In this chapter, I turn to a more detailed exposition of how Hegel, and several other major thinkers including the “naturalists” or “empiricists” – Thomas Hobbes and David Hume and their successors – and Plato and Kant, develop the idea of the individual who thinks for herself and is responsible for her actions. What does this thinking for oneself involve, in practice? Do we have reason to regard it as something that can really happen, so that it is truly appropriate to hold people responsible – to praise them or blame them – for their actions? Would the individual's thinking for herself reduce or increase the likelihood that she would treat other individuals in a way that is in keeping with morality or ethics? And how would a person who thinks for herself relate to “God”? Should she reject the idea of God, as someone whose existence is unproven and who (if real) would interfere with her thinking for herself, or is there a conception of God that is consistent with, and even reinforces, the idea of individual freedom and thinking for oneself – and whose existence might even be provable?

Kant and Hegel on the Will

In 1.2.2, I sketched Hegel's conception of an individual's practical freedom, which depends on her stepping back from whatever inclinations, desires, or drives she may experience, and asking whether acting on them would fit into the big picture of a life that makes sense as a whole.