Resumen

MULLER, Marcos Lutz. Freedom and ethical life: Hegel’s critical diagnosis of political modernity. Educação e Filosofia [online]. 2019, vol.33, n.69, pp.1255-1294.  Epub 06-Feb-2022. ISSN 1982-596X.  https://doi.org/10.14393/revedfil.v33n69a2019-56408.

Departing from a brief characterization of the historical-conceptual process by which civil society and the state, respectively, the bourgeois and the citizen, differed and separated from one another - a fundamental trait of political modernity - (1), I have undertaken a concise analysis of the three moments of the exposition (Darstellung) of freedom’s concept, which, within the scope of objective spirit, culminates in the development of the concept of ethical life (2). Thereupon, I have elucidated the three logical moments, that is, the three constitutive and procedural elements of freedom’s concept, namely, universality, particularity and singularity (3), which, in their effectivation within the scope of subjective spirit, assume three figures: that of natural will, arbitrary will and the free will which wants the universal effectivation of freedom as its “content, object and aim” (4). Hegel is thus the philosopher of political modernity par excellence and, simultaneously, its severe critic, inasmuch as he, on the one hand, deepens the rift which modern contractualism introduced in ethical-political thought when it founded family, society and political power upon autonomous free will, and on the other, inasmuch as he, at the same time, tears down the atomist and negative character of individual freedom set forth by the contractualist paradigm as its basis. (5) Finally, I examined in detail the two fundamental columns upon which a normative structure of a modern and reflexive ethical life are based: the person as subject of rights (6.a) and the modern moral consciousness’ as subjective freedom (6.b).

Palabras clave : Freedom; Political modernity; Difference between society and state; Ethical life; Person; Moral consciousness.

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