In his works, and especially in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel often uses literary references. Among them, we can find also some characters that, in Hegel’s view, embody a worst aspect of the modern subject, “the ethical infirmity”, the inability to act, to realize themselves objectifying their inner determinations. Characters of this kind are Allwill and Woldemar, protagonists of two homonymous novels of Jacobi, that Hegel critically analyzes in Faith and Knowledge. Through the Hegelian analysis of these two literary figures, we will try to highlight the features and causes of this “ethical infirmity”, showing how Hegel see it as a one of the diseases to which it is structurally exposed the modern subjectivity.
