Hegel and Freedom

We can use Hegel’s dialectical method to elucidate the necessity of political obligation. If one is to live in a lawless society, that is a society in which one can do anything they wish to do it appears to us as a free society, this freedom we could define as abstract. However, a society in which we are free to do as we please is a society in which another is free to do as they please, therefore if you wish to do something one is free to prevent you from doing that thing. We can conclude that under this definition of freedom our ability to do as we wish has been negated. This inconsistency resides in the thesis or the initial convention and consequently generates it’s antithesis of autocracy.

Autocracy requires obedience absolutely, if we obey absolutely it either contravenes the will and is mere compliance which means that we superficially accede and our freedom is curtailed as a consequence of some form of positive punishment or we do that which is instructed without any reflection and this implies the non existence of will which means our actions translate as that of the despot. Incidentally we identify this through the subtle power relations which manifest in society. In this respect we can identify that freedom is obliterated. For Hegel, historical progress is non other than the logical development of societies underlying concepts. In the context of lawlessness and autocracy we see how the concept of freedom operates and in both instances is actually negated. The failure of freedom to come to fruition leads to a necessary synthesis culminating in the amalgamation of the positive aspects of freedom found in lawlessness and autocracy. This synthesis is encompassed in democratic society in that we all have an equal say in what we want but the law inhibits any obstruction of the freedom of the individual.

For Hegel we can identify the pattern of change in History yet we cannot discern a future if operating within the confines of a system; it's contradictions need to become evident which instigate modification. This is a Romantic view pervasive during the first half of the 19th century which suggests that one is always a product of their culture and to know oneself is to know ones culture as opposed to The Enlightenment thinking of the 18th century which claimed that humans are reasoning beings and can step outside of any cultural contingencies by utilising this reason which is universal in its nature. 

Hegel would concur with this in that we can only discern the change of the concept explicitly in retrospect although he agrees that reason is what drives humanities progress. For Hegel the progress of mind is nothing more than the development of the consciousness of freedom. In each successive period of history that Hegel delineates he gives an analysis of the freedom present and then subsequently presents it’s contradictions rendering it merely an appearance until it’s full realisation embodied in the Prussian state of the 18th century.