Freedom's Course: Hegel's Concept of World History and the Greek War for Independence (1821–1831)

Abstract: A little-remarked aspect of Hegel's lecture courses on the philosophy of world history is that he delivered them five times during a nine-year period (1822–1831) that aligns almost perfectly with the years of the Greek War for Independence. If Hegel was tracking the French and Haitian Revolutions while writing The Phenomenology of Spirit , then he may have been similarly tracking the Greek Revolution when delivering these lectures. What Hegel had done conceptually in 1807 in his Phenomenology of Spirit , he now intended to do historically in this lecture course: namely, to theorize the historical course of human freedom. Since these lectures represent the first text of Hegel's to be translated into English (in 1857), and since they had been translated into Italian even earlier (1840), Hegel's contention that freedom from domination was the moral aim of world history would provide philosophical support for abolitionist and other emancipatory freedom movements in Europe and the Americas. Equating domination by tyrants with slavery would also inspire national independence movements from Greece to Italy and New Spain. Hegel's romantic account of Greece's emancipation from domination, in antiquity and the present, seemed to speak in favor of such nationalist uprisings. At the same time, his concern with the devolution of the French Revolution left him ambivalent about revolution as a political praxis. His lectures would strike both notes as the Greek Revolution unfolded.