November 19, 2005
Hegel's conception of freedom runs counter to the Kantian conception of freedom that stands in opposition to nature and sensuous inclination, even though Hegel accepts that freedom is the basis for the modern state. He questions the individual conception of freedom and the way that right is reduced to the coexistence of my individual will lwith those of other individuals, as presupposed in social contract theories. This means that the state is reduced to a contract based on the arbitrary will of individuals.
What Hegel does is question negative freedom (abstract freedom) which he sees embodied in the destructive fury (ie., the reign of terror) of the French Revolution; Bentham's conception of freedom that sees law as a fetter or constraint on liberty; or Hobbe's definition of liberty as the absence of external impediments. This conception of freedom holds that law is a constraint on our liberty to pursue our desires without obstruction or intrusion. Hence we have freedom as the arbitrary will of the individual desiring to do as they pleased that runs through the modern philosophical liberal tradition.
True, Locke is more moderate, as instead of opposing freedom to law, he talks in terms of freedom as doing whatever one pleases within the space carved out by the law. So is John Stuart Mill, as he talks of liberty as pursuing our own good in our own way so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of their liberty or impede their efforts to obtain it.
What Hegel argues for is a conception of freedom as radical self-determination that is distinct from the will being determined by its natural inclinations and particular desires; a negative conception of freedom that is presupposed by neo-classical economics or libertarianism. Freedom as self-determination has its object its own freedom.
Yet is this not Kant's idea of freedom of autonomy?
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Gary, An essay by my favourite Philosopher.
Freedom Is the Only Law and Happiness The Only Reality by Avatar Adi Da Samraj
John