THE LIVING FORM OF THE GOOD LIFE

Abstract

In the movement from the human spirit to spirit, Hegel transformed the nature of freedom and the self and with them the question of the good life. When freedom is the process of cultivating the mutual receptivity of subjective goals and their externally existing objects, it lies outside of the achievement of the isolated human spirit, for freedom is a condition in which the human spirit already finds itself and in which it comes to participate. The question of the good life becomes an inquiry into the existing world as a totality of relationships. We now ask what system of relationships binds the human spirit to its political community in a participatory way. The answer that we will give in this chapter contributes the living form of the good life, first as objective institutions, then as subjective disposition, and finally, in their unity.