Filozofija i drustvo 2018 Volume 29, Issue 4, Pages: 553-564
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID1804553J
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Between philosophy and state: Hegel’s dialectic of the institutionalization of freedom
Jovanov Rastko (Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade)
Hegel considers, in his system of philosophy, different specifications of
freedom; he distinguishes between subjective, objective and absolute
freedom. I am interested, in this paper, primarily in the dialectics of
objective freedom, which Hegel introduces in his Philosophy of Law, in order
to point out the problematics of the historicity of objective freedom, and
to argue that the concept of freedom gains the quality of true historicity
only at the level of the absolute spirit. This will allow me to open the
space, within my argument, for presenting the thesis about the dialectical
gap which is present in Hegel’s understanding of the perfection of freedom
at two different levels of his system: in the state as attaining the
concreteness of freedom in the domain of the objectivity of the spirit, as
well as in the apparently apolitical notion of freedom in the sphere of the
absolute spirit, that is, in the sphere of concrete thinking, the sphere of
philosophy itself.
Keywords: Hegel, freedom, state, history, absolute spirit
Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 179049