ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, I discussed the moment of absolute mechanism as a logical problem: I argued that absolute mechanism is for Hegel a way of thinking the nature of self-determination within an objective, mechanistic system. It became clear that the mechanistic object can only be thoroughly self-determining if it acts as part of a whole in which it mediates between the other parts of the whole and its own nature. But self-determination is also one of the central, supporting concepts in Hegel’s philosophy of objective spirit, as developed in his Philosophy of Right. Here he argues that the legitimacy of the modern social and political institutions that he describes rests on the way in which they allow spirit to actualize itself, that we are only free in a substantial sense if we are ‘with ourselves’ in our actions, namely if we control our actions, recognize ourselves in them and actualize our faculties in them. Such self-determination can only be adequately grasped through an institutional analysis that describes the way in which social institutions such as the family, the economy and the state must operate so as to provide relations of recognition in which such willing is possible.
