Even for those who have struggled with Hegel long enough to discover that he is neither a positivist nor a communitarian, nor (at the other end of the spectrum) a Platonist, the fact that he also insists upon distinguishing his appproach to practical philosophy from Kant's may seem deeply puzzling. After all, the two philosophers share in common the same principal opponents. Both set out to undermine the skeptic's doubts about the possibility of objective practical judgments and requirements; both in addition reject positivist derivations of law, exclusively empiricist accounts of human behavior, and intuitionist forms of justification. The two philosophers furthermore seem to share the same conception of the conditions of human freedom. For Hegel as well as Kant, a theory of morality and political right devoted to advancing the cause of freedom must require more than just the absence of obstacles preventing the satisfaction of our animal passions. For Hegel as well as Kant, freedom requires in addition the respect of the ends we have as rational natures. We achieve this kind of freedom when our actions are motivated by the legislation of reason and when the social norms that constrain us are norms we can rationally endorse.

Despite these similarities, Hegel tells us in the Philosophy of Right that the conception of freedom he associates with Kant and discusses under the heading of “Moralität” must give way to the more adequate conception of “Sittlichkeit” or “ethical life.”