Hegel Essay Analysis

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In this passage from Hegel he is saying that freedom is terribly misunderstood in it's formal subjective sense, and has been far removed from its essential purpose and goals. People think they should be able to do whatever they want and that is what freedom is, and that anything limiting there desires, impulses , and passions is a limit of there freedom. Hegel is saying this is not true, but these limitations are simply the condition from which they must free themselves from, and that society and the government are where freedom is actualized.

What I believe he means by this is that without limits we would not know what freedom is. If you could always do what you've always wanted the thought of not being able to do something would be so foreign to you that you would not understand what it was to not have freedom, for that matter you would not understand what having freedom was either. That is why it is impossible to have one-hundred percent freedom, because if we ever reached one-hundred percent freedom you would be treading on other peoples freedoms because not everyone wants the same thing. That is what I believe Hegel is trying to say is that freedom is simply the process of freedoms progress, not a tangible goal because as free as you might think you are you still have laws and limitations and thats OK it should be looked at as a reminder of what freedom we do have.

Hegel says that the nature of spirit's direct opposite is matter. And the essence of matter is gravity and the essence of spirit is freedom. Matter is contained outside of itself, but spirit has a self-contained existence.

This self contained knowledge and existence is the essence of self-consciousness thus conciousness itself. The first conscious...

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...ing ethics and for any deterioration in those ethics. This responsibility often seems neglected in history, but Hegel warns against pessimistic preachers of haughty ideals that are ill-defined and cannot be maintained. Often, he says, people complain that history has been immoral without choosing moral ideals that are truly universal, rather than simply subjective.

Overall I mostly agree with Hegel's points that he makes. I agree that freedom is misunderstood and that real freedom can never be achieved it is merely gaining the freedom of one limitation at a time. And at the moment I think I'm as free as I can get but in a thousand years people might look back and say I had no freedom. So freedom is a very subjective thing and is really an invention of man. But with society and governments which most think is necessary for men, you must limit some freedoms.

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