Hegel, Freedom and the State

  According to Hegel freedom constitutes the substance and essential character of the will, and the system of right is the kingdom of actualized freedom. The ethical is the synthesis of the abstract good, or right, with morality, or consciousness. The ethical system is the idea of freedom, the living good, and the actualization of good in the self- consciousness. The ethical comes alive in the self-conscious through knowing, willing and through the action of the self-consciousness. In the ethical self-consciousness discovers it goal, its teleology. Because the good is substance, or the filling of the objective with Subjectivity, the ethical material, the system of the phases of the idea, freedom, realizing itself, is rational. Thus freedom is the absolute will, the objective, subjectivity is self-consciousness driven by desire. Desire bound by necessity in actuality is the ethical the actualization of freedom. Separately individuals are particulars of this process, accidents, bou...