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I have carried around in my electronic filofax for years a quote that apparently comes from Hegel that says

“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”

I used to believe in free will and liked this quote, though it refers to the progressive extension of political freedom to unpropertied men, women, and eventually animals. But lately I have been reading bits of Spinoza and been impressed by his argument that people are not really free to act, only “free” to follow their unasked for desires. It took thousands of years to figure out the laws behind simple things like inanimate planets. We haven’t lived long enough yet to discover the laws describing all matter, of which we are a part.

His amendment to Hegel would be

The history of our knowledge of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of our lack of freedom.