HUMANITY, FREEDOM AND SOCIO-POLITICAL COMMUNITY IN HEGEL

The central question that Hegel’s social-political philosophy aims to answer is the problem of the self-determining subject and the ethico-social being. Hegel argues that the self-determining subjectivity necessarily requires an idea of the universal collective existence which rests on the conception of the universal subject as an internally differentiated unity. In the subjective exposition, Hegel shows how self-consciousness finds its truth in another self-consciousness and comes to find its essence as universal self-consciousness. As such, this is the unity of the subject with the object and identity with the other. This identification provides the universal objective substance on which human individuals recognize each other as free independent beings and acquire rationality and freedom as their universal essence. In the objective justification, Hegel examines the actualization of this concept of the self-determining free will into the ethical-social world. The ethical-social institutions and practices as the actualization of the universal essence make it possible for human individuals to reconcile their subjective/particular freedom with the collective/universal freedom. This article critically examines how and why in Hegel’s social and political philosophy the self-determining individual subject is at the same time and necessarily the ethico-social being.