Freedom and Spirit

This chapter traces the development of Hegel’s thought from his early reactions to the French Revolution and the Enlightenment crisis of religion, through the Phenomenology of Spirit, to the Philosophy of Right. Hegel’s ethical thought propounds two deep theses. First, what he calls Moralität, the individualistic modern standpoint of freedom of conscience, can only survive within ethical life (Sittlichkeit), in which individuals are realized through their service and self-understanding in various social wholes. Second, ethical life realizes the life of spirit. Absolute idealism is the metaphysics of spirit: its fundamental concept is the dialectical identity, or unity-in-difference, of self and other. This conception of ethical life issues in a deep rethinking of religion and politics: a reconciling vision of being and freedom in the modern age.