“Freedom in the European sense”: Hegel on Action, Heroes, and Europe’s Philosophical Groundwork

Multiple strategies are possible while approaching the topic of the connection between Europe and freedom in Hegel’s philosophy. In this paper, I have deliberately avoided to attempt a definition of the term “Europe,” which I kept rather open, historically, geographically, and politically. Instead, I investigate several general conceptual features, which according to Hegel constitute the shared heritage of modern Europe, even though they are actualized in a plurality of historical, geographical, and political shapes. These features are, in my reading, basic but unrevisable starting, rather than concluding, points of European identity. This paper begins by discussing two statements where Hegel advances the idea that subjective or moral freedom, i.e., the right of the particular subject, is characteristic of modern Europe, finding its expression in individual action and imputability. In the second section, I investigate Hegel’s genealogical reconstruction of this principle by contrasting the modern European understanding of freedom and action with the substantial one of classical Greece. With the tragic dissolution of the latter at the hands of heroic subjectivity, a path is opened to the former. Finally, I elaborate on the idea that, for Hegel, the modern European understanding of freedom cannot be detached from the primacy of philosophy at the level of absolute spirit, and I highlight some broader implications of this idea for our contemporary world.