an object. Yet there cannot exist two selves, each of whom is the center of the world it experiences. The subject wants to be limited by nothing, wants to fill its own world completely and infinitely. A confrontation with another subject would therefore mean the limitation of the infinite.32 Therefore, the other subject, as the place of subjective centrality in its own world is denied.33 Hegel says:
They are, for each other, shapes of consciousness which have not yet accomplished the movement of absolute abstraction, of rooting-out all immediate being, and of being merely the purely negative being of self-identical consciousness; in other words, they
27 S. Houlgate, p. 68. 28 C. Taylor, 1975, p. 152. 29 S. Houlgate, p. 68. 30 G.W.F. Hegel, PS, p. 112. 31 Ibid., p. 112.
32 L. Raunch, D. Sherman, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Self-consciousness – text and commentary, State University of New York Press, New York, 1999, p. 94.
have not as yet exposed themselves to each other in the form of pure being-for-self, or as self-consciousness.34
In order to achieve independent self-consciousness, a confrontation is necessarily made: ‘Each is indeed certain of its own self, but not of the other, and therefore its own self-certainty still has no truth.’35 The presentation of the self is to show itself as the negation of this objective mode in which the subject is seen by the other. This involves action: action on the own part and action on the other part. In this active encounter each seeks the death of the other and each is prepared to risk its life for the achievement of recognition by the other: it is the ‘life-and-death-struggle’. According to Hegel, it is necessary that one’s life is at stake. To gain ‘the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness’ one has to give itself completely.36 Each of the individuals is willing to risk its life in order to achieve recognition for itself as a person, because the objectification of the subject by the other subject is resisted by the other because both of them see themselves from within as a subject and not as an object for the other. Therefore this objectification must be negated.37One of the consciousnesses will win the fight, but the other cannot be killed in order for the victor to gain the recognition it wants. The winner therefore allows the loser to live, but enslaves him.38 Slavery, Reason and Spirit
Hegel holds that through this experience the consciousness that loses the fight learns that its life is as essential to it as its pure self-consciousness. Therefore it decides to let the other win. And now there exists a one-sided and unequal relation of consciousnesses: ‘one is the independent consciousness whose essential nature is to be for itself, the other is the dependent consciousness whose essential nature is simply to live or to be for another. The former is lord, the other is bondsman.’39 In the stage that follows, the lord has power over the bondsman and achieves his recognition through this other consciousness. The other consciousness, is something unessential both because of the work he does and its dependence on an other existence. The lord becomes the pure, essential action in this relationship: the action of the bondsman is really the action of the lord, while the action of the bondsman is impure and unessential. In this recognition the unessential consciousness for the lord is the object, that creates the certainty of himself – as an independent being. But then the lord learns that the
34 G.W.F. Hegel, PS, p. 113. 35 Ibid., p. 113. 36 Ibid, p. 114. 37 L. Raunch, D. Sherman, p. 58. 38 Ibid, p. 58. 39 G.W.F. PS, Hegel, p. 115.
recognition stays away: this object isn’t really the desired object. It is a subject, and what the lord has achieved turns out to be different from being an independent consciousness; it is a dependent consciousness: ‘He is, therefore, not certain of being-for-self as the truth of himself. On the contrary, his truth is in reality the unessential consciousness and its unessential action.’40 Consequently, the lord turns out to be dependent on the slave whereas the slave, by doing the work for the bondsman, develops a feeling of universal freedom. In fashioning the object for the lord, although for purposes that are not his, the slave learns that it was him that made this object. The slave therefore creates an independence for his own, coming to understand that although enslaved, he is free in mind.
At this point the slave has no option than to internalize his sense of the self, for no person in the external world can give him recognition. From this, the slave develops the sense of the self according to several outward forms as Stoicism, Scepticism and the Unhappy Consciousness. Now, culture proceeds in the way the slave develops itself from now on. Life now unfolds itself on the life side of the life-and-death-struggle. Surviving the struggle, we live enslaved and proceed from here.41 Hegel’s analysis reaches too far to discuss elaborately, but the end of the development means the most important part of the way to freedom. The slave, free in mind as the idea of freedom of mankind, externalizes this view as Stoicism. In this view, recognition by the other is regarded as an illusory goal. The only way to recognition is his own personhood. The relation between the master and the slave is illusory as well, because the slave has gained universal freedom – freedom of mankind.42 Working its way through the stages, the slave arrives at the stage of Unhappy Consciousness, wherein he suffers from inner contradiction between freedom and determination, the finite and the infinite. This stage in the end will be resolved by Reason. It is the moment where the subject discovers its inner consciousness to be the ‘Absolute Essence’.43 It is the point where the human spirit begins to find itself as being reflected in the world, as it starts making the world ‘as rational and as real as spirit itself’ is.44 This, as we will see, is what happens in the moment of Sittlichkeit. Hegel says: ‘The Spirit of this world is a spiritual essence that is permeated by a self-consciousness which knows itself, and knows the essence as an actuality confronting is.’45 Reason therefore, can only be realized and become truly free when it recognizes itself in
40 Ibid., p. 117. 41 L. Raunch, D. Sherman, p. 59. 42 Ibid., p. 60. 43 Ibid., p. 61. 44 Ibid., p. 61. 45 G.W.F. Hegel, p. 297.
the Spirit of the world. The world is an alienated world, that the subject has to take possession of, only to come to the conclusion that this alienation was brought forth by the actuality of the ‘being-for-iself’: … self-consciousness is merely a ‘something’, it has actuality only in so far as it alienates itself from itself; by so doing, it gives itself the character of a universal, and this its universality is its authentication and actuality.’46 Spirit therefore is thus to be interpreted as the living substance of freedom. Similarly, Spirit turns outward towards the world, towards others. It becomes the difference between itself and the non-identical other, in the process of becoming. Reflecting into its own self through this ‘other’, Spirit returns to itself in the synthesis of that non-identical other and its self-reflection.47
As is pointed out above, the parable about consciousness can be read as the development of human culture expressing itself through different stages. In this perspective it provides a framework through which we can understand the development of human subjectivity and its surrounding as human consciousness and its surrounding are necessary steps in the development of subjective freedom. In the end, the rational subject comes to see that nature is itself part of a rational plan and that division was necessary to reach this higher unity. It identifies itself with the whole as being part of the rational activity: he is no longer opposed to a nature which has itself transformed to meet the expression of rationality.48 This is the progress of reason working its way through conflict towards unity. The transition from Reason to Spirit is progression in which immediate consciousness transposes the individual that looks inside its own consciousness into discovering the principles for normative action in reality.49 The master-slave dialectic therefore, reveals the idea that the normative processes of dialectical thinking have a practical dynamic, an idea that comes to be adopted by both Taylor and Adorno. The development of consciousness to Reason reaches its peak in the individual’s positive recognition of the political sovereignty of the modern nation-state. 50 The state, as we will see below, entails the actuality of social freedom and the notion of mutual recognition serves as basis for the laws and institutions in ethical life. Hegel’s theory of recognition is thus to interpreted as a theory of social freedom; to be an individual is to have social relations
46 Ibid., p. 297.
47 A.W. Wood, 1993, p. 52. 48 C. Taylor, 1979, p. 22.
49 K. R. Westphal, ‘Hegel’s Phenomenological Method and Analysis of Consciousness’ in: The Blackwell Guide to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, K.R. Westphal (ed.), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, UK, 2009, p. 169. 50 R.B. Pippin, Hegel’s Practical Philosohpy – Rational Agency as Ethical Life, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2008, p. 210.
that are necessary to be an agent of reason. What this amounts to will now be discussed in relation to freedom in the state.
Freedom and the state
It is God’s way in the world that the state should exist.51 The previous section revealed that the development of human consciousness reaches its peak in the individual recognition of its environment and eventually the political sovereignty of the state. The state, which Hegel describes in Outlines of the Philosophy of Right, can be considered as the actuality of social freedom. Within the framework of the state, Hegel introduces the term ‘ethical life’ or Sittlichkeit5253. Sittlichkeit means that freedom and the good are embodied in the laws and institutions that constitute Sittlichkeit. Freedom has to take the form of Sittlichkeit with its specific institutions, as well as the associated trust in these institutions.54 These are not drawn from abstract moral reflections but from the concrete relations of a living social order.55 Hegel’s aim with the Philosophy of Right is to show that the self-realization of Spirit – through human beings – is above all characterized by freedom. What the Philosophy of Right therefore reveals is what it means to be free and what objective structures and institutions are made necessary by this freedom. It is therefore not a philosophy about how a modern state should look like, but about what actualized, lived freedom looks like. As we have seen, the freedom of the subject evolves along with a growing of self-consciousness. It is self-consciousness that is necessarily in search for the other as well as in search for independence from that other. As we move further, the state, according to Hegel, serves as the finest environment for the subject to explore the possibilities of this freedom in relation to others, in order to develop the self-actualization of freedom. As such, the state provides objective conditions for the freedom of the subject, that at the same time are brought about by the rationality of the subject striving to realize itself. The institutions and laws should therefore be seen as completely in line with that central part of the modern individual:
51 G.W.F. Hegel, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right (hereafter: PR), Transl. by T.M. Knox, S. Houlgate (ed. & intr.), Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 233/234.
52 I will leave the word Sittlichkeit untranslated because the original word captures better what it entails than the often used translation ‘ethical life’.
53 I am aware of the fact that the relation between Sittlichkeit and freedom is much more complex than what I expose in this text. I will not discuss this both because of the lack of space and because the discussions on the interpretations of Hegel will not affect the question that I want to answer, which is related to two specific interpretations, namely that of Taylor and that of Adorno. For a further discussion on the relation between
Sittlichkeit and freedom I refer to A. Pattens book Hegel’s idea of freedom (Oxford University Press, Oxford,
UK, 1999).
54 S. Houlgate in: PR, p. xxix. 55 A.W. Wood, 1993, p. 215.
rationality. How does freedom evolve from the individual that has learned it self-consciousness and relation to the other, towards the greatest possible freedom in the state? The Will
Because substances can be seen as the embodiment of Spirit, the Philosophy of Right focuses on Spirit in the form of the practical subject, that is, free will. The basis of right is the realm of the Spirit, which is actualized in the will. The subject-matter of right is the Idea: the concept of right together with the actualization of that concept, whereby Idea refers to the realization of freedom. Hegel says: ‘The will is free, so that freedom is both its substance and its goal, while the system of right is the realm of freedom made actual, the world of spirit [Geist] brought forth out of itself as a second nature.’56 The will is a particular way of thinking, it entails translating the subject into existence, giving oneself existence. Through the development of the will, the subject attains self-realization. Since freedom can only be realized by a self-consciousness that expresses itself, the will needs to get a concrete content in order to be truly free. The subject moves through several stages of the will that correspond with moments of right as to reach the highest possible moment, Sittlichkeit, which is achieved at the moment the subject becomes a ‘concrete universal’.
Freedom of the will is in the first and most abstract form explained as negative freedom. In this stage, the will is free in and for-itself, in the sense that the will is self-related and has a negative contrast with reality. This means that the individual feels itself to be free from restrain and considers itself as exclusive individuality. The individual has a will that is a formal universality: the self-consciousness has a contentless and simple relation of itself and is defined as a person. This means two things: 1) as a person, I am completely determined by my impulses and desires and immediate external existence and therefore finite, and 2) I am solely self-relation and therefore infinite, universal and free.57 Therefore, the ‘I’ considers itself a pure ‘I’ that can think of itself as ‘I’ and therefore has thought. For Hegel, one can only be a person if one has this ability to think of oneself as a subject. We have seen this above with the ‘scene of recognition’. At this stage, the will is immediate. We can see the correspondence of the immediate will with the moment of the scene of recognition where the subject is a person that has a passionate relation with the ‘I’ and wants to distinguish itself from the objects surrounding it. The concept of the will in this stage is abstract and its
56 G.W.F. Hegel, PR, p. 26. 57 Ibid., p. 54.
existence is an immediate external thing. Therefore the will is at the stage of the abstract right.58
At the second stage, the will is reflected from its external existence into itself and can be characterized as positive. As a subjective individuality, I have the possibility to give myself a particular ‘content and object’, that is to affirm a certain desire of mine.59 This stands in opposition to the universal. The I is the ‘transition from undifferentiated indeterminacy to the differentiation, determination and positing of a determinacy as a content and object.’60 The second stage of the will corresponds to het sphere of morality. In the sphere of morality the self is regarded as a volitional subject. The aim for the moral subject is to make this will conform to the universal will. Moral subjects demand of themselves to do what is objectively good, to give reason to action and to consider the consequences of these action with the inside of why it is good. Because the subject can deliberate on the consequences of its choices, morality is the sphere of responsibility for one’s actions.
The truly free will is constituted out of the unity of these two moments. The will now can be characterized as individuality, since it involves the self-determination of the I. The I feels restricted and determinate by its own negative – the inclinations of nature – but at the same time determines itself and remains with itself and this brings about the freedom of the will.61 As a consequence, freedom lies neither in indeterminacy nor in determinacy; it is both of these at once. The will which restricts itself simply to this is the will of the stubborn individual who supposes that he is not free unless he has this will. But the will is not tied to something restricted; it must go beyond the restriction, since the nature of the will is other than this one-sidedness and constraint. Freedom is to will something determinate, yet in this determinacy to be with oneself and to revert once more to the universal.62 In relation to the previous mentioned spheres, the unity of indeterminacy and determinacy, of particular and universal, corresponds with the moment of Sittlichkeit. Sittlichkeit can therefore be seen as the mediation, or Aufhebung, of abstract right and morality. In order to do what is right, the subject has to act conform the accepted standards of its surrounding people and culture. At this stage, although the laws and institutions have a claim on us, we simultaneously desire those laws and institutions as they are brought forth by rationality. Sittlichkeit therefore, is the
58 Ibid., p. 50.
59 S. Houlgate, in: PR, p. xx. 60 Ibid., p. 30.
61 Ibid., p. 31
point at which we don’t consider our environment of right as constraint and restriction but as liberating. Ethical duties are duties of relationships and entail actions we want to perform in the fulfillment of our social roles because they constitute our concrete identity as individuals. Fulfillment of social roles is thus equal to self-fulfillment and this is what the master-slave dialectic has shown previously: freedom is necessary constituted in relation to others.
The will is an important part Hegel’s project of individual freedom because choice has a necessary aspect of freedom in it. As thinking beings, we immediately experience freedom of choice. It has a necessary structure: it combines ‘positive freedom’ (to affirm what is given) with ‘negative’ freedom (to abstract from what is given).63 This means that for Hegel, in order for the will to be truly free, it has to externalize itself. This argument has a similar structure to that of the embodiment and action: the will has to be ‘embodied’ to exercise its content, to become truly free is to make a conscious choice. Otherwise the will would remain an abstract notion while the goal is to make it particular for the individual that has the will. In order to do this, the individual has to negate the universal nature of the will that he has recognized in himself. This means that the individual needs to focus on something particular, it has to understand that it cannot want everything. In order to be a person, it has to choose, and it has to choose a certain thing. At the moment the individual takes this step it will experience this as a constraint, for choosing this one things means leaving other things behind. Choosing always brings the consciousness that we could have chosen otherwise.64 At the next stage the individual recognizes that it had to make this choice in order for his will to be particular, not being forced from external causes. Therefore at the last stage, the individual realizes that this was not a constraint but that it had it source in universality and thus freedom. The particular content of the will now has a new meaning because the subject understands how the will came into being. This is the stage where that Hegel formulates as ‘the will that wills itself’ and is therefore truly realized. 65 Taylor quotes a passage in Hegel’s Die Germanische Welt:
The will is only free, in so far as it wills nothing other, external, foreign – for then it would be dependent – but only wills itself, the will.66
This argument is compatible with what we saw with the shaping of self-consciousness. The subject is necessarily embedded in a social environment for the connection with others is the only way the individual can become a person, through recognition and independence. To be
63 S. Houlgate in: PR, p. xxi. 64 Houlgate, in: PR, p. xxi. 65 G.W.F. Hegel, PR, p.46. 66 C. Taylor, 1975, p. 369.
truly free therefore, cannot be limited to the individual just doing as it pleases, because that would not take in consideration the social environment of the subject. True freedom is thus to strive towards self-realization in accordance with the environment that gives the subject room to make itself and its freedom actual, existent, living.
Hegel sees the will as the basis of right and thus the ground of the state. It is a crucial element that the will is free and self-determining, for Hegel holds that the subject can only be free when it can use the element of rational free thinking as existing next to the inclinations that are brought about by its nature. Therefore, the affirmation of the self-defining subject is a necessary stage in the realization of freedom. It means that the subject has to mediate between its natural impulses and its self-determination. When this mediation succeeds, the subject will know what the will really is, namely free. And that is the basic principle of a fully realized state. It is the stage where the truly free will not only wills its own freedom, but understands that it must do so if it is to be truly free. The truly free will is thus not one that can do as it pleases, but the one that ‘considers freedom to constitute a realm or right that must be willed and affirmed by any truly free will.’67 What this entails will now be discussed in relation to the state.
Being different
We have seen three spheres of the will that correspond to the moments of abstract right, morality and Sittlichkeit. Likewise, the ethical substance consists of three forms: natural spirit, which is the family; its division and appearance, which is civil society; and the state as freedom, universal and objective freedom, even in the self-subsistence of the particular will. As we will see, all three of these spheres play an important role in the formation the state. The dialectical nature of these three components demands that the family represents the universal, whereas the civil society represents the particular. These two are necessary moments for the subject to come to the realization that it is a part of the state and Spirit, that functions as a substance of freedom of the universality through the particular.
The family functions as the immediate substantiality of the spirit, because it is characterized by love and by the fact that each member feels itself to be an equal part of this unity. The right that the individual enjoys, being part of this unity, however, begins to take up the form of right only when the family begins to dissolve. This is a necessary step towards individual right, because the freedom didn’t have a particular content so far: it is impossible to become a self-subsistent person in a unity where everyone is equally related to each other, and therefore
it becomes impossible to cultivate one’s own particularity. Therefore, the family, the immediate form of Sittlichkeit, has to be abandoned, broken with. It has to dissolve into the civil society. This is the second moment on the way to the realization of freedom. Sittlichkeit now takes up the form of the universal. The individual can become a particular person now:
‘… the moments bound together in the unit of the family, since the family is the ethical Idea sill in its concept, must be released from the concept to self-subsistent reality. This is the stage of difference.’68
For Hegel, the difference between civil society and the state is an important one. Only when these spheres exist separately, the individual can particularize itself and realize its own freedom. As we have seen with the emergence of self-consciousness, in order to become a person, the individual has to give itself external existence in action. Therefore, the individual needs to pursue its own particularity, its needs and desires, in civil society. But at the same time, this stage of civil society is not correctly mediated yet. The individual is given a limitless freedom to achieve its own goals and to accomplish its own particularity, but at the same time it is hold back ‘by the power of universality’: it discovers that it has to depend on others as well as that others are depending on him. This is where the state comes to function as the mediation between the particular and the universal:
By means of their ideas and reflections human beings expand their desires, which are not a closed circle like animal instinct, and extend them into a bad infinity. At the other end of the scale, however, want and destitution are measureless too, and the confusion of their situation can be brought into a harmony only by the state which has powers over it.69
This is the point where the rights of the state appear. Together with the system of needs, subjective freedom implies a system of rights that makes the question of freedom a freedom under the law. Hegel distances himself from philosophers that have tried to formulate a formal law that was to be equally applied to the individuals. For Hegel, the law is something that is a social process that is part of the transformation from subjective rights to objective law.70 The system of needs and the system of rights are therefore both moments in the composition of
68 G.W.F. Hegel, PR, p. 180. 69 Ibid., p. 183/184 – Addition.
70 R. Fine & R. Fernandez, Freedom and Subjectivity in Modern Society: Re-reading Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, in: Law and Sociology, Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2012, p. 8
civil society, vehicles through which the possibility of subjective freedom is to be realized.71The nature of civil society comes to play an important role in our further discussions of the modern notion of freedom. As we will see, the difficulties that Hegel articulates with respect to the unrestraint pursuit of particular needs have not compromised in importance. It is this that questions the role that Hegel’s theory of freedom can play in our current discussion. Adorno quotes the following sentences of Hegel’s philosophy of right to prove that Hegel foresaw problems of this kind:
It hence becomes apparent that despite an excess of wealth civil society is not rich enough, i.e. its own resources are insufficient to check excessive poverty and the creation of a penurious rabble.
This inner dialectic of civil society thus drives it – or at any rate drives a specific civil society – to push beyond its own limits and seek markets, and so its necessary means of subsistence, in other lands which are either deficient in the goods it has over-produced, or else generally backward in industry.72
Hegel’s goal with civil society was that its excess of wealth would be restricted by the moment of Sittlichkeit, were man would feel the need to be restricted by the law and the universal. The dangers of excessive poverty and the ‘penurious rabble’ are obstructed by the nature of the state, the universal that exercises itself through the particulars:
…the Idea in this stage of division grants to each of its moments a distinctive existence; to particularity it gives the right to develop and launch forth in all directions; and to universality the right to prove itself not only the ground and necessary form of particularity, but also the power over it and its final end. It is the system of ethical life, split into its extremes and lost, which constitutes the Idea’s abstract moment, its moment of reality.73
Taylor points out that the crucial characteristic of ethical life is ‘that it enjoins and brings about what already is.’74 This entails a two-way movement: ‘It is in virtue of its being and ongoing affair that I have these obligations; and my fulfilment of these obligations is what
71 Ibid., p. 8
72 G.W.f. Hegel, PR, p. 151, quoted in: Hegel, three studies, p. 29 73 Ibid., p. 181/182.
sustains it and keeps it in being.’75 This is the point where Hegel makes one of his most famous statements about the state. In the preface of the Philosophy of Right, the relation of his philosophy and that what is, the actual, is to be regarded as ‘the exploration of the rational’. The moment of the state means that it is the comprehension of the present and the actual: ‘What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational.’76 This famous quote of Hegel has often been interpreted as engendering acquiescence in the status quo. In the third chapter we will see how Hegel’s goal to create a subject that has a critical stance towards against its environment, can result in the view that the subject only has the role of affirmation instead of criticism. Hegel implements the element of alienation to surmount this difficulty. In the stage of alienation the individual feels itself opposed to society as it doesn’t recognize itself in its surrounding environment of the laws of the state. According to Hegel, alienation is a necessary way in the moving towards the Absolute. It means distancing oneself, experiencing the otherness, in order to come back to oneself in better understanding, just as Spirit comes back to itself through the subject. Alienation, therefore, is a period of formation that will emerge in a higher stage.77
History
In the perspective of the realized state that the unity of form and content appears important once more. Like the subject, the community of the state develops according to the principle of unity of form and content. Form in its most concrete sense is reason as conceptual knowing, and content is the reason as a substantial essence of actuality.78 Hegel says:
This actual and organic spirit of a people [Volk] reveals and actualizes itself through the process of world-history it reveals and actualizes itself as the universal world-spirit whose right is supreme.79
The moment that world-history comes to itself is referred to as the ‘supreme’ right. According to several stages through which the Idea – concept80 – develops itself, it reaches its peak in the realization of the Idea, just like the developments of life-forms reaches its peak in human
self-75 Ibid., p. 83.
76 G.F.W. Hegel, PR, p. 14. 77 C. Taylor, 1975, p.171. 78 G.W.F. Hegel, PR, p. 15. 79 Ibid., p. 51.
80 I didn’t discuss the relation between concept and Idea but it refers to concept as the thought of the thing, which concretely – when developed and actualized – is the Idea [realization of freedom].
consciousness. The development of the concept entails the process of becoming actual, from implicit – in thought – to explicit – in concrete action, as organic growth:
As the seed grows, it differentiates itself into trunk, branches, leaves, etc., but when its growth is complete, it is a concrete unity, because it is now a differentiated and not an immediate, undeveloped, immature, unity.81
The end of the development of freedom can thus be regarded as the maturing of Reason, where Reason or Spirit – and subject – has come to itself. The synthesis is the moment of realized individuality or concrete universality which means universality through particularity – the individual. Freedom comes to supreme right in the state. In considering freedom, the only starting point can be de essence of self-consciousness: ‘for whether people know it or not, this essence realizes itself as a self-subsistent power in which single individuals are only moments.’82
The universal Idea gives itself actuality through world-history. Because the realization of the absolute Spirit entails a development of man in history. Man starts off from the immediate being with particular needs, towards cultivation and formation. This is the dividing of Spirit from itself. If man has to become the vehicle of Spirit’s return to itself, it has to learn from culture and history and to form it.83 History can therefore be seen a necessary the development of reason and thus freedom, as it is the path of Spirit realizing itself. Since the speculative nature of dialectical movement is one of inventing, man does not always fully grasp the particular developments that are set in motion, the progress of reason is not always a conscious one. Therefore Hegel proposes that Reason ‘uses’ the passions of men to fulfill their purposes. Where ‘particular men and their purposes fall in the battle’, the individual purposes are kept safe above their heads. It is the cunning of reason, the way of reason working through the instincts of certain men who sense the purpose of what they are doing. The cunning of reason is the moment when the individual ambition coincides with Reasons ambition.84 Great occurrences in history can be seen from this perspective, as Reason realizing itself through contradiction and battlefield with the use of man coming to understanding. Particularly this last part on history and society, of Reason that works its way through conflict towards self-realization, are going to become painful issues for the contemplation on the
81 Houlgate, in: Outlines of the Philosophy of Right, p. xxxvi. 82 Ibid., p. 233
83 Taylor, 1975, p. 392. 84 Ibid., p. 392.
question of Hegel’s relevance for our time. As history has shown, the abrasions that Hegel allows Spirit to incur through its devastating rage towards the goal, are no miniscule details. ‘It is God’s way in the world that the state should exist’, is a precarious quote for interpreters as it seems to give priority to the universal over the heads of particulars. It is not surprising therefore, that a notion such as the cunning of Reason is unacceptable for Adorno. As we will learn, the idea of history as ‘a slaughter bench’ gains more and more priority over the idea of the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and at certain points seems more plausible. Similarly, the thesis of alienation seems too optimistic in the light of the current political and economic tensions. The idea that protest against the established norms and institutions is a part of that moment of coming to unity, seems both optimistic and worrying. What is Hegel’s theory of realization of freedom prepared to put up with? These questions will be of importance for the further discussion of freedom.
Conclusion and discussion
Hegel’s story of the freedom of the subject has been unfolded. The subject starts with immediate self-relation and works towards self-consciousness that culminates in the moment where the community functions as something that the self-consciousness sees itself reflected in. Freedom therefore has an explicitly social component and condition. The ethical surrounding of the state functions as a vital element of the realization of freedom. As self-consciousness grows, the self-consciousness of its freedom grows as well, bringing forth practical, objective conditions to sustain and further this. Since the objective conditions are brought forth by reason, the objective conditions are natural experiences as the human desire for recognition functions as the motor of social change and development. Both these subjective and objective conditions can be seen as constitutive for the realization of freedom. In a broader perspective, they point to Spirit’s way in the world, realizing itself through human subjects through history. This implies that along with Spirit’s development, the conditions for freedom grow. And since these objective conditions are developed according to the subject coming to reason they can be seen as subjective as well as the subject is able to recognize itself it and comes to understand how they were brought about by reason. Understanding thus, means the consciousness of freedom and how freedom is realized in free inventing. It is in this way that history can be considered as a development to the moment of ultimate freedom. According to Hegel, this point of Reason coming to itself can only be reached in modern societies as only modernity can have the free individual as a central part of the state.
We can see why Hegel’s theory is appealing. There is much value in locating the starting point of a theory of the state in the free individual, emphasizing the particular individual that is different from others. In our current society that has put so much emphasis on authenticity and individuality – as will be explained in the second chapter – we feel that freedom is only possible in the freedom of the individual. Moreover, Hegel’s system shows the necessity of the realization of freedom in relation to the other. The combination of positive freedom, in which the subject has the freedom to realize itself, and negative freedom, in which the subject is hold back through universality and others, is what makes Hegel’s philosophy special. When institutions and law are not experienced as restraints but as desire, when properly understood, freedom emerges. It leaves room for the rational subject that we have come to consider so important, and at the same time sheds a new light on the way in which civil society is not the place for ‘doing as one pleases’.
But we encountered difficulties with Hegel’s thought as well. The idea of the progress in the consciousness of freedom seems in vain in the light of current society and history. The historical developments that have put so many lives to sacrifice seem incompatible with such progress. It seems that Hegel has a slight preference for the universal development in history as he seems prepared to cope with sacrifices as a moment in the development of history. This is an issue that Adorno comes up with as well. As a philosopher that dealt with direct confrontations of the Second World War, he is in the right position to question Hegel’s progress-thesis.
Also, with respect to the ‘rational is actual’ quote, Hegel’s intentions to create a critical subject can be doubted. He seems to want to imply that it is possible that subject and Spirit reach perfect harmony in the state through Sittlichkeit, the moment where the subject recognizes itself in the institutions and laws of the state. But this seems problematic. Not only with reference to the question of the ‘critical subject’ endorsing the status quo, but more importantly because we are unable to find such a harmony in our time. This is a question that Taylor asks as well: if Hegel was right, we would have recognized ourselves in our social and institutional environment. But instead, we perpetually challenge it.
Hegel’s story of freedom is appealing, but it is difficult as well to come to reconciliation with his thought in the light of the struggles of contemporary society. The question is why exactly this is the case. Was it a false story? Was it wishful thinking? Do we have to come up with a different story? The following chapters are a search for answers to these questions.
2 Rewriting the story Introduction
In our current age, the story went lost. Being lost, is an important topic of Taylor’s search for the answer to the problems of our times. As a result of this moment in history that set modern thought in motion: the loss of the framework of a cosmic order. Enlightenment was seen as bringing forth freedom and independence, but this empowering human capacities turned away from a framework that gave sense to our lives. As a result, certain achievements that modern thought yielded have been transformed into problematic focuses on individuality and instrumental reason. As a consequence, society has become ‘atomistic’. It has become the playfield of economic gain, regarding the individuals as separate atoms, deprived of the moral environments that bind them together. According to Taylor, we have come to give the notions of freedom the wrong emphases as a result of which we have lost our orientation on the map of moral environment.
Taylor sees the loss of framework as an important moment in history. A moment that we tend to interpret wrong. It seems that the ability to transfer the divine powers to the human being, has proved that we can live without a framework, that the fate of the modern human being is to be lost because of this boundless and endless freedom. Taylor holds that this is wrong. We cannot live without a moral framework: even though it might seem hard and even unnatural to articulate what our framework is, that doesn’t mean we don’t live by one. Articulating one’s framework is therefore a necessary in the understanding of what it means to be a modern individual. In Sources of the Self, Taylor sets himself the task of tracing the history of modern identity as a way of giving new meaning to the questions of the present.
Taylor has a two-fold way of approaching selfhood: the ontological part what makes a moral human being, and the historicist part that provides the conditions of being a modern human being.
What makes Taylor an interesting player on the field of our quest to human freedom is the fact that he can be seen as a contemporary Hegelian. As we will learn, Taylor holds that the ‘human situation’ is a vital element of moral life. This not only relates to the idea of articulating who we are, but also to an aspect that Hegel thought so important for the realization of freedom: Sittlichkeit. According to Taylor, articulating the good is inseparable from realizing this good in reality. Therefore, defining modern selfhood is directly related to
