Absolute Freedom

Contemporary Hegel scholarship either defends a theological metaphysics in which history is a teleological unfolding of cosmic Geist; or, the evolution of Geist represents the absolutization of human subjectivity, which undergoes a Bildung that prescinds from any reliance on metaphysical givens. The dilemma is between presenting Hegel as an absolute monist that is outmoded in light of modernity’s skepticism towards a teleology of history; or, of reducing Hegel to the terms of modernity, as defending the absolute self-grounding of the human subject, in history without ontology. I argue that co-opting Hegel for modernity is a mistake. The post-Kantian interpretation of Hegel, that rejects any metaphysics of the absolute, leaves the human subject in a state of alienation that the dialectic process in Hegel is supposed to resolve. I argue that PKI’s account of the self-grounding subject is too similar to absolute freedom that Hegel views as a dangerous fruit of the Enlightenment. Absolute freedom, having relegated God to deistic irrelevance, and stripped nature of any telos, seeks to make its own categories sovereign over those of reality.