“The subject matter of the philosophical science of right is the Idea of right- the concept of right in its actualization (25).” This sentence serves not only as the opening line to the introduction of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, but also as the primary guideline for the development of his work and the eventual realization of the ethical life. Hegel follows the Idea of right along two developmental paths: the path of the Idea of the individual and the path of existence. The methodology he uses is a logical dialectic technique within the framework of the scientific method. For Hegel, all human development is the development of the consciousness of freedom of the will. Therefore, the scientifically logical map he creates of that process leads to his ultimate end. Through his description of the stages of development of the individual, existence, and morality, he creates a system by which individual desire and general morality are not opposed, but rather synthesized together to create something greater than either: the ethical life.
Hegel begins tracing development of freedom of consciousness on two separate tracks: the Idea of the individual and existence. First, he demonstrates the stages, or moments, by which a will becomes the Idea, or concept in its concrete actualization, of the individual. He initially introduces his readers to the will as “pure indeterminacy”, in other words as merely an abstract concept of a will. At this stage in development, the will exists only in the realm of the universal and has no qualities, thus no concrete particularities. The individual begins here as abstracted Idea, and will eventually end as Idea in a very different form (Hegel 37-38). However, even in that first stage the will is given the quality of indeterminacy, which makes it particular. Thus, the will immediately moves into the second stage of development where it is determinate and particular. At this moment, the will does not just will in general as it did before, but rather it wills something particular. That particularity will later develop the will into a personality (40). Once the will has become determined, it is able to will specifically; the will wills freedom. To realize this freedom and become complete, the will must determine itself in order to become the synthesis between reason and desire. The will cannot achieve its desire for freedom before that moment because it lacks either the universal element of reason (in the purely indeterminate “I”) or the particular element of desire (in the purely determinate “I”) (42). This third and synthesis stage of the development of the self prevents the will from being shackled wholly to either reason of desire, and thus demonstrates Hegel’s concept of freedom, in that freedom cannot exist without limitations.
An excellent example of Hegel’s conception of will and its relation to freedom lies in habitual cigarette smokers. When a smoker has gone for a certain period of time without a cigarette, he desires one. This is an example of a basic desire of the arbitrary will, seeking to satiate its hunger for nicotine. However, even stronger than his desire for a cigarette is his desire to no longer desire a cigarette. These two desires in one way can be fulfilled by the same activity, smoking a cigarette, but in another way contradict each other. A smoker desires to no longer desire a cigarette, which can best be achieved by quitting smoking. It is at this point when reason begins to bear upon the arbitrary will. The smoker reasons he will be able to fulfill his second desire, no longer wanting to smoke, by quitting. However that action will not fulfill his first desire, the cigarette itself. The smoker is, by definition of his addiction, a slave of his desires. Only when he enters into the synthesis of his arbitrary will and reason will he be able to seek freedom from the habit.
Once a will has self-determined by the aforementioned means, and thus become conscious of itself, it becomes a person (67). It is not at this point, though, an individual. The will becomes an individual when it self-reflects and incorporates the universal element of right into its actions. In the smoker analogy, this is the phase in which the addict realizes his addiction and reflects on how he can best satisfy his urges and be done with it. The synthesis of the person and this reflection creates an individual, because will has now determined itself as an object as well as a subject (68). Still, the will is not yet a personality, the highest form of the will, because it has no means of differentiating itself from the countless other individuals. To do this, the personality must establish itself as a subject, thus differentiating itself from objects and other subjects. It asserts this subjectivity by exercising the absolute right of appropriation, in other words by claiming property (74). This external expression of power constitutes possession. In the final phase of development, the personality is both universal in its nature and has established itself as a subject. At this point, Hegel has developed the individual as Idea, according to Hegel’s definition of Idea as universal (76).
The point at which an individual becomes as such by gaining property is also the point at which existence comes into being. Existence, according to Hegel is the point at which the world announces itself in the form of external things. In his dialectic, it is the synthesis of the abstract indeterminate will and the determined concrete will. How then, does existence manifest? Existence becomes real for the individual when the will places itself in something external and therefore becomes subjective. Property allows the will to differentiate itself, making it both a true individual and a true existence in both the universal and concrete senses (73). Why is this subjective differentiation important? Because only by virtue of difference can we claim to know anything. The smoker knows what brand of cigarettes he likes to buy because they are differentiated from other cigarette brands by taste, labels, and packaging. Without being able to differentiate between the two, he cannot know the nature of either. Thus, without difference there can be no truth and no universal ethical life as Hegel is designing.
Property in Hegel’s sense however, does not necessarily mean plots of land or cars. Each individual owns, if nothing else, their will and their body. Without the will being able to exercise ownership over itself and the body in which it is contained, it couldn’t exist as a person. The will needs to own the body in order to connect with the concrete world, which is required for existence. Hegel does not distinguish between those individuals that own only their bodies and will and those like kings who have immeasurable wealth. Possessions can only be quantified by value. The important part of ownership, he claims, is not the value of the externalities one owns, but the fact that they’re presence as possessions makes existence possible and unite it with the Idea of the individual (77). This is how path of the individual and existence eventually exist together as one moment, and as the springboard for the development of ethical life.
If the two concepts of existence and idea eventually exist in the same moment does Hegel bother to separate them in the first place? He does so because the separation follows a very important step of the scientific method. He begins according to the scientific method by accepting as truth an idea that cannot be doubted. In this case, he takes Descartes’ famous thesis “I think therefore I am” as proof of the existence of one’s own self and the basis of his system. He then divides the aspects of that consciousness, Idea of an individual and existence, and then further divides those into the stages that go into creating them. He then rebuilds the fabric of those concepts according to an ordered principle, in this case logic by the dialectic method. He creates the state in the manifestation of ethical life according to that logical principle. The final step of the scientific process, remeasuring, occurs in the existence of the ethical life. His use of the scientific method explains why Hegel divides different aspects of the ethical life into pieces only to rebuild it later.
Hegel has, as indicated above, demonstrated the development of the will in terms of the Idea of the individual, and in terms of its manifestation in existence. He also traces the development of morality in its relation to the human will. Morality, by Hegel’s definition, is a system of social mores which posits a limit to the will. Morality comes into being when the subjective will, defined as such by appropriation in property, begins to address other subjective wills. Why must the will move into the moral realm at all? The individual will must make this move because without the limitations morality provides, there is no freedom. Freedom is the ultimate object of the will (42). Unless the individual can choose between his desires and something else, he has no choice and thus no freedom (135).
The movement into morality is necessary for freedom, but more importantly is the cultivation of the ground ethical life is eventually planted in once the Idea attains true nature as both subjective and correspondingly objective. How, then, does a will move into the realm of morality? First the will must become objective as well as subjective. Objectivity is necessary because only once a will is able to see itself as more than just subjective will it be able to see external wills as more than merely objects to appropriate, and thus to take on the interests of the whole. Once the will is subjective-objective, it has become the will in and for itself and superseded its previous individual subjectivity. This then translates into external subjectivity, or the universalization of the subjective. External subjectivity exists when the personal will becomes the common will. All wills do not necessarily will the same ends, but the will comes to understand the concept of the other as a subject with desires, particularities, etc. Only once this is achieved is the will able to address the wills of others, which is the first step in morality (139).
For example, the smoker’s will which moves from the realm of abstract right where he was merely trying to best satiate his desires both to smoke and no longer smoke now finds himself addressing the wills of others in the moral realm. He examines the relative social mores of the wills surrounding him. Are they adverse to the second-hand smoke he’s producing? Are they tobacco farmers? Which will serve the community better, his continuance or cessation of his habit? Now, the smoker has a true choice: should he follow his desires or the desires of the community as a whole? Can he find a way to satisfy both? It is at this moment in his development of consciousness that the smoker reaches true freedom of choice. The synthesis of these two options, or in Hegel’s dialectic the realms of abstract right and morality, is the ethical life.
However, Hegel cannot end the development of the ethical life with morality and the true freedom of choice because morality is, by nature, relative. A moral system is derived from social mores, conventions, and norms, which vary from place to place and time to time. Morality determines the rules of contract in a society. Society then creates civic laws to organize the ways in which individuals contract with one another, and are dictated by the social mores. These laws and contracts inevitably vary according to particularities of community. For example, if second-hand smoke is a big health concern in the community of the smoker, he should quit to best serve the group. However, if the economy thrives on the tobacco industry, he should continue his patronage and stimulate the job market. The smoker, therefore, has relative guidelines to dictate his actions in terms of a specific and immediate community, but he has no universal ones by which he should live regardless of particularity. This is why Hegel says, “In morality, self-determination should be thought of as sheer restless activity which cannot yet arrive at something that is (137)”. One cannot live only in the moral realm of being because it is only relative, and one must have a choice between the universal and the relative or particular in order to have true freedom. Hence the synthesis of relative morality with universal abstract right is necessary to become the ethical life.
If the will needs morality to be free, what then does Hegel mean when he says the will has a right to morality? He does not mean, as that phrasing of the word right usually connotes, a political right; he assumes individuals understand that they have natural rights by virtue of being human in the way John Locke described. Nor does right really mean obligation, because by the time the ethical life is reached, the will does not feel obliged to be moral in the way culture today understands obligation. He means that the will has a right to choose the best with its freedom of options found in morality, which is the ethical life. The choice to be moral is made because it is a step in that direction. The will is then free to choose the ethical life given that is has already made both abstract right and morality part of its content.
In conclusion, through his scientific use of the dialectic and tracing the development of the individual, existence, and morality, Hegel builds the basis for the ethical life he is trying to achieve. One must keep in mind when reading Hegel, however, that he is trying to teach thinking and comportment, but not necessarily what those concepts require to become concrete manifestations of theory. This is why his dialectic takes place entirely in the realm of abstract logic, so he doesn’t mix his universal ethical system with relative things from a certain place or time. The analogy of the smoker, for example, is only useful in so far as it helps people understand his very abstract description. For Hegel, the important part is the learning process. In due course, he asks his readers to learn that freedom requires limits, and that only when the will is affected by both morality and subjective desire can there be true choices. His theory ultimately is not possible, but gives readers a framework to patterns themselves after.
