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Freedom and the Foundation of Right 205Hegel fully realizes that there are some choices that we make thatlack objective reasons and that might be based on nothing morethan the personal or individual choices, such as my choice of aspecific career or mode of dress.But even these choices should beprotected by the state, Hegel thinks, because they are part of theinfinite right of subjectivity (see pp.231 3).Granted that Hegel values negative as well as positive freedom,the question remains whether his use of positive freedom sanctionsauthoritarianism.The issue here is more complicated than manyscholars recognize.At stake is not simply the historical or factualissue whether Hegel acknowledges the value of negative liberty,but two logical or systematic issues: whether Hegel s concept ofpositive freedom has authoritarian implications, and whether Hegelcan unite both forms of freedom into a single coherent philosophyof the state.It is not sufficient to point out that Hegel intends or wantsnegative liberty to be upheld; for that leaves the question whether itis compatible with his ultimate principles.The issue is not disposedof simply by claiming that, because autonomy involves the capacityof choice, subjective freedom is the precondition of objective free-dom.8 For this begs the question: what if my subjective choice is atodds with the standard of rationality involved in autonomy? Thequestion whether Hegel betrays negative liberty ultimately restsupon whether political institutions, as Hegel envisages them,involve sufficient safeguards for negative liberty.We will considerthese troublesome issues in more detail below (pp.237 43).THE FOUNDATION OF LAWIt is a telling sign of the difficulty and complexity of Hegel s polit-ical thought that it has been subject to such conflicting interpret-ations.This is especially the case with regard to Hegel s viewson the foundation of law.Hegel has sometimes been read as avoluntarist, as someone who bases right on the will rather thanreason.9 In this vein, Hegel has been seen as the last great spokesmanin the modern voluntarist tradition, which begins with Hobbes and 206 HegelGrotius and blossoms in Rousseau and Kant.However, Hegel hasalso been read as just the opposite: as a rationalist, as someone whoderives right from reason and gives it a value independent of thewill.10 Accordingly, some scholars have placed Hegel in the naturallaw tradition, a tradition which ultimately goes back to Aristotleand Aquinas.Finally, Hegel has also been understood as an histori-cist, as someone who thinks that law is ultimately based on thehistory and culture of a people.11 In this respect Hegel has beenplaced in the tradition of Montesquieu, Möser and Herder, who sawlaw as one part of the spirit of a nation.It is a no less striking sign of the subtlety and sophistication ofHegel s political thought that all these interpretations are both rightand wrong, both partially correct and partially incorrect.It wasHegel s grand aim to synthesize all these traditions, to preservetheir truths and cancel their errors in a single coherent account ofthe basis of law.In a phrase, Hegel s doctrine was a rational histori-cism or an historicist rationalism, a rational voluntarism and avoluntarist rationalism.But such apparent oxymorons raise the ultimate question: DidHegel really have a coherent doctrine? Before we can assess thisquestion, we must first examine the strengths and weaknesses ofthe opposing interpretations, and consider more closely whatHegel accepted and rejected from these conflicting traditions.There is much evidence in favor of the voluntarist interpretation.Hegel justifies right on the basis of freedom, which he understandsas the expression of the will (PR §4A).Furthermore, he defines thegood in terms of the will, as the unity of the particular will with theconcept of the will (PR §129).Finally, he places himself firmly inthe voluntarist tradition when he states that Rousseau was right tomake the will the basis of the state (PR §258R).It is indeed of thefirst importance to see that Hegel denied one of the fundamentalpremises of the natural law tradition: that value exists within therealm of nature, independent of the will (VRP III, 93).He acceptsone of the basic theses of Kant s Copernican revolution in ethics: Freedom and the Foundation of Right 207that the laws of reason are created by us and and not imposed uponus by nature.However, there is also much evidence against the voluntaristreading.It is a central thesis of the voluntarist tradition that what-ever the will values is good simply because the will values it.ButHegel protests against the purely formal and abstract will chieflybecause the will alone cannot be a source of the law (PR §§135 40).It is also a basic premise of the voluntarist tradition that nothingcan be good in itself or in nature, independent of human agree-ments or contracts.But Hegel insists that some things are valuablein themselves, whether they are enshrined into law or recognizedby governments (PR §100R)
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