Bakhtin and Benjamin are ambivalent towards habit and cognate phenomena such as ritual, tradition and so forth, and their adequacy to the task of preserving the integrity of experience. In the nineteenth century, the influential figure of Hegel, however, had been positive about the benefit (indeed the indispensability) of such customary cultural and social forms for the free development of the individual's subjectivity. In the second part of Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1822), Hegel launches a sustained attack on Kant's resolution of the problem of what Hegel terms "abstract freedom". Like Kant, Hegel argues that abstract freedom (the unconstrained freedom to do what we want) is illusory, since in acting according to our individual desires we are in thrall to those desires. Similarly, Hegel also argues that freedom is to be achieved in the acting out of our duty: "I should do my duty for its own sake, and it is in the true sense my own objectivity that I bring to fulfilment in doing so. In doing my duty, I am with myself [bei mir selbst] and free."¹ Against Kant, however, Hegel argues that the fulfilment of one's duty towards an abstractly conceived categorical imperative is not sufficient for the realization of the individual's freedom. Rather, Hegel contends, such a conception of freedom in duty towards an abstract rational imperative pits reason against desire and hence denies human beings the happiness produced by the satisfaction of their natural desires.