SINCE THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY it has been assumed—indeed it has become something of a cliché—that, whereas Kant drew a sharp distinction between theoretical and practical reason and clearly exalted the practical over the theoretical, Hegel insisted on the indissoluble unity of the theoretical and the practical. Whether that familiar picture of Kant is accurate is not something I propose to examine in this essay. However, I do wish to consider to what extent that familiar picture of Hegel is correct. My judgment is that it is indeed correct, but that not enough attention has been paid by commentators to the precise ways in which theoretical and practical spirit are unified in Hegel’s philosophy. The aim of this essay is to shed light on the unity of the theoretical and the practical in Hegel’s theory of freedom, in particular, and so perhaps to provide a foundation for future work on the relation between Hegel and his German Idealist predecessors.
In §481 of the 1830 Encyclopaedia, Hegel states explicitly that “actual free will is the unity of theoretical and practical spirit.”1 In so far as human beings, in Hegel’s view, are not just animals, but are self-conscious, thinking beings, their practical activity—or willing— must involve knowledge and understanding of what they want to achieve through such activity; and knowledge and understanding, for Hegel, are precisely what is meant by theoretical intelligence.2
This connection between theoretical and practical activity is not simply contingent, but stems from the fact that both practical and theoretical activity are modes of the same basic human activity of thought. The difference between understanding and willing for Hegel is thus simply the difference between the theoretical and the practical attitude or comportment (Verhalten) of thought itself, between thought as theoretical and thought as practical. Thought and will are not to be regarded as two distinct mental faculties, therefore; rather, “the will is a particular mode of thought; it is thought as translating itself into existence, as the drive to give itself existence.”3
Nevertheless, there is a difference between theoretical and practical activity—between thinking as thinking and thinking as willing— and this difference is set out clearly by Hegel in a handwritten note to §4 of the Philosophy of Right. Theoretical intelligence, he writes, involves “considering [what is], letting it be (es lassen) and—cognizing [it] as it is, knowing it as universal.” Practical spirit, on the other hand, entails relating negatively to the world, “changing” it in accordance with a determination that is “posited by me.”4 Yet, in spite of this clear difference between letting things be and negating and changing them, if theoretical and practical spirit are both modes of thought, then human beings will be required by their nature as thinking beings to engage in both theoretical and practical activity and not to neglect one for the sake of the other. In fact, the fully developed human spirit will be the explicit unity of theoretical and practical activity: the will which knows itself as will, understands all that it means to be will, and wills (or lets itself be determined by) what it understands willing to entail.5
The first thing to note about theoretical intelligence, Hegel says, is that it finds itself “externally determined” by the given content of sensation; that is to say, it sees colors, hears sounds, feels pressures, and so on, which it does not produce from within itself.6 The second thing to note is that theoretical intelligence regards the sensations it has as stemming from, and as constituting perceptions of, objects which are different from us. “When I touch something hard,” Hegel says, “I feel a pressure, but I say straightaway that the pressure comes from something hard.”7 This idea that what I perceive is something hard is not contained in the sensation itself, but, as Hegel argues in the Encyclopaedia, is the result of an act of consciousness whereby the mind “separates this [sensory] material from itself and gives it initially the determination of being.”8 Hegel would thus appear to agree with Kant that the mind must be able to form for itself a conception of objectivity distinct from and other than subjectivity, if it is to be conscious of a world outside of itself, and that, consequently, (as Kant puts it) “though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience.”9 (Unlike Kant, however, Hegel believes that the same consciousness is the source of our awareness of objectivity and of the immediacy of being, whereas Kant distributes our awareness of objectivity and immediacy amongst the two separate faculties of understanding and intuition.)10
Both sensation and consciousness are important to theoretical intelligence, yet neither one by itself constitutes the genuinely theoretical moment in knowing. Consciousness is theoretical to a degree in that it conceives of things as distinct from subjectivity and as being whatever they are, and so could be said to “let them be.” However, for consciousness, “the object is external, an other for us, an other side for us,” and so cannot be said to reveal itself fully to, and so be fully known by, the subject.11 The object is only known properly when what it is is understood to be disclosed in thought. Thought thus constitutes the genuinely theoretical, cognitive moment in human subjectivity.
Thought begins from the perspective of consciousness and so accepts initially that objects are external to consciousness, existing outside or over against us in time and space. However, the distinctive activity of thought is to come to the recognition that objects are not just to be regarded as external to us, but that what objects are is in some sense revealed in, and present in, thought itself. When I conceive of something in thought, therefore, I am not simply forming an image or representation of something, or merely thinking “about” something other than myself; rather, I am regarding the objective character of the thing—what the thing itself is, its very nature and form—as brought to mind in the thought itself. In so doing, I am finding the truth of the object in my own thinking and so, as Hegel puts it, am taking away the strangeness of the object and making it mine.12 This does not mean that I come to regard objects and their perceived qualities as mere “posits” of my intellect, as really only existing “in my mind” rather than in the world; thought is not idealistic in this sense. On the contrary, thought affirms the genuine objectivity of what it thinks and understands things to be. Thought regards itself as precisely that which lets the true nature of things be known, as that which finally lets their law-governed structure or form, which the eyes cannot see and the fingers cannot touch, become evident. Thought thus does not consider what it understands there to be to be merely what it understands there to be, but rather to be what there truly is. In fact, it regards itself as disclosing what is, more thoroughly than any other activity of the mind.13
My purpose here is not to defend Hegel’s conception of thought, nor to explore all the difficulties it might entail, nor even to provide a full explanation of what Hegel means. It is simply to draw attention to three important features of the theoretical “attitude” of thought in Hegel’s account. The first is that thought is subjective—is always my thought—since what I think is within me in a way that what I see is clearly not; the second is that thought is not utterly subjective, since what I understand is something universal (such as a concept, form or a law), and is thus not peculiar to my perspective on the world but something that can be understood by all;14 and the third is that thought is thoroughly objective, since what I understand there to be is what I understand and know there actually to be. By insisting on this latter point, of course, Hegel is clearly aligning himself with the ancient metaphysical tradition, which stretches from Parmenides through Plato to Descartes and Spinoza, and which considers “the determinations of thought to be the fundamental determinations of things.”15
Now Hegel would by no means deny that, at least in the case of natural objects (if not in the case of the self), sensation and intuition are needed for us to be aware of something. However, Hegel’s claim is that in so far as we are aware of something we perceive as being there, as actually existing in the world, it is consciousness and, even more importantly, thought—not some distinct, nonintellectual form of intuition—that constitute our awareness of such being. Sensuous consciousness, Hegel tells us, is aware of the perceived object as “something existing” (ein Seiendes);16 and thought is the awareness that the universal structures we understand the world to have are indeed what there is. In this respect, by thinking of consciousness and thought as the sources of our awareness of being, Hegel departs most obviously from the position of Kant. For Hegel, in contrast to Kant, thought and consciousness could be said to be “intellectual intuition”; and this intuitive side to thought has, as we shall see, profound consequences for Hegel’s conception of practical spirit. It is to Hegel’s account of practical spirit that we therefore now turn.
We saw above that in his handwritten note to §4 of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel defined human practical activity as bringing about some change in the world in accordance with a determination that is “posited by me.” If one is to bring about change in this way, one must not only have some conception of what is to be brought about; one must also be able to conceive of the possibility of change being effected—that is, of the world becoming a different place to live in and of one’s own activity making that difference. Without understanding that the world can be changed and that I can bring about such change, I could not regard myself as a practical being. Indeed, my very identity as a practical being lies in knowing myself to be the source of possible changes in the world that follow from as yet unrealized possibilities conceived and “posited by me.”
Such a consciousness of oneself as essentially the source of new possibilities involves what Hegel refers to as a “negative determination,”17 that is, an awareness that what is now the case need not be, that one’s activity is not simply restricted to sustaining what at present exists, and that one is able to bring about through one’s own activity what is not yet the case. This ability to say “no” to what is, to look away from what is now the case and to conceive of other possibilities, is referred to by Hegel as the act of abstraction.18 It is only because the mind abstracts from the specific situation it finds the world to be in that it can conceive of bringing about what is not yet the case. Furthermore, it is only because we abstract from the specific qualities and characteristics we find ourselves to have that we can conceive of as yet unrealized possibilities for ourselves.
In so far as I abstract in this way from what I find myself to be, and understand that, as essentially practical, I can always project new possibilities for myself (and the world), I understand that I am not fixed or defined by whatever I find myself to be, by my nature, talent, sex, and so on. That is to say, by understanding myself as essentially the source of new possibility, I understand that what I “am” is ultimately not determined, but is instead essentially indeterminate.19 This consciousness of myself as indeterminate, as sheer possibility—as the possibility even of voluntary death—is, Hegel explains, nothing but the pure, abstract thought of oneself.20
The reason why Hegel regards practical spirit or will as a form of thought should now be clear. We may imagine that practical activity is fundamentally “material,” but I can only engage in practical activity to the extent that I understand myself to be the source of possibility and regard myself as free to change or negate any given situation in the world or characteristic in myself in the light of possibilities conceived and “posited by me.” In so far as I regard myself as essentially the source of new possibilities for the world and myself, I understand that I can abstract from whatever I find the world or myself to be at present. This, however, means that I regard what I “am” as ultimately indeterminate; and to regard oneself in this way is nothing other than to conceive of the pure indeterminate thought of oneself. My practical freedom and will is thus founded on the abstract thought of myself as essentially the power of abstraction, that is, on the abstract thought of myself as “this absolute possibility of being able to abstract from every determination in which I find myself or in which I have placed myself.”21 In Hegel’s view, therefore, I conceive of myself as a practical being that is able to abstract through an act of actual abstraction, namely, through an act of abstract thought.
It becomes clear in subsequent paragraphs of the Philosophy of Right that practical spirit does not just involve this abstract thought of oneself, but also entails making specific choices, deciding to satisfy these desires and not those, and so to settle on certain determinate possibilities rather than others. Nevertheless, if one’s choices are to be understood as the expression of genuinely practical activity and as stemming from the freedom of the will, then, Hegel believes, one must preserve, together with an awareness of one’s specific desires and interests and the specific possibilities one elects to pursue, a sense of one’s ultimate indeterminacy, of one’s infinitely variable ability to … , of oneself as possibility. That is to say, one must preserve the sense that, although one has settled on this possibility rather than that, one is not bound by any of them and could always settle on something else. (One should note that Hegel is not yet thinking here of that practical spirit that limits its possibilities by taking into account the actual character of the world in which it acts and the actual consequences of its actions. We only meet this form of the free will in the section on morality. What Hegel is describing at the moment is rather the self-indulgent subject which takes delight in its own thought of what is possible, of what it can do. Such a practical spirit finds enjoyment (Genuß) in its own sense of power and arbitrariness, in its own ability to effect change.)22
Hegel notes that there is an essential ambiguity in the will’s abstract thought of itself as indeterminate. By abstracting itself from all specificity and determinacy, and by withdrawing into the pure thought of itself as possibility, the will frees itself from whatever it merely finds itself to be. In this way, the will withdraws out of the sphere of what it is given to be by nature and history, into the sphere of its own pure possibility and choice. This act of abstraction or withdrawal thus constitutes an act of what Hegel calls “reflection” into oneself.23 It is the act whereby I become aware of myself as wholly myself, as I.
Yet, at the same time, as we have seen, by abstracting from all that I find myself to be, and by constituting myself as pure I, I render myself wholly indeterminate. I thus cut myself off from all the specific features—such as natural characteristics, age, sex, nationality, and so forth—which distinguish me from others, and so give myself an abstract identity which is indistinguishable from that of other free wills. Indeed, I give myself an identity which is quite universal, that any free will has and must have if it is to be free. “By saying I, I renounce everything. … This is the absolute abstraction of the universal, the abstract infinite, the positing of oneself as wholly universal.”24
By conceiving of myself as pure I, I thus come into an identity that is utterly mine, that constitutes my own inner freedom, and one that is also utterly universal, and so not just mine, but rather the identity that all free wills share.25 When practical spirit or will understands and explicitly recognizes that freedom does not just lie in its own possibilities, but is rather the universal property of all thinking beings, then practical spirit becomes explicitly theoretical once again, because one of the defining features of theoretical intelligence for Hegel is that it is consciousness of universality.
This is the point at which the truly free will emerges. The truly free will, for Hegel, is thus the unity of theoretical and practical spirit, the unity of intelligence and will—the will that does not just promote its own arbitrariness, but rather wills what it understands freedom to be, namely, something universal.26
What I propose to do for the remainder of this essay is sketch out how the idea of the free will as the unity of theoretical and practical spirit determines the development of the concept of the will in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right What becomes apparent in Hegel’s account is that the will or practical spirit develops and gains in freedom as it is educated into being fully theoretical, that is, as it comes to understand better what freedom entails. The process whereby the will is fully liberated is thus, in Hegel’s view, “theoretical in nature” (diese Befreiung ist theoretischer Natur).27
I have already indicated that this theoretical education and liberation of the will involves the recognition of the universal character of freedom. However, theoretical intelligence is also committed to the idea that what it understands (rather than imagines) there to be, is in fact what there is. Accordingly, as the will becomes explicitly theoretical, its conception of the modality of freedom is subtly changed. It understands that freedom is not just possibility, but is such possibility, is the actuality of possibility, and so is actual being-there or Dasein as much as it is possibility. As Hegel himself words it, the will learns that “it is not mere possibility, predisposition, or capacity (potentia), but the infinite in actuality (infinitum actu).”28
Kant would no doubt regard this shift in the way freedom is regarded as quite illegitimate, since, for him, merely understanding oneself as free, without any intuition through which my freedom would be given to me, is not enough to assure me that I am free.29 However, for Hegel, in contrast to Kant, freedom is not something that needs to be given in intuition to be known as actual; it is established as actual by thought alone. This is because Hegel does not think of freedom as the characteristic of some putative “object” called the self, to which one would need to have some kind of access in order to confirm that it is free. Rather, he thinks of freedom—at least initially—as consisting in nothing but the simple act of abstracting and thinking of myself as I, as indeterminate possibility. For Hegel, then, in so far as I think of myself as I—as free—I both conceive of myself as a free “I” through that act of abstraction and am free simply in performing that very act. In the case of natural objects, Hegel believes that thought (and consciousness) supply our awareness of being, but he accepts that the mind nevertheless needs sensation and intuition, since knowledge of the natural world involves the thought (and consciousness) that what one perceives is real. In the case of the I, however, thought alone without intuition and sensation is enough to assure us that we are free, since our freedom consists in nothing but the act of thinking of ourselves as free. (In this, of course, Hegel is close to, indeed indebted to, the early Fichte.)30
When the will becomes theoretical and changes its understanding of the modality of freedom in the way I have described, its fundamental stance or comportment (Verhalten) towards its own freedom changes. It ceases to regard the pursuit of its own arbitrary freedom and the projection of its own infinite possibilities as its exclusive concern, and acknowledges that, since freedom is actual in the act of abstraction, freedom is to be recognized for what it is, for what that act of abstraction actually entails, and not just for what I would like it to entail. The free will is practical; it locates its freedom in the withdrawal into its own indeterminacy and self-determination. However, as theoretical spirit, the will also recognizes that its freedom and self-determination are not simply under the will’s control, but are whatever they are. It therefore recognizes that, in so far as it seeks to remake the world in the light of its own freely conceived possibilities, its free conception of those possibilities cannot be absolutely arbitrary but has to be informed by a regard for what freedom itself is and will turn out to be. “The free will is active,” Hegel says, “[and] recognizes only something posited by itself, … acknowledges only its own. But what is produced by it is essentially not something only produced by it, but that which is in and for itself (das An und für sich seiende), and [the recognition of] this falls on the side of the theoretical.”31
When freedom is recognised by the will as its own, and also as universal, and also as something actual and objective, as a Dasein or “existence” which is to be acknowledged and respected and not abstracted from at will, freedom is understood as right. Right, for Hegel, is thus simply the recognised “existence of the free will.”32
The person or free will as the bearer of what Hegel calls “abstract right” exhibits theoretical intelligence to the extent that it understands right and personhood to be universal and to be respected as the Dasein of freedom. Yet the person is at the same time practical in that it understands its freedom to lie in its “consciousness of itself as a completely abstract ‘I’.”33 As a person, therefore, “I know myself to be free, free in myself, abstracting from everything” and withdrawing into the realm of my own possibilities and arbitrary choices—except that I now regard myself and all other persons as having the actual inalienable right to such abstract freedom.34 Freedom as personhood is thus the universal freedom of abstract individuality. That is to say, right is always my (individual) right, my right to do and appropriate whatever I please—provided that I respect the rights of all persons to do the same.35
My right to do and appropriate whatever I choose is contained in the universal right of persons to do and appropriate whatever they choose. However, precisely because “as this [person] I know myself to be free, free in myself, abstracting from everything,”36 it can seem to me that I can abstract my own freedom from the universal freedom of all persons, and pursue my own possibilities to the exclusion of the rights of others. When I do this, I commit wrong.
It should be noted that, in Hegel’s view, the idea that my freedom as a person is exclusively my own personal freedom is an illusory effect or Schein created by the very idea of the rights of the abstract person.37 My right is always my right—my right to be unconstrained in my choices, except by the rights of others also to be so unconstrained. However, as a result, the very idea of right as my right provides a constant temptation to me to assert my own freedom and my own possibilities in abstraction from those of others. When I do abstract my own freedom from its embeddedness in the universal freedom of personhood, the practical side of the will—the side which abstracts from whatever it finds itself to be—abstracts itself from what the theoretical side of the will understands freedom actually to be (namely, something universal). For Hegel, therefore, the will of the criminal is simply “the abstraction (Abstraktum) of the I will.”38
Crime, however, is based on an illusion—the illusion that my own freedom can be abstracted as I please from the intrinsically universal freedom of personhood. In so far as I succumb to this illusion and do so abstract from the universal character of freedom, I cause the universal character of freedom as right (which must be respected) to be reasserted against me in the form of just punishment. By not allowing my criminal violation of the rights of others to stand, and by thus “negating” my crime, punishment reestablishes the authority and validity of rights as the rights of all persons that have to be respected by all persons. But, of course, the criminal is himself a person and a bearer of rights. What is reestablished in punishment is thus the inviolability of the criminal’s own rights as a person; and “in so far as the punishment … is seen as embodying his own right, the criminal is honored as a rational being.”39 And yet in punishment, right, including the criminal’s own right, is restored by force against the criminal will.
What is interesting about crime and punishment in Hegel’s account is that, by abstracting themselves from the universal dimension of their own freedom as persons, criminals turn that universal dimension of their own freedom against themselves, that is, turn it into an abstract, external power or “essence” that negates their purely personal freedom in the name of the universality of right.40 Universal freedom and right do not, however, automatically constitute such an abstract power over the individual, and would not do so if individuals did not abstract themselves from, and so disregard, the universality of freedom. The problem is that, in the sphere of abstract right;, the illusion that the individual has the right to do whatever he or she pleases is an irreducible effect of the very idea of individual right. It is therefore always a possibility that bearers of individual rights will assert their own individual freedom abstractly and so violate the rights of others and commit a wrong. Since this is the case, right has to establish its universal character by explicitly differentiating itself from, and dissolving, the illusion that freedom lies in sheer individual arbitrariness.41 This occurs, as we have seen, in punishment.
The will that acknowledges and internalizes the explicit difference between individual arbitrariness and universal individual freedom and right, is the moral will. The moral will frees itself from the illusion that its theoretical understanding of freedom as right is merely in the service of its practical interest in pursuing its own possibilities, and fully accepts that freedom is not just its own but is in itself something universal. In the sphere of morality, the theoretical moment of the will thus gains a certain autonomy, an autonomy evident in a variety of features of the moral will.
The moral will recognizes, for example, that it cannot simply insist on pursuing its own possibilities untrammeled, because its actions have actual consequences that it cannot control and, as a thinking being, it must anticipate and take account of such consequences in determining what it is to do. The moral will acknowledges what Hegel calls “the right of the objectivity of the action.”42 The moral will also recognizes that it can only pursue its own interests and welfare in so far as it furthers the interests and welfare of others. It also, of course, acknowledges the demands of universal duty.43
Yet, the moral will is the will for whom the demands of universal freedom and right are no longer imposed from the outside in the form of punishment. This is because the moral will has internalized the demands of universal freedom and right and holds itself responsible for taking those demands into account in whatever it does. Indeed, the moral will claims the right to bind itself to respect the demands of others and not simply to be forced into such respect. The moral will thus claims the right to be able to work out for itself what the actual consequences of its actions will be and only to be held responsible for what it intends through its actions;44 it also claims the right to determine for itself what duty requires of it and only to recognize what it understands to be good.45 From this point of view it becomes apparent that, even though the moral will does possess the theoretical understanding that it is bound in its actions by the actual conditions it encounters in the world and by the universal freedom of others, this will is still under the sway of the practical concern to determine for itself and out of its own understanding what is required of it. The moral standpoint thus lays claim to what Hegel calls the “right of the subjective will” according to which “the will can recognize something or be something only in so far as that thing is its own, and in so far as the will is present to itself in it as subjectivity.”46
For all its attentiveness to what it is required to do, the moral will, for Hegel, is dominated by the specifically practical concern to determine itself, to be its own lawgiver, and to pursue possibilities and obligations which ultimately stem from its own insight and understanding. Such a will is therefore still ultimately an abstract will, because in its very recognition of the rights of others it draws back into the sphere of its own freedom and self-determination and regards itself as ultimately responsible for such recognition.
The moral will, for Hegel, is dominated by the practical mode of thought, even though it includes an explicit theoretical interest in freedom as universal. In the idea of the good as duty, or what I ought to do, we can see two ways in which the theoretical moment is subordinated to the practical. On the one hand, in so far as I ought to do what is good, I conceive of doing good as something that is still ahead of me, still as yet beyond me, abstracted from me, something to be achieved by me in the future. The moral will does not yet understand its actions as already good now and does not understand the good itself as actually present in its actions. Accordingly, the moral will lacks the full theoretical understanding of the good as actually existing—as actually secured—right and welfare. Theoretical understanding, we remember, is (as well as the awareness of universality) the awareness of what is. In the case of the moral will, however, which knows only that it ought to do good, not that it is good, “self-determination is still the pure restlessness of activity that as yet has come to no ‘what is’” (die reine Unruhe der Tätigkeit, die noch zu keinem “was ist,” gekommen ist).47
On the other hand, in so far as I recognize that I ought to do good, I recognize that obligation as stemming from within me, from my own nature as a free being rather than from some external authority. If the good were simply an end in itself for me, all I would be able to say is that I must pursue it, that I am compelled by the very nature of the good to pursue it. However, the idea that I ought to will the good indicates, for Hegel, that I am compelled to will the good by my own nature as opposed to some external force. To the extent that I understand that I ought to will the good, therefore, I also understand that my own freedom requires of me that I do so, that the pursuit of the good is my own objective duty.48 Consciousness of the ought is thus always consciousness that I ought, consciousness of one’s own inner compulsion, and to that extent belongs more to the practical side of the will than to the theoretical.
In this essay I am trying to interpret the free will as the unity of theoretical and practical spirit. At the level of abstract right, the will is theoretically aware that it is free and that the freedom of the person is universal. However, since the freedom which the will knows itself to have—the right to do what one pleases provided that the rights of others are respected—is still only a modification of the abstract, practical freedom of the arbitrary will, the theoretical consciousness of right as individual right tempts, indeed in some ways encourages, the person to withdraw into his own abstract self-identity and commit wrong.
In the moral will, the theoretical moment is given greater independence, since the moral will knows explicitly that it cannot just do what it wants to, but is bound to will the universal for its own sake. However, the practical side of the will still dominates, since the moral will understands everything it wills, including both its own interests and the content of its duty, to be determined by itself and its own reason, rather than something else.
In the ethical will the moment of theoretical understanding is finally given equal status with the practical will. The ethical will is theoretical in that, like the moral will, it knows freedom to be universal, to be the freedom of all free individuals, but, unlike the moral will, it understands freedom in the form of right and welfare to be actually present and realized in the world. It does not just regard the good as what we ought to do, but as “the living good which has its knowledge and volition in self-consciousness, and its actuality through self-conscious action,” and which thus constitutes an “existing world.”49 The ethical subject knows that the laws and institutions that it regards as constituting the “substance” of freedom actually exist and that they do not just hold out the promise or possibility of freedom or oblige us to pursue it, but actually secure right and welfare. As such, of course, ethical subjectivity can only emerge where the laws and institutions do in fact secure right and welfare— that is, in a healthy rational society or state—and so is not available to all people at all times in history.50
The ethical subject is not, however, a purely theoretical one. Its freedom does not just consist in knowing that existing laws and institutions secure its rights and welfare; nor are these laws and institutions understood simply to be given contingent realities that exist in the world in utter indifference to and independence of my freedom, in the manner of natural objects.51 The ethical subject is also a practical one which acts in order to realize its own possibilities and pursue its own interests, and which works to make a difference in the world. Moreover, the ethical subject recognizes that the institutions that secure freedom and welfare only exist in the understanding and action of practical beings who labor in order to secure their rights and welfare. For the ethical will, therefore, ethical life has “its actuality through self-conscious action.”52
Yet, the practical activity of ethical subjects does not simply emanate from their own subjective, arbitrary interests, or from what they think such activity ought to be. Rather, such activity emanates from the will’s theoretical understanding of what freedom in the world actually is. The ethical subject, therefore, understands its own interest to he in acting in accordance with the laws and institutional expectations that it knows actually secure right and welfare. This ethical will represents the most complete unification of theoretical and practical spirit we have encountered so far. It is the spirit that understands what freedom is, that acts in order to bring about (and sustain) the freedom and happiness of itself and others, and that allows its own practical activity to be informed and grounded by what it understands the maintenance and furtherance of its own freedom (and that of others) actually to require. Furthermore, its theoretical understanding does not just stand over and control its practical activity; it informs practical activity itself as the habit of mind expressed in practical activity.53 The result is that the ethical subject living in ethical institutions and under ethical laws—institutions and laws that actually secure right and welfare—does not need always to decide for himself what he should do, but does freely what is to be done to sustain and further freedom.54
Hegel notes that the moral will objects to such an ethical disposition to be guided in one’s practical activity by “what is done”—by one’s ethical duty—and considers it a limitation on its freedom. In Hegel’s view, however, this is only because the moral will wants to safeguard its abstract practical freedom to determine for itself what it is to do.
[Ethical] duty only limits the arbitrariness of subjectivity or runs against the indeterminate, against the abstract good, which subjectivity should hold fast. As if, for example, people were saying: we want to be free, but free as such, abstractly.55
By conceiving of its freedom abstractly in this way as subjective self-determination, the moral will itself turns whatever is objective— including the existing laws and institutions of the state—into an abstract power over against the individual that is understood ultimately to limit or negate individual freedom. The ethical will, however, does not regard its freedom as solely and abstractly its own, and so does not consider itself to be confronted by abstractly objective or “alien” powers and authorities which dictate to it what it has to do. On the contrary, the ethical will understands its own freedom—including its own rights and welfare—to be secured by actual ethical laws and institutions and so feels itself to be “at home” in those institutions. Far from seeing in laws and institutions an implicit or explicit restriction on or threat to its freedom, therefore, the ethical will finds its own freedom realized in and through those laws and institutions. Ethical subjects find that “it is in the ethical realm that they actually possess their own essence and their inner universality.”56 As ethical subjects recognize that their own freedom is secured by laws and institutions, and that such laws and institutions are themselves actualized in the habits and practices of ethical agents, the difference between abstract subjectivity and the abstract essence, substance, or power of universality—a difference which defines morality—disappears.
For the ethical character … recognizes that its own dignity and the whole continued existence of its particular ends are based upon and actualized within this universal. Subjectivity is itself the absolute form and existent actuality of substance, and the difference between the subject on the one hand and substance as its object, end, and power on the other is the same as their difference in form, both of which differences have disappeared with equal immediacy.57
With the ethical subject that understands its practical activity to be grounded in its theoretical understanding of what freedom actually is, the free will moves out of the sphere of abstract subjective freedom and thus at the same time out of the sphere in which the universal and objective character of freedom are regarded primarily as an “essential” or “substantial” power over individuals. In the ethical realm, the free will is released from the hegemony of abstraction and the categories of essence, and is freed to a more rational perspective for which laws, institutions, and the state “cease to be an other for me,” but are understood to actualize and secure my own freedom and to inform my own habits and practices. “And in my consciousness of this,” Hegel says, “I am free.”58
There is room for abstract self-determination in Hegel’s conception of freedom in the state (specifically in the system of needs in civil society).59 However, it cannot be allowed to remain wholly abstract if freedom is to be more than the mere possibility of right and welfare, and individuals are not just to consider the state to be a “power” or public “authority” over them. As free beings, we enjoy the abstract freedom to produce through our own activity the means to satisfy our needs; we also enjoy the abstract freedom to choose for ourselves what kind of work we shall do.60 However, our practical activity must also be informed by a deep regard for the rights and welfare of all, by a common sense of identity with other members of the corporation to which we belong and with other citizens of our state. This does not just mean that we sense that we ought to help others; it means that our practical activity must be habituated, by life in corporations and in the state, to being the actual pursuit of universal right and welfare.
The ethical will is the will that can and does make decisions by and for itself about what it is to do (for example, about choice of work). It is, however, a will that makes its decisions on the basis of its clear recognition of, and fundamental habitual disposition to promote, the laws, institutions, and human practices that actually secure right and welfare. For Hegel, it is this moment of theoretical insight into what actually secures the right and welfare of oneself and others that provides the objective guide to action, which the moral will sought but was unable to find in the idea of doing duty for duty’s sake, and which prevents the ethical will from having to resort to the arbitrariness of conscience to determine what is the right thing to do.
Unlike the moral will, therefore, the ethical will does not regard itself above all as “the determining and decisive factor,”61 but—even though it does decide some things about its life wholly by and for itself—is willing to allow its activity ultimately to be guided and informed by the laws, institutions, and habits that it knows actualize and secure freedom. In this sense, the ethical will is more like the speculative, philosophical mode of thought described in the Preface to the Phenomenology, which is prepared to “let [the content] move itself” (sich bewegen zu lassen) and to let itself be moved by that content, than the understanding which claims for itself the right to be “the arbitrarily moving principle of the content” and to judge for itself what is right and true.62
It is interesting to note that even the monarch, who represents the pinnacle of the state and the supreme example of abstract arbitrary freedom in the state, is ethical in the sense just outlined in that in his decision making “he is bound by the concrete content of the advice he receives [and by the law]; and if the constitution is firmly established, he often has nothing more to do than sign his name.”63
I wish to stress again that even though the ethical will is defined as ethical by its theoretical understanding of what freedom actually is, and by allowing its activity to be guided by this understanding, this will is also a practical will that produces new needs, new means of production, and new social arrangements through its own activity; ethical life consists, after all, in the will, action, and labor of individuals.64 However, the ethical will realizes that, as ethical, its activity is also re-producing, sustaining, and giving life to the existing laws and institutions which already actually secure freedom. It also recognizes that in so far as its activity is informed by the laws and institutions in which it has been educated, its activity is not just its own. We are ourselves active in renewing and sustaining society, but as the free beings society has helped to make us.
What the free will produces through its own activity is thus not just what it has produced, but what has been produced by the social and historical actuality of freedom that constitutes ethical life and defines to a large degree who “we” are. The recognition that what we produce through our own activity is not just our own, but also belongs to society, history, and the nature of freedom, falls, Hegel says, “on the side of the theoretical.”65 It is our theoretical, not our practical, activity that takes us out of ourselves and educates us to the ways and needs of other free beings. Theoretical activity does this, of course, by taking us out of ourselves into the universality and actuality of our own freedom. That is to say, it takes us out of our abstract conception of ourselves as I, as the possibility of radical newness, into a concrete understanding of what it actually is to be free, what we, as free beings, actually are, namely beings with personal but also fundamentally social, communal, and historical identities and interests.
Practical activity purports to take us out of ourselves in the sense that—at least in so far as it is moral activity—it seeks to translate inner purposes and intentions into actuality. However, the acting, moral subject seeks to translate its own purposes and intentions into action and insists that it only be held responsible for what it had in mind when acting. Taken by itself, therefore, despite exposing itself to the contingencies of the world in which it seeks to act, moral practical activity seeks to remain within the sphere of its own self-determination. Theoretical understanding, on the other hand, reminds us that what we are is not simply our own to begin with, but an identity we share with our society and historical forbears; that is to say, that the I is not simply an I but a We.66
Though some may regard theoretical activity as self-enclosed contemplation that refuses to go out of itself and act, Hegel sees in such activity the activity in which above all we go out of ourselves, both by disclosing and accepting what we are rather than what we think we ought to be or would like to be, and by disclosing that we share a universal, social identity with others that is ours and yet not just ours. In so far as the will is liberated from its abstract concern for itself and its own possibilities, to the actual universality of its freedom, and to action that does actually promote and further the rights and welfare of others and of oneself, Hegel believes that this liberation is “of theoretical nature” (diese Befreiung ist theoretischer Natur).67 As Hegel shows in his analysis of the French Revolution, without being leavened in this way by a theoretical openness to what freedom is, the practical freedom of the abstract I by itself has ultimately little to bequeath the world but the abstract possibility of freedom—the abstract possibility that all too often finds its realization in the ultimate abstraction of death.68
DePaul University, Chicago
Correspondence to: Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, England.
1 See G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1830). Dritter Teil: Die Philosophie des Geistes, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl M. Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), [Werke in zwanzig Bänden 10]. All further references to part three of the Encyclopaedia will be given in the form: Hegel, Enc §481. All translations of passages from this text are my own.
2 See G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie. 1818–1831, ed. Karl-Heinz Ilting (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1973–4), 4:107. See also G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, §4 Addition, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl M. Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970) [Werke in zwanzig Bänden 7]. Further references to the Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie will be given in the form: Hegel, VR, 4:107. All translations of passages from this edition are my own. Further references to the Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts will be given in the form: Hegel, PR, §4 Add. All translations of passages from this edition are taken from G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B. Nisbet, ed. Allen Wood, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). I have occasionally altered Nisbet’s translation.
3 Hegel, VR, 4:102. See also Hegel, PR, §4 Add, and Clark Kucheman, “Abstract and Concrete Freedom: Hegelian Perspectives on Economic Justice,” The Owl of Minerva, 15, no. 1 (Fall 1983): 28.
4 Hegel’s handwritten notes are not included in the Wood and Nisbet edition of the Philosophy of Right, but this note can be found in the Moldenhauer and Michel edition, p. 49. In his lectures on aesthetics, Hegel also claims that “theoretical interest lets individual things be (läßt … die einzelnen Dinge gewähren)”; G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik 1, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl M. Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), [Werke in zwanzig Bänden 13], 59–60 (my translation). By contrast, Stanley Rosen argues that “theory originates in the process by which the world is assimilated into the subject” (my emphasis); see Stanley Rosen, “Theory and Practice in Hegel: Union or Disunion?” in Hegel’s Social and Political Thought, ed. Donald P. Verene (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1980), 38.
5 See Hegel, Enc, §481.
6 See Hegel, VR, 4:103. For Hegel’s full account of theoretical intelligence, see Enc, §§445–68. See also William deVries, Hegel’s Theory of Mental Activity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988) and David F. Krell, Of Memory, Reminiscence and Writing (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 205–39.
7 Hegel, VR, 4:103.
8 Hegel, Enc, §418.
9 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. Raymund Schmidt (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1990), B1. The translation is taken from Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: MacMillan, 1929).
10 See Hegel, Enc, §418, and Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B74–5.
11 See Hegel, VR, 4:103.
12 See Hegel, VR, 4:103–5.
13 See Hegel, Enc, §465.
14 See Hegel, VR, 4:104–5.
15 G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1830). Erster Teil: Die Wissenschaft der Logik, §28; ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl M. Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), [Werke in zwanzig Bänden 8].
16 Hegel, Enc, §418.
17 Hegel, PR, §4, handwritten note.
18 Hegel, VR 3:112.
19 See VR, 3:111–12. See also David Kolb, The Critique of Pure Modernity. Hegel, Heidegger and After (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 29.
20 See Hegel, VR, 4:112. See also G. H. R. Parkinson, “Hegel’s Concept of Freedom,” in Hegel, ed. Michael Inwood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 159.
21 Hegel, PR, §5.
22 See Hegel, Enc, §§444, 476–7.
23 Hegel, VR, 3:114.
24 Ibid., 3:112; see also VR, 3:158.
25 See Rosen, “Theory and Practice in Hegel,” 35–6.
26 See Hegel, Enc, §481; VR, 3:150; PR, §21.
27 Hegel, VR 4:108.
28 Hegel, PR §22.
29 See Kant, Kritik der reinen Vemunft, B157n. and Henry Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 248.
30 “Sich selbst setzen und Sein sind, vom Ich gebraucht, völlig gleich”; Fichte, Fichtes Werke, ed. Immanuel H. Fichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971), 1:98.
31 Hegel, VR, 3:110.
32 Hegel, PR, §29.
33 Ibid., §35.
34 Hegel, VR 3:191; see PR §35 Add.
35 See Hegel, PR §36.
36 Hegel, VR 3:191.
37 Ibid., 3:283–4; see PR §83 Add.
38 Hegel, VR 4:552.
39 Hegel, PR §100; see VR 4:283.
40 See Hegel, VR 3:283; PR §82 Add.
41 See Hegel, VR 4:266; PR §82 Add.
42 Hegel, PR §§120, 118.
43 Ibid., §§125, 133–5.
44 Ibid., §§117, 120.
45 Hegel, PR §§132, 137.
46 Ibid., §107.
47 Hegel, VR 3:338; see PR §108 Add.
48 See Hegel, VR 3:417; see PR §133 Add.
49 Hegel, PR §142.
50 See Adriaan Peperzak, “Hegels Pflichten-und Tugendlehre. Eine Analyse und Interpretation der ‘Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts’ §§142–156,” Hegel-Studien 17 (1982): 101.
51 See Hegel, PR §146.
52 See ibid., §142.
53 Hegel, PR §§151, 268.
54 See ibid., §150.
55 Hegel, VR 3:489–90; see PR §149 Add.
56 Hegel, PR §§153, 147.
57 Ibid., §152. On the transition from morality to ethical life as the Aufhebung of abstraction, see Udo Rameil, “Sittliches Sein und Subjektivität. Zur Genese des Begriffs der Sittlichkeit in Hegels Rechtsphilosophie,” Hegel-Studien 16 (1981): 134–6.
58 Hegel, PR §268.
59 On the abstract character of freedom in the system of needs, see Lu de Vos, “Die Logik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie: Eine Vermutung,” Hegel-Studien 16 (1981): 111. On the importance of not simply excluding or suppressing abstract freedom, see Hegel, VR 4:112 where we read the following: “But this one-sidedness always contains an essential determination in itself. This freedom of the understanding is thus not to be dismissed.” See also Hegel, PR, §5 Add; and Manfred Riedel, “Natur und Freiheit in Hegels Rechtsphilosophie,” Hegel-Studien Beiheft 11 (1974): 374.
60 Hegel, PR, §§206–7.
61 Hegel, PR, §136.
62 G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (hereafter, “Phen”) ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl M. Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), [Werke in zwanzig Bänden 3], 56, 36.
63 Hegel, PR, §279 Add; VR, 4:672, 674, 677.
64 See Hegel, PR, §142.
65 Hegel, VR, 3:110.
66 See Hegel, Phen, 145.
67 Hegel, VR, 4:108.
68 See Hegel, Phen, 436.