Hegel and Du Bois on Social Freedom

In the Philosophy of Right, G.F.W. Hegel argues that the modern state is characterized by the rise of individual liberty, as well as the rise of three principal institutions – the family, civil society, and the state. Each institution ideally corresponds to a set of ethical norms, participation in which allows the individual to exercise her freedom. These institutions afford indispensable background conditions for individual freedom, for, according to Hegel, the individual is inevitably dependent on and bound to these social institutions. A certain ideal form of participating in these institutions bolsters freedom for the following reasons: the family affords a ‘private’ space of intimacy protected from external encroachment; the pursuit of individual interests in civil society allows for self-realization and -development, and does not merely cater to the brute satisfaction of basic needs; and the state must impartially protect its citizens’ civil and political rights. I argue that Du Bois’s assessment of the goals and failures of Reconstruction in The Souls of Black Folk implicitly invokes the above tripartite normative criterion of social freedom. First, Du Bois defends the ethical significance of the freedom to have intimacy in the family and repudiates the destruction of the black family by rape and slave markets. Second, Du Bois’s analysis of the Freedmen’s Bureau parallels Hegel’s discussion of ‘corporations’ in civil society insofar as he views the Freedmen’s Bureau as an indispensable institution for the satisfaction of black labor’s interests. He also stresses education as a condition for securing individual freedom in civil society because it enables blacks’ free self-realization and –development. Blacks ought not to be forced into vocational industry but ought to have the freedom to pursue intellectually demanding professions. Third, Du Bois’s criticism of Booker T. Washington indicates his affirmation of the inalienable dignity Hegel ascribes to individuals in the modern state in the form of civil and political rights. Washington argued that blacks ought to forego the struggle for civil and political rights and ought to focus instead on being productive laborers. Washington contended that the productivity of black labor would eventually ‘prove’ to whites that blacks deserve equal recognition before the state. Du Bois rejects this argument, claiming that human beings have an inalienable dignity that necessitates equal recognition of civil and political rights, regardless of their productivity or any other empirical feature. Thus, for Du Bois, the social and historical circumstances of Reconstruction invoke the standard of social freedom Hegel outlines in the Philosophy of Right.