Comment: Philosophy has played an intellectual role in coming to terms with the modern, through modern philosophical understanding

of the term modern. Freedom, Rationalism and subjectivity are key terms to the concept of modernity. Concepts such as history, absolute spirit "Geist" and Modern State are central to Hegel's political philosophy because they show the way he conceives modernity. Hegel regards history as a dialectical progress rather than as historiography. In The Philosophy of Right, Hegel claims that The rational is actual and the actual is rational. Habermas argues that Hegel's integration of history into his philosophy and relating it therefore to the world stands as crucial perspective of modernity. Consequently, history is, for Hegel, the organic process by which the idea of freedom becomes completely realized in the modern age. Hegel's defines the Geist, in his Phenomenology, as "this absolute substance which is the unity of the different independent self-consciousness, which in their opposition, enjoy perfect freedom and independence". According to Hegel, free individuals are the product of a public culture, of freedom, and such a culture is the product of the process of historical development. In the Philosophy of History, Hegel's metaphor of self-consciousness implicitly connotes the phenomenon of Eurocentrism; modern Europe has nothing to learn from other cultures. For Hegel, the Modern Age begins with German event (the Lutheran Reformation) which is fully developed during the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Hegel's idealism aimed at unifying substantial (objective) freedom and subjective freedom, state and civil society. Like Hegel, Marxs goal is the freedom of mankind. However, in pursuing this goal he places much more stress on economic equality than does Hegel. Thus, Marx gives much more attentions to continuous conflict between civil society and the state. Real thinking, as Hegel argues through his dialectical method, is the reconciliation between an idea and its negation. As a result, Hegel unified subjective freedom and objective freedom in modern ethical life. According to Hegel, free individuals are the product of a public culture, of freedom, and such a culture is the product of the process of historical development.

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