L’amore etico tra limitazione e libertà, tra individualità astratta e universalità concreta

Abstract

In this article, I examine why, in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel characterizes the loving union as an experience that is simultaneously one of limitation and liberation. In the first part of the article, I analyze the ecstatic nature underlying the experience of love: love is an affective disposition that leads me to limit myself – that is, to renounce my abstract personality – in order to experience the feeling of unity with the other. In the second part, I argue that in this ecstatic process, the subject does not lose her individuality but rather comes to feel herself, insofar as the experience of love is based not only on an immediate affective disposition but also on an active, conscious, critical, and rational openness toward the beloved. In the third part, I account for the emancipatory value of the self-feeling generated by love on the basis of the dialectic of free will at the beginning of objective spirit, as well as the pure logical structure that underlies it – namely, the pure logical form of the freedom of the concept as a concrete universal.