The chapter approaches Hegel’s idea of reconciliation with reality, focusing on the figure of enjoyment presented in the Preface to the Elements of the Philosophy of Right and the voice of reason as the source of an insight that elevates reason to the peak of enjoyment. The voice is theorized as what connects Hegel’s imperative of the enjoyment of reason with two other imperatives—the Kantian imperative of reason and the Sadean imperative of enjoyment. Hegel’s absolute freedom is interpreted as the form of consciousness where the opposites of Kant and Sade, i.e., moral and immoral, reason and enjoyment, intertwine. From this perspective, Hegel’s philosophy of the French Revolution and the revolutionary terror is considered as a turning point between the solitude of consciousness and the ethical community, or the “we” that creates a utopian horizon within the post-apocalyptic political-theological situation of the death of God and the end of the world.
