what he believes to be good. Still he is not morally free, unless he throws himself on the side of this good. Indeed, complete moral freedom implies that within the reach of his volition must be not only a general good, but the ultimate good, however that may be defined. Close him away from the possibility of realizing this highest good, and you at the same time close him away from the highest liberty, the liberty involved in his being God's freeman. To speak of a man as free only if he can walk in the pure air of the highest conceivable purpose, is to use the word freedom in an ethical sense.
It goes some way in a discussion of free will to keep distinct these two senses of freedom,[1] although it does not remove the difference between Hegel and his critics; freedom abstracted from a concrete good is not here in debate. Neither Schwegler nor v. Hartmann accuses Hegel of setting up a theory, which would reduce free action to a play of merely physical tendencies. Hence the contest between Hegel and his opponents must be fought out on the field of ethics. The real question is, What does Hegel conceive to be the purpose of the world? Can man realize it, or must he content himself with something short of it? Is he free in reality, or free only in appearance? This question can be answered only by an estimate of Hegel's view of freedom as he has propounded it in the Philosophy of Right and in the introduction to the Philosophy of History.
The Philosophy of Right, as students of Hegel are aware, conducts us from the conception of an abstract, incomplete, and undeveloped will to that of a concrete, complete, and developed will. The process through which Hegel conceives the will to pass in becoming complete or absolute is not, it must be kept in mind, a process in time. Indeed, it is only with a modification of the meaning of the term that we can speak of the completion of the individual, in Hegel's conception of it, as a process at all, because this term almost of necessity suggests a temporal succession, even to Hegel, who yet continually
- ↑ I do not press the distinction, because the argument for freedom, viewed psychologically, seems valuable in the end only as it insists that the highest good must be for the individual. See the end of this article.
