Hegel and the Ontology of Freedom

Abstract

In this paper I want to defend the thesis that Hegel's Science of Logic, and especially the transition from substance to subject at the end of the doctrine of essence, must be read as an ontology of freedom. The ontology of freedom is the answer to the question of how the existence of human freedom is possible within nature and the objective world. But beyond explaining and clarifying the transition from substance to subject in the Science of Logic as clearly as possible, I intend to contribute to the debate about the transcendental or metaphysical-precritical character of Hegelian logic. As an ontology of freedom, logic is not merely a transcendental philosophy, as certain Anglo-Saxon readings suppose, but neither is it a pre-Kantian metaphysics that ignores the problem of self-consciousness. Thus, the ontology of freedom offers a new perspective for thinking the absolute: since the spontaneity of the subject is nothing other than the appearance and reflexive manifestation of substance, the absolute can no longer be simply substance or nature, nor even the simple unity between substance and subject, but rather the self-conscious and reflexive thought of that unity.