10h-12h en Salle Simmel

The talk aims at showing the meaning of a Hegelian statement (Enzyklopädie, § 503 Zusatz) concerning freedom «im europäischen Sinne» as subjective freedom. In order to understand this meaning, I assume that a clarifying standpoint is given by Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics, where a similar definition of subjective freedom could be found in section « Auflösung der klassischen Kunst in ihrem eigenen Bereich». In the first part of the talk, I will therefore focus on the difference between ancient and modern subjectivity in Hegel’s analysis of literary characters. In the second part I will underline that Hegel’s insight of modern, romantic subjectivity doesn’t nevertheless overlap perfectly with the meaning of subjective freedom «im europäischen Sinne».In the third part I will then turn my attention to Hegel’s Phenomenology of spirit, in order to find an appropriate figure of this subjective freedom in the subjectivity of Bildung (chapter 6), where the role of language, as borrowed from Diderot’s Neveu de Rameau, seems to play a major role in promoting an identity which contains in itself difference and which can only affirm itself by passing through a process of Entfremdung.