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149

As a limitation, binding duty can appear only against the undetermined subjectivity or abstract freedom, and against the drives of the natural will, or of the moral will determining its undetermined good out of its own arbitrariness. |160| But the individual has, in duty, rather its liberation — in part from the dependence in which it stands within mere natural drive, as well as from the oppressiveness in which it finds itself, as subjective particularity, within the moral reflections of what it ought and might do; in part from the undetermined subjectivity that does not arrive at existence and the objective determinacy of acting, and remains within itself, an unactuality. In duty the individual liberates itself into substantial freedom.

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2 responses to “149”

  1. Eduard Gans (Additions) Avatar
    Eduard Gans (Additions)

    Duty limits only the arbitrariness of subjectivity, and comes into conflict only with the abstract good that subjectivity clings to. When people say, we want to be free, this at first means only that we want to be abstractly free, and every determination and articulation within the state counts as a limitation of this freedom. Duty is therefore not a limitation of freedom, but only of its abstraction, that is, of unfreedom: it is the arrival at essence, the attainment of affirmative freedom.

  2. Hegel (Simple) Avatar
    Hegel (Simple)

    § 149: Duty sets free

    Many people think: A duty restricts me. It takes away some of my freedom.

    That is only partly true. What does duty restrict? Only whim. Only the drives that pull me this way and that. And only the empty brooding that never comes to a deed.

    Where does the liberation lie?

    First, duty frees me from the power of my drives. I am no longer their plaything.

    Second, it frees me from endless back and forth. I do not have to work out anew every morning what is good.

    Third, it brings me to action. Without it I would stay stuck inside myself.

    An example:

    A doctor is on night duty. She would rather sleep. But she has a duty. In this very duty she is free. She is not simply at the mercy of her tiredness. She does what she wants to be as a doctor.

    Someone who says “I want to be free and have no duty” wants an empty freedom. In duty, by contrast, he gains real freedom.

    Summary: Duty restricts only whim and empty inwardness. In truth, it sets us free. In duty, a person gains real freedom.

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