In brief: More agreement than one expects, and one objection that hurts. Hegel holds the freedom of the individual to be the principle of the modern world and says so as emphatically as almost any liberal. He denies only that it can carry itself.
The agreement
The sentence that separates Hegel from the conservatism of his time stands in § 260:
The principle of modern states has this immense strength and depth: that it allows the principle of subjectivity to perfect itself into the self-sufficient extreme of personal particularity, and at the same time brings it back to substantial unity, thereby preserving that unity within subjectivity itself.
Groundlines, § 260
„Self-sufficient extreme“ is no concession. Hegel demands that particularity live itself out fully – choice of occupation by one’s own decision (§ 206), conscience (§ 137), property (§ 45), freedom of the press (§ 316–§ 319), publicity of the deliberations of the estates (§ 314–§ 315). In § 206 note the absence of this freedom of choice is expressly declared a deficiency – in Plato as in the Indian castes.
The charge that Hegel sacrifices the individual to the whole likewise founders on § 260: „the universal neither holds good nor is accomplished without particular interest, knowledge, and will, nor do individuals live merely for the latter as private persons“. Both halves are meant.
The objection
It has two parts. First: a society consisting only of contracting parties produces poverty out of itself, and systematically – § 243–§ 245. The market does not solve this problem because it brings it forth. Second: whoever takes freedom for mere arbitrary will – being able to do what one wants – does not yet have the concept of freedom. § 15 note calls the notion „that freedom in general consists in being able to do what one wants“ evidence of „a complete lack of intellectual cultivation“. Free, for Hegel, is not the one who can choose but the one who wills what he can see to be right.
From this follows the uncomfortable consequence: the state is for Hegel not the referee of the competition but the condition of there being private persons at all. § 258 note is expressly directed against determining the state by „the security and protection of property and personal freedom“ – not because that is unimportant, but because being a member of the state would then be „something optional“.
Where one need not follow him
At three points the liberal objection to Hegel has not been refuted to this day. The argument for the hereditary monarch in § 279 convinces almost nobody any more. The assembly of estates in § 301–§ 311 is not a parliament and expressly not a representation of individuals. And the rejection of universal suffrage in § 303 note rests on a premise – that the many as individuals are merely a „formless mass“ – which two hundred years of lived democracy may dispute.
What remains, though, is the question from which Hegel derives these constructions: on what does an order of free individuals live, if it wills nothing but freedom itself? Whoever answers „on itself“ should read § 185.
Sources. Groundlines § 15 note (arbitrary will), § 45, § 124 note, § 185 and note, § 206 and note (choice of occupation), § 243–§ 245, § 258 note, § 260, § 279, § 301–§ 319 (assembly of estates, publicity, freedom of the press). – In the glossary: Subjective Freedom, Arbitrariness, Civil Society. – Literature. Shlomo Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, Cambridge 1972; Charles Taylor, Hegel, Cambridge 1975; Axel Honneth, Leiden an Unbestimmtheit, Stuttgart 2001.