I. Autonomy and the general will in Rousseau, Kant and Hegel

In the ‘architecture’ of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right morality has the function of linking the rational universal with the individual will, with subjectivity. Therefore W. Jaeschke calls the sphere of morality ‘gleichsam die begriffliche Genese der “volonté générale” ’ (‘as it were the conceptual genesis of the volonté générale’ – see Jaeschke Reference Jaeschke2010: 382). Without morality, there would not have been a consciousness of freedom in the modern sense, and hence also no free society or rational state in the modern sense, because they presuppose subjectivity. In modernity a state, or more generally an institution, that would not satisfy the needs of free subjectivity could not be regarded by the individuals as their own, as it would not fulfil the demands of reason (see also Jaeggi Reference Jaeggi2009: 538-539, 542-543, Quante Reference Quante2011: 226). But how can one regard a political order as one’s own?

The contractarian theories of Hobbes and Locke formulated a principle of social agreement which constitutes a state and legal order based on the idea of a ‘transaction’Footnote ⁸, so that everybody should give up his natural freedom in order to gain security and legally guaranteed spaces of freedom (which are much broader for Locke than for Hobbes, of course). Rousseau exceeds also Locke’s liberal conception and reformulates the social contract as an act of gaining a new kind of freedom: giving up natural freedom corresponds to winning a civil freedom which is much more than the negative freedom in Hobbes’ and Locke’s models: the rational state is not understood as just a necessary limitation of individual freedom, but as the ‘precondition’, and also as the ‘embodiment’, of a higher form of actualized freedom (see Neuhouser Reference Neuhouser2000: 56-57).Footnote ⁹ Here, the legislation of the community has to be understood as the result of each citizen’s freedom, so that each is ‘bound only to one’s own legislation’ (Reath Reference Reath1994: 438). Therefore Rousseau is aiming for an identification of the individual citizen with the universality of the community – or what he even calls the ‘total alienation’ of the individual towards the community (Rousseau Reference Rousseau1953: I, VI, 15). In this state of identification the citizen now would regard the political affairs of the republic as his own, he would feel at home in public debates, feel solidarity with his fellow citizens, would not give his petty egoistic needs and interests priority over the common good, etc. In short: He would then subject himself to the volonté générale, the general will that enacts the law and which is the result of the legislating process in which he participates as a citizen.

Admittedly, in Rousseau’s version of the social contract the danger of despotism or even totalitarianism cannot be denied and it is very much the question how much space is left for individual freedom here. One might say that it was his error to confound the sphere of rights or politics with the sphere of morality – and that this demands too much of the citoyen (Kersting Reference Kersting2005: 169-170, 178-179). Rousseau’s republic depends on the virtue of its citizens, on their conscience and willingness to identify with the whole of society and to subordinate voluntarily to the general will.

In contrast to this attempt, we find a rigorous distinction of the spheres of right and morality in Kant’s philosophy. Nonetheless Kant is deeply inspired by Rousseau’s conception of freedom: both within his philosophy of right, where he follows Rousseau’s idea, that the republic must be based on the general will of its people, but also in his moral philosophy, where he transforms the idea of political autonomy to inner self-legislation (see Allison Reference Allison2011: 2, Reath Reference Reath1994): The good will is constituted by a voluntary subordination to a self-legislated law, a law that one gives oneself in identification with oneself as a rational person, a homo noumenon. And according to the Categorical Imperative this means, that one should act only on those maxims which could be thought and wanted as a universal law. As it is expressed in the Formula of Autonomy in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, a will is truly free and rational if it is ‘a will giving universal law’ (GMM: 39, GMS: 431). In this legislation, a rational being subordinates her particular individuality to those laws which are moral and therefore rational, hence universal. And because these are laws that one gives to oneself, this principle ‘collapses the distinction between subject and legislator’ (Reath Reference Reath1994: 446): every rational being has to be regarded both as subject to the universal law and as its legislator, therefore as morally autonomous.

While every rational being has to be regarded as such a universal legislator and, as this is the source of her dignity, therefore ‘exists as an end in itself, not merely as a means to be used by this or that will and its discretion’ (GMM: 37, GMS: 428), one can formulate (following Rousseau’s principle of the volonté générale) the moral ideal of a community of rational beings, in which each must be understood as an universal legislator and as an end in itself (see for this connection also Holtman Reference Holtman2009). This moral and rational unity of humanity, which is formulated in Kant’s concept of the ‘Reich der Zwecke’, the ‘kingdom of ends’, is the ‘mundus intelligibilis’ (GMM: 45, GMS: 438) as a ‘practical idea’, with the purpose (as Kant explains in a footnote) ‘of bringing about, in conformity with this very idea, that which does not exist but which can become real by means of our conduct’ (GMM: 44, GMS: 436). In this sense, the ‘Kingdom of Ends’ formula of the Categorical Imperative demands to ‘act in accordance with the maxims of a member giving universal laws for a merely possible kingdom of ends’ (GMM: 46, GMS: 439).

Even though this ‘kingdom’ is only thought of as ‘possible’, a mere rational idea, this idea opens up a new horizon for human life. In this ideal ‘republic’ of rational beings, in which Rousseau’s principle of people’s sovereignty is transformed from political theory to the universal moral community of mankind, we find an accordance of the individual with the universal, in which ‘the universal’ is not only the general will of a particular empirical community, but that of practical reason itself.

Hegel likewise aims at such an accordance of the free subject with the rational universal, but extends the idea of autonomy from the sphere of subjective morality to the horizon of spirit. This further step is necessary, because the moral ideal is indeed formulated as an obligation to which the subject should correspond, however, in the sphere of morality alone autonomy cannot yet be regarded as actualized (see Menegoni Reference Menegoni2005: 128). Spirit then must be seen from the leading perspective of actualized autonomy (see Neuhouser Reference Neuhouser2000): ‘Autonomy expresses the demand of Spirit to deduce its whole content out of itself’ (Taylor Reference Taylor1975: 369). Therefore spirit can be regarded as a ‘legislator’, and ‘[w]hat spirit legislates for itself are laws’ (Pippin Reference Pippin2008: 65). Although Hegel does not explicitly mention the concept of ‘autonomy’ very often in his Philosophy of Right, he nevertheless determines it even more concretely than Kant in this work (see Jaeschke Reference Jaeschke2010: 369).

One might object that Hegel’s theory of ethical life falls back to Rousseau’s level of the community, because the ‘universal’ here is itself only regarded from a non-universalist perspective: namely not with regard to the truly universal goal of Kantian morality and its ideal of a community of rational beings (as the community of the legislators in the ‘kingdom of ends’), but only to a particular empirical community. But one must bear in mind that Hegel aims for the sphere of actualized social freedom, and that this actualization necessarily takes place at first in particular communities. Nevertheless, these particular realizations of ethical life have their common universal ground which Hegel calls the ‘universal spirit’ (PR: §342). We are being made aware of this universal spirit in the philosophy of history, where we learn at the same time that in modernity only those communities will succeed which do not contradict the demands of universal reason and subjective freedom, and it is morality in the Kantian sense which represents the decisive step in the development of this modern consciousness.

II. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and the concrete free will

Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is the attempt to bring together again all fields of practical philosophy as a systematic unity, regarded as a necessary unfolding of the concept of freedom under the categories of speculative logic. ‘Point of departure’ is the free will as such which is regarded in its development towards its actualization in the social world, as is prominently pointed out in §4:

With this aspiration, Hegel regards the whole social world – with the spheres of abstract right, morality and ethical life, including all of its institutions as family, civil society and state – as a ‘realm of actualized freedom’ that can be justified as the unfolding of the free will.Footnote ¹⁰ But how can this happen? According to Hegel’s logic of concept, the whole social world, and finally the political community of the state, must be regarded under the teleological perspective of the unfolded idea, therefore as a result of a development of rational categories (we are not talking here about the empirical world as such, of course, but about the social world as seen from a speculative, and that includes normative, perspective). This unfolded ‘realm of actualized freedom’ must be a social whole that has the form of a concrete universal, which is ‘an interpenetrating unity of universality and particularity’ (Neuhouser Reference Neuhouser2000: 49), in which the universal (the community) is mediated with the singular citizen (see Jaeschke Reference Jaeschke2010: 390-391). According to Hegel, this concrete universal has itself the structure of ‘subjectivity’ (as it is based on knowledge and rationality), and it also depends on the free subjectivity of its citizens and their voluntary identification with the rational universal.

Subjectivity is rooted in the ‘point of departure’ of the Philosophy of Right, in the principle of the free will. Subjectivity, however, has to be unfolded, and Hegel must demonstrate how it can determine itself to attune with the principle of rational universality. This subjective self-determination was exactly the task of the autonomous will in Rousseau’s political and Kant’s moral theory, as we have seen. For Hegel, the self-determination of the will now must be regarded from a dialectical perspective. In his ‘Introduction’ to the Philosophy of Right, Hegel sees the will at first in ‘the element of pure indeterminacy’, as ‘the limitless infinity of absolute abstraction or universality’ (PR: §5). At this stage, the free will is just taken as ‘negative freedom’, which is the ‘absolute possibility of abstracting from every determination in which I find myself or which I have posited in myself’ (PR: §5 R, 38). According to its negativity, this abstract freedom is the possibility to reject or destroy any particular content. This ability is the condition of freedom – but it is only its condition and not its actualization, and therefore it is only a first step. The next logical stage must be the negation of abstract negation: The will now gives itself a particular content, through its ‘positing of itself as something determinate’ (PR: §6). But it still has to recognize itself as self-determined, and that is the will as an individuality which knows that it is mediated with both its abstract universality (the first stage) and determined particularity (the second stage) as a ‘reference to itself’ through its own free activity (PR: §7). At this third stage the will is the concrete universal, the speculative structure of a whole, thought of as ‘self-mediating activity’ and ‘return into itself’ (PR: §7 R, 42). It now can be free in all of its relations to any object or content, knowing that in all of these relations it will always be with itself (PR: §7 Add.).

This is the fundamental structure of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, which now, of course, still needs to be developed in a more concrete form, also regarding the role of morality. In the next paragraph of the introduction, Hegel introduces the antagonism of subjectivity and objectivity. In a dialectical model, this antagonism will not remain, but in the beginning we are facing the question, how the free will, as the principle of subjectivity, might shape the objective world. And that distinction is also the topic of morality: It is the task of ‘translating the subjective end into objectivity’, into ‘external immediate existence’ (PR: §8, 42-43). How can the free will not only determine itself, but regard its own actions and relations in the objective world as its own, in so far that the latter might correspond to the will’s self-determination? This is already the problem of action that Hegel discusses in the chapter of morality (see Menegoni Reference Menegoni2005: 131, n. 7).

The will cannot stay free in itself, but must also be free for itself, therefore it has to become its own object and develop, as Hegel formulates referring to Aristotle, from potentiality to actuality (PR: §10). This process requires two different moments: one is the externalization of itself, the actualization of the will in the objective world, and the other is a new consciousness which requires its inward education.Footnote ¹¹ From this perspective, we can understand the structure of the Philosophy of Right: abstract right is the sphere in which the will externalizes itself and builds up a freely structured objective world. As the will gets objective in this realm, it still stays empty and alienated for itself, so it has to get back into itself, revealing itself as free subjectivity. The third sphere, ethical life, brings both sides together again, the objective world of right and the subjective world of morality.

Let us go back once again to the introduction, where Hegel discusses arbitrariness and the relation of the will towards ‘drives and inclinations’ (PR: §17). On the step of arbitrariness, the will has its free choice, which of its drives or impulses it might follow. But it is then determined by its random impulses, therefore still heteronomous. It frees itself only by subordinating these impulses, drives and inclinations to a rational reflexion and ‘the universality of thought’ (PR: §20). Here in thought – and only in thought (as Hegel emphasizes against anti-rational Romantic theories of freedom – see Taylor Reference Taylor1975: 370), ‘as thinking intelligence’, the will becomes aware of its freedom as ‘self-determining universality’ (PR: §21 with R, 52-53) and finds out that it can always come back to itself as ‘truly infinite’ (PR: §22). According to Hegel, only in this rational freedom of thought is the will ‘completely with itself [bei sich], because it has reference to nothing but itself’ (PR: §23). This is again the structure of the concrete universal, as mentioned above.

Since action must ‘translate’ the subjective end into objectivity, we can understand now that this relation must be understood as the task of the ‘extension’ of the rational will: this will is the free will, as ‘the universal which extends beyond its object, which permeates its determination and is identical with itself in this determination’ (PR: §24 R, 55). In this extension or ‘overlapping’ (Hegel calls it ‘Übergreifen’Footnote ¹²) the free will is taking over the objective world, establishing a system of right, ‘penetrating’ the institutions of the social world. It is therefore ‘cancelling... the contradiction between subjectivity and objectivity’, while giving itself an objective form in the objective world and ‘while at the same time remaining with itself in this objectivity’ (PR: §28, 57). The goal of this mission cannot be just an arbitrary freedom of choice, but only concrete freedom in the objective world, according to the self-conscious will that finds itself as a concrete universal. The will can achieve this freedom only through the power of (speculative) thought and its ‘education’ (PR: §20), by emancipating itself from random contents and giving itself the universal law, a law that must take the universal principle out of itself: and this is ‘the free will which wills the free will’ (PR: §27), which wills itself in its own concrete universality.Footnote ¹³

III. Hegel’s theory of morality

In the sphere of abstract right, the free will is regarded as a single person (PR: §35) in its relations to other persons and to things. A sphere of objective, outer freedom can be constructed here, but no matter how rational it is, it still lacks subjectivity, inner freedom. The person here ‘takes possession of himself’ (PR: §57), of his own body and mind, but it is only in passing over to the sphere of morality, that the will really develops a relation to itself and ‘determines itself [...] also for itself, as self-related... negativity’ (PR: §104, 131). This new awareness is reached by the negation of abstract right: the criminal will that became guilty by breaking the universal law gets punished, and during this process it becomes aware of itself as being opposed to the universal. The punishment is the negation of the crime and the punished will understands its failure and is connected with the universal again (PR: §§99-103). Now, the inner space of subjectivity is the new established ground, where the individual is confronted with the universal voice of reason inside of herself, before the inner court of justice. Here, the ‘requirement’ is constituted ‘for a will which, as a particular and subjective will, also wills the universal as such’ (PR: §103). The task of reconciliation with the universal gets relocated: The scene changes from the flat world of abstract right to the inward, from the person to the subject (PR: §105), and therefore to the ‘the infinite subjectivity of freedom’ (PR: §104, 131-132) and to ‘self-determination of subjectivity’ (PR: §104 R).

Subjectivity, the individual self-conscious will of the subject, is now the ‘ground’ of freedom (PR: §106). This ground still needs further ‘cultivation’, if one wants to progress to ‘truly concrete’ self-determination (PR: §106 R). The goal is a subjective will that withdraws back into oneself and sets itself voluntarily as identical with the universal. The ‘concept of morality’ demands from the singular will (with its own particular needs and inclinations) to unite with the universal will, with practical reason (see Peperzak Reference Peperzak2001: 326-327). As this rational identification is the result of self-determination, the starting point must be ‘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’ (PR: §107). The free subject wants himself to ‘be present in everything he does’ (PR: §107 Add., 137).

But this aspiration of subjectivity leads also to a fundamental ambivalence, which is characteristic for the standpoint of morality as such (see Menegoni Reference Menegoni2005: 132): the subjective will demands to be with itself in all of its relations to the objective world, but it is confronted with an objectivity that does not fit its self-determinate will. Therefore, the sphere of morality is characterized by a steep gap between subjectivity and objectivity. This sphere is ‘in general... the point of view of the difference... of the will’, where there is at first only the ‘obligation’ or the ‘requirement’ (PR: §108) to overcome this difference. But the will cannot remain in this ‘opposition’, because it is also ‘the aspiration... to overcome... this restriction... – i.e. the activity of translating this content from subjectivity into objectivity..., into an immediate existence’ (PR: §109). The will formulates its own content which is regarded by it as its ‘inner end’ that should acquire ‘external objectivity’ (PR: §110 R).

‘The expression of the will as subjective or moral’ then is what Hegel calls ‘action’.Footnote ¹⁴ An action, to be one, must be known by the actor as its own, it must be based on an ‘obligation’ and must be related to other wills (PR: §113). Therefore, the realized action must in the end be understood within its social context (see Quante Reference Quante2011: 204-205, Ritter Reference Ritter2003b: 302-303); but before this actualization in ethical life can really come into view, we have to consider its subjective and moral determination. In its self-determination, the will strives to be with itself in all of its actions and to determine them by its own intentions. That it may start from its own particular intentions here is the condition of ‘subjective freedom in its more concrete determination, i.e. the right of the subject to find its satisfaction in the action’ (PR: §121). The subject finds her own ‘subjective value’ and ‘interest’ there (PR: §122) and she may follow her own ‘welfare’ and ‘happiness’ as she wants (PR: §123). While this sounds more like a teleological concept of action, one might say, that Hegel integrates the Aristotelian idea of action as self-actualization here within the frame of modern subjectivity, which then must be combined with the normative position of Kantian morality (see Peperzak Reference Peperzak2001: 320, Menegoni Reference Menegoni2005: 140-141, with n. 19). From the Kantian perspective one can understand that in seeking just one’s own happiness the will cannot reach the highest steps of subjective freedom, which will only succeed in rational and moral self-legislation. Nonetheless, for this conception of autonomy as well, a still indeterminate form of subjective freedom is the precondition, which even represents the modern principle as such for Hegel:

But the particular intentions of the subject can be such or such, they can be accidentally motivated and therefore still be heteronomous. As an approach to the universal, the subject might formulate a ‘moral’ intention, aiming even at the ‘the welfare of all’ (PR: §125) or the ‘common weal’ (PR: §126 R, 154). But as Kant’s moral philosophy has shown, moral self-determination cannot be understood properly in respect to a special purpose or content (as ‘the welfare of all’ or of ‘the greatest number’, as in Utilitarianism), but only in respect to a formal principle: moral goodness can only be found in the inner self-determination of the subjective will according and subject to a rational law (GMM: 13, GMS: 400).

Here, two moments come together which thereby reveal ‘the good’: the particular subjective will on the one hand and ‘the concept of the will’ (PR: §129), which A. Peperzak (Reference Peperzak2001: 362) explains as ‘the will’s still undifferentiated universality’, on the other. The idea of the good is the union of particularity and universality, of subjective satisfaction and morality (see Pinkard Reference Pinkard1999: 224-226). Therefore, what can be regarded as ‘good’ must have met the requirements of the rational judgement of the subject:

Nevertheless, this subjective right of insight into and recognizing the good is only a formal principle, and it is ‘equally capable of being true and of being mere opinion and error’ as well (PR: §132 R, 159). Therefore Hegel holds against this subjective principle ‘the right of objectivity’, namely the spheres of abstract right and ethical life. Subjectivity alone seems to be too volatile as ground for social life. This insight is also valid for Kant, of course, who, alongside the inner freedom of morality, recognizes the necessity of a sphere of outer freedom of right. And in morality, we must not look just for a simple subjective will which is just following its private insight, but for such a will which is oriented strictly towards the universality of reason, as Kant’s principle of the Categorical Imperative postulates. Therefore, ‘the good’ brings both sides together: the subjective will and the objective principle of reason (see Jaeschke Reference Jaeschke2010: 383-384). This union takes place in a subject whose relation to the good defines ‘the essential character’ of her will, who regards this strict orientation towards the good as her duty (PR: §133). Since this is the sphere of Kant’s moral principle, Hegel on the one hand praises Kant for having formulated the ground for human autonomy, for rational freedom and the ‘unconditioned’ in the human being itself. On the other hand, he repeatedly calls Kant’s principle a merely ‘abstract’ and ‘formal’, a principle ‘without content’:Footnote ¹⁵

The passage is followed by Hegel’s prominent accusation against Kant’s ‘formalism’, according to which Kant’s moral principle is lacking any content and is just concerned with the testing of maxims for their universality and for being without any contradiction. One might argue that Hegel’s accusation is not fair, because this is exactly what Kant was searching for: a formal principle that is free from any particular content and only therefore rational. Regardless whether one should understand this really as an appropriate critique against Kant’s theory of morality or not, Hegel’s point is that a subjective and formal rational principle in general is simply not sufficient to understand the normativity of the social world. Therefore he says that the contents of our maxims and all particular duties are derived from social reality itself, from ethical life (see PR: §§135 R, 148 R). But one must also bear in mind that a form of ethical life that satisfies modern consciousness must have integrated the moral standpoint of subjectivity, which is formulated especially in Kantian philosophy as the principle of autonomy. Following T. Pinkard, one might say that Kantian morality is not rejected, but rather ‘extended’ in Hegel’s practical philosophy (see Pinkard Reference Pinkard1999: 222).Footnote ¹⁶

Before he moves over to ethical life, Hegel still presents two further moments of subjectivity, namely ‘conscience’ on the one hand and forms of an ‘evil’ and misguided or failing subjectivity on the other hand (A. Honneth speaks here of ‘pathologies of moral freedom’, see Honneth Reference Honneth2011: 206-218). At this stage the subjectivity of conscience is mediated by the knowledge of Kantian autonomy. It

This subjective principle as a ‘sanctuary’ is ‘a standpoint of the modern world’ (PR: §136 Add., 164); it is at the same time the root of modern freedom and it is also the cause for specific modern problems (Hegel also calls it in a note to §138 ‘die Krankheit dieser Zeit’ – ‘the sickness of this time’, see GW 14.2: 659), because the subjective will may undermine the objective ground of ethical life and its social institutions, as we have already seen before in the demise of the Greek world. One might think of a terrorist, for example, who may have only ‘good’ intentions – judged from the standpoint of his own conviction – but may finally sacrifice the life of other people to his own arbitrary law or ends, so that ‘virtue’ may turn into ‘terror’.Footnote ¹⁷

Hegel therefore draws a distinction between a ‘true conscience’ and a mere ‘formal conscience’, because the conscience’s ‘appeal solely to itself is directly opposed to what it seeks to be – that is, the rule for a rational and universal mode of action which is valid in and for itself’ (PR: §137 R, 165). At the standpoint of morality, according to Hegel, we can merely find the formal conscience, while the true conscience can be found only in ‘ethical disposition’ (PR: §137 R, 165) within a particular social context.

While even an erring conscience might still seek the good, subjectivity can also take the form of being ‘evil’, because it can elevate ‘the arbitrariness of its own particularity’ above the universal, and thus give particularity ‘precedence over the universal’ (PR: §139). Morality and evil have a ‘common root’ and it depends on the moral decision of the subject alone, whether she puts the universal above her own particularity or instead (while already knowing the universal and her duty) subordinates the universal to her particular interests and desires. This possibility of evil, however, is a necessary moment within the development of the concept of freedom, since without it there would not be the possibility of autonomy and of a morally good will as well (see PR: §139 R with Add.).

Hegel explains the problem of a one-sided subjectivity especially in §140 and its long remark: The subjective will now is for itself conscious of the universal good, but it still wants the particular which conflicts with the universal. Hegel distinguishes here between a self-consciousness that, while following the particular, just pretends for others to be good (the stage of hypocrisy) and one that even claims for itself to be good. Only the latter self-consciousness is truly ‘evil’. Here, Hegel distinguishes again between different stages, in which, to summarize, rational objectivity and universality are subordinated to subjective particularity. This subordinating might even happen with ‘good intentions’ as well. While oriented towards an unsubstantial ‘abstract good’ the will might also subsume a voluntary content under it, for example that it is allowed to kill bad people, as it is expressed in the proverb: ‘The end justifies the means.’ (‘Der Zweck heiligt die Mittel.’) This point of view can justify any means in the name of ‘the good end’. It subordinates objective right to subjective opinion, to ‘conviction’ and a kind of ‘faith’ – a ‘faith’ not in an objective truth, but only in a ‘loyalty to one’s conviction’ (PR: §140 R, 178). Truth and objectivity as such are neglected at this stage of one-sided subjectivity and only subordinated to opinion. However, the ‘evil’ subject claims that this is exactly the good, just because it is its own conviction: ‘My good intention in my action and my conviction of its goodness make it good.’ (PR: §140 R, 178) As conviction now became the only benchmark for good and evil (see PR: §140 Add., 184), Hegel sees here, as just mentioned, the danger of a terrorist mind which might even kill for the sake of its own purposes and defend its deeds referring to its conviction.Footnote ¹⁸

But even this stage of particular subjectivity is still surpassed by the ‘ironic’ will that knowingly sets itself as the absolute principle, merely ‘playing’ with its contents (e.g., with laws or duties) and giving itself the form of ‘subjective emptiness [Eitelkeit]’ (PR: §140 R, 182). This most radical form of particular subjectivity Hegel links especially with the position of the early Friedrich Schlegel, but he mentions (more indirectly) also others of his ‘romantic’ contemporaries in this context, many of which he had already critically discussed in his Phenomenology of Spirit.Footnote ¹⁹

IV. Autonomy and ethical life

Hegel’s answer for these problems which are caused by the modern principle of subjectivity, and which cannot be solved within the sphere of morality alone, is his theory of (objective) spirit that culminates in the stage of ethical life. Here the social sphere is regarded as a whole, which is, as the universal, logically prior to the individuals (as in Aristotle’s Politics – see Aristotle 1950 –, 1253a, where the whole is defined as being logically prior to its parts). Hegel’s social theory is therefore ‘holistic’ (Quante Reference Quante2011: 269-270). Nevertheless, a modern theory of ethical life has to integrate the principle of subjectivity which Hegel developed in his theory of morality. Ethical life has to be regarded as the actualization of freedom, in the sense of social freedom – and therefore as the actualization of (social) autonomy.Footnote ²⁰

While morality (for which, as we have seen, Hegel regards Kant’s theory as paradigmatic) is shaped by the division of subjectivity and objectivity, the obligation and the actual being, the rationality of the homo noumenon and the homo phaenomenon’s subjection to laws of nature and inclinations, Hegel transcends this dualism to a sphere, where the ‘outer’, ‘empirical’, objective world can be regarded as free as well. His speculative logic allows Hegel to regard ‘actuality’ itself as a rational totality and as the result of the self-realization of the idea. Therefore the social institutions of ethical life can be reconstructed as ‘rational forms of life’, as realizations of an ‘autonomia phaenomenon’ (Hoffmann Reference Hoffmann2007: 18). It is only in this sphere where duty remains not just a formal principle as in (Kantian) morality, but gets a material content which allows to formulate an ‘immanent theory of duties’, considering ‘the determination of particular duties’ as well (PR: §135 R, 162, see also §148 R).

While morality is shaped by an abstract distinction between subjectivity and the objective world, showing how to determine the subject’s will according to the moral law, but not passing over to realized action, Hegel demonstrates that action is only realized ‘in the context of the world’ (see Ritter Reference Ritter2003b: 300). J. Ritter emphasizes that Hegel’s conception here has roots in Aristotle’s theory of action (as praxis), according to which action must be seen within the circumstances of social reality and its institutions. But these institutions for Hegel cannot remain just in the objective form of a grounding ethos, since they are only alive and realized through the actions of the individuals (see Ritter Reference Ritter2003b: 302-306, Jaeggi Reference Jaeggi2009: 538-539, 542-543). Hegel elevates morality into ethical life, but this also means that the social and political institutions must now satisfy the demands of autonomous subjectivity (Ritter Reference Ritter2003b: 284, 289).

Therefore ethical life cannot just be regarded as a substantial unity, but must have the form of the unfolded idea, as a concrete universal. And from this standpoint of the unfolded idea, all previous concepts can be understood as mere one-sided moments: The first moment here is an abstract universal: ethical life as an abstract general will (see the note to §142 in GW 14.2: 705, 707) or ‘substantial will’ (PR: §258), in which the individuals are radically subordinated and mere ‘accidents’ to the ethical substance (PR: §145 R). But this substance develops dialectically to subjectivity as its ‘absolute form and existent actuality’ (PR: §152 R, 196), and this cannot happen without the subjective freedom of the individuals, whose ‘right... to their particularity’ (PR: §154) is a necessary moment within this development. It required the long process of history for a consciousness of freedom to develop, and it is only in modernity that this consciousness demands its right. Its relation with the ethical universal cannot be based on an abstract identity anymore, an immediate ‘[f]aith and trust’, but has to ‘turn into... a relationship mediated by further reflection, into insight grounded on reasons’ (PR: §147 R).

This reflexive principle of subjectivity, which Hegel developed systematically in the chapter on morality, pervades the different institutional spheres of the ethical world, as in the modern family (PR: §162 R) or immediate relationships generally, and then especially in the spheres of civil society, where particularity is ‘indulging itself in all directions as it satisfies its needs’ (PR: §185). However, it is necessary to bring the particular back to the universal, which succeeds only outwardly in the institutions of civil society (as in the economic system and its social organizations), but both outwardly and inwardly within the idea of the modern state.

According to Hegel’s theory of the state, the subject can identify with the universal here and regard it as her own, while at the same time this universal sphere, this spirit, is not only created by the particular wills of the individuals, but is also prior to them, includes them. Due to this unity in spirit, the individuals are able to live ‘a universal life’ (PR: §258 R, 276) – a stage that, according to Hegel, could not even be reached by Rousseau’s political theory which still deduced the general will from the act of a contract, and therefore by the gathering of individual wills, and did not start with the universal as such. Against Rousseau (and social contract theories in general, including also Kant and Fichte) as well as the French revolutionaries, Hegel emphasizes, that within the universal principle of ‘the Idea of the rational will’ ‘the subjectivity of freedom [...] embodies only one (consequently one-sided) moment’ (PR: §258 R, 277). But nevertheless it is a necessary moment – and only because of this moment Hegel can call the modern state ‘the actuality of concrete freedom’ in which the ‘personal individuality’ is fully recognized in its right:

Therefore the modern and rational state must have ‘passed through the form of education’ (PR: § 270, 290), and this ‘education’ is to a great deal a, as one might say, ‘moral education’ as well. The state must be based both on the objective institutions and on the subjective ‘disposition’ and participation of its citizens.Footnote ²¹

One might argue that this reconciliation of the modern subject within the state exists only in ideology, but this critique misses the crucial point in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, namely that Hegel develops the normative structure of a rational social sphere here, in which social freedom is actualized. Although the forms and possibilities of participation that Hegel provides for the citizens, such as taking part in the legislative process and in public debates, should be expanded (perhaps into some kind of a participatory democracy), the telos of this further development is already inherent in Hegel’s idea as a concrete universal. From this perspective it is understandable that T. Pinkard emphasizes the ‘affinities’ of Hegel’s unfolded idea with Kant’s ideal of the ‘kingdom of ends’.Footnote ²²

Regarding this teleology of a further development and actualization of the idea to a concrete universal as the community of the autonomous subjects, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is by no means ideological, but reveals the fundamental structure of a normative social theory, which can serve also as a critical benchmark against its false realizations. It is the same dialectical structure which for example also the young Marx follows, when he explains ‘human emancipation’ as a condition, in which ‘individual man, in his daily life... has become a species-being’ (Marx Reference Marx1964: 31). But again, for such an identification of the individual with the rational universal one needs a theory of the subjective foundation of such identification as well – and this is a theory of moral autonomy.