ABSTRACT

This chapter describes Hegel tries to do justice to those standpoints whilst avoiding their abstract understanding of freedom, through his notion of 'concrete freedom', which is 'being with oneself in an other' or self-realization in and through relations with others. It considers Hegel's argument to understand why he describes the state as 'the actuality of concrete freedom'. As Hegel has challenged the common understanding of freedom as arbitrariness when discussing the limitations of the purely negative aspect of freedom, now he questions the related widespread belief that duties restrict freedom. What is missing in Hegel's theory is an account of economic equality and democracy as the objective conditions for such a free society. The chapter explores how the communitarians develop Hegelian ideas on the necessary socio-historical context of freedom, by arguing that the value of community should be taken seriously in order to create and sustain a free society in which people would 'feel at home'.