Take Ownership of Yourself
Is freedom inherent to human beings? In our democratized world today, the answer seems obvious. In the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers proclaimed that “all men are created equal…with certain unalienable Rights” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The United Nations in 1948 declared in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” These are just a couple of examples that reveal why we may be inclined to think that our freedom is inherent. Yet Hegel in his Philosophy of Right (PR) writes that human beings need to claim their freedom. Through the example of slavery, he states that while human beings are free by definition, they must actualize it through self-consciousness, recognizing themselves as rational, autonomous beings. In the case of slavery, the slaves become free by gaining self-consciousness through the fight for liberation. Ultimately, Hegel’s view that human freedom is not inherent to our existence and must be actualized is convincing because freedom is indeed a human right but not something implicit in our existence.
The excerpt from §57 is a part of Hegel’s larger project on the Idea of Right, or the existence of free will in the world (§29). He uses this fundamental idea to create a philosophy of freedom that seeks to comprehend freedom actualized in how we relate to each other and construct social and political institutions. §57 is a section of an investigation into the legal relations between people, which includes property. While we take possession of objects by either taking them directly, creating them, or marking them as ours, it gets difficult when the object in question is a human being. Hegel raises the example of slavery in §57 because he wants to make a point about the contradiction, or antinomy, existent in a slave’s concept as a human being and their unfreedom. According to Hegel, supporters of slavery assert that it is justified because the human being is not free by nature, while supporters of abolition put forth that it is universally wrong because the human being is free by nature. Hegel disagrees with both standpoints because the former assigns an inappropriate concept to human beings and the latter assumes the concept of freedom is implicit in our existence. Hegel’s personal view, then, is that humans must claim the concept of human being themselves to become what they are — free will. In the case of the slave, they must fight against their master to gain consciousness of their free will.
In the remaining part of §57, Hegel talks about the necessity of a state for freedom to exist. Freedom, he claims, cannot just be an ideal or theoretical concept: “The human being in and for himself is not destined to be a slave should not itself be understood as a mere ‘ought’[…] the Idea of freedom is actual only as the state.” For us to achieve freedom in practice, the idea of the state must come in to ensure that a framework is set in place to allow individuals to exercise their freedom while also making sure that their freedom does not infringe upon the freedom of another. Therefore, the state is necessary for the realization of human freedom.
An Aristotelian objection can be made against Hegel to say that not all individuals are capable of exercising their freedom to the same extent because some are by nature more suited for slavery than others. However, this statement does not stand because the actualization of freedom is not contingent upon natural qualities, but rather on the development of self-consciousness through participation in institutions such as the state. While Aristotle in his Politics rejects slavery by force, he supports a natural argument for slavery. According to him, the ability to reason is what separates humans from animals. A slave is someone who “shares in reason to the extent of understanding it, but does not have it himself” (POL 1254b22–24). They are people who lack reason and are little different from animals — therefore “naturally suited” to be a slave. Hegel’s rebuttal to Aristotle will be twofold. The first objection he would make is that freedom is not conditional on the inherited mental and physical abilities of the individual. If that were true, it would make every disabled or mute person “unfree” by definition. Instead, Hegel aligns the concept of human beings with that of free will, and that anyone can attain it through self-consciousness. The second objection he would raise is that allowing slavery to exist is making “wrong” a norm in that society. Since the wrong of slavery is still “right” (acceptable) in that society, that wrong has validity and is “necessarily in place” (Addition §57). If an exception is made for slavery, then all sorts of other wrongs may arise to become norms in the society and return to what Hegel calls a “state of nature” as opposed to an ethical state. Since Aristotle’s philosophy prioritizes the common good over individual freedom, then it seems that he would rather choose to uphold societal order than have chaos. Thus, Aristotle’s position is defeated.
In conclusion, Hegel’s view that freedom is a human right that must be realized is convincing because the existence of slavery demonstrates that we can be subjugated and unfree. To become free, we must enter a struggle against our masters to self-recognize our freedom. However, for us to truly have freedom, a governing state must exist to uphold rules so that our freedoms are not infringed upon. It is also important to note that our potential for freedom is not reduced by our inherited physical or mental ability because the very concept of a human being is free will. In the end, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right offers us a new vision of individual freedom that is not simply the absence of external constraints or free choice, but rather the ability to act according to one’s will in the context of a community that respects each other the same.
