CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALECTIC IN ADORNO A ...

structure of modern society maximizes freedom because it is in itself rational, and it is
rational because it maximizes freedom. 106 The claim that this structure is the most
rational form of social organization is the prescriptive dimension of Hegel’s claim.
Additionally, Hegel argues that modern Western society (or at least the European
social order of his time) 107 instantiates this most rational structure and thus embodies the
most rational social order. This is the descriptive dimension of Hegel’s claim.
Hegel’s claim, in both of its senses (prescriptive and descriptive), ties the alleged
rationality of the modern social order to this order’s actualization of freedom. But what
does Hegel mean by ‘freedom,’ and how does he take it to be actualized in the social
world? In the first two sections of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel discusses two types of
freedom specific to the realm of private life: personal freedom and moral freedom.
Personal freedom is the negative freedom that protects individuals from being imposed
upon by an external will. This is the kind of freedom usually prominent in discussions of
106 We thus have the bi-conditional (maximization of freedom ↔ maximization of rationality),
which is grounded in Hegel’s doctrine that the structure of rationality—i.e. the structure of “the Concept”—
just is the structure of freedom as self-determination.
107 Hegel’s claims are based on his analysis of the European social order of the 19 th century. The
claims are however not meant to be restricted to that specific historical moment, but rather to apply to any
social order built around the institutions of the family, civil society, and the state, where these institutions
are related to each other in accordance with the structure of “the Concept.” What Hegel takes to be
important about the European social order of the 19 th century is that it has the structure of the most rational
social order for human beings. Michael Hardimon makes this point in his Hegel’s Social Philosophy: The
Project of Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 131-3, and uses it to defend
Hegel against charges of Eurocentrism, explaining that Hegel does not defend the European social order
just because it is European, but rather because it instantiates a number of principles that can be
independently shown to be the most rational principles for any social order. In my view, the fact that Hegel
takes the European order of his time to be necessarily the best and most rational for human beings, ignoring
the plights of colonization and poverty (which he in fact takes to be a necessary, if regrettable, consequence
of the modern social order) is strong, though admittedly not decisive, evidence for Eurocentrism, and a
legitimate cause of suspicion toward Hegel’s project. In any case, the important thing to note is that the
social order that Hegel describes in Die Philosophie des Rechts is meant both to characterize the European
society of his time and to describe the most rational order for any social arrangement after that time.
Whether or not Hegel would take contemporary European or American society to embody the same, and
allegedly most rational, social order is debatable.
105