Comments on: 21

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:35:26 +0000

§ 21: The will that wants itself

Happiness brought a kind of universality into the drives. But only from outside. It still takes its content from the drives.

Now comes the decisive step. The will takes itself as its content. It no longer wants just this or that. It wants freedom. So it is not only free in its potential. It is really free, and it knows it. Here the will arrives at its truth.

How does this succeed? Through thinking. Thinking means looking away from what is accidental and grasping the universal. This is exactly what the will does when it rises above its drives. It pushes aside what is merely natural and merely personal. It asks: What am I really? And it answers: free.

So this holds: The will is truly free only as a thinking will. Will and thinking are not two separate powers. The free will is thinking that asserts itself in willing.

A hard example makes this clear: the slave. He does not know that he is free. He does not know his own essence. He does not think of himself as a free human being.

This knowledge of one’s own freedom carries everything that follows: right, morality and ethical life.

When some people talk about right, they prefer to appeal to feeling, to the heart and to enthusiasm. They find thinking cold. But whoever throws out thinking despises the very thing that makes human beings free. In the end, he robs people of their truth, their worth and their dignity.

And what does “truth” mean here? The image from the beginning helps: Body and life belong together. When a person dies, the body is still there for a while. But it is no longer a real human being, and it decays. Something is true when it matches its core. For the will, this means: It wants what it itself is. Freedom wants freedom.

Summary: The will becomes really free when it wants freedom itself. For this, it must think. Whoever does not think of himself as free is not free. All right builds on this thought.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 12:57:43 +0000

Truth in philosophy means that the concept corresponds to reality. A body, for example, is the reality, the soul the concept. Soul and body, however, ought to be adequate to one another; a dead person is therefore still an existence, but no longer a true one, a concept-less being-there: this is why the dead body decays. So too the true will consists in this, that what it wills, its content, be identical with it — that is, that freedom will freedom.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1830)

Hegel (Encyclopedia 1830) — Sat, 18 Sep 1830 23:06:32 +0000

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1830), § 480:

§ 480. Happiness is the merely represented, abstract universality of content, which merely ought to be. But the truth of the particular determinacy, which just as much is as it is sublated, and of the abstract individuality, the arbitrary will, which in happiness just as much gives itself a purpose as it does not, is the universal determinacy of the will in its own self, i.e. its self-determining itself, freedom. The arbitrary will is in this way the will only as the pure subjectivity which is pure and concrete at the same time by having for its content and purpose only that infinite determinacy, freedom itself. In this truth of its self-determination, wherein concept and object are identical, the will is - actually free will.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1827)

Hegel (Encyclopedia 1827) — Thu, 24 May 1827 23:06:32 +0000

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1827), § 481:

§ 481. Happiness is the universality of content which merely ought to be. But the truth of the particular content, which just as much is determinacy as it is sublated, and of the abstract individuality, the arbitrary will, which therein just as much gives itself a purpose as it does not, is the universal determinacy of the will, i.e. its self-determining itself, freedom. The arbitrary will is in this way the will as the pure subjectivity which is pure and concrete at the same time by having for its content and purpose only that determinacy, freedom itself. Spirit in this truth of its self-determination, wherein concept and object are identical, is objective will, objective spirit in general.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Fri, 08 Nov 1822 08:08:32 +0000

[zu § 21] Culture — formal — universality, and thereby determinate distinction
Form of universality — subjected to an other
Transition from the principle [of] happiness to the principle of freedom —
both moments, universality and determinacy — unification in thought. In happiness only determinacy remains within the universal, not this or that drive — determinacy that is in and for itself — universal determinacy, which is nonetheless determinacy — is freedom — will — ideal determinacy —
α) happiness is end — object
and β) of satisfaction — of enjoyment — universality passes over into universality within itself —
Enjoyment is α) as feeling — is only form, is indeed present in everything — a moment, an addendum, that I am it in this my particularity
β) state, enduring existence — but is supposed to be a lasting, fixed one, that is, itself universal within itself at every time — more independent
αα) thus not a single immediate mode of state
ββ) effortless like Croesus — rich without toil, and so on — is contrary to spirit; the possibility of an external change — on the contrary, activity through itself — universality as the overreaching of subjectivity beyond objectivity.
γ) satisfaction — whatever content, however determined, thereby vanishes — only the form of the drive.

[zu § 21 Anm.] To hold fast only to the universal concept — not yet wanting to think along with it — that is, wanting to have it in its concrete representation —
α) To have as an object — to will something — the will itself in its universality — culture — is elevation to universality.
The immediacy of naturalness and particularity sublated, so that determinacy remains —

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1817)

Hegel (Encyclopedia 1817) — Wed, 30 Apr 1817 23:06:32 +0000

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1817), § 399:

§ 399. The truth, however, of the particular purpose of the will, of particularity, which just as much is determinacy as it is sublated, and of the abstract individuality, the arbitrary will, which in such a purpose just as much gives itself a content as it does not, is the unity in which both are only moments; the absolute individuality of the will, its pure freedom, which determines itself in and for itself for itself. Spirit in this truth of its self-determination, which is the purpose as pure reflection-into-self, is thus universal, objective will, objective spirit in general.