German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is recognized for shaping contemporary philosophical thought. Hegel’s view of freedom was that it was a human entitlement, not a person’s right, but merely a product of human logic. Hegel comprehensively explains his viewpoint in the books, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right and Elements of the Philosophy of Right. To be free did not mean to be able to act whenever one pleased. Instead, it meant to be in harmony with a collective drive for happiness. When humans started acting as moral intermediaries, conflicts stopped, and they started working toward the same goals. The citizens could reconcile the household ideals and the requirements of economic life by relegating their being to the state. Hegel’s conception of the state opposes patriotism as a social institution since it makes other parts of society dependent on it and incorporates society members into communal actors that do not promote universal goals like individual freedom.
To grasp Hegel’s explanation of freedom and its fulfillment in the current state, it is crucial first to interpret his theory of the state. Hegel contends that the creation of the modern state makes it possible for humans to achieve the maximum level of freedom. In the past, the state’s will was said to supersede the choices of individuals, stifling individual liberty. Hegel contends that nowadays, people claim their thoughts, will, and conscience, which is a hallmark of liberty (Hegel 2008). The contemporary state resolves the conflict between state will and the individual will since the obligations and rights of people correspond perfectly inside it. Since the state’s establishment is the only requirement for the achievement of specific objectives and benefits, fulfilling one’s responsibility to the state entails affirming an individual’s right to the freedom to seek those goals.
For Hegel, this contemporary state perspective is the foundation on which he builds his concepts of patriotism and the obligation a citizen has to the state. Patriotism can only be defined as the subject’s normal conduct, which supports Hegel’s claim that patriotism is an outcome of behavior (Hegel 1991). If the subject realizes that working inside the state’s systems gives them the freedom to seek their interests, they will realize that responsibility and rights are inseparable. This fosters in the subject confidence in establishments and the consciousness that his “interest, both substantial and particular, is contained and preserved in another’s (as in the state’s) interest and end…” (Hegel 2008, 240). As a consequence of this association, rather than being a separate entity, the state now looks to be an extension of the person. This means that obligation is seen as a person’s free will.
As history unfolds, it tells a tale of the cyclical development of individual liberty, which is realized in state organs in various situations along the way. The sum of these entities inside a state is the politico-administrative constitution of that state. Thus, patriotism reveals a tendency to freedom ingrained in the state’s systems to the degree it prevails in any government. To summarize, Hegel’s initial explanation of patriotism is that it is a propensity toward the specific entities of a state since membership in those bodies reinforces the person’s welfare. Hegel maintains that the uniqueness of a state is comprised of the many modes wherein freedom is created and expressed within its establishments (Hegel 1991). Nevertheless, irrespective of whether the constitution of a government is seen as genuine by its residents, a state’s uniqueness does not exist until it is acknowledged by other groups, for instance, other republics. This exaplian why states may clash with one another in the absence of a worldwide governing body.
Furthermore, Hegel contends that the state’s personality is a growing self-negation mechanism. In other words, the state’s uniqueness arises from how specific needs are subordinated to the general, conceptual freedom of the state and its agencies (Hegel 2008). This evolution manifests as a succession of conflicts with external, contingent occurrences or conflicts for acknowledgment with other governments. When the state’s distinctiveness is threatened, sacrificing on its behalf “is a universal duty” (Hegel 2008, 308). In other words, people who value institutions and consequently the uniqueness of their states are obligated to protect such organizations at any expense. The connection between the state and the citizen seems to stress the former’s total authority over the latter since people’s lives must be sacrificed for the nation’s benefit.
Consequently, Hegel implies that these two concepts of patriotism are antagonistic. He compares his definition of patriotism in the initial version with the claim that being a patriot merely requires preparedness for extraordinary sacrifices and acts (Hegel 2008). He claims that although this is undoubtedly a component of patriotism, it ignores the reality that the ground for all these compromises is the constant understanding that “the community is one’s substantial basis and end…” (Hegel 2008, 241). However, the second explanation is focused on the general need to forgo that person’s benefit in favor of the state’s interest. Indeed, it is on this basis that Hegel considers it essential for individuals to transcend the civil society-based conception of freedom.
Hegel argues that confusing the state for civil society and seeing its ultimate purpose as protecting human life and property results in a completely erroneous view of it (Hegel 1991). However, in the first interpretation, the sense of patriotism resulted directly from the state’s commitment to upholding civil society. Accordingly, there seems to be a conflict between the roots of nationalism and its obligations. Nonetheless, this conflict dissipates with the complete formation of patriotic tendency. Patriotism stems from the state’s power to safeguard specific interests; however, its need for personal selflessness empowers the citizen to surpass the quest of interest and achieve a deeper type of liberty.
Essentially, Hegel argues that people must differentiate between the usual and exceptional situations of the republic, comprising peacetimes and wartimes. He contends that the state’s status has major mental effects on its inhabitants. Patriotism is the mentality that civil society is one’s main foundation and goal in the connections of an individual’s everyday lives and within normal circumstances (Hegel 1991). Nevertheless, although normality fosters such a tendency, it is frequently simply at a semi-conscious stage. As a result, patriotism begins in the person, manifesting deep feelings of satisfaction with the state.
The basis of the modern state is that the common is closely associated with the total freedom of its citizens and with individual welfare. Thus, the household and civil society should focus on the republic; however, the unifying goal cannot be achieved without the awareness and determination of its participants, whose liberties have to be protected. In contrast, the exceptional circumstance of war has the reverse impact. Hegel explains that the moral of the hopelessness of devotion to material commodities, which clergyman frequently conveys, does not ring true in everyday settings. Instead, he contends that everybody believes they will preserve their composure no matter how impacted they are by what they hear (Hegel 1991). However, the immediate possible destruction of the state that war presents eventually causes the citizen to understand this lesson.
The capacity to recognize freedom greater than the liberty to follow one’s unique interest arises when the state’s identity is threatened and the commodities the citizen had ignored are rendered unstable. The heroic sacrifice of oneself in the service of the state enables the nationalist to exert a greater degree of freedom than the quest for personal interests. Here, Hegel claims that bravery is a substantive attribute on two grounds:
- It is the ultimate conception of freedom from all specific purposes, belongings, pleasures, and existence (yet it contradicts them in an external and actual); and
- their isolation or abandonment (Hegel 2008, 309).
According to Hegel, a voluntary act of sacrificing one’s physical or financial well-being for a goal can be an act of virtue. This bravery act is only noble to the degree that it is motivated by a legitimate cause. This honorable justification defines the amount to which the act of bravery is beneficial. For instance, these are not genuine manifestations of bravery if a person demonstrates courage to get sustenance or to achieve honor (Hegel 1991). True bravery, which is also the ultimate manifestation of liberty, is the readiness to sacrifice oneself for the republic’s survival.
Hegel believes that, in this case, connecting oneself with the general is more essential than displaying one’s courage. In a compromise on behalf of the nation, a human transcends their concrete existence and transforms into a symbol of the ultimate total. In this manner, the diverse people within the state confirm their devotion to the government, establishing a genuine relationship as residents. However, it must be correct that the civilians express their freedoms in this compromise to be valid that sacrifice for the modern state’s sake is the individual’s shared responsibility. The results of real heroism show that obligation and right can converge in sacrifice. It has previously been said that a state’s charter, which the subject gets oriented towards, is that government’s representation of individual liberty. This symbol of freedom is threatened whenever two states clash in a quest for legitimacy.
By exhibiting genuine bravery, voluntarily opting to act for the state’s benefit notwithstanding material and physical hazards, the citizen willingly consents to the reality of freedom as codified in these establishments. Thus, Hegel notes, “this determination, wherein the rights and interests of persons are posed as ephemeral, is simultaneously something positive, i.e., the positing not of their contingent, changeable uniqueness, but their personality in and of itself” (Hegel 2008, 305). Consequently, the ultimate type of freedom is only feasible during times of conflict. Only then is there a chance for genuine bravery, and people can only learn the folly of merely caring about their desires.
Hegel emphasizes the significance of the two ideas of the citizen-state interplay, which seem to be at odds with one another. The superiority of genuine bravery over the liberty to follow one’s interests could sometimes imply that a state seeks conflict, although this is demonstrably wrong. Hegel’s emphasis that protecting a person’s freedom to pursue their interests is the cornerstone of patriotism demonstrates how perpetual conflict would undermine the state’s credibility (Hegel 1991). Conversely, a permanent peace is undesirable as he suggests that “with peace, civil life increases ceaselessly; all its fields become securely entrenched, and people stagnate over time…” (Hegel 2008, 307). Citizens will lose vision of the boundaries of their self-interest and the ties of citizenship strengthened through sacrifice if the instability of commodities is not made apparent to them, as it is in times of war. Ultimately, this will culminate in the degeneration of genuine political society into a civilization ruled by self-interested individuals. A constraint on human ability results from this development of economic life and the breakdown of political and civic life conceptions. Hence, the need for each component of nationalism advises against eternal peace or unending war while in favor of the virtue of occasional moments of conflict.
Correspondingly, Hegel separates himself from the core tenet of the liberal tradition. He argues that there is no genuine contradiction between the free state’s growing emphasis on protecting citizen rights and the idea that sacrificing one’s life in service of one’s nation is a responsibility of citizenship. Nonetheless, at least two concerns remain following his apparent harmonization. First, whether Hegel is right that long spells of peace are harmful, it seems shockingly unethical to go to war merely to stimulate political life. Other liberals might see this behavior as an irresponsible hazard and a pretext for rebellion. Secondly, one can question whether or not countries founded on liberalism and market economics would deteriorate at such a rapid rate when there is no conflict.
Overtly, one may assume that participating in politics would provide a particular group of people the chance to dedicate themselves to the upkeep and expansion of the constitutional democracy or the accomplishment of freedom within the republic. It is conceivable to propose that the importance of political decisions plays a similar, though less striking, role in the journey of growing awareness as the potential of conflict does and that the action of making decisions in politics may be seen as the unconstrained yearning of freedom. Therefore, Hegel concludes that freedom is primarily political and social and not individual, with the assertion that liberty in the absence of structured social institutions is both a rational and an experiential paradox.
To summarize, Hegel implies that the state is an organic whole that maximizes individuals and societal interests and includes all life-sustaining institutions. In contemporary times, the state is the realization of freedom in line with the notion of will, as opposed to the personal whims of individuals. Hegel believes that war is a measure of the relative strength of states, with the most logically ordered nations winning over less morally well-structured governments. Undeveloped states are ones in which the concept of the state is largely obscured, and its specific decisions have not fully achieved self-sufficiency. Therefore, proactively engaging in political affairs may render the advantages of conflict redundant or less significant. Contrarily, Hegel’s thorough analysis of the dual character of patriotism helps readers to address and perhaps start to grasp the link between conflict and the roots of the modern state.
References
Hegel, George. (1991). Elements of the philosophy of right. Edited by Allen William Wood and translated by Hugh Barr Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hegel, George. (2008). Outlines of the philosophy of right. Edited by Stephen Houlgate and translated by Thomas Malcolm Knox. Oxford: Oxford University Press.