This article aims to explore the Hegelian views on humanity’s
emancipation from the natural condition and the gradual process of social
rationalization. In the context of an immanent determinative movement from
abstract to concrete, the dialectical process passes through the concepts of
natural spirit, consciousness and self-consciousness, until the concept of
rational spirit becomes its terminal station. Given that Hegel himself locates
the prelude to the right-oriented or just relation already in the rational
mutual recognition of the particular self-consciousnesses, i.e. at the terminal
point of a dialectical deduction that starts from the concept of natural spirit
and moves through the concepts of consciousness and self-consciousness, this
article tries to reconstruct in broad lines the key points of this process.
According to Hegel, the total transit through all these three evolutionary
stages is crowned by the ability of spirit to come to terms with the objective
completion of its concept, that is to think of itself not only as a subjective
structure, opposite to an external object, but as homogenous to objectivity, in
the meaning of the thing itself (die Sache selbst). The moment of rational
intersubjectivity is of cardinal importance for this completion, which grants
spirit the ability for intelligent theorizing and just practical conduct.
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