The substantial subject: the logic and appearance of freedom in Hegel

While it is widely agreed that Hegel’s philosophy is a philosophy of freedom, the significance and scope of Hegel’s theory of freedom is disputed. Most scholarly work on this topic has been devoted to the socio-political philosophy of the Philosophy of Right. But Hegel also speaks of freedom in a way which extends beyond the concerns of his socio-political thought. This dissertation demonstrates how Hegel’s theory of freedom is more fully grasped when it is understood as a comprehensive philosophy which also involves an ontology (a logic of being) and a phenomenology (a direct experience of this logic). The free state which Hegel outlines in the Philosophy of Right is still only a limited manifestation of a freedom which also pervades other aspects of human experience. A way of thinking which is “free” (in the sense that it does not restrict itself by assuming false methodological limitations) is itself essential to our capacity for rational self-determination. Moreover, this “speculative” perspective has only been achieved through the gradual cultivation (Bildung) of the free personality throughout history. This dissertation therefore investigates why Hegel thinks that freedom is at issue in abstract philosophical thought (in his logical works) as well as in concrete historical phenomena (in the Phenomenology of Spirit). This logic and appearance of freedom explicates Hegel’s statement in the Preface of the Phenomenology that the absolute is not only substance, but also subject. Having shown that both the ancient freedom of the “social substance” and the modern freedom of the “pure I” are untenable on their own terms, Hegel advances a logical and phenomenological theory of freedom in which these one-sided truths are reconciled with each other. The “substantial subject” of Hegelian freedom more fully actualizes the purely subjective freedom of the Enlightenment, enabling true individual self-determination. Freedom appears not just as the right to make arbitrary choices, but as substantial thought and conviction. Chapter 1 describes how Hegel thinks of freedom as true self-determination in three senses which continually appear throughout his work: as inner necessity, as being-at-home-with-oneself (Beisichselbstsein), and as the development of self-consciousness. Chapter 2 relates these three senses of freedom to Hegel’s statement that the absolute is both substance and subject. I then explore how Hegel’s own theory of freedom takes up Spinoza’s philosophy of substance and Fichte’s philosophy of subjectivity. Finally, I consider how Hegel understands the development of freedom in history to be a movement from substance to subject. Chapter 3 considers the logic of substance as Hegel describes it in his logic of essence, demonstrating how Hegel understands substantial necessity to ground the freedom of conceptual subjectivity. I then consider the appearance of this logic in Hegel’s account of ancient Greek ethical life as a “social substance.” The polis offered its citizens the freedom of membership but, when this “ethical life” broke down, it also first unveiled the truth of subjective moral freedom. Chapter 4 traces how Hegel’s logic of negation is operative in the formation of the “I” which abstracts itself from all particularity. In negating every external restriction, the freedom of the individual is now understood as an expression of what Hegel terms the “bad infinite.” I then consider how this logic has appeared throughout late antiquity and modernity, finally culminating in the Enlightenment before destroying itself in the Terror of the French Revolution. Chapter 5 describes the substantial subject which can now be realized in our own time. The substantial subject thinks systematically, achieving the freedom of rational self-determination by satisfying the inner necessity and inner purpose of self-conscious thought. The substantiality of subjectivity appears more immediately in moral conviction, where we paradoxically experience our freedom as what “must” be done. It is also present in the phenomenon of forgiveness, where we freely accept the finite limitations inherent in both action and judgement.