On Hegel, the Subject, and Political Justification
Andrew Chitty
Res Publica 2:2, Autumn 1996, pp. 181-203
What are the foundations of political and legal philosophy? On what ultimate basis can particular
political institutions be justified? An almost irresistible answer is that they can be justified only on the
basis of the nature of the human beings to whom they have to apply. However this justification can
take different forms. One major form of it in the Western tradition is the pragmatic one: that of
Hobbes, Hume and utilitarianism. Here the justification of political institutions is that, given the
desires, needs and behavioural tendencies that in our experience human beings have, under such
institutions they will behave so as to satisfy those needs and desires to a greater extent than they would
under alternative institutions. Another major form is an ‘ontological’ one, that dates back to Plato’s
analogy between the just city and the well-ordered soul. Here the justification of political institutions is
that they somehow reflect or express, or else allow the realisation of, the essential nature of the human
subject, as it can be discovered through self-reflection. In both cases there is an appeal to ‘human
nature’, but in a rather different sense in each case.
Contemporary liberalism and communitarianism both rely heavily on the ontological form of
justification. Liberalism is centrally a view about what the content of political institutions should be,
one that makes the protection of individual rights central. Yet to justify this view liberal theories also
typically rely, whether explicitly or not, on an ontological form of justification, specifically one that
appeals to the idea of the individual subject as essentially free. This is ‘ontological liberalism’. To take
a central example, John Rawls’s initial justification of his principles of justice in A Theory of Justice is
based on the idea of a contract made in an original position.1 Yet in the course of the book it emerges
that the central features of the original position itself, in particular its ‘veil of ignorance’, are chosen in
such a way as to express a ‘Kantian’ conception of the person: as a subject that freely chooses its own
life in such a way as not to prevent others from choosing theirs.2 This conception of the person
remains foundational in Rawls’s later presentation of his theory as ‘political not metaphysical’,
although now the justification of the principles is based on the claim, not that this conception is
1
J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972
2
Rawls's reliance on a Kantian subject is documented in M.J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of
Justice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982
1
metaphysically true, but that it is shared by all groups in the political societies to which we happen to
belong.
3
Communitarianism, too, can be defined in terms of the content of the political institutions it advocates.
Roughly speaking, communitarians think that political institutions should embody the shared values of
the community, and accordingly that they should further a ‘common good’ as defined by those values.
Yet communitarianism also has a typical form of justification, and again this is of the ontological kind,
for to justify such institutions it standardly appeals to the idea that the human subject is ‘socially
constituted’, so that the shared values of its community are built into its nature. The communitarian
argument is then that political institutions should express the nature of this subject, and that to do so
they must embody the communally shared values that are partly constitutive of it. Such ‘ontological
communitarianism’ has a parallel structure to ontological liberalism, although it has a different
conception of the subject that forms the basis of justification.
Hegel’s political philosophy has sometimes been seen as a form of ontological liberalism, in which the
‘system of right’, the system of social, legal and political institutions of the Philosophy of Right, is
justified as necessary for the maintenance of an individual free will described in the introduction to the
book. It has also been seen as a form of ontological communitarianism, especially in the wake of
Charles Taylor’s influential Hegel.4 I shall argue however that neither of these characterisations is
correct. Hegel’s form of justification is indeed ontological in my sense, but the subject he uses as the
basis for it, the possessor of ‘free will’, is neither the subject of ontological liberalism nor that of
ontological communitarianism, for although it is socially constituted, it is so not in the sense that the
values of any particular community or culture are built into the content of its motivations. Rather it is
so in that its possession of this free will arises from its participation in social relations as such, where
social relations are understood as relations of mutual recognition. Furthermore, participation in such
relations is itself necessitated by an even more fundamental feature of the human subject, its awareness
of itself as a subject in contrast to an objective world outside it, or what Hegel calls ‘consciousness’.
I shall suggest, therefore, that Hegel takes the debate between ontological liberalism and ontological
communitarianism several stages further. He takes it further with regard to his account of the subject,
which begins at the most elementary level of our own subjective experience. He also takes it further
with regard to his method of justification, which is to show that there is a basic contradiction in the
subject at this level which can ultimately be resolved only by developing certain political institutions.
Finally he takes it further with regard to his view of the content of justified institutions. For this
contradiction in the subject requires it to become a subject with both individual and collective
3
See J. Rawls, Political Liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993
4
C. Taylor, Hegel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975
2
dimensions, and correspondingly the institutions needed to resolve the contradiction involve both the
protection of individual rights and the advancing of various common goods.
This is not to say that Hegel’s picture of the subject is a satisfactory one, any more than is his view of
the content of justified political institutions. However, by his example he does show that the
ontological form of justification has possibilities that liberal-communitarian debate has scarcely begun
to explore. For this alone, Hegel’s account of the subject, and the form of political justification
associated with it, deserve reconstructing.
In this paper I shall attempt such a reconstruction, by retracing the steps through which Hegel derives
‘free will’ from ‘consciousness’ in his Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Mind, and in the lectures that
accompany it.5 By doing so I hope to make good some of the above claims.
The main stages of Hegel’s derivation of free will are as follows: consciousness, self-consciousness,
mastery and servitude (one-sided recognition), universal self-consciousness (mutual recognition),
intelligence, will, and finally free will. Most of these have sub-stages within them. Each main stage is
what I shall call a ‘form of subjectivity’. It is a fundamental way in which a subject conceives itself
and the components of its world, which constitutes it as a certain kind of subject. Each form of
subjectivity in the sequence ‘incorporates’ the previous ones. That is, they appear within it as
subordinate aspects, in the same way that when one shifts from conceiving something as circular to
conceiving it as a sphere one’s original way of conceiving it does not disappear but is reduced to a
subordinate aspect of the way one now sees it.
Each form of subjectivity ‘necessitates’ the next one in the sequence, in the sense that each form
involves an internal contradiction which can be resolved only by abandoning that form in favour of the
one that follows it. Furthermore, the contradictions that affect the different forms of subjectivity are in
the end simply developed versions of the contradiction that affects the first of them: consciousness.
Hegel’s view is that a conscious subject must eventually become aware of the contradiction internal to
consciousness, and must respond to that awareness by adopting the following form of subjectivity. In
turn it must become aware of and respond to the contradiction in that form, and so on. So his
exposition of the forms of subjectivity and the necessary transitions between them becomes a narrative
of the journey that the conscious subject must, and does, make through these forms, successively
reconstituting itself until it becomes the possessor of free will.
5
Hegel covers much of the same ground in the earlier Phenomenology of Mind, translated as The
Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A.V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. My reconstruction
concentrates entirely on the Philosophy of Mind account, although I believe that each throws light on
the other.
3
In the course of this progress the forms of subjectivity become at first practical, in that they essentially
involve ways not only of conceiving but also of acting, and then collective, in that they essentially
involve ways in which a number of different subjects conceive and act towards each other.
Furthermore the development does not stop with the free will, but continues into the institutions of the
system of right, which are themselves simply practical and collective forms of subjectivity. So Hegel’s
exposition is an account of the nature of the subject as it must become in order to resolve the
contradiction of consciousness, which develops seamlessly into a justification of a set of political
institutions as necessary to resolve that same contradiction.
1. Consciousness
To begin with, then, it is important to understand just what Hegel means by consciousness and how he
thinks it is internally contradictory. In Hegel’s narrative consciousness emerges out of a series of more
elementary forms of awareness which he collectively calls ‘soul’, and it is best understood by
contrasting it with one of them, the form of soul called ‘feeling of self’ (Selbstgefühl). Feeling of self
is the most basic form of self-awareness. It consists just in having sensations, and in experiencing
those sensations as mine. For Hegel, to experience one’s sensations in this way, which he calls
‘idealising’ them, is to establish a distinction between oneself and one’s sensations of the same
fundamental kind that is made in a subject-predicate proposition, or what Hegel calls a ‘judgment’, and
making this distinction constitutes one as a subject:
The feeling totality is, as individuality, essentially the tendency to divide itself within
itself, and to awaken to the judgment within itself, by virtue of which it has particular
feelings and is a subject in relation to these its determinations. The subject as such
posits these as its feelings within itself. (E3 §407, 323-5)6
6
References to the Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Mind 3rd ed. [1830] (E3) are given by paragraph
number. R = remark to the paragraph. A = addition (Zusatz) to the paragraph by Bouwmann, compiled
from various sets of students' lecture notes in 1840. G = Griesheim's lecture notes relevant to the
paragraph, from the 1825 lecture course. K = Kehler's lecture notes relevant to the paragraph, from the
same course. After the paragraph number I have given the page number of the English translation in
Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 3 vols., ed. and tr. M.J. Petry, Dordrecht: D. Riedel, 2nd ed.,
1979, which is a bilingual edition with Griesheim's and Kehler's lecture notes included as an appendix.
For §§388-412 the pagination is from Petry's volume 2, and for §§413-482 from volume 3. Petry
republished §§413-439, with Griesheim's and Kehler's lecture notes appended directly to the relevant
paragraphs, as The Berlin Phenomenology, ed. and tr. M.J. Petry, Dordrecht: D. Riedel, 1981. I have
modified all translations from Hegel's works.
4
However, in this initial form of self-awareness the subject relates only to ‘particular’ sensations, and
accordingly it forms a conception of itself only as the possessor of particular sensations:
It is sunken in this particularity of sensations, and at the same time it unites with itself
therein as a subjective one [Eins] through the ideality of the particular. In this way it is
feeling of self - and at the same time it is this only in the particular feeling. (ibid.)
The subject here is implicitly ‘universal’ in the sense that it has a plurality of ‘particular’ sensation, but
it does not conceive itself as universal in contrast to the elements of its experience as singular things.
The feeling soul ‘has a content which has not yet developed to the separation of universal and singular,
subjective and objective’ (E3 §402A). In consciousness, by contrast, the subject stands back and
conceives itself as the possessor of the content of its experience in general, and therefore as something
universal, separated off from the singularity of the elements of its experience.7 Thereby it constitutes
itself as what Hegel calls an ‘I’:
[The] being-for-itself of free universality is the higher awakening of the soul to the I,
abstract universality in so far as it is for abstract universality. (E3 §412, 425)
By conceiving itself in this universal way, the subject frees itself from its entanglement with particular
sensation, and gains an independence from it, in that it no longer identifies itself just as the possessor
of such sensation. At the same time this means for Hegel that it conceives the content of its experience
as independent of it, and so outside it. Thereby it constitutes that content as an ‘object’. Consciousness
is just this joint conceiving of oneself as an ‘I’ and of the content of one’s experience as an ‘object’,
dividing the world into subjective and objective, inner and outer:
[T]he immediate identity of the natural soul is raised to this pure ideal identity with
itself, while what is the content of the former is object [g.]8 for this reflection that is for
itself. Pure abstract freedom for itself lets its determinacy, the natural life of the soul, go
out from it as equally free, as independent object, and it is of this latter as something
outside it that I is initially aware, and as such is consciousness. (E3 §413, 427)
Just as the subject of consciousness, the ‘I’, conceives its objects as what are external to it, so it also
now conceives itself by contrast with its objects, as that which stands opposite them and has them as
its objects. In Hegel’s terms, it is ‘reflected into itself’ in its objects (E3 §412, 425).
7
'Particular' (besonder) in Hegel has the sense 'part of', whereas singular (einzeln) simply has the
sense 'individual'. See M. Inwood, A Hegel Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, p. 303.
8
Hegel uses two terms for 'object': das Objekt and der Gegenstand. Gegenstand literally means
'standing-against', and using it emphasises the idea of the object as what stands opposite to the subject.
In quotations from Hegel I have translated both terms as 'object', and the corresponding adjectives as
'objective', but where the German word is Gegenstand I have signalled this by adding '[g.]' to the
translation.
5
For Hegel, then, consciousness is more than mere awareness, or even mere self-awareness. It is
awareness of oneself as a subject counterposed to an objective world outside oneself. So characterised,
consciousness immediately involves a fundamental contradiction, a contradiction simultaneously in the
way that the object and the I are conceived in it.
With regard to the object, the subject conceives this object as both outside out of it and independent of
it, and yet also as its object, in the same way as in feeling of self it conceived of the contents of
experience as belonging to it:
Consciousness is both: we have a world outside us, which is firmly for itself, and at the
same time in that I am consciousness I am aware of this object [g.], it is posited as
ideal, so it is not independent but superseded. These are what are the two contradictory
[elements], the independence and the ideality of the objective side. Consciousness is
just this contradiction, and the progression of consciousness is its resolution. (E3
§414G, 275)
With regard to the I, it conceives itself as independent or free of each of its objects, as related only to
itself, and yet it still relies on its objects in general in order to form a conception of itself as thatwhich-possesses-these-objects. This means that it has to conceive itself as both ‘with itself’ (bei sich
selbst), related only to itself, and ‘with another’, related to something alien to it:
[T]he certainty that mind has of itself at the standpoint of mere consciousness is still something
untrue and self-contradictory, for here, along with the abstract certainty of being with itself,
mind has the directly opposed certainty of being related to something essentially other to it. (E3
§416A, 15)
The contradiction of consciousness is fundamentally a contradiction between the mutual independence
and separateness of the I and the object on the one hand, and their internal relatedness, thus in a sense
their fundamental identity, on the other: ‘Consciousness is ... the contradiction between the
independence of both sides, and their identity’ (E3 §414, 9).
2. Self-consciousness and desire
In consciousness as I have described it so far, the object is conceived as a singular independent entity,
in complete opposition to the universality of the I. Hegel calls this elementary form of consciousness
‘sensuous consciousness’ (E3 §418, 19). In order to resolve the contradiction of consciousness, the I
must reconceive the object in successively more universal, and so ‘I-like’, ways, thereby tending to
eliminate its independence and ‘foreignness’ and thus both aspects of the contradiction. This leads
initially to a new form of consciousness, ‘perception’, in which the object is endowed with some of
the universality of the I by being conceived as a thing with universal properties (E3 §§419-421, 2531). In turn this leads to another form, ‘understanding’, in which the object is further universalised by
being conceived as a realm of laws which subordinate the particular appearances that present
6
themselves to the I (E3 §422, 31-33). Finally the object is conceived as a whole which subordinates its
own parts under it, in the same way that a law subordinates appearances under it: that is, as a living
being (E3 §423A, 35; §423G, 311-3).
At this point the object has in part the same characteristics that the I uses in order to conceive itself, for
in that it subordinates its parts it in a sense possesses them, just as the I conceives itself as possessing
its objects in general. So in conceiving the object as a living being the I conceives it as an object which
in part shares its own quality of ‘I-hood’. When the I conceives its object as characterised by
subjectivity (where the term is now used to mean such I-hood) then conversely it looks back at itself
from the perspective of this external subjectivity and conceives itself as an object. This dual
conception of the object as subjective and of the I as an object constitutes a new form of subjectivity
that Hegel calls ‘self-consciousness’:
There is consciousness of a certain object [g.], livingness, I relate myself to something
living. I am now what thinks; and in that this relates itself to livingness thinkingly,
subjectivity or livingness as such comes into being for it there ... In that I now has
subjectivity as such, abstract subjectivity, as object [g.], it has itself as object [g.]. I is
itself living, makes its livingness into an object, and so is self-consciousness. (E3
§424G, 315)
It might be said that if the I conceives its object as characterised by subjectivity (I-hood) then surely it
must conceive it as another I, another conscious being. However in self-consciousness as it first
appears the I has only one way of identifying itself, as ‘possessor of objects’. So it has no way of
distinguishing between ‘I’ and ‘I-hood in general’. It cannot make the distinction between what is
numerically identical to it (the very same thing as it) and what is only qualitatively identical to it (the
same kind of thing as it), and so cannot formulate the idea of ‘another I’, something qualitatively
identical to but numerically distinct from it. As a result, for it to conceive its object as ‘characterised
by I-hood’ is just for it to conceive its object as ‘I’. Thus the I of self-consciousness literally conceives
its object as itself: ‘As judging, the I has an object which is not distinct from it - itself - selfconsciousness’ (E3 §423, 35). Hegel expresses this with the formula ‘I=I’, where the ‘=‘ sign stands
for the relationship between a subject and its object.
Hegel calls self-consciousness in its initial form ‘abstract’ or ‘immediate’ self-consciousness. In it the
contradiction of consciousness in its original form has been resolved, in that the object has been
rendered identical with the subject. However the contradiction now reappears in a new form, as the
contradiction of self-consciousness. Again Hegel describes the contradiction as two-fold, but now both
aspects of it concern the self-conscious subject’s conception of itself, the first its self-conception as
object and the second its self-conception as I.
With regard to its self-conception as object, it faces a ‘contradiction of abstraction’. For it is part of the
idea of an object that it be different from the I. So the I is not after all a genuine object. It has ‘a lack of
7
reality, of existence [Dasein]’ (E3 §425G, 317). It is ‘without reality, for since it is itself its own object
[g.], it is not one, for there is no difference present between itself and what is its’ (E3 §424, 37). As
Hegel explains:
There is lacking here is what there was too much of in consciousness. There, there was a
preponderance of difference, of content which is other than the I. In self-consciousness the
other determination predominates, I = I, difference is altogether lacking, I am only
conscious of me, only aware of me, identity is too strong ... (E3 §424G, 317)
With regard to its self-conception as I, it faces a ‘contradiction of immediacy’. In self-consciousness
the I conceives its object as itself. So although when conceiving itself as ‘possessor of objects’ it
conceives itself as related to its objects, it thereby remains related only to itself. The contradiction
between independence and dependence that affected its self-conception in consciousness is resolved,
and it is now ‘free’ in that it does not depend on anything else in order to form a conception of itself.
‘In self-consciousness I am free, I am not related to another, I am with myself’ (E3 §424G, 317). Yet at
the same time it only achieves this self-relation through a relation to an object that is initially merely
given to it. So it is not after all free. Since it is ‘related to an object that is initially posited as
immediate, the I is not yet posited as independent’ (E3 425G, 323). It is ‘still burdened with an
external object’ (E3 §425, 39).
The self-conscious subject’s double sense of contradiction expresses itself as a sense that the
contradiction ‘ought’ to be overcome, that its abstract I ought to be given a genuine objectivity, and at
the same time that the object on which it depends ought to be rendered thoroughly identical with it, so
that it is no longer dependent on anything external to it. Hegel calls this double sense of ought ‘desire’:
Self-consciousness in its immediacy is singular and is desire - the contradiction of its
abstraction, which ought to be objective, or of its immediacy, which has the shape of an
external object and ought to be subjective. (E3 §426, 43-5)
Specifically, desire is the urge on the part of the self-conscious subject to overcome its double
contradiction by consuming the living being which confronts it as an independent object, thereby
trying simultaneously to objectify the subject and to render the object subjective. In the various forms
of consciousness, the contradiction of consciousness led to efforts on the part of the subject to
conceive the object differently. Here, the contradiction leads to efforts to change the object. So the
transition from consciousness as such to self-consciousness is a transition from purely theoretical
forms of subjectivity to the first practical form of subjectivity, the first form which essentially involves
a determination to act in a certain way towards the object.
3. Related self-consciousness
Self-consciousness in its present form can overcome its contradiction only by consuming its object. It
would not be able to overcome it by simply transforming the object in some way, although such a
8
transformation could be seen as a way of objectifying itself and rendering the object subjective, for it
‘does not yet have the strength to endure the independence of the other’ (E3 §428A, 51). As a result,
‘desire in its satisfaction is always destructive’ (E3 §428, 49). Thus the act in which the self-conscious
I attempts to change its object in such a way as to resolve the contradiction in its self-conception is
also the act whereby it destroys that object. Hence the satisfaction of desire fails to resolve the
contradiction of self-consciousness, and that satisfaction only gives rise to a new desire (ibid.).
Nevertheless, according to Hegel, the desiring I must eventually succeed in giving itself an objectivity
outside itself. For in the moment of satisfaction of desire it has at least the fleeting sense of an object
which has been rendered thoroughly subjective while still remaining an object. This enables it to make
the transition from immediate self-consciousness to a new form of self-consciousness:
The judgment or diremption of this self-consciousness is consciousness of a free object,
in which I has awareness of itself as I, which is however also still outside it (E3 §429,
53)
That is, it now comes to conceive its object as another I. It has ‘filled the other with I, made it from
something self-less into a free, self-like object, into another I’ (E3 §429A, 53).
Hegel does not consider the anthropomorphic possibility of a single subject relating to an inanimate
object or an animal as ‘another I’. He assumes that a necessary condition for the appearance of this
form of self-consciousness is that two self-conscious individuals encounter one another. Thus each
self-conscious individual can resolve its internal contradiction only by finding itself as a subject
objectified in another self-conscious individual. It is this fact, rather than an inability to supply their
own material needs, that draws individual human beings (indeed any self-conscious beings) together.
This is Hegel’s version of the idea of natural human sociability. The moment of treating the other as
another I is, as Hegel puts it in his notes to the Philosophy of Mind, the ‘origin of society in respect of
consciousness’.9 The joint form of subjectivity that is established when two subjects each conceive
each other as ‘another I’, a form that we could call ‘related self-consciousness’, is the precondition for
society: although subjects that go no further than this remain in a state of nature with respect to each
other in so far as this form does not entail any acceptance of a common authority.10
The identification of an external being as ‘another I’ resolves the contradiction in self-consciousness,
for now the subject of self-consciousness has succeeded in objectifying itself and rendering its object
subjective without simultaneously destroying that object. However this only leads to the reappearance
of the basic contradiction of consciousness in yet another form, as the contradiction of related self9
Cited Petry, notes to The Berlin Phenomenology, p. 161. Hegel's note is attached to that paragraph
which becomes §429 in the third edition of the Philosophy of Mind.
10
Hegel's own phrase for this joint form of subjectivity is 'the relating [Verhalten] of one selfconsciousness to another self-consciousness' (E3 428G, 329).
9
consciousness. Essentially this contradiction is encapsulated in the phrase ‘another I’. On the one hand
the ‘I’ in this phrase simply stands for ‘conscious subject’ (or rather now ‘self-conscious subject’), an
entity which is qualitatively identical to but numerically distinct from the I. But on the other hand the
first-person reference of the ‘I’ in the phrase has to be taken quite literally, for the subject does not
conceive the other just as simply another self-conscious subject but also quite literally as itself:
The other human being is just as much I as I am, there is no distinction to be made
there. From the point of view of the pure self of consciousness, of this root of
subjectivity, there is an identity, there is the identity of both self-consciousnesses, I
have in the other what I have in myself. But secondly these Is are also distinguished, the
I is also something particular, and the question is how this distinction is determined.
(E3 430G, 329)
Furthermore, the other is not just distinct from me. It is also positively independent from me, in the
sense that ‘I’ always stands for independence. This makes the contradiction even stronger:
Since I is what is wholly universal, absolutely pervasive, interrupted by no limit, the
essence common to all humans, the two selves here relating to one another constitute
one identity, one light so to speak, and yet at the same time they are two, which subsist
in complete rigidness and unyieldingness towards each other, each as something
reflected into itself and absolutely distinct from and impenetrable by the other. (E3
§430A, 55)
In short, ‘the highest contradiction is posited, on the one hand the clear identity of both and on the
other this complete independence of each’ (E3 §430G, 329-31).
The contradiction of related self-consciousness can be seen in terms of the two subjects’ simultaneous
status for each other as corporeal entities and self-conscious beings. In so far as they are corporeal
entities they are physically outside one another as objects, located in different places, and each of them
is on a par for the other with ordinary living beings - those living beings which, in desire, they simply
subordinate to their own subjectivity. This is what they are in their ‘existence’ (Dasein), by which
Hegel means in the mode of being in which they are directly present to us. From this point of view
they can see themselves only as distinct, singular entities. Yet in so far as they are self-conscious they
are simply free, not only in the sense of being self-related, but also in the ‘practical’ sense of being the
self-originating source of action, for in subordinating objects to its subjectivity in desire this is how the
self-conscious subject experiences itself.11 As simply free they are indistinguishable. They are a
unitary, universal I: the ‘pure self of consciousness’ or the ‘essence common to all humans’ that Hegel
mentions above. Therefore the contradiction between their separateness and their identity can be seen
as a contradiction between the corporeality and the freedom that each has for the other:
11
Hegel does not distinguish these two senses of freedom, or explain the transition from the first to
the second. I have assumed that it must occur in desire.
10
The more precise shape of the contradiction that ... although the two self-conscious
subjects relating to one another have immediate existence [Dasein], are natural,
corporeal, thus are in the manner of a thing subordinated to an alien power, and come
to be for one another as such, they are at the same time simply free and not to be treated
by one another as just immediately existing [daseiende], as something merely natural.
(E3 §431A, 55-7)
Accordingly to overcome this contradiction it will be necessary for them somehow to integrate their
freedom and their corporeality for each other. For Hegel, this can only happen through each, in its
actions as a corporeal entity, treating both itself and the other, as corporeal entities, as free, where to
treat something as free means to treat it as a self-originating source of action, thus as a maker of
decisions that are in some way valid for oneself. Hegel calls treating another as free in this way
‘recognition’ (Anerkennung).12 In treating each other as free they would simultaneously be distinct
from each other, in that their actions would be actions of distinct corporeal entities, and yet identical,
in that those actions would express a conception of them both as free, and thus as belonging to a single
universal I whose defining characteristic is freedom. Hegel continues:
In order to overcome this contradiction it is necessary that the two mutually opposed
selves posit themselves and recognise themselves in their existence [Dasein], in their
being-for-others, as what they are in themselves or in their concept - namely not merely
natural but free beings [Wesen]. (ibid.)
From the point of view of the individual subject, overcoming the contradiction is first of all a matter of
being recognised by the other individual, in one’s very existence (Dasein) as this corporeal entity, as
free:
This contradiction gives the drive to show oneself as a free self and to exist [da zu sein]
as this for the other - the process of recognition. (E3 §430, 53)
Similarly, the other individual will have the same drive to become recognised by the first as free.
However to treat the other as free means defer to its decision-making in some way, and for the selfconscious subject as we have it at present this is not easily achieved, for this subject is still ‘singular’.
That is, it understands its freedom as a matter of it (conceived as this single individual) being
completely self-determining in all its decisions. It does not yet see freedom in a universal way, as a
matter of it (conceived as a unitary universal I that is the same I as all other self-conscious beings are)
being self-determining in making decisions valid for all. Its notion of freedom is still tied to its own
12
The German anerkennen generally means 'recognise' in the sense of 'publicly acknowledge as
having a positive normative status' rather than in the sense of 'identify as an individual or as a member
of a kind'. So the mere identification of an object as 'another I' that occurs in related self-consciousness
does not count as Anerkennung, and Hegel does not use the term to describe it. See Inwood, A Hegel
Dictionary, p. 245.
11
single individuality. This means that as soon as it defers to the decision-making of another in any way,
however minor, it cannot think of itself as free:
I, as free self-consciousness, am still immediate and singular. The immediate singularity
of my self-consciousness and my freedom are not yet separated from each other, and
thus I cannot surrender anything of my particularity without surrendering my free
independence. (E3 §431G, 333)
So this subject is incapable of recognising another as free, without losing its own freedom: ‘In that I
recognise someone as free, thereby I am unfree’ (ibid.). As a result, the two subjects cannot
simultaneously recognise each other and themselves as free. The only way in which the first can
conceive of overcoming the contradiction of related self-consciousness is by having both of them
recognise the first, and not the second, as free. Then the two individuals would be distinct in that they
would remain separate corporeal entities, but identical in that these entities would share a single will,
that of the first. The situation is parallel for the other individual. So each ‘must resist recognising the
other as free, just as on the other hand each must concern itself with demanding to be recognised as
free in the other’s self-consciousness’ (E3 §431G, 335). Thus the effort on the part of the subjects of
related self-consciousness to overcome their contradiction degenerates into a struggle between them in
which each tries to force or coerce the other to recognise it alone as free, as that whose decisions alone
the other must take as valid for itself (E3 432G, 337-9). This struggle is the ‘struggle for recognition’.
4. Mastery, servitude and universal self-consciousness
I shall not rehearse the detail of this struggle. Briefly, Hegel’s claim is that each must use physical
force against the other to the point of being willing to kill it in order to try to make the other recognise
it as free. At the same time, each must expose itself to the danger of being killed by the other in order
to demonstrate to the other that it is free, in that it cannot be coerced even by the threat of death. When
one individual capitulates rather than die, then in that act it demonstrates to itself (as well as to the
other) that it is not free. Thereby it abandons the demand to be recognised as free, and recognises the
other alone as free by taking the arbitrary decisions of the other individual as decisions for it too,
obeying unconditionally the orders which the other now gives it. This one-sided or ‘immediate’
recognition constitutes a new joint and practical form of subjectivity, ‘mastery and servitude’
(Herrschaft und Knechtschaft), as it constitutes the two subjects as ‘servant’ and ‘master’ respectively.
This is how the contradiction of related self-consciousness is initially resolved:
The recognition of the other must come about, and initially it must come about
immediately, so that the one subjects its will, surrenders the independence of its will, a
resolution of the contradiction which is in itself also a contradiction. Thus the relation
of mastery and servitude is posited. The one that prefers life to independence, that
allows itself to be coerced, is the subjected, the one that obeys, the server [Diener]. (E3
432G, 339)
12
In abandoning its claim to be free and recognising only the other as free, the servant has effectively
surrendered its own will: ‘the self-will of the servant gives itself up to the will of the master, and
receives as its content the end of the commander’ (E3 §433A, 65). As a result, there is now as far as
both individuals are concerned only one will, one centre of free decision-making:
The will of the master counts, not that of the server. It is one will, and it is already a
universal one, it is not only the will of this self, it is a will that has become broader. The
servant has to work for the desire of the master, whatever shape it has, but at the same
time universality is present. Will, subjective will, desire is extended, the master is will
in this consciousness and also in the consciousness of the servant. (E3 435G, 341-3)
The surrender of the will that initiates mastery and servitude is the analogue of the act in which men
leave the state of nature by alienating their wills to the community in Rousseau’s social contract, and
as with Rousseau the surrender creates a general or universal will13. However, in contrast to Rousseau,
the resulting will is not truly universal. It is universal in that it counts as the will of both master and
servant (or servants, if there are many), but it does not have an impersonal content. Its content is made
up of the desires of one particular individual, the master, and the way the servant obeys that will is
through labour to produce things to satisfy that one individual’s desires.
As a result, the master-servant relation does not resolve the contradiction of related self-consciousness
which gave rise to it. It is true that servants and master could be said to be ‘identical’ in that they share
a single will, but because this will is determined by the desires of one particular corporeal individual, it
is not genuinely self-determining or free. So it is not a will that is expressive of the I as such, of the
universal I that they sense themselves to be. Their actions therefore do not express a conception of
themselves as a single universal I, and so fail to unite their corporeal separateness with their identity as
such an I. The servant’s recognition through working for the master does not express to the master the
servant’s identity with it as free, but rather the opposite. The same is the case for the master’s activity
of giving orders to the servant.
Thus the contradiction of related self-consciousness remains. Nevertheless, the master-servant relation
does show how this contradiction can finally be overcome. For the servant, in working for the master,
learns to resist its own immediate desires. It ‘works off its singular- and self-will in service to the
master’ and ‘supersedes the inner immediacy of desire’ (E3 §435, 67). It thereby achieves a sense of
freedom as something other than just being completely self-determining in all its decisions, for here it
is free in the sense of being able to act independently of its own desires. Thereby it partly overcomes
the ‘singularity’ that drove subjects into a struggle for recognition. However it is still not yet free in the
13
The German allgemein, translated here as 'universal', also means 'general', and elsewhere Hegel
uses allgemeine Wille to translate Rousseau's 'general will' (for example in the Philosophy of Right at
PR §258R, 277).
13
sense of being able to act independently from everyone’s desires, for it only acts independently of its
own desires in so far as it carries out the master’s desires:
This servile obedience forms only the beginning of freedom, for that to which the
natural singularity of self-consciousness submits is not the truly universal, in-and-foritself rational will, but the singular, contingent will of another subject. What emerges
here is merely one moment of freedom, the negativity of self-seeking singularity. (E3
§435A, 69)
The ‘positive side of freedom’ (ibid.) can only be realised when:
servile self-consciousness disengages itself from the singularity of the master just as much
as from its own singularity, and apprehends what is rational in-and-for-itself, in a
universality which is independent of the particularity of the subject. (ibid.)
Hegel is unclear about what it is within the master-servant relation that brings about the realisation of
this ‘positive side’ of freedom, but he appears to suggest that is the master’s concern to meet the needs
common to itself and its servants, which leads it, like the servant, to overcome its own immediate
desires and instead to do and order done what is necessary to meet those common needs (E3 §434, 65;
§435A, 67). Thus the will which it comes to enact (and which the servants in turn also enact) becomes
an impersonal one whose content is independent of any one individual’s desires.
This would be at least an approximation to the will that is independent of everyone’s desires and
‘rational in-and-for-itself’. If both master and servant can come to enact such a will, and to feel that
their freedom consists in enacting it, then they will both have overcome their ‘singularity’: they will
have come to conceive freedom no longer as individual self-determination but as the selfdetermination of a unitary universal I that they all, as separate individuals, are. Thereby they will have
overcome the condition which originally prevented them from mutually recognising each other as free
and forced them instead into the struggle for recognition. They can then finally resolve the
contradiction of related self-consciousness by recognising each other as free, dissolving the masterservant relation. Hegel calls the collective and practical form of subjectivity in which subjects do this
‘universal self-consciousness’.
What makes universal self-consciousness possible is the internal division which each subject has now
made within itself between its own desires, which are particular to it as a separate corporeal entity, and
its freedom, as possessor of which it is the same I that all the others are:
Universal self-consciousness is the affirmative awareness of oneself in the other self,
each of which as a free singularity has absolute independence, but, on account of the
negation of its immediacy or desire, does not differentiate itself from the other. (E3
§436, 71)
Thanks to this internal division each one can recognise the other as free without being in any way
unfree itself: for when one recognises the other as free it only treats as valid the decisions of the other
14
as universal I, and enacting the decisions of that same universal I is just what its own freedom consists
in.
However it is unclear at this point how the decisions of this universal I are to be identified. Until now,
to speak of a universal I was simply a way of saying that individuals felt themselves to be somehow
numerically identical at some level. However Hegel speaks of mutual recognition as creating a
common ‘substance’ that is the basis for all social institutions (E3 §436, 71; §436G, 345), and it is at
least consonant with his usage to say that they create social relations and a society for the first time. He
further suggests that mutual recognition constitutes each individual as universal in some sense, for in
universal term so far, for in universal self-consciousness:
[each] is universal and objective, and has real universality as reciprocity, in that it
knows itself recognised in the free other, and knows this, in so far as it recognises the
other and knows it as free. (ibid.)
However this is not enough to be able to say that any real universal I with determinate decision-making
capacities has been constituted by virtue of mutual recognition. So it is still difficult to see how the
‘decision-making’ of the universal I can be conceptualised. If this decision-making I is Hegel’s version
of the general will, then it is a version that as yet lacks any content.
5. Will, free will and right
In order to see a solution to this problem it will be necessary to look at Hegel’s conception of the free
will. From universal self-consciousness there are several stages to the ‘free will’ but they do not
involve any development in the way the subject sees its fellow subjects, so I shall summarise them
very briefly.
Firstly, the individual of universal self-consciousness sees other individuals as both object (distinct
from itself) and subject (identical with itself), so it unifies the objective and the subjective. Thereby it
gains the confidence or ‘certainty’ that the objective and the subjective in general can be unified. This
confidence is ‘reason’ (E3 §437, 75). It is as if the individual who attains to universal selfconsciousness gains the confidence to assume that the underlying principle that animates itself and its
fellow mutual recognisers is a principle that also underlies the physical universe, so that there is no
distinction between things as they are and things as they can in principle be known. It becomes, in
Hegel’s terms, an idealist. Universal self-consciousness, supplemented by this more general
metaphysical confidence, is what Hegel calls ‘mind’ (Geist)14 (E3 §439G, 353-5).
Secondly, as mind, the individual immediately confronts the fact that the physical world presents itself
as something independent of it and alien to it, contradicting its confidence in their underlying unity. So
14
I have translated Hegel's Geist as 'mind' rather than the more common 'spirit'.
15
it is compelled to attempt to make this unity explicit, and it is this activity of attempting to realise its
unity with the objective world that is the characteristic activity of mind (E3 §441A, 87).
This activity first takes a cognitive form, giving rise to the form of subjectivity called ‘intelligence’ (or
‘theoretical mind’). Here, in a process that parallels the development of the forms of consciousness,
the individual renders the objective world progressively more like the ‘universal I’ that it is by
transforming its singular intuitions of that world into representations, which are more general, and then
thoughts, which are more general still (E3 §§446-68, 117-229). Through this process, the individual
proves to itself that the forms of things themselves are identical with the forms of its own mentation
(E3 §468A, 229). Thereby it gains the confidence to reverse the process, so that its attempt to realise
its unity with the objective world takes a practical form, giving rise to the form of subjectivity called
‘will’ (or ‘practical mind’), where ‘will’ has to be understood as meaning something more than it has
until now. Here the individual attempts to objectify successively more universal aspects of itself in
action (E3 §§469-480, 231-265). Initially, as ‘practical feeling’, it simply registers the satisfaction of
its individual needs in feelings such as pleasantness and pleasure. Then, as ‘natural will’, it actively
tries to satisfy its inclinations through drives that correspond to them. At this point the introduction to
the Philosophy of Right begins its systematic exposition of the will, so that from here on its account
runs parallel to that of the Philosophy of Mind (PR §§10-21, 44-52).15 Next, as ‘reflecting will’, it
stands back from its inclinations and chooses which inclination to try to satisfy. Then, under the
heading of ‘happiness’, it attempts to maximise the sum total of such satisfactions.
In all the above forms the will is free ‘in itself’, for regardless of its content it always involves some
form of self-determination in so far as the individual makes some effort to act that content out into the
world. Finally however it becomes ‘free will’ in the proper sense (‘will free in and for itself’, or ‘free
mind’). Here freedom forms the actual content of the will. The individual attempts to objectify
freedom itself as an objective world, the world of what Hegel calls ‘objective mind’. This ‘realm of
actualised freedom, the world of mind produced from within itself as a second nature’ is just the
system of right (PR §4, 35). In fact Hegel simply identifies ‘right’ as any objectification of the free will
-- any actual institution, practice or law in which the free will is directly present to us. ‘Right is an
existence [Dasein] in general that is an existence of the free will’ (PR §29, 58). Correspondingly an
individual is properly free in so far as it acts to create or sustain such institutions, practices and laws.
15
References to the Philosophy of Right [1821] (PR) are given by paragraph number. R = remark to
the paragraph. A = addition (Zusatz) to the paragraph compiled by Gans from various sets of students'
lecture notes in 1833. After the paragraph number I have given the page number of the translation as
Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A.W. Wood, tr. H.B. Nisbet, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992.
16
Now the steps between universal self-consciousness and the ‘natural will’ can obscure the fact that the
individual that possesses this will, with which the Philosophy of Right begins, is an individual that has
already attained universal self-consciousness, that is, one that belongs to a community of ‘mutual
recognisers’, and that thanks to this can think of itself as a ‘universal I’ as well as a particular
individual without contradiction. Since each of the forms of subjectivity in Hegel’s systematic
derivation presupposes the others, it is natural to expect that this should be the case, and Hegel
effectively confirms it. In his initial introduction to the idea of the will in paragraphs 5 to 7 of the
Philosophy of Right he states that the will involves an ‘I’ which is universal and abstracted from every
content (PR §5, 37), but which gives itself an existence (Dasein) by investing itself in some
determinate content (PR §6, 39), and which retains its abstractedness even as so determinate (PR §7,
41). Interpreters of these paragraphs have tacitly assumed that the ‘I’ which Hegel is talking of is an
individual ‘I’, and that he is simply referring to the capacity of the individual who has a will to refrain
from acting on any particular drive. But in his lectures Hegel states explicitly that the ‘I’ associated
with the will is one that abstracts from the particular individual as well as from its various drives:
I is thinking, thought, conceptualising in general, I is the universal, the completely
universal, there is nothing more universal. When each one says ‘I’ he means himself as
a particular, but each is I, and in the higher sense the universal, wholly abstractly the
universal. I is wholly abstract; in the I, I leave out of account every particularity, my
particular character, temperament, knowledge, age.16
This I is the ‘universal I’ of universal self-consciousness. Accordingly, will’s self-investment in a
determinate content is not just a matter of choosing to do one particular thing, but of the individual
differentiating itself as one particular individual, from the indeterminacy of the universal I. Hence
Hegel calls this moment the ‘particularisation of the I’ (PR §6, 39). It happens through the decision by
the individual as to which of its various inclinations to act to satisfy: ‘By deciding, the will posits itself
as the will of a determinate individual which separates itself out from another.’ (PR §13, 46).
So the ‘natural will’ involves the capacity for seeing oneself without contradiction both as the
universal I and also as ‘this particular I’, a capacity realised only in the community of mutual
recognition of universal self-consciousness. It follows that the ‘properly free will’ whose aim is to
objectify its freedom as the system of right must also be the will of a member of this community of
mutual recognition. Furthermore this ‘properly free will’ must be nothing other than a developed form
of the free decision-making capacity of the universal I of universal self-consciousness. For since the
properly free will wills only freedom itself, it does not involve any element of ‘particularisation of the
I’. Its content is completely impersonal, so that it is a will that everyone has.
16
Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie [1818-31], 4 volumes, ed. K.-H. Ilting, Stuttgart: Frommann
Verlag, vol. 4, p. 105. A version of this lecture note is included in the Philosophy of Right (PR §4A,
35).
17
In fact it now appears that the difference between the individual of universal self-consciousness and
the individual with a properly free will is only this: although the former sees itself as part of a free
universal I, it has no particular conception of what the content of decisions of this universal I is to be,
whereas for the latter, which has had its will ‘awakened’ by the experience of unifying the objective
and the subjective in cognition, what this universal I must do is objectify its own freedom in a
determinate system of institutions and practices.
Given this close connection, it is possible to see a much more direct way in which Hegel could have
derived the properly free will that is the basis of the system of right from universal self-consciousness.
Universal self-consciousness consists in individuals’ enactment of a self-conception of themselves as a
universal I through mutual recognition of one another as free. Yet to recognise someone as free means
to treat the decisions of that individual, considered as universal I, as valid for one in some way: and in
order to do that one must know what the decisions of this ‘universal I’ are. As we have seen, though, in
universal self-consciousness these decisions are completely indeterminate. Universal selfconsciousness is therefore contradictory. Like the initial, abstract form of self-consciousness, it lacks
existence (Dasein).
The contradiction cannot be overcome by making a collective decision, for the universal I is not a
collective entity. It consists only in that common subjectivity in ourselves and each other that we take
as authoritative over us when in our actions we recognise each other as free, and whose only essential
characteristic is freedom. So the urge to overcome the contradiction can only be the urge to give a
Dasein to this freedom of the universal I, that is, to derive from the nature of that freedom those
practices that will count as recognising oneself and others as free. This, I suggest, is exactly the aim of
objectifying freedom as an objective world, the aim of the properly free will. The objective world
which the properly free will must will is then simply that system of practices and institutions which
can realise the idea of mutual recognition that appears in an abstract form in universal selfconsciousness.
Hegel’s justification of those practices and institutions, then, will be that in the end that they are
necessary in order to resolve the contradiction in universal self-consciousness. In turn universal selfconsciousness was necessary to resolve the contradictions in related self-consciousness, immediate
self-consciousness, and finally consciousness itself.
If this is correct then it is no accident that the institutions that Hegel goes on to describe in the
Philosophy of Right alternate between seeing right as a matter of protecting individual rights (property,
morality, civil society) and advancing a collective good (family, state). For the universal I whose
freedom has to be given a Dasein in these institutions, as a subject that incorporates in its nature both
sides of the contradiction of related self-consciousness, is the universal I of subjects that
18
simultaneously see themselves as distinct, particular Is: an ‘I that is we and we that is I’.17 In turn this
double nature of the universal I finally reflects out own double nature as both conscious and corporeal
beings, subjects and objects.
This is not the place to begin to reconstruct Hegel’s justification of those institutions, beginning with
property, as necessary Daseins of the freedom of such a subject. One thing that would be needed for
such a reconstruction would be a more exact account than I have been able to give here of the idea of
‘mutual recognition as free’. However I think it is possible to say already that Hegel shows that there
can be more to the ontological form of political justification than is dreamed of in most contemporary
political philosophy.
hegsub10.doc
17
Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 110.
19