Hegel: A Very Short Introduction

by Peter Singer

Freedom for Hegel is not freedom to do as we please; it consists in having a free mind. Mind must be in control of everything else, and must know that it is in control.

The kind of freedom Hegel believes to be genuine is to be found, as we saw, in rational choice. Reason is the essential nature of the intellect. A free mind, unimpeded by coercion of any sort, will follow reason as easily as a river unimpeded by mountains or hills would flow directly to the sea. Anything that is an obstacle to reason is a limitation on the freedom of mind. Mind controls everything when everything is rationally ordered.

Some years ago a Hegel scholar named Robert Whittemore argued that Hegel was a panentheist. The term comes from Greek words meaning ‘all in God’ it describes the view that everything in the universe is part of God, but – and here it differs from pantheism – God is more than the universe, because he is the whole, and the whole is greater than the sum of all its parts. Just as a person is more than all the cells that make up his or her body – although the person is nothing separate from the body – so on this view God is more than all the parts of the universe, but not separate from it. Equally, just as no single cells amount to a person, so no individual parts of the universe amount to God.

Hegel sees God not as eternal and immutable, but as an essence that needs to manifest itself in the world, and, having made itself manifest, to perfect the world in order to perfect itself. It is a strange vision, but a powerful one. It is a vision that places immense weight on the necessity of progress: for the onward movement of history is the path God must take to achieve perfection. Therein may lie the secret of the immense influence that Hegel, for all his outward conservatism, has had on radical and revolutionary thinkers.