ABSTRACT
Traditional sociology tends to assume that the state is part of the social system, and that a system of power operates only at some levels within the system. Few commentators have viewed the directly political and social writings of G. W. F. Hegel as an extension of his more abstract works. This chapter shows that such a view represents a misreading of Hegel. If taken literally, it would result in a view of him as a thinker who lacks the skills of even a keen social ethnographer. The chapter demonstrates that for Hegel the social and political issue of freedom represents die Weisheit, the sociological expression of philosophic wisdom. Hegel shared with the Sturm und Drang movement and its romantic aftermath a dissatisfaction with the utilitarian impulse to define freedom in terms of a calculus of individual interests. The category of freedom pervades all areas of Hegel's philosophy. Freedom is essentially a changing phenomenon.
