Kant and the Meaning of Freedom in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

Abstract

Relying mainly on R. B. Pippin’s and D. Moggach’s interpretative works on Kant and Hegel, the thesis tackles the problem of the reception of Kant by Hegel. It does so by looking into the impact of Kant’s first critique on the Preface, the Introduction and the first part of the section Self-consciousness of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Three Kantian conditions for there to be freedom are identified and shown to be reinterpreted by Hegel in a continuist perspective. These three conditions are spontaneity, reflectivity and negativity which propels and retains the free Kantian subject in the Hegelian becoming of reality.