Hegel’s “Anthropology” considers components of an agent’s practical identity that are not chosen but rather inherited: components such as the agent’s temperament, talents, and ethnic background. Through a discussion of habit and happiness, Hegel explores how these inherited traits can become part of the agent’s self-determination. I argue that this process provides a model for explaining how we are obligated within roles we do not choose—roles for instance within the family or as citizens of a state. Through evaluation of an inherited role itself and assessment of her own place in it, the agent earns and eventually comes to own her actions within the role. In this way an inherited role, like an inherited trait, can contribute to an agent’s freedom.

Hegel suggests that spirit, in contrast to animal nature, can encounter infinite agony in the death of what was its center, and yet, by dwelling with this loss, emerge into a new form of existence. The paradigm for this move is described toward the end of the chapter on Revealed Religion in the Phenomenology of Spirit. An analysis of the key paragraph introduces a discussion of four questions: Why is this experience triggered by the death of a mediator? What characterizes the spiritual metamorphosis that results? Are such transformations restricted to revealed religion? And what does this defining characteristic tell us about the way spiritual life differs from the natural?