Abstract

Hegel wants to preserve individual liberty and treats on structural problems of the rising industrial society. The philosophy of law and social philosophy combine the principle of individual liberty with objective restrictions in an egalitarian „labour“ society. His concept of political freedom refers to the idealistic reformulation of neoplatonism. According to that Hegels political philosophy and theory of society fails. Neither individual liberty nor rules of the market or of political performance belong to any kind of substantial rationality (idea). If individual liberty should be kept in state and society, state and society aim not to the freedom of the whole but to the freedom of the individual.