Hegel generally characterizes the actualization of freedom as spirit’s activity of liberating itself from nature. This liberation cannot be attained by dominating nature or by simply leaving it behind, since living nature itself presents us with a first form of freedom. Spirit’s liberation from nature rather is a liberation from a dualistic relation to nature and essentially includes a liberation of spirit in nature and as nature. This complex form of liberation is attained by producing a second nature of the right kind. This chapter offers a systematic reconstruction of how such a second nature is brought about, discussing the three essential stages of its actualization: first, the very emergence of spirit from nature in the course of Hegel’s Anthropology; second, the appearance of spirit proper in the Phenomenology; and finally, the actualization of freedom through the institutions of ethical life in his doctrine of Objective Spirit. The section on the emergence of freedom offers a new reading of Hegel’s now much-discussed account of habit. The section on the appearance of freedom develops a new understanding of self-consciousness and a new account of the master–servant dialectic. The section on the actuality of freedom provides a new account of the very form of a free ethical life.

This chapter begins with the Phenomenology’s brief critique of Kantian moral theory. Hegel credits Kant with reconciling the objective validity of rational criteria with their status as self-authored, while failing to make good on his own insight. Since, on Hegel’s diagnosis, Kant’s conception of the will is a reified abstraction from social ‘actuality’, he assigns it a spurious self-sufficiency, leading to an unsatisfactory picture of the nature of practical reason. The chapter then turns to Hegel’s strategy for undoing this conception, namely by traveling the two paths Kant opened up but did not take. Taking the first path means appreciating that rational criteria cannot have their basis in features of the individual agent considered in isolation; instead, criteria must be those agents can act upon in institutional actuality while still recognising themselves as their authors. Taking the second entails seeing resistance and alienation as productive phenomena, symptoms not of structural deficits of the human will, but of conflicts between what freedom seems to demand at a given socio-historical juncture and what it really does. Taking both paths, therefore, entails a recognition that what counts as respectively internal and external to free subjectivity is subject to both synchronic and diachronic variation.

The other philosopher writing in Kant’s wake who figures prominently in the origins of “continental” philosophy is Hegel. Although many of the seeds of Hegel’s thought were planted by Fichte, Hegel’s works ultimately had far greater direct impact. Hegel was not, however, an ethical or moral philosopher like Fichte. T. H. Irwin plausibly claims, indeed, that Hegel actually denies that moral philosophy is “a distinct discipline.” But Hegel had a massive influence on the history of ethics even so, including on “modern moral philosophy.” Partly this was as a critic, not just of moral philosophy, but also of the modern conception of morality itself. Hegel argues that what he and other moderns call “morality” (Moralität) is a formal abstraction that is incapable of “truth” or “reality.” Moral philosophers who focus on oughts and obligation mistake, in his view, an abstract moment of practical thought for something realizable; they fasten on a desiccated abstraction rather than the “living good” that is embodied in actual modern (liberal) customs and institutions, what Hegel calls “ethical life.” Hegel’s critique of morality begins a tradition that runs through Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche in the nineteenth century and through Anscombe and Bernard Williams in the twentieth.

This chapter shows that Hegel’s discussion of cognition in his Logic fits his previous conclusions on teleology. I argue first that both cognising and acting are analysed by Hegel as processes that have an inner purpose. I, then, explain what Hegel calls being alive ‘for itself’. For being alive for itself, Hegel requires that a concept be realised in a medium that is itself of an ideal, inner purposive character. The objectification of teleology in a purposive element, one that sustains its own existence, is the source of an ‘imperishable life’, as Hegel puts it –the life of a concept qua concept. The upshot of my entire discussion is that Hegel’s Science of Logic succeeds in making sense of the idea that an objective activity can be the accomplished realisation of a purpose and, indeed, of a purpose for itself.

As a nurse, you will be called upon to support, care for and protect people who are vastly different from yourself. How you respond to the diversity of human beings will be a measure of your own humanity as well as your professionalism. The NMBA Code of Conduct and the ICN Code of Ethics are designed to support you in this. Certainly, caring does not come as easily to some nurses as it does to others. After all, it is not always pleasant being around incapacitated, sick or grieving people. So why do people want to support the ill or incapacitated? What is it about human nature that causes people to care for each other at all?

I begin with an account of the fundamental aims of Hegel’s ‘science of right’ so as to show how his account of property faces two key challenges: justifying the concept of property and any specific form of it, on the one hand, and integrating property into the system of right, which includes subordinating it to any higher moments of right, on the other. I then turn to Hegel’s argument for private property. I distinguish between two interpretations of his argument: the ‘embodiment’ interpretation and the ‘recognition’ interpretation. I identify serious problems with the first interpretation and then argue for a version of the second one that entails the type of triadic model of the concept of property developed by Fichte and already implicit in Kant’s Rechtslehre. I show that this triadic model, and thus Hegel’s full argument for private property, becomes explicit only at the stage of contract. Next, I discuss how Hegel seeks to integrate private property into ethical life, and I argue that the idea of ethical life is, in fact, more compatible with some form of common or collective property because this form of property is more expressive of this idea.

This chapter begins by showing why Hegel thinks that recognition depends on sociality, on shared forms of “ethical life” (Sittlichkeit). Drawing on a comparison with Rahel Jaeggi’s conceptions of “social practices” and “forms of life,” I consider the central elements of the social theory advanced in the Phenomenology. I show that “ethical life,” in particular when understood as a configuration of “spirit,” both provides the terms for individual self-understanding and secures the conditions for equality and reciprocity with other subjects. At the same time, I demonstrate that relations of reciprocal intersubjective recognition will not be possible in all forms of social life. While social forms that entrench relations of domination and inequality among their members are among the primary threats to the achievement of reciprocal recognition, I argue that, in the Phenomenology, Hegel makes a unique argument that it is possible for a form of social life to be structured so that no one is recognized within them, in which even one-sided configurations of recognition are impossible. I conclude by pointing to Hegel’s proposed solution to this problem, a universal conception of the self that is explicitly articulated within a shared way of life.

This chapter presents an interpretation of Fichte’s theory of society as an original theory of ethical life or ‘Sittlichkeit’ as distinguished from mere morality, or ‘Moralität’, in the very same direction which will be developed in a clearer way by Hegel. Moving from introductory remarks devoted to Hegel’s presentation of the distinction and to the terms “morality” and “ethical life”, it will be shown, first, in which passages of the “System of Ethics” Fichte seems to have in mind a strict sense of “morality” as a limited standpoint distinguished from the ethical one; second, the reorientation of Fichte’s argument in the “System of Ethics” which makes possible a new, ethical, and social point of view; third, Fichte’s peculiar reinterpretation of the Kantian notion of legality as a principle of the organization of social life; fourth, the proper dynamic of ethical life through its institutions: State, church and learned public; fifth, the consequences of the new, ethical point of view for the doctrine of duties in comparison with the tradition and with Hegel’s later view.