Hegel: Freedom has its own necessities, and those necessities get expressed particularly in the idea of a right. For hegel the idea of arigh is er, what you must will if you are to be free. Hegel thinks a free state must have a clear distinction between civil society and the state. In christianity all are free in the eyes of god, so we do not need slavery. This becomes a secular principle of rights that brings us into modern freedom. Is actually a charge against england too, because people don't belong to any one religious sect or religion.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 - 1831) on history. Hegel, one of the most influential of the modern philosophers, described history as the progress in the consciousness of freedom, asking whether we enjoy more freedom now than those who came before us. To explore this, he looked into the past to identify periods when freedom was moving from the one to the few to the all, arguing that once we understand the true nature of freedom we reach an endpoint in understanding. That end of history, as it's known, describes an understanding of freedom so far progressed, so profound, that it cannot be extended or deepened even if it can be lost.
With
Sally Sedgwick
Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Boston University
Robert Stern
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield
And
Stephen Houlgate
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick
Producer: Simon Tillotson