Next blog post -- Mill

By Friday (class), in the usual format:

For Mill, what is the relationship between individual freedom and social power that bends us to conform? Is there such a thing as too much individual freedom?

Choice A

Individual’s relationship to others is the primary way in which God figures out who He is. The human world is radically and antithetically different from God, and God discovers himself by working out complexities in the human world. Complexities in the human world are expressed primarily through an individual’s relationship to other individuals. This is because self-consciousness, the human realization that one is alive, comes about “only by being acknowledged or ‘recognized.’” (Hegel) Since self-consciousness comes about when an individual enters into relationship with others, these structures of relationship are the ways in which god actualizes himself.

This has several implications for how individuals must then relate to other individuals. First, each person must believe he or she is free – the expression of free will is central to God’s self actualization. And second, individual’s relationships with each other will, over time, be filled with more and more justice and freedom. This is because God is good. Each “evil” in the world is just a moment in historical time, and the trajectory of history is from necessity to freedom. As God actualizes himself through human relationships over time, those relationships become more and more good.

In addition, individuals must receive authentic feedback from others to be truly conscious and free. When situations arise where one individual has the power to violate another, such as slavery, the “master gets his recognition through an other consciousness,” and therefore the master is highly dependent upon his slave for validation and self-identity. Independent and free individuals are the ones who do not rely on others within their control to validate them.

*And, on a side note, I just wanted to add my two favorite Jamie quotes from the last week.

"Hegel has as much difficulty being concrete as freshman have being abstract"

"Love? That's a while totality of emotion and desire and blah blah blah"

Society and the Individual

For Hegel, all of human history represents moments in the differentiation of God. God created the Earth as His antithesis, his exact opposite. History is him attempting to reach a personal understanding of who He is in His entirety by first defining what He is not (i.e., the earth). This dialectic relationship is a core idea in Hegel’s take on the world. Everything becomes a game of balancing these natures which are both distinct and interrelated at the same time.

The relationship between and individual and their society is divided as well. God manifests himself in the social structures which govern a person, as well as in the universality of individuals in the society (their relationship/ interdependence on each other). The individual also exists, and is related to the particular or particular manifestations of the universal populous. This universality provides what some people refer to as our moral compass, telling you what you should and shouldn’t do on the basis your interrelatedness with everyone else. One easy example is a speed limit, which is a nuisance but is followed (more or less) because it is better for one’s self interests to live in a society where everyone follows the speed limit then in one where everyone drives as fast as they want. The universal imposes itself over the particular situation, causing one to choose the more socially “correct” path of following the speed limit.

Therefore, the social and the universal have power and influence over the individual and the particular, while at the same time being grounded in them. This relationship is not necessary for the individual to function, but as all humans exist within the confines of one society or another, this relationship is essential to the achievement of an individual’s real or rational freedom. For Hegel, real and meaningful freedom is achieved through the recognition and enacting of rational and “moral” actions. Therefore, an individual can only achieve meaningful freedom through a society.