Abstract

The most common and powerful understandings of freedom are those of liberal political theory and the Kantian tradition. Broadly speaking, freedom is understood by the former as the ability to choose, and by the latter as freedom of the will. I argue that Hegel and Nietzsche show these understandings of freedom to be incomplete, and that they also help us to articulate a more comprehensive understanding of freedom. ;Hegel adopts Kant's criticism of liberalism, but contends that the Kantian will is not free because it cannot determine any actions that follow solely from its own form. The will can be free, according to Hegel, only in a state in which the institutions and customs that determine the will are themselves determined by the concept of freedom. However, this means that political freedom, or freedom of the will, is dependent upon thought first determining the institutions and customs the concept of freedom requires. Hegel thus concludes that the most free thing is not the will, but thought itself. ;Like Hegel, Nietzsche thinks the will is dependent upon the concepts of thought for its content, and that freedom thus lies in the generation of those concepts. Unlike Hegel, Nietzsche does not think thought can generate its concepts entirely out of itself. Nietzsche argues thought is dependent upon and limited by the logic of the grammar of the language in which it takes place. Thought's freedom thus depends on the occasional transformation of the logical boundaries within which it is confined. ;The conclusion articulates the understanding of freedom that results if we draw on the complementary insights of Hegel and Nietzsche. Hegel teaches us that a free thing must generate and organize its content in accordance with its form, and Nietzsche emphasizes that it must also be open to the possibility of the transformation of its form, since it does not give its form to itself. Both free individuals and free political communities, therefore, must have this dual structure: they must be self-organizing and self-determining, yet also open to transformation, and therefore open to continual reorganizing in light of such transformations