The Introduction offers an overview of the main themes of the book, focusing especially on Hegel’s claim that our sensuous experience of beauty offers a distinctive access to metaphysical truth. The basic nature and parameters of this sensuous aesthetic experience – what Hegel calls “sensuous intuition” – are explored to set the stage for the analysis that follows. In anticipation of the book’s main claim about the distinctive sort of ontological truth that artworks in particular serve to reveal on Hegel’s account – namely, that they put us in touch with the transformative event of spirit’s birth in and through nature – the chapter includes a sketch of the path of the book from the ontology and aesthetics of nature through to the ontology and aesthetics of artworks.

The human body is tied to a distinctive form of natural beauty, for Hegel proposes that there is something about the human body in its given, natural form that makes it uniquely capable of manifesting self-conscious spirit or mind. Since, ontologically speaking, the being of spirit is of a higher order than anything in nonhuman nature, the capacity to give off the distinctive look and sound of a spiritual way of being amounts to the human body’s capacity for a higher, fuller beauty as well. This chapter focuses primarily on the naturally given, predominantly involuntary ways in which the human body allows spirituality to appear. Because Hegel characterizes artworks generally as involving a “spiritualizing” of otherwise natural forms, we are encouraged to think of the human body’s distinctive, spirit-manifesting demeanor as a kind of root aesthetic vocabulary with which all of the more developed “languages” of art are familiar and from which they grow. But it also seems that for Hegel it ultimately takes art, and in particular classical sculpture, to reveal the purportedly natural beauty of the body, and this complicates the sense in which bodily beauty is natural after all.

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.

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.

Race, racism, and ethno-racial factors have shaped histories of ancient Greece and Rome from at least the nineteenth century. Historians of the ancient world show the influence of Hegel and race science on their writings. Notable examples include Droysen’s comments on Persian civilisation and Mommsen’s on the Celtic. Historians are troubled by racial mingling in the Roman empire, and some explain the decline and fall of Rome as the result of racial mingling. Racialising attitudes and analyses can be found in the early twentieth century as well and continue into the years of the Second World War. Not all historians are straightforwardly racist, and many show complicated and contradictory attitudes towards race. They make clear that a liberal outlook on life is not incompatible with racist beliefs in some areas. This is the context in which to appreciate Frank Snowden’s writings on Blacks in antiquity and Martin Bernal’s attempt to rewrite the history of Graeco-Roman antiquity and classical scholarship.

After sketching two indicative moments from Emerson’s 1867 westward lecturing trip – his visit to the Santee Sioux in Minnesota and his visit to a group of Hegelian philosophers in St. Louis – this Introduction to the New Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson gives an overview of the volume contributors’ main thematic emphases. These are Emerson in relation to his contemporary moment; his religious and spiritual development; transatlantic Romanticism; nature, the environment, and climate; ethics and self-reliance; political resistance and slavery; race, US imperialism, and Asia; aesthetics, poetry, philosophy, and experimentalism; and his late style and legacy. While many readers of Emerson are most familiar with the iconic picture of him as the Sage of Concord, this introduction paints a picture of a transitional and transnational Emerson who tirelessly lectured across the United States throughout his lifetime, who can be placed in his contemporaneous transatlantic currents of Romantic literature, religion, philosophy, or science, and who nonetheless looks forward to modernist poetic, aesthetic, or musical innovations.

This coda concludes with a reflection on some of the wider political implications and affordances of the choreographies that were presented in this book. It discusses how choral fragmentations and augmentations might model the politics of group formation in and against the city. It also suggests that the chorus’ spoken and sung contributions explored in the accounts of interruption and interaction likewise reflect the chorus’ capacity to embody political concerns.

This chapter offers a critical analysis of the Gulf region’s industrial transformation, identifying the 1973 oil embargo as a key moment that accelerated industrial investment. It undertakes a rigorous exploration of the geopolitical forces that sculpted the region’s economic and industrial trajectory during this pivotal era. By meticulously tracing the enduring geopolitical repercussions from the early 1970s to their contemporary manifestations, the analysis exposes the strategic economic restructuring undertaken by Gulf states in the wake of the embargo. This investigation illuminates the intrinsic interconnectedness of global politics, economic ambitions, and industrial growth within the Gulf and illustrates the profound and enduring legacy of these historical events in shaping the region’s modernization and evolving global status.