Hegel: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions Book 49)

by Peter Singer

but a necessary consequence of the fact that the Church does not treat the Deity as a purely spiritual thing, but instead embodies it in the material world.

Thus the spiritual element in human beings is fettered to mere material objects.

Hegel sees the Reformation as an achievement of the Germanic people, arising from ‘the honest truth and simplicity of its heart’.

The Reformation proclaims that every human being can recognize the truth of his or her own spiritual nature, and can achieve his or her own salvation.

No outside authority is needed to interpret the scriptures, or to perform rituals.

Therefore all social institutions – including law, property, social morality, government, constitutions, and so on – must be made to conform to general principles of reason.

Only then will human beings be free and yet fully reconciled with the world in which they live.

Yet the immediate result of this ‘glorious mental dawn’ was the Revolutionary Terror, a form of tyranny which exercised its power without legal formalities and inflicted as its punishment the quick death of the guillotine.

put into practice purely abstract philosophical principles, without regard to the disposition of the people.

‘the history of the world is nothing but the development of the idea of freedom’ – and suggesting that the progress of the idea of freedom has now reached its consummation. What was required was both that individuals should govern themselves according to their own conscience and convictions, and also that the objective world, that is the real world with all its social and political institutions, should be rationally organized.

Once the objective world is rationally organized, on the other hand, individuals following their consciences will freely choose to act in accordance with the law and morality of the objective world.

Then freedom will exist on both the subjective and the objective level. There will be no restrictions on freedom, for there will be perfect harmony between the free choices of individuals and the needs of society as a whole. The idea of freedom will have become a reality and the history of the world will have achieved its goal.

His rosy description of the Germany of his own day, coupled with his statement that the progress of the idea of freedom has now reached its consummation, can only mean that he believes his own country, in his own times, to have achieved the status of a rationally organized society.

the goal of freedom.

‘Governments make of philosophy a means of serving their State interests, and scholars make of it a trade’?

Karl Popper

Hegel had one aim, ‘to fight against the open society, and thus to serve his employer, Fre...

Hegel says that world history is nothing but the progress of consciousness of freedom.

this term ‘freedom’ is ‘an indefinite, and incalculably ambiguous term … liable to an infinity of misunderstandings, confusions and errors’.

instead the essential nature of freedom ‘is t...

Ethics does figure prominently in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, but its subject is closer to political philosophy.

This can mean ‘right’, but has wider associations, including that of ‘law’,

So the Philosophy of Right expresses Hegel’s philosophical ideas about ethics, jurispruden...

the Philosophy of Right contains Hegel’s most detailed discussion of freedom in the so...

Liberals generally see freedom as the absence of restrictions.

‘negative freedom’.

he refers to it as formal or abstract freedom, meaning that it has the form of freedom, but not the substance.

definition of freedom is ability to do what we please, such an idea can only be taken to reveal an utter immaturity of thought, for it contains not even an inkling of the absolutely free will, of right, ethical life, and so forth.’

individual choice, considered in isolation from everything else, is the outcome of arbitrary circumstances. Hence it is not genuinely free.

They do not ask how these preferences come about.

shall call these economists ‘liberal economists’.

‘radical economists’.

They bring up examples of the following kind: suppose that at a certain time people in our society take the normal human body odours for granted.

Then someone discovers a product which has the effect of inhibiting sweat and the odour it gives

launches a clever advertising campaign

The radical economists think this is manifestly absurd.

must face the difficult task of enquiring into the basis of preferences, and must judge economic systems by their ability to satisfy not just any preferences, but those preferences that are based on genuine human needs or contribute to genuine human welfare.

we cannot claim that our assessment is value-free; but they add that no method of assessing an econo...

genuinely free choices from those that are free only in form and not in substance, would be to write one’s own values into the conception of freedom.

Hegel’s retort, like that of the radical economists, would be that the negative conception of freedom is already based on a value, the value of action based on choice, no matter how that choice is reached or how arbitrary it may be. The negative conception of freedom, in other words, gives its blessing to whatever circumstances happen to be influencing the way people choose.

you agree that the radical economists have a point, it is only a small step to agreeing that Hegel has a point. Indeed, it is really no step at all; for Hegel anticipated the central point of the radical economists’ position, a point that has been popularized in modern times by J. K. Galbraith, Vance Packard, and a host of other critics of the industrial economy.

Hence the need for greater comfort does not exactly arise within you directly; it is suggested to you by those who hope to make a profit from its creation.

Hegel’s criticism of this system of needs shows that the ground of his opposition to the liberal economic view of society was essentially that taken by radical economists today.

He never loses sight of the fact that our wants and desires are shaped by the society in which we live, and that this society in turn is a stage in a historical process. Hence abstract freedom, the freedom to do as we please, is effectively the freedom to be pushed to and fro by the social and historical forces of our times.

Some of our desires are the product of our nature – like the desire for food, we were born with them,

Many of our other desires were formed by our upbringing, our education, the society in which we live, our environment generally.

Since we did not choose our desires, we are not free when we act from desire.

If we are not free when we act from desire, it seems that the only possible path to freedom is to purge oneself of all desires.

Kant’s answer is: reason.

Motivation to action can come from desires, or from reason. Do away with the desires, and we are lef...