Abstract

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;This thesis considers Hegel's concept of modern historical freedom as this emerges especially in his Phanomenologie des Geistes. The principal problem to be considered concerns the extreme conflict between rational freedom and natural and historical life in chapters IV and V of that work. Is this conflict necessary to an understanding of Hegel's account of spirit in chapter VI? I argue that such a conflict is absolutely central to Hegel's view of the religious and institutional possibilities of modern freedom. His account of the spirit at work in nature and history is intimately connected with the problem of determining where modern freedom comes from and why it proves to be so destructive. ;I try to show that Hegel's phenomenological argument forms a more connected whole than most contemporary commentators are willing to allow. I here focus on continental European commentators on Hegel, especially those falling within a Marxist and existentialist tradition. Hegel gives us a valuable critique of their tendency to explain modern freedom as a natural or merely human phenomenon. I maintain that Hegel brings out the problem of modern freedom in such a way that it can only be explained through what is divine or absolute in his terms