Hegel's Thoughts on Freedom

Hegel's most renowned discussion of freedom traces the evolution of freedom in three stages of world history. "In the world of the ancient Orient, people do not yet know that the Spirit - the human as such - is free. Because they do not know this, they are not free. They know only hat one person is free; but for this very reason such freedom is mere arbitrariness, savagery, stupefied passion." Note that Hegel connects freedom to knowledge in this passage. He continues with, "This one person is therefore only a despot, not a free man." This might be the emperors in ancient China. "It was among the Greeks that the consciousness of freedom first arose, and thanks to that consciousness they were free. But they, and the Romans as well, knew only that some persons are free, not the human as such." To the Romans only citizens were free, and the slaves were not. "It was first the Germanic peoples, through Christianity, who came to the awareness that every human is free by virtue of being human, and that the freedom of spirit comprises our most human nature." Therefore, "World history is the progress in the consciousness of freedom-a progress that we must come to know in its necessity."

Hegel also adds a discussion on the freedom of the human will. He say, "The will is free, so that freedom is both the substance of right and its goal, while the system of right is the realm of freedom made actual."