Hegel believes that freedom is complete self sufficiency and it is this freedom that is incorporated with his concept of the Spirit. The Spirit is what Hegel argues is responsible for moving history along.
The Spirit is most important when trying to understand Hegel’s view on freedom. Hegel was a firm believer in the dialectic method. This method is the idea that everything that exists is a result of a thesis and an antithesis. The product of the combination of these two elements is called synthesis. Synthesis is what keeps history moving and the dialectic process is ongoing. “World history is the progress in the consciousness of freedom,” (22). Hegel writes that the reason for this process is so that the Spirit can maintain its freedom. With history progressing along, it is being driven by the idea of freedom.
Hegel possesses a different view on good and bad than most did during his time. The Church believed that good and bad was based on the morals and values one lived by. Religion was very important in Europe, but Hegel was not affiliated to any religion. It has been argued that Hegel is a religious man who does not believe in a god, and this idea is very plausible. His concept of the Spirit can easily be swapped with the Christian concept of God. While Christians believed that God was responsible for the world and how it advanced, Hegel believed that the Spirit was in control of history and where it went.
Due to his beliefs in the Spirit, his view of a good leader has nothing to do with the morals of that person. Instead a good leader is one that brings about a change in history, or moves history along. It does not matter how this leader accomplishes this goal, but he/she must change history. An example of a good leader in the eyes of Hegel is Napoleon. Despite the large number of deaths caused by Napoleon’s wars, he successfully brought about a change in the world. As a result of the wars, many European countries went from a dynastic rule to a state government.
It is in the State where people can reach freedom. Hegel distinguished between the terms of morality and ethics. While morality deals with right and wrong, ethics is more involved with freedom. Hegel believes that ethics make people free by allowing the people to choose to adhere to the laws of the land. While people don’t have to abide, their choice to do so would be ethical. While it may seem that the State would be limiting freedom, Hegel argues that this is not only false, but the State is a requirement to freedom.
Universal freedom is only brought about in the State. The State allows for a situation in which an individual can make his/her own decisions while also adhering to the universal laws. It is because of this that Hegel writes that history does not begin until the State was formed. “It is the final goal-freedom-toward which all the world’s history has been working. It is this goal to which all the sacrifices have been brought upon the broad altar of the earth in the long flow of time,” (22). Events prior to the formation of the State are not of importance, because the people living then had no concept of the State.
“But this ‘freedom’…is itself indefinite and infinitely ambiguous,” (22). This leaves plenty of room for interpretation of the term freedom and often why many found Hegel different to understand. However, it is freedom that the Spirit is striving for, and great leaders can move history to establish the State in order to bring about freedom.
Works Cited:
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, and Leo Rauch. Introduction to The Philosophy of History: with Selections from The Philosophy of Right. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 1988. Print.
