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Hegel 's Concept Of Freedom

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What is Hegel’s concept of freedom? One wishes such a question could be easily

answered. Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right has been read as Hegel tracing out his

concept of freedom, at all of its different moments, in its many different forms, personal,

interpersonal and communal.1 So we do not follow the path that Hegel traces and arrive at a

concise definition of freedom; rather Hegel’s definition of freedom is contained in and

expounded through the entire path.2 In this paper I will attempt to follow this path and make the

various aspects of Hegel’s concept of freedom as clear as possible.

Before I set out on this Hegelian path, I want to clearly differentiate between

philosophical conceptions of freedom and political conceptions of freedom. Philosophical

freedom is broadly concerned with the nature of the will. It is primarily concerned with the

freedom of the individual, with free will. Political freedom, conversely, is concerned with the

relationship between the subject and the external world, with rights, with what one is permitted

to do. There is an obvious sense in which an ape living in the wild is freer than an ape confined

to a small cage. If one were to argue that apes lack the necessary rationality, self-awareness,

mind, soul, etc. that is necessary for freedom, or if one were to argue that the world is determinist

and so both apes are equally unfree, one would be missing the point. The ape lacks what might

broadly be

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