ABSTRACT
In the modern age the freedom of the individual is at once elevated as a supreme value and subordinated to the compelling forces of instrumental rationality, class exploitation and state domination. The principle of subjective freedom is expressed in all manner of forms: rights of personality and property, romantic love and individual responsibility, the moral point of view and the voice of conscience, portraiture in painting and character in literature. On the other hand, it is subordinated to the self-valorizing wealth and self-expanding power of capital and the state, which to use Hegel's phrase from the Philosophy of Right, are turned into ‘earthly gods’. If we remain in hope that these opposites can be reconciled, the wonder of it all is that we can still find ways of living with such intense contradiction. At every critical moment we are confronted with the question of how to handle the hypertrophy of freedom the modern age bestows and the atrophy of freedom it constantly threatens.
