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.

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.

This chapter was written on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Sir Peter Strawson’s The Bounds of Sense in 1966. Strawson’s book contributed greatly to the revival of interest in Kant’s theoretical philosophy in Anglo-American philosophy in the 1960s and thereafter. But, the chapter argues, Strawson read Kant through a meaning-theoretical approach that led him to mischaracterize some of Kant’s most fundamental arguments and unduly restrict their results. In particular, he held that Kant’s transcendental deduction showed only that we need a concept of an objective world in order to form a concept of the self, and thus could not find in Kant an argument of the kind that is developed in this book’s Chapter 1, that all of the categories must apply to all of our experience. This chapter argues by contrast that Kant’s conception of the transcendental unity of apperception as applying to all of our possible experience and his analysis of the conditions of time-determination, or making judgments about the temporal relations among all of our experiences, are meant to show that the categories must apply to all of our experience.

John Locke’s influential account of personal identity emphasizes the importance of consciousness.  This had led many commentators to argue that Lockean selves just are consciousnesses.  Charles Taylor has mounted persuasive critiques of this “punctual” Lockean self; such a conception of the self is too thin and stands divorced from our values and moral agency.  This chapter shifts the focus from Locke’s views on personal identity to his views on personhood in an effort to show that Locke is sensitive to the kinds of worries raised by Taylor.  Lockean persons are more than consciousness.  In particular, the chapter focuses on Locke’s exploration and analysis of the complex faculty psychology undergirding consciousness and on the ways in which persons can be embodied.  This allows for a richer conception of the self.  It then argues that this richer conception better aligns with Locke’s own views about the value and importance of the self and with what he says regarding our moral agency and our duty of self-improvement.  Finally, the chapter shows that understanding Locke’s examination of human cognition as contributing to an analysis of the self allows us to resituate him with respect to some of his predecessors in seventeenth-century England.

This chapter begins the work of showing how the Phenomenology effects a transition from Kantian to Hegelian theodicy. It begins with Hegel’s exposition of self-consciousness, since this sets the terms for his subsequent analyses. Indeed, the famous ‘Self-Consciousness’ chapter thematises the very possibility of criteria of goodness by unfolding elementary structures of human autonomy. The chapter then turns to Hegel’s developmental account of Kant’s understanding of freedom as autonomy, which functions simultaneously as a critique: he presents Kant’s practical thought as the result of a progressive, rational development, while also diagnosing it as the product of a series of abstractions and reifications, whereby Kant conflates his insight into the nature of freedom with a certain methodologically individualistic metaphysics of the human being. The chapter focuses on the first of three key phases in the Phenomenology that engage with Kantian theodicy and its underlying view of the will, namely the somewhat satirical presentation of ‘Virtue’, which Hegel classifies as a shape of ‘Reason’. By charting the interrelated views of goodness and the will that produce and are produced by ‘Virtue’, we can uncover a developmental logical that leads to the Kantian idea of freedom as self-authorship.

Andrews ” Reath offers a new interpretation of the doctrine, set forth in the Critique of Practical Reason, that the moral law is given to us as a “fact of reason.” Reath proposes that we understand this doctrine through the idea that what is given in this fact is the reality of a basic rational power. He argues that Kant accepts a generally ‘Aristotelian’ conception of a rational power, so that pure practical reason is a rational power with its own formal end and its own formal principle, which we know to be the moral law. Exercises of this power are (in some sense) guided by a subject’s consciousness of its formal principle, and therein lies its spontaneity and self-activity.

Stephen Engstrom argues that judgments that amount to knowledge constitute the end of the faculty of understanding. This implies that true judgments and false judgments are not on par in relation to the attainment of this end. False judgments are incomplete realizations of the understanding whose explanation requires reference to a factor that prevents it from attaining its end. Engstrom takes this to show that truth is essential to judgment (and belongs to its form) whereas falsity is not. This is reflected in our original, a priori understanding of judgment, according to which the capacity to judge is the capacity to know (rather than the capacity, say, to judge either truly or falsely). In an appendix, Engstrom relates this account to the notion of objective validity.

Janum Sethi investigates Kant’s application of hylomorphism to the theory of self-consciousness, as evident in the distinction he draws between transcendental and empirical apperception. According to Sethi, the standard reading of this distinction overlooks that it is drawn in terms of a distinction between transcendental and empirical unity of apperception, which can be traced to the distinct natures of the two faculties that produce these unities: whereas the former is brought about according to the rational laws of the understanding, the latter is a result of the psychological laws of the imagination. In light of this, Sethi argues that the two types of apperception amount to a subject’s awareness of two cognitively essential aspects of herself: namely, her spontaneity and her receptivity – that is, of her capacity to receive the material for cognition through the senses and of her capacity to impart a certain form to this material through the use of the understanding.

The 15-item Body Image Self-Consciousness (BISC) Scale (Wiederman, 2000) is a widely used contemporary measure of the extent individuals are self-conscious of their own bodily appearance during physical intimacy with a partner. The BISC Scale can be administered online or in-person to adolescents and adults with and without partnered sexual experience, and to those with male or female sexual partners. The BISC Scale is free to use in any setting. First, this chapter discusses the development of the BISC Scale and provides evidence of its psychometrics properties. Specifically, the BISC Scale has been found to have a single-factor structure within exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and is invariant across male and female genders. Internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and incremental validity support the use of the BISC Scale. Next, this chapter provides BISC Scale items in their entirety, instructions for administering the BISC Scale, the item response scale, and the scoring procedure. Logistics of use, including permissions, copyright, and contact information, are provided for readers. A Polish translation of the BISC Scale is provided and a modified version of the BISC Scale for use with men specifically is described (M-BISC; McDonough et al., 2008).

The 59-item Derriford Appearance Scale (DAS59; Moss, 2005) assesses appearance-related distress across various dimensions, including social anxiety, self-consciousness, and negative self-concept. The DAS can be administered both online and in-person to adolescents and adults and is available for £0.50 per use. This chapter first discusses the development of the DAS, which was created to address gaps in existing body image measures by capturing the broader psychological impact of visible differences. The DAS has a multidimensional factor structure, with five distinct factors identified through factor analysis, and strong psychometric properties, including high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha: .85 to .95) and test-retest reliability. This chapter also outlines the scale’s administration process, scoring procedures, and item response format. A shorter version, the DAS-24, is available for quicker assessments. The DAS has been validated across diverse demographic groups, ensuring its applicability in both clinical and research settings. Permissions and guidelines for use, including translations and modifications, are provided to ensure consistent and accurate application of the scale.

“Everyone has a price at which he sells himself”: Immanuel Kant quotes this remark in the 1793 Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone, attributing it to “a member of English Parliament.” This chapter argues, however, that the context of the quotation in the Religion alludes to the arresting pedagogical practices of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who famously said that “different people sell themselves at different prices.” The chapter argues that there are two sides of Epictetus’ pedagogical strategies: a jolting side meant to expose self-deception and practical inconsistency; and an uplifting side meant to arouse the resources by which it is possible to progress towards virtue – specifically, our sense of kinship with the divine insofar as we are rational. This chapter argues that Kant develops a conception of self-respect in later practical works that plausibly draws on Epictetus, and his distinctive version of the traditional Stoic account of rational agency.