This chapter addresses the second main challenge to Kant’s conception of autonomy: the sense that the opposition between nature and freedom renders the actuality of freedom unintelligible. Turning to the Inaugural Dissertation and the three critiques, the second chapter shows that tackling the problem requires us to first overcome a widespread misunderstanding of Kant’s notion of the intelligible world. The intelligible world is not a given world available to theoretical cognition but initially accessible only through practical cognition as a world that ought to be. The chapter develops a new interpretation of Kant’s use of the principle “ought implies can” to show how the moral self-consciousness of the ought provides the realm of freedom with a first degree of actuality that, however, remains insufficient on its own. For freedom to be truly realized, we have to realize our freedom in the natural world by endowing it with a different purposive form. The third Critique offers unrecognized resources to explain how such a realization may be possible. By means of its account of natural purposiveness and the feeling of life, it redescribes external and subjective nature in such a manner that we can see how freedom may take root in them. By means of its account of fine, Kant specifies the general form of processes through which we can transform given nature and produce a second nature expressive of ideas. The chapter closes by considering why Kant did not fully develop these resources and why freedom remains ultimately unreal in his own account, something especially obvious in his discussion of the highest good.

In this chapter, I demonstrate that Hegel removes three Kantian obstacles that stand in the way of an elaboration of autonomy as a form of life. Hegel rearticulates the form of autonomy in such a way that we can recognize living beings as a basic case of autonomy. Secondly, Hegel shows that internal purposiveness is not a derivative concept, making positive knowledge of natural purposiveness intelligible. Thirdly, Hegel provides a positive account of the lived reality of freedom. Taken together, these shifts open up the possibility of understanding practical autonomy not just as analogous to living self-organization but as an actual form of living self-organization. The second half of the chapter shows how this account is underwritten by Hegel’s new understanding of the distinction between the realm of nature and of freedom. By reference to Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, the chapter shows how he modifies Kant’s distinction in crucial ways. Firstly, he gives a new substantive account of the realm of nature, revealing how it includes a form of natural freedom. Secondly, Hegel clarifies that the realms of freedom and nature are not externally juxtaposed and argues that the differentiation of these two realms is internal to spirit. Thirdly, Hegel considers the ways in which spirit reproduces the forms of a realm of nature within itself in the shape of a second nature.

This chapter introduces the fundamental idea of The Life of Freedom in Kant and Hegel: the notion that we can only make sense of autonomy by returning to the concept of life. This return is needed to understand fully the genesis, the form, and the reality of human freedom. Such an account can be developed by means of a systematic reconstruction of Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophies of freedom. As we can learn from Kant’s account, the notion of autonomy is threatened by the paradox of self-legislation and an opposition of freedom and nature that makes the reality of freedom unintelligible. As Kant already indicates and Hegel goes on to develop, we can overcome these problems by reconceiving of autonomy as a form of life. The chapter outlines the reading of Kant and Hegel supporting this view, situates the resulting systematic position in current debates on the sources of normativity and the nature of human freedom, and defines its relation to other approaches norm and nature (ethical naturalism, forms of life, and biopolitics).

In this chapter, I offer an account of the kind of freedom that alreadypertains to natural life. It begins by laying out how Hegel’s account of the freedom of life is related back to his critiques of Kant’s practical philosophy: his objections against the empty formalism of the moral law, the bad infinity of the ought, and the paradox of self-legislation. It reveals that all of these critiques are based on Hegel’s fundamental insight that self-determination has to be construed as a mode of living self-constitution. Hegel first develops this notion of self-constitution in his account of animal life, revealing both the freedom of natural life and why it still falls short of true spiritual freedom. Drawing on his Philosophy of Nature, the chapter reconstructs the ways in which animal life constitutes itself through the process of shape, the process of assimilation, and the genus-process. This reconstruction gives us a concrete understanding of self-constitution and reveals how self-determination can be a natural reality. At the same time, Hegel’s analysis of the inherent limitations of animal nature reveals the ways in which the freedom of spiritual self-constitution goes beyond animal self-constitution. The chapter argues that Hegel does not hold an additive view according to which our spiritual self-constitution is just tacked onto our animal self-constitution, but endorses a transformative view. It develops the way in which Hegel’s dialectical version of the transformative view is superior to contemporary Neo-Aristotelian varieties of the transformative view.

This chapter characterizes the very idea of autonomy as a response to two problems: understanding the source of normativity and the reality of freedom. Following debates on normativity (Pufendorf and Leibniz) and freedom (Locke, Hume, Rousseau), Kant introduces the notion of autonomy as a unified response to both problems. On this account, to be positively free and to be normatively bound are one and the same thing: to follow rules one has given to oneself. After discussing the attractiveness of this idea, the chapter elaborates a first fundamental challenge: the so-called paradox of autonomy, suggesting that autonomy at its very foundation reverts to heteronomy or arbitrariness. The chapter shows that Kant’s conception is indeed threatened by this paradox and develops Kant’s ways of avoiding it. It argues that Kant’s most important resource, however, has not yet been fully acknowledged: It consists in his concept of self-organizing beings from the third Critique. To avoid the paradox, we should no longer think of self-determination in terms of self-legislation but rather conceive of it in terms of living self-constitution. The chapter closes by discussing why Kant himself did not fully develop this resource and argues that the main reason resides in his notion of transcendental freedom.

Hegel generally characterizes the actualization of freedom as spirit’s activity of liberating itself from nature. This liberation cannot be attained by dominating nature or by simply leaving it behind, since living nature itself presents us with a first form of freedom. Spirit’s liberation from nature rather is a liberation from a dualistic relation to nature and essentially includes a liberation of spirit in nature and as nature. This complex form of liberation is attained by producing a second nature of the right kind. This chapter offers a systematic reconstruction of how such a second nature is brought about, discussing the three essential stages of its actualization: first, the very emergence of spirit from nature in the course of Hegel’s Anthropology; second, the appearance of spirit proper in the Phenomenology; and finally, the actualization of freedom through the institutions of ethical life in his doctrine of Objective Spirit. The section on the emergence of freedom offers a new reading of Hegel’s now much-discussed account of habit. The section on the appearance of freedom develops a new understanding of self-consciousness and a new account of the master–servant dialectic. The section on the actuality of freedom provides a new account of the very form of a free ethical life.

The conclusion clarifies the historical trajectory and the systematic and the systematic upshot of The Life of Freedom in Kant and Hegel. Regarding the historical trajectory, it delimits the new understanding of the transition from Kant to Hegel it has argued for. Rather than depicting Hegel as leaving Kant behind, the investigation has revealed that Hegel’s account has led us deeper into Kant’s problems and has made it possible for us to reaffirm them as part of the vital dialectic of freedom. In terms of the systematic upshot, the chapter clarifies the ways in which we can understand autonomy in terms of living self-constitution. I distinguish the basic freedom of self-constitutive entities shared by living and spiritual beings from the practical freedom of spiritual beings. I clarify the way in which the self-constitution of spiritual beings rests upon and remains dependent upon their self-constitution as living beings. I show that for self-consciously self-constitutive beings, the form of their life necessarily remains a problem. I sketch the necessary internal and external plurality of this form of life, its reflexive character, its self-transgressive nature, and the freedom it requires vis-à-vis its own form. To develop a clear understanding of this form of life, we need a critical theory of second nature.