Shorter Works

On the Prospects for a Folk Religion by Hegel
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Hegel-by-HyperText
On the Prospects for a Folk Religion

Hegel, Tubingen (1793)
Source: Three Essays, 1793-1795. The Tbingen Essay, Berne Fragments, The Life of Jesus, by G.W.F. Hegel, edited and translated with Introduction and Notes by Peter Fuss and John Dobbins. University of Notre Dame Press. Notre Dame, Indiana, 186pp., 1984. pp. 30-58 reproduced here, omitting footnotes, under the Fair Use provisions; Copyright: remains with University of Notre Dame Press. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. Religion is one of our greatest concerns in life. Even as children we were taught to stammer prayers to the deity, with our little hands folded for us so as to point up toward the supreme being. Our memories were laden with a mass of doctrines, incomprehensible at the time, designed for our future use and comfort in life. As we grow older, religious matters still fill up a good deal of our lives; indeed for some the whole circuit of their thoughts and aspirations is unified by religion in the way that a wheels outer rim is linked to the hub. And we dedicate to our religion, in addition to other feast days, the first day of each week, which from earliest youth appears to us in a fairer and more festive light than all the other days. Moreover, we see in our midst a special class of people chosen exclusively for religious service; and all the more important events and undertakings in the lives of people, those on which their private happiness depends birth, marriage, death and burial have something religious mixed in with them. But do people reflect as they become older on the nature and attributes of the being toward whom their sentiments are directed or in particular on the relation of the world to that being? Human nature is so constituted that the practical element in sacred teaching, that in it which can motivate us to act and which becomes a source of consolation for us as well as the source of our knowledge of duty, is readily manifest to the uncorrupted human sensibility. On the other hand, the instruction (i.e. the concepts as well as everything only externally connected with [the practical]) that we receive from childhood on, and which accordingly makes such an impression on us, is something that is, as it were, grafted onto the natural need of the human spirit. Although this relation is frequently immediate enough, it is, alas, all too often capricious, grounded neither in bonds indigenous to the nature of the soul nor in truths created and developed out of the concepts ... We should not be so enthralled by the sublime demand of reason on mankind (the legitimacy of which we wholeheartedly acknowledge whenever our hearts happen to be filled with reason), or by alluring descriptions (the products of pure and lovely fantasy) of wise or innocent men, as to ever hope to find very many such people in the real world, or to imagine that we might possess or behold this ethereal apparition here or anywhere else. [Were we not in fact so easily enthralled,] our sensibility would be less often clouded by a peevish disposition, by dissatisfaction with what we in fact encounter; nor would we be so terrified when we believe ourselves obliged to conclude that sensuality is the
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predominating element in all human action and striving. It is no easy matter to tell whether mere prudence or actual morality is the wills determining ground. Granted that the satisfaction of the instinct for happiness is the highest goal of life, if we but know how to calculate well enough, the results will outwardly appear the same as when the law of reason determines our will. However scrupulously a system of morality may require us to separate in abstracto pure morality from sensuality and make the latter more subservient to the former, when we consider mans life as a whole we must make equally full allowance for his sensuality, for his dependence on external and internal nature (i.e. both on the surroundings in which he lives and on his sensual inclinations and blind instinct). But human nature is quickened, so to speak, solely by virtue of its rational ideas. just as a dish well prepared is permeated by salt, which must impart its flavor to the whole without showing up in lumps or even as light, which cannot be exhibited as a substance, nonetheless suffuses everything, showing its influence throughout all nature (e.g. breaking upon objects in various ways, thus giving them their shape, and generating wholesome air via plants, etc.) so likewise do the ideas of reason animate the entire fabric of our sensual life and by their influence show forth our activity in its distinctive light. Indeed reason as such seldom reveals itself in its essence; and its effect pervades everything like fine sand, giving each and every inclination and drive a coloring of its own. By its very nature, religion is not merely a systematic investigation of God, his attributes, the relation of the world and ourselves to him, and the permanence of our souls; we could learn all this by reason alone, or be aware of it by other means. Nor is religious knowledge merely a matter of history or argumentation. Rather, religion engages the heart. It influences our feelings and the determination of our will; and this is so in part because our duties and our laws obtain powerful reinforcement by being represented to us as laws of God, and in part because our notion of the exaltedness and goodness of God fills our hearts with admiration as well as with feelings of humility and gratitude. And so religion provides morality and the well-springs of its activity with a new and nobler impetus it sets up a new and stronger dam against the pressure of sensual impulses. But if religious motives are to have an effect on sensuality, they too must be sensual; hence among sensual people religion itself is sensual. Of course such motives, insofar as they are at all moral, lose a bit of their majesty. But they have thereby acquired such a human aspect, and have so perfectly adapted themselves to our feelings that, led by our hearts and lured on by the beauteous images of our fancy, we readily forget that cool reason disapproves of such images or indeed even forbids so much as comment on this sort of thing. When we go on to speak of religion as public, we still of course take it to include the concepts of God and immortality as well as everything connected with them, but specifically insofar as these constitute the conviction of a whole people, influencing their actions and way of thinking. Moreover, we include the means whereby these ideas are both taught to the people and made to penetrate their hearts a means concerned not only with the immediate (e.g. I refrain from stealing because God has forbidden it), but directed more especially to ends that, while removed from the immediate, must by and large be reckoned as more important. Among these we include the uplifting and ennobling of the spirit of a nation so as to awaken in its soul the so often dormant sense of its true worth, and to encourage a selfimage colored with the gentler hues of goodness and humanity; for not only should it resist debasing itself or allowing itself to be degraded, but it should refuse to settle for being merely human. Now although the main doctrines of the Christian religion have remained essentially the same since their inception, one doctrine or another has been, depending on the times and circumstances, left altogether in the dark, while some other doctrine has been given the limelight and, unduly emphasized
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at the expense of the one obscured, stretched much too far or interpreted much too narrowly. Yet it is the entire body of religious principles and the feelings flowing from them above all the degree of strength with which these are able to influence modes of action that is decisive in a folk religion. Upon an oppressed spirit, one which, under the burden of its chains, has lost its youthful vigor and begun to age, such religious ideas can have little impact. At the beginning of maturation the youthful spirit of a people feels its power and exults in its strength; it seizes hungrily upon any novelty (albeit never upon anything that would put fetters on its proud and free neck), and then typically tosses it aside in favor of something else. By contrast, an aging spirit is characterized by its firm attachment to tradition in every respect. It bears its fetters as an old man endures the gout, grumbling but unable to do more. It lets itself be pushed and shoved at its masters whim, and it is only half conscious when it enjoys itself not free, open, and bright with the appealing gaiety that invites camaraderie. Moreover, its festivals are but occasions for chatter, since old folk prefer gossip to everything else. Here there is no boisterousness, no full-blooded enjoyment.
Exposition of the difference between objective and subjective religion; the importance of this exposition in view of the entire question
Objective religion is fides quae creditur [the faith with which one believes]; understanding and memory are the powers that do the work, investigating facts, thinking them through, retaining and even believing them. Objective religion can also possess practical knowledge, but only as a sort of frozen capital. It is susceptible to organizational schemes: it can be systematized, set forth in books, and expounded discursively. Subjective religion on the other hand expresses itself only in feelings and actions. If I say of someone that he has religion, this does not mean that he is well schooled in it, but rather that his heart feels the active presence, the wonder, the closeness of the deity, that his heart knows or sees God in nature and in the destinies of men, that he prostrates himself before God, thanking him and glorifying him in all that he does. The actions of such an individual are not performed merely with an eye to whether they are good or prudent, but are motivated also by the thought: This is pleasing to God which is often the strongest motive. When something pleases him or when he has good fortune he directs a glance at God, thanking him for it. Subjective religion is thus alive, having an efficacy that, while abiding within ones being, is actively directed outward. Subjective religion is something individual, objective religion a matter of abstraction. The former is the living book of nature, of plants, insects, birds and beasts living with and surviving off each other each responsive to the joys of living, all of them intermingled, their various species everywhere together. The latter is the cabinet of the naturalist, full of insects he has killed, plants that are desiccated, animals stuffed or preserved in alcohol; what nature had kept totally apart is here lined up side by side; and whereas nature had joined an infinite variety of purposes in a convivial bond, here everything is ordered to but a single purpose. The entire body of religious knowledge belonging to objective religion, then, can be the same for a large mass of people, and in principle could be so across the face of the earth. But having been woven into the fabric of subjective religion, it comprises only a small and relatively ineffectual part of it, and in fact varies within each individual. For subjective religion the chief question is whether and to what extent our sensibility is inclined to let itself be determined by religious impulses, i.e. how susceptible are we to religion sensually; then further, what makes an especially strong impression upon the heart, what kinds of feelings are most cultivated in the soul and hence most readily elicited. Some people
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have no feeling whatever for the more tender representations of love, so that impulses derived from the love of God simply do not affect their hearts; the organs with which they feel are rather more blunt, being roused only by the stimulus of fear (thunder, lightning, etc.). The chords of their hearts simply do not resonate to the gentle stroke of love. Other people are deaf to the voice of duty; it is quite useless to try to call their attention to the inner judge of actions which supposedly presides in mans own heart, i.e. to conscience itself. In them no such voice is ever heard; rather, self-interest is the pendulum whose swinging keeps their machine running. It is this disposition, this receptivity that determines how in each individual subjective religion is to be constituted. We are schooled in objective religion from childhood, and our memory is laden with it all too soon, so that the as yet supple understanding, the fine and delicate plant of an open and free sensibility, is often crushed by the burden. As the roots of the plant work their way through loose soil, they absorb what they can, sucking nourishment as they go; but when diverted by a stone they seek another path. So here, too, when the burden heaped on memory cannot be dissolved, the now sturdier powers of the soul either shake loose of it altogether or simply bypass it without drinking in any nourishment. Yet in each person nature has planted at least the seed of finer sentiments, whose source is morality itself, she has implanted in everyone a feeling for what is moral, for ends beyond those attaching to mere sensuality. It is the task of education, of culture, to see to it that this precious seed is not choked out and is allowed to sprout into a genuine receptivity for moral ideas and feelings. And religion, precisely because it cannot be the first to take root in our sensibility, needs to find this already cultivated soil before it can flourish. Everything depends on subjective religion; this is what has inherent and true worth. Let the theologians squabble all they like over what belongs to objective religion, over its dogmas and their precise determination: the fact is that every religion is based on a few fundamental principles which, although set forth in the different religions in varying degrees of purity, however modified or adulterated, are nonetheless the basis of all the faith and hope that religion is capable of offering us. When I speak of religion here, I am abstracting completely from all scientific (or rather metaphysical) knowledge of God, as well as from the relationship of the world and ourselves to him, etc; such knowledge, the province of discursive understanding, is theology and no longer religion. And I classify as religious only such knowledge of God and immortality as is responsive to the demands of practical reason and connected with it in a readily discernible way. (This does not preclude more detailed disclosures of special divine arrangements on mans behalf.) Further, I here discuss objective religion only insofar as it is a component of subjective religion. But I do not intend to investigate which religious teachings are of the greatest interest to the heart or can give the soul the most comfort and encouragement; nor how the doctrines of any particular religion must be constituted if they are to make a people better and happier. Rather my concern is with what needs to be done so that religion with all the force of its teaching might be blended into the fabric of human feelings, bonded with what moves us to act, and shown to be efficacious, thus enabling religion to become entirely subjective. When it actually is so, it reveals its presence not merely by hands clasped together, knees bent, and heart humbled before the holy, but by the way it suffuses the entire scope of human inclination (without the soul being directly conscious of it) and makes its presence felt everywhere although only mediately or, if I may so express it, negatively, in and through the cheerful enjoyment of human satisfactions. Subjective religions role in the performance of the nobler deeds and the exercise of the finer, philanthropic virtues is not, to be sure, a direct one; its influence is discreet, it lets the soul carry on these tasks freely and openly without inhibiting the spontaneity of its actions. Any expression of
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human powers, whether of courage or considerateness, cheerfulness or delight in life itself, requires freedom from an ill-natured tendency toward envy along with a conscience that is clear and not guiltridden; and religion helps foster both of these qualities. Furthermore, its influence is also felt insofar as innocence, when combined with it, is able to find the exact point at which delight in extravagance, high-spiritedness, and firmness of resolve would degenerate into assaults upon the rights of others.
Subjective Religion
Inasmuch as theology (whatever its source, even if in religion) is a matter of understanding and memory, while religion is a concern of the heart stemming from a need of practical reason, it is clear that the powers of the soul activated in each of them differ considerably, and that our sensibility has to be made receptive in a different way for each. For our hope to be vindicated that the highest good one dimension of which we are duty-bound to actualize will become actual in its totality, our practical reason demands belief in a divinity, in immortality. This, at any rate, is the seed from which religion springs. But when religion is thus derived, it is in fact conscience (the inner sense of right and wrong, as well as the feeling that wrongdoing must incur punishment and well-doing merit happiness) whose elements are being analyzed and articulated in clear concepts. Now, it may well be that the idea of a mighty and invisible being first took root in the human soul on the occasion of some fearful natural phenomenon; God may first have revealed himself through weather that made everyone feel his presence more closely if only in the gentle rustling of the evening breeze. Be that as it may, the human soul eventually experienced a moral feeling such that it found in the idea of religion something that answered to its need. Religion is sheer superstition whenever I seek to derive from it specific grounds for action in situations where mere prudence is sufficient, or when fear of divinity makes me perform certain actions by means of which I imagine that it might be placated. No doubt this is how religion is constituted among many a sensual people. Their representation of God and how he deals with men is bound to the idea that he acts in accordance with the laws of human sensibility and acts upon their sensuality. There is little of the truly moral in this notion. However, the concept of God and my recourse to him (worship) is already more moral hinting at consciousness of a higher order, determined by non-sensual ends (even though superstitions like the above may still be involved) when my feeling that everything depends on Gods decision leads me to beseech his support concerning the eventual outcome of an undertaking, when my belief in Gods dispensing good fortune only to the just and inflicting misfortune on the unjust and presumptuous becomes at least as pervasive as belief in fate or in natural necessity, and when religion at last gives rise to principles of moral conduct. While objective religion can take on most any color, subjective religion among good people is basically the same: what makes me a Christian in your eyes makes you a Jew in mine, Nathan says. For religion is a matter of the heart, which often deals inconsistently with the dogmas congenial to understanding and memory. Surely the worthiest people are not always those who have done the most speculating about religion, who are given to transforming their religion into theology, and who are in the habit of replacing the fullness and warmth of faith with cold cognitions and deft displays of verbal dexterity. Religion in fact acquires very little through the understanding, whose operations and skeptical tendencies are more likely to chill than warm the heart. And whoever finds that other
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peoples modes of representation heathens, as they are called contain so much absurdity that they cause him to delight in his own higher insights, his own understanding, which convinces him that he sees further than the greatest of men saw, does not comprehend the essence of religion. Someone who calls his Jehovah Jupiter or Brahma and is truly pious offers his gratitude or his sacrifice in just as childlike a manner as does the true Christian. Who is not moved by the splendid simplicity and guilelessness of someone who, when nature has bestowed its goods on him, thinks at once of his greatest benefactor and offers him the best, the most flawless, the first-born of his grain and sheep? Who does not admire Coriolanus who, at the apex of his good fortune, was mindful of Nemesis, and asked the gods (much as Gustavus Adolphus humbled himself before God during the battle of Luetzen) not to glorify the spirit of Roman greatness but rather to make him more humble? Such dispositions are for the heart and are meant to be enjoyed by it with simplicity of spirit and feeling, rather than be criticized by the cold understanding. Only an arrogant sectarian, fancying himself wiser than all men of other parties, could fail to appreciate the guileless last wish of Socrates to have a rooster delivered to the god of health, could remain unmoved by the beauty of his feeling in thanking the gods for death, which he regarded as a kind of convalescence, or could bring himself to make the malicious remark offered by Tertullian. A heart that does not speak louder than the understanding (unlike that of the friar in the scene from Nathan above), or that just keeps silent, allowing the understanding all the time it needs to rationalize some course of action a heart like that isnt worth much to begin with: there is no love in it. Nowhere do we find a finer contrast between the voice of uncorrupted feeling, i.e. a pure heart, and the obstinacy of the understanding than in the Gospels. With what warmth and affection Jesus allows a woman of former ill-repute to anoint his body, accepting this spontaneous outpouring of a beautiful soul which, filled with remorse, trust, and love, refuses to be inhibited by the rabble around her. And this even as several apostles who are too cold of heart to empathize with her deepest feeling, her beautiful gift of trust, belie their pretensions to charitableness by indulging in cutting side-remarks. What a sterile and unnatural observation it is that good old Gellert makes someplace (much like Tertullian, Apologia, ch. 46: deum quilibet opifex) to the effect that a small child nowadays knows more about God than the wisest heathen. This is as if the treatise on morality I have sitting in my closet which I can use to wrap up a stinking cheese if I see fit were of greater value than the perhaps at times unjust heart of a Frederick the Second. For in this respect the difference between Tertullians opifex, or Gellerts child who has had the theological leaven beaten into him along with the catechism, and the paper containing moral pronouncements is on the whole not very great. A genuine consciousness acquired through experience is lacking in them to nearly the same degree ...
Enlightenment: the will to actualize by means of the understanding

The understanding serves only objective religion. In clarifying fundamental Principles and exhibiting them in their purity, the understanding has brought forth splendid fruit (Lessings Nathan) and deserves the eulogies with which it is forever being extolled. But such principles are never made practical by means of the understanding alone. The understanding is a courtier who is ruled complaisantly by the moods of his master. It knows how
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to hunt up rationalizations for every passion, every venture; and it is first and foremost a servant of self-love, which is always very clever at putting blunders committed or about to be committed in a favorable light. Self-love likes to sing its own praises for this, i.e. for having found such a good excuse for itself. Having my understanding enlightened does make me smarter, but not better. If I reduce virtue itself to Shrewdness, and calculate that no one can become happy without it, such a calculation is much too sophisticated and cold to be effective in the moment of action, indeed to have any influence on my life at all. Were one to adopt the very best of moral codes, inform oneself most exactly both about its universal principles and its derivative duties and virtues, and keep in mind this mountain of rules and exceptions at the moment of action, the result would be a mode of conduct so involuted that one would be eternally hesitant and at odds with oneself Not even the authors of moral codes go so far as to expect that somebody would actually commit their books to memory or, upon the slightest impulse to action, consult them before doing anything in order to ensure that this is all quite ethical and hence permissible. And yet this is in fact what one demands of a person when one insists on a moral code. No printed code or manner of enlightening the understanding could ever prevent evil impulses from taking root or even flourishing. In view of this, Campes Theophron is designed to have only a negative effect a person ought to act on his own, work things out for himself, make his own decisions, not let anybody else do this for him although in his hands this approach turns out to be nothing more than a mechanical contrivance. When one speaks of enlightening a people, this presupposes that errors and vulgar prejudices associated with religion are rampant. And by and large religions do consist of such things, based as they are on sensuousness on the blind expectation that a certain effect will be brought about by an alleged cause that has nothing to do with it. Among a people full of prejudices the concept of cause seems largely based on the notion of mere succession, as evidenced by its not infrequent tendency, when speaking of causes, to leave out and indeed fail to observe the intermediate members of a series of effects. Hence sensuousness and fantasy are and remain the sources of prejudice. And even valid propositions that have stood up to investigation by the understanding are still prejudices when people simply adopt and give credence to them without having any rational grounds for them. Prejudices, therefore, can be of two kinds: a) notions that are actually erroneous, b) notions that, while in actuality true, are not apprehended as truths ought to be (i.e. by means of reason), being acknowledged only on the basis of trust or faith, and thus doing little credit to the person who accepts them. To enlighten a people, to rid it of its intellectual prejudices (practical prejudices, i.e. those that affect the determining process of the will, have entirely different sources and consequences and are thus of no concern here) involves improving its understanding in certain respects so that it may free itself of the thrall of error and attain the certainty of actual truths on rational grounds. Yet to begin with, who is the mortal willing to decide what truth is? Still, we can here assume as we must when we speak of human knowledge in concreto and (from a political perspective) in view of the fact that human societies do exist that surely there are some universally valid principles which are not only evident to common sense but form the basis of any religion
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deserving of the name, however deformed it may be. a) Certainly there are only a few such principles; and they are all quite general and abstract. Thus when set forth in their purity as reason demands, they contradict ordinary experience as well as everything that seems so apparent to the senses. These they could never influence anyhow, since they are fit only for an order of things antithetic to sense. Little wonder, then, that they do not readily qualify for whole-hearted acceptance on the part of the people. And even if they are preserved in memory, they still constitute no part of mans system of spiritual desires. b) Now a religion that is supposed to be generally accessible cannot consist just of some universal truths embraced lovingly and wholeheartedly only by the handful of outstanding individuals who rediscovered them for their era. Hence there are always added ingredients which must be taken merely on faith; and the purer tenets must be coarsened and given a more sensual exterior if they are to be understood and made accessible to a sensual disposition. Moreover, customs must be introduced that require., if one is to be aware of their necessity and utility, either trusting belief or habituation from childhood on. Thus it is evident that a folk religion, if as its very concept implies its teaching is to be efficacious in active life, cannot possibly be constructed out of sheer reason. Positive religion necessarily rests on faith in the tradition by which it is handed down to us. Our commitment to religious customs stems likewise from their binding force, i.e. from our belief that God demands them of us as being appropriate and obligatory. But when they are taken merely by themselves and regarded rationally, all that can be claimed for them is that they serve to edify, to awaken pious sentiments; and their suitability for this purpose is always open to critical inspection. Yet as soon as I have persuaded myself that such customs and forms of worship do no real honor to God that right conduct is the form of service most pleasing to him they have, despite their edifying effect, thereby already lost a good deal of their potential impact on me. Since religion is inherently a matter of the heart, one might well ask how much ratiocination it can tolerate without ceasing to be religion. If we do a lot of reflecting on the formation of our sentiments on the customs in which we are made to participate and which are supposed to awaken pious feelings, on their historical origin, on their utility, and so forth they surely lose some of the aura of sanctity with which we had always been accustomed to regard them. No less do the dogmas of theology lose some of their dignity when we look at them in the light of ecclesiastical history. Yet how little lasting effect such cool reflections have can be seen when we find ourselves in straitened circumstances, when a troubled heart seeks a sturdier staff, when in desperation we reach out deaf to the sophistries of the understanding for anything that once gave comfort, clutching at it all the more tightly and fearfully now lest it slip away again. Wisdom is something quite different from enlightenment, from ratiocination. But wisdom is not science. Wisdom is the souls elevation, through experience deepened by reflection, over its dependence on opinion and the impressions of sense. And if it is to be practical and not merely a complacent and boastful intellectualism, wisdom must be attended by the steady warmth of a gentle flame. It does little rationalizing; and it does not proceed methodo mathematica from concepts and, by way of a series of inferences in the mode of Barbara and Barocco, arrive at what it takes to be truth. Nor does it purchase its conviction at the common marketplace, where knowledge is handed out to anybody who pays the right price; indeed it wouldnt know what denomination to put on the counter for such a deal. And when it speaks, it does so only from the depths of its heart.
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Now the cultivation of the understanding and its application to matters that elicit our interest may very well be promoted by enlightenment along with a firm grasp of our obligations and a clear head in practical matters. But none of these are such that they could endow mankind with morality. They are infinitely inferior in worth to goodness and purity of heart, with which they are not really commensurable in the first place. A happy disposition is a major part of the character of a well-constituted youth. But now suppose that circumstances compel this youth to become increasingly self-absorbed, and he resolves to cultivate himself into a virtuous person. Lacking the experience to realize that books cannot make him one, he may perhaps pick up Campes Theophron in order to make its lessons in wisdom and prudence the guiding principles of his life. Each morning and evening he reads an excerpt, and all day he thinks about it. What will be the result? True self-perfection, perhaps? Knowledge of human nature? Practical good sense? All this requires years of experience and practice yet meditation on Campe and the Campian rule will cure him in a week! Gloomily and apprehensively he enters into a society where only those are welcome who know how to be amusing. Timidly he indulges in this or that pleasure which is a real treat only for him who partakes of it cheerfully. Overcome by feelings of inferiority, he defers to everyone. The company of women gives him no joy, for he fears that even the slightest contact with some girl might cause a raging fire to course through his veins. His appearance is awkward, his demeanor rigid. But he wont be able to stand this for long; soon he will reject his peevish mentors outlook on life, and feel all the better for it. If enlightenment is to accomplish what its eulogists claim for it, if it is to earn its accolades, it must become true wisdom. Short of this it tends to remain a kind of snobbish sophistry that fancies itself superior to its many weaker brethren. Such arrogance is typical of adolescents, and indeed of their elders; having got a couple of insights out of books, they begin scoffing at beliefs they had up to now, like everyone else, unquestioningly accepted. In this process vanity of course plays a major role. So whenever someone has a great deal to say about the incomprehensible stupidity of the masses, seeks to show at great length that some popular prejudice is the most unbelievable folly, and is given to bandying about terms like enlightenment, the knowledge of human nature, the history of mankind, happiness and perfection, we know we are in the presence of one of enlightenments babbling quacks peddling shop-worn panaceas. These types stuff each other with empty words, oblivious to the sacred and delicate web of human feeling. Everyone is likely to hear examples of such idle chatter; no doubt some have experienced it firsthand already, for in our wordy age this form of culture is quite prevalent. Even if life itself gives one or another of us a better understanding of what had previously been stashed away in our soul as unused capital, we still have to deal with a belly-full. of book learning which, undigested, keeps the stomach hard at work, precluding healthier nourishment and preventing the flow of nutrients to the rest of the body. Our corpulence may give the appearance of health, but in every joint our free movement is inhibited by dried-out phlegm. Part of the business of enlightened understanding is to refine objective religion. But when it comes to the improvement of mankind (the cultivation of strong and great dispositions, of noble feelings, and of a decisive sense of independence), the powers of the understanding are of little moment; and the product, objective religion, doesnt carry much weight either. Human understanding is nonetheless rather flattered when it contemplates its work: a grand and lofty edifice of knowledge divine, moral, and natural. And true enough, it has provided out of its own resources the building materials for this edifice which it is making ever more elaborate. But as this building, which engages the efforts of
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humanity as a whole, becomes gradually more extensive and complex, it becomes less and less the property of any one individual. Anybody who simply copies this universal structure or appropriates it piecemeal anybody who does not build within (and indeed from inside) himself a little residence of his own, roofed and framed so that he feels at home in it, with every stone if not hewn then at least laid by his own hands anybody who neglects to do this becomes a person who can only rigidly adhere to the letter, who has never really lived. And were the individual to have this great house rebuilt for him as a palace, and inhabit it as Louis xiv did Versailles, he would have only the barest acquaintance with its many chambers and would actually occupy a mere cubicle. By contrast, a family man is far more familiar with the details of his ancestral home, and can give an account of every bolt and every little cabinet, telling what they are used for now as well as their history (Lessings Nathan: For the most part I can still tell how, where, and why I learned it.). This little house, which he can indeed call his own, requires the help of religion to build; but how much can religion help in all this? The difference between a pure religion of reason, which worships God in spirit and in truth, affirming that he is served through virtue alone, and an idolatrous faith, which imagines it can curry Gods favor by some means other than a will that is in itself good, is so great that in comparison the latter is utterly worthless. In fact the two are completely different in kind. It is nonetheless of the utmost importance for us to discourage any fetishistic mode of belief, to make it more and more like a rational religion. Yet a universal church of the spirit remains a mere ideal of reason; and it is hardly possible to establish a public religion that would really do everything it could to rid itself of fetishistic belief. So the question naturally arises: How would a folk religion have to be constituted so that a) negatively, the opportunity for people to become fixated on the letter and the conventions of religion would be minimized, and b) positively, the people would be guided toward a religion of reason and become receptive to it? Whenever moral philosophy posits the idea of saintliness as consisting of moral conduct at its highest, of moral exertion to the fullest, the objection will be raised that such an idea is beyond human attainment (which the moral philosophers themselves concede) because man needs motives other than pure respect for the moral law, motives more closely bound up with his sensuality. Such an objection does not prove that man ought not to strive, for all eternity if need be, to approximate to this idea, but merely that, given our crudeness and our powerful propensity toward the sensual, one ought to be content to elicit from most people a mere legality that does not demand the kind of purely moral motives for which they feel little or no affinity. Nor does such an objection deny that much has already been gained if crude sensuality is at least in some way refined and some interest in higher things is aroused if propensities are awakened other than sheer animal drives, ones more amenable to the influence of reason and approximating to morality a little more closely. For in this way it is at least possible that, whenever the clamor of the senses dies down a little, moral dispositions might begin to make their presence known. In fact it is generally conceded that cultivation of any kind would already be a gain. Hence what this objection really comes down to is that it is altogether unlikely that humankind, or even a single individual, will ever in this world be able to dispense entirely with non-moral promptings. Now we do in fact have a number of feelings, woven into our very nature, which do not arise out of respect for the law and hence are not moral, which are inconstant and unstable and do not deserve
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respect because of any inherent worth, but which are nevertheless to be cherished because they serve to inhibit evil dispositions and even help bring out the best in us. All the benign inclinations (sympathy, benevolence, friendliness, etc.) are of this sort. But this empirical aspect of our character, confined as it is to the arena of the inclinations, does contain a moral sentiment bent on weaving its delicate thread throughout the entire fabric. Indeed the fundamental principle of our empirical character is love, which is somewhat analogous to reason in that it finds itself in other people. Forgetting about itself, love is able to step outside of a given individuals existence and live, feel, and act no less fully in others just as reason, the principle of universally valid laws, recognizes its own self in the shared citizenship each rational being has in an intelligible world. The empirical character of human beings is still of course affected by desire and aversion; but love, even though as a principle of action it is sub-rational, is not self-serving. It does not do the right thing merely because it has calculated that the satisfactions resulting from its course of action are purer and longer lasting than those resulting from sensuality or the gratification of some passion. This principle, then, is not refined self-love, in which the ego is in the end always the highest goal. Empiricism is of course absolutely useless in the establishment of foundational principles. But when it comes to having an effect on people, we must take them as they are, seeking out every decent drive and sentiment through which, albeit without directly enhancing their freedom, their nature can be ennobled. In a folk religion in particular it is of the utmost importance that the imagination and the heart not be left unsatisfied: the imagination must be filled with large and pure images, and the heart roused to feelings of benevolence. Setting these on a sound course is all the more crucial in the context of religion, whose object is so great and sublime; for both the heart and the imagination all too easily strike out on paths of their own or let themselves be led astray. The heart is seduced by false notions and by its own indolence; it becomes attached to externals, or finds sustenance in feelings of false modesty, thinking that with these it serves God. And the imagination, taking to be cause and effect what is merely accidental, comes to expect the most extraordinary and unnatural results. Man is such a many-sided creature that anything can be made of him; the intricately woven fabric of his feelings has so many strands that there is nothing that cannot be attached to it at some point. This is why he has been capable of the silliest superstitions, and of the greatest ecclesiastical and political slavery. Folk religions primary task is to weave these fine strands into a noble union suitable to his nature. The main difference between folk religion and private religion is one of aim. Through the mighty influence it exerts on the imagination and the heart, folk religion imbues the soul with power and enthusiasm, with a spirit indispensable for the noble exercise of virtue. On the other hand, the training of individuals in keeping with their character, counsel in situations where duties conflict, special inducements to virtue, comfort and care in the face of personal suffering and misfortune all such things must be left to private religion. That this is not the concern of a public folk religion is evident from the following considerations: a) Situations that involve a conflict of duties are so complex that I can satisfy my conscience only by falling back on the counsel of upright and experienced men or by recourse to the conviction that [come what may] duty and virtue constitute the highest principle of conduct assuming of course that this conviction has been in some way established by public religion and so become available to me as a maxim of action. But public instruction, like the moral training mentioned above, is too tedious; and not even this conviction is in the least capable of making us amenable in the moment of action to hairhttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pc/tubingen.htm Page 11 of 18
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splitting casuistical rules. If it were, the result would be a perpetual scrupulosity quite contrary to the resoluteness and strength requisite for virtuous action. b) If virtue is not the product of indoctrination and empty rhetoric but is rather a plant which, albeit with proper tending, grows out of ones own driving force and power, then the various arts invented allegedly to produce virtue as though in a hothouse (where it would be incapable of failure) actually do more damage to people than just letting them grow wild. By its very nature public religious instruction involves not only an attempt to enlighten the understanding concerning the idea of God and our relation to him, but also an effort to make our obligations to God the ground of all other duties, whereby the latter become at once more urgent and more binding. But there is something strained and farfetched about this derivation. It involves a relationship whose connection only the understanding comprehends, one that tends to be rather forced and is not at all evident, at least to common sense. Ordinarily, the more inducements we are offered for doing our duty, the cooler we become toward it. c) The only true comfort in suffering (for pain [Schmerzen] there is no comfort; strength of soul is all that can be pitted against it) is trust in divine providence. Everything else is idle talk which the heart does not heed. How is a folk religion to be constituted? (Here folk religion is understood in an objective sense.) a) With respect to objective religion. b) With respect to ceremonies. A. I. Its teachings must be founded on universal reason. II. Imagination, the heart, and the senses must not go away empty-handed in the process. III. It must be so constituted that all of lifes needs, including public and official transactions, are bound up with it. B. What must it avoid? Fetishistic beliefs, including one that is especially common in our prolix age, namely the belief that the demands of reason are satisfied by means of tirades against enlightenment and the like. As a result, people are endlessly at loggerheads over points of dogma without doing anything constructive either for themselves or for anyone else.
I
The doctrines [of a folk religion], even if resting on the authority of some divine revelation, must of necessity be constituted so that they are actually authorized by the universal reason of mankind, whereby one is no sooner made aware of them than he perceives and recognizes their binding force. For even if such doctrines either claim to furnish special means of obtaining Gods favor or promise all sorts of privileged insights and detailed information concerning otherwise inaccessible matters, the disclosures they provide are intended to serve ones rational intellect, not just ones fantasy.
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Moreover, since doctrines such as these sooner or later come under fire from thinking men and end up as objects of controversy, our practical interest in them invariably gets misdirected as the endless bickering of various factions issues in rigid symbols expressive of little but their own intolerance. And since these doctrines remain unnatural in their link to the true needs and demands of rationality, they lend themselves to abuses, especially as they become engrained and hardened through habit. Surely they could never of themselves gain sufficient weight in human feeling to be a pure and genuine force in direct alignment with morality. But the doctrines must also be simple; and indeed they are simple, if only they be truths of reason, because as such they require neither the machinery of erudition nor a display of laborious demonstrations. By virtue of such simplicity, they would exert all the more power and impact on our sensibility, on the determination of our will to act; thus concentrated, they would have a far greater influence and play a much bigger part in cultivating a peoples spirit than is the case when commandments are piled up and ordered artificially so as always to be in need of many exceptions. At the same time, these universal doctrines must be designed for humans, i.e. must be in keeping with the level of morality and spiritual cultivation attainable by a given people which is no easy task to determine. Some of the noblest and for mankind most interesting ideas are scarcely suited for adoption as universal maxims. They appear to be appropriate only for a handful of ripened individuals who, having endured many trials, have already succeeded in attaining wisdom. In such individuals they have become sure beliefs, and in situations where such beliefs are truly supportive they have become matters of unshakable conviction. Thus, for instance, the belief in a wise and benevolent providence: when it is alive and of the right sort, it goes hand in hand with the complete acceptance of Gods will. Now this tenet and everything connected with it is also undeniably the main doctrine of the whole Christian community, whose teachings in general reduce to the all-transcending love of God toward which everything moves. Day in and day out God is represented to us as being ever present and close by, as bringing about everything that goes on around us. And this is not just represented as being somehow necessarily linked with our morality and everything we hold sacred, it is even given out as a matter of complete certainty on the basis of the abundant assurances God provides us and through all the deeds he performs to convince us of it incontrovertibly. And yet as experience teaches, a mere thunderclap or a cold night can cause the masses to become very faint-hearted in their trust in divine providence and in their patient submission to Gods will, it evidently being only within the capability of the wise man to quell impatience and anger over frustrated hopes, and to overcome despair over misfortunes. Such abrupt abandonment of trust in God, this sudden changeover to dissatisfaction with him, is facilitated not only by accustoming the Christian populace from childhood on to pray incessantly, but even more by forever seeking to persuade it of the most urgent necessity for doing so through promises that such prayers will surely to some degree be answered. Moreover, suffering mankind has been furnished with such a motley assortment of reasons for proffering solace in misfortunes that in the end one might well come to regret not having a father or mother to lose once a week, or not being struck blind. With incredible acuity, this way of thinking has taken to pursuing and pondering over the widest range of physical and moral effects. And since these were alleged to be the designs of Providence, it was supposed that one had herewith attained keener insight into its plans for humankind, both in the broad perspective and in detail. But no sooner do
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we lose patience with this, unwilling to merely lay our finger across our lips and lapse into awestricken silence, than we tend to find ourselves prey to an arrogant inquisitiveness that presumes to nothing short of mastery of the ways of Providence a propensity reinforced (though not among the common people) by the many idealistic notions currently in vogue. All of which contributes little indeed to the furthering of contentment with life in general and acquiescence in Gods will. It might be interesting to compare all this with what the Greeks believed. On the one hand, their faith that the gods favor those who are good, and leave evildoers to the tender mercies of a frightful Nemesis was based on a profoundly moral demand of reason and lovingly animated by the warm breath of their feelings, rather than on the cold conviction, deduced from single instances, that everything turns out for the best (a conviction that can never come truly alive). On the other hand, among them misfortune was misfortune, pain was pain. What had happened could not be altered. There was no point in brooding over whatever such things might mean, since their moira, their anangkaia tyche, was blind. But then they submitted to this necessity willingly and with all possible resignation. And at least this much can be said in their favor: one endures more easily what one has been accustomed from childhood on to regard as necessary, and that the pain and suffering to which misfortune naturally gives birth did not occasion in them the much more burdensome and unbearable anger, the despondency and discontent we feel. This faith, since it embraced not only respect for the course of natural necessity but also the conviction that men are governed by the gods in accordance with moral laws, seems humanly in keeping with the exaltedness of the divine and the frailty of man in his limited perspective and dependence on nature. Doctrines that are simple and founded upon universal reason are compatible with every stage of popular education. And the latter comes gradually to modify the former in accordance with its own transformations, albeit more with respect to its external effects, i.e. those having to do with what the sensuous imagination depicts. In keeping with how they are constituted, these doctrines, if they are founded on universal human reason, can have no other purpose than to influence the spirit of a people in but a general way and to do so partly in and of themselves and partly through the closely connected magic of powerfully impressive ceremonies. They have no business interfering in the execution of civil justice or usurping the role of ones private conscience. Nor, since the way in which they are formulated is simple as well, will they easily give rise to squabbles over their meaning. And, since they demand and stipulate very little that is positive (reasons legislation being in any event merely formal), the lust for power on the part of the priests of such a religion remains circumscribed.
II
Any religion purporting to be a folk religion must be so constituted 4 that it engages the heart and imagination. Even the purest religion of reason must become incarnate in the souls of individuals, and all the more so in the people as a whole. In order that our fantasy be given a proper outlet, one orienting it onto a path it can decorate with its beautiful flowers without drifting off into romantic extravagances, it would be best to tie myths to the religion itself from the very outset. Now the doctrines of the Christian religion are for the most part tied to history and represented historically. The stage, even if other than mere humans acted on it, is set here in this mundane realm. Thus our
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imagination is provided with a readily discernible goal. To be sure, our imagination is still given some room to rove: if colored with black bile it can paint a frightful world for itself, or since the spirit of our religion has banished all the beautiful colorations of sense as well as everything that has charm, even while we have become far too much men of words and reason to take much delight in beautiful images it may well lapse into childishness. With regard to ceremonies, on the one hand no folk religion is conceivable without them; on the other, nothing is harder to prevent than their being taken by the populace at large for the essence of religion itself. Now religion consists of three things: a) concepts, b) essential customs, and c) ceremonies. Thus if we regard baptism and the eucharist as rites involving certain extraordinary benefits and indulgences which we as Christians are duty-bound to perform so as to become more perfect, more moral, then they belong to the second class. But if we look upon them as mere means intended and able only to arouse pious sentiments, then they belong to the third class. Sacrifices belong here too; but they cannot properly be called ceremonies, for they are essential to the religion with which they are connected. They are part of its structure, whereas ceremonies are mere embellishments, the formal aspect of this structure. Sacrifices themselves can be looked at from two perspectives: a) In part they were brought to the altars of the gods as propitiation, as atonement, as an attempt either to commute a much-feared physical or moral punishment into a fine or to ingratiate oneself into the lost favor of the supreme lord. the dispenser of rewards and punishments. Such practices are of course deemed unworthy and rightly censured on grounds of their irrationality and their adulteration of the whole concept of morality. But we have to keep in mind that an idea of sacrifice as crass as this has never really gained ascendancy anywhere (except perhaps in the Christian church), and we have to appreciate the value of the feelings activated in the process, even if they were not pure: a solemn awe of the holy being. a contrite heart humbly prostrated before him, and the deep trust that drove a troubled soul crying out for peace to this anchor. Think of a pilgrim burdened by the weight of his sins. He has left behind the comforts of home, his wife and children, his native soil, to wander through the world barefoot and clad in a hair-shirt. He hunts for impassable tracts to torment his feet. He sprinkles the holy places with his tears. Seeking repose for his ravaged spirit, he finds relief in every tear shed, in every mortification. He is urged on by the thought Here Christ walked, here he was crucified for me, a thought from which he gains renewed strength, renewed self-confidence. But is it really for us, incapable of such a state of mind merely because of other notions prevalent in our time, to react to such a pilgrim and such simplicity of heart with the Pharisaic sentiment Well, I am more sensible than people like that"? Is it for us to heap ridicule upon his pious sentiments? Then again, expiatory pilgrimages like this do form a subspecies of precisely the sort of sacrifice I was speaking of above, being offered up in the very same spirit as those penances. b) But there is another, milder spirit of sacrifice, one germinating in a gentler latitude, that was probably the more original and universal. It was based on gratitude and benevolence. Filled with the sense of a being higher than man, and aware of its indebtedness to him for everything, it was confident that he would not scorn what was offered him in all innocence. It was disposed to implore his help at the outset of every undertaking, and to sense his presence in every joyous experience, every good fortune attained. Thinking of Nemesis before partaking of any pleasure, it offered to its god the first fruits, the flower of every possession, inviting him into its home confident that he would
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abide there willingly. The frame of mind that offered such a sacrifice was far removed from any notion of having hereby atoned for its sins or expiated some portion of their justly deserved punishment. Nor did its conscience persuade it that in this manner Nemesis might be appeased and induced to give up not only her claims on it but her laws governing the restoration of moral equilibrium as well. Essential practices like these need not be bound more closely to religion than to the spirit of the people; it is preferable that they actually spring from the latter. Otherwise their exercise is without life, cold and powerless, and the attendant feelings artificial and forced. On the other hand it may be that these are practices that are not essential to folk religion anyway, although they may be to private religion. Thus for instance we have the eucharist as it exists in its present form throughout Christendom, although originally it was intended as a meal for communal enjoyment. The indispensable characteristics of ceremonies designed for a folk religion are: a) First and foremost, that they contain little or no inducement to fetishistic worship that they not consist of a mere mechanical operation devoid of spirit. Their sole aim must be to intensify devotion and pious sentiments. Perhaps the only pure means for eliciting such an effect, the one least susceptible to misuse, is sacred music and the song of an entire people perhaps also folk festivals, in which religion is inevitably involved.
III
As soon as any sort of wall is put between doctrine and life as soon as they become in any way separated or lose touch with each other we begin suspecting that there is something wrong with the very form of this religion. Perhaps it is too preoccupied with empty verbiage. Perhaps excessive and hypocritical demands are being made on the people, demands repugnant to their natural needs, to the impulses of a well-ordered sensibility (tes sophrosynes). Or possibly both at once. If a religion makes people feel shame over their moments of joy and merriment, if someone has to slink into the temple because he has made a spectacle of himself at a public festival, then its outer form is too forbidding for it to expect anyone to give up lifes pleasures in favor of its demands. A folk religion must be a friend to all lifes feelings; it should never intrude, but should seek to be a welcome guest everywhere. And if it is to have real effect on a people, it must also be their companion supportive of their undertakings and the more serious concerns of their lives as well as of their festivals and times of fun. It must not appear obtrusive, must not become a nagging schoolmarm, but rather initiate and encourage. The folk festivals of the Greeks were all religious festivals, and were held either in honor of a god or of a man deified because of his exemplary service to his country. They consecrated everything, even their bacchantic excesses, to some deity; and the dramas they staged in the public theater had a religious origin which they never disavowed, even as they became more cultivated. Thus, for instance, Agathon did not forget the gods when he carried off a prize for his tragedy; the very next day he arranged a feast for them. A folk religion engendering and nurturing, as it does, great and noble sentiments goes hand in hand with freedom. But our religion would train people to be citizens of heaven, gazing ever upward, making our most human feelings seem alien. Indeed at the greatest of our public feasts we proceed to
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the enjoyment of the holy eucharist dressed in the colors of mourning and with eyes downcast; even here, at what is supposed to be a celebration of human brotherhood, we fear we might contract venereal disease from the brother who drank out of the communal chalice before. And lest any of us remain attentive to the ceremony, filled with a sense of the sacred, we are nudged to fetch a donation from our pocket and plop it on a tray. How different were the Greeks! They approached the altars of their friendly gods clad in the colors of joy, their faces, open invitations to friendship and love, beaming with good cheer. The spirit of a nation is reflected in its history, its religion, and the degree of its political freedom; and these cannot be taken in isolation when considering either their individual character or their influence on each other. They are bound together as one, like three companions none of whom can do anything without the others even as each benefits from all. The improvement of individual morality is a matter involving ones private religion, ones parents, ones personal efforts, and ones individual situation. The cultivation of the spirit of the people as a whole requires in addition the respective contributions of folk religion and political institutions. Ah, to the soul that retains a feeling for human splendor, for greatness in great things, there radiates from distant bygone days an unforgettable image. It is the picture of the spirit of nations, son of fortune and freedom, pupil of a fine imagination. He too was tied to mother earth by the brazen fetters of basic need. But by means of his sensibility and imagination he cultivated, refined, and beautified them to such an extent that, garlanded with roses given by the Graces, he was able in the midst of these chains to take delight in them as his own handiwork, as part of his own self. His servants were joy, gaiety, and poise, and his soul was suffused with the consciousness of its power and freedom. But his more intimate playmates were friendship and love not the wood faun but sensitive, soulful Amor, adorned with all the allurements of the heart and of sweet dreams. Thanks to his father, himself a favorite of Fortune and a son of Force, he had ample trust in his own destiny and took pride in his deeds. His warm-hearted mother, never harsh or reproachful, left her son to natures nurturing; good mother that she was, she refused to cramp his delicate limbs in tight swaddling. She would rather play along with the moods and inspirations of her darling than think to curb them; in harmony with these, his nurse [i.e. religion] reared this child without fear of the rod or ghosts in the dark, without the bittersweet honey bread of mysticism or the fetters of words which would keep him perpetually immature. Instead she had him drink the clear and healthful milk of pure sensations. With the flowers of her fine and free imagination she adorned the impenetrable veil that removes the deity from our gaze, conjuring up behind it a realm inhabited by living images onto which he projected the great ideas his heart brings forth in all the fullness of its noble and beautiful sentiments. just as the nanny in ancient Greece was a friend of the family and remained a friend of her charge the rest of her life, so his nurse [again, religion] remains his friend even while he, unspoiled as he is, freely expresses his gratitude and returns her love. A good companion, she shares in his pleasures and takes part in his games; and he in turn never finds her a bother. Yet she always maintains her dignity; and his conscience rebels whenever he slights it. Her dominion holds sway forever, for it is based on the love, the gratitude, the noblest feelings of her ward. She has coaxed their refinement along, she has obeyed his imaginations every whim yet she has taught him to respect iron necessity, she has taught him to conform to this unalterable destiny without murmur. We know this spirit only by hearsay. We have only a few traces on a handful of surviving
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reproductions that enable us to contemplate and lovingly admire his likeness; and these can but awaken a painful longing for the original. He the fair youth we love even in his more light-hearted moments, when among the whole retinue of the Graces he inhales from every flower the balsam breath of nature, the soul that they had breathed into it has fled from the earth.
Religion within the limits of Reason Alone, Kant 1793 Positivity of the Christian Religion, Hegel 1795
Hegel-by-HyperText Home Page @ marxists.org
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pc/tubingen.htm
Page 18 of 18
Jena Lectures 1805-6 by Hegel
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The Philosophy of Spirit (Jena Lectures 1805-6) PART I. Spirit according to its Concept
A. Intelligence
In Spirit, the subsistence of an object its space is Being. Being is the abstract, pure concept of subsistence. I and the thing are in space. Space is posited as essentially distinct from its content. It is not the essence of its fulfilment itself. It is only a formal universal which is separate from its particular. The subsistence of Spirit, however, is truly universal; it contains the particular itself. The thing is. It is not in Being [as content is in space]; rather it itself is. That, in immediate form, is the essence of intuition (Anschauung): knowing some being (Seyenden). Spirit, however, is this mediated with itself. Spirit is what it is only in transcending what it is immediately, stepping back from it. In other words, we are to consider the movement in Spirit, i.e., how a being becomes universal for it, or how it makes a being universal, positing it as what it is. Being is the form of immediacy, but Being should be posited in its truth. (a) Spirit is immediate, as generally intuiting, so that a being is for it. But it comes back out of this immediacy, returns into itself, is for itself. It posits itself [as] free of this immediacy, distancing itself from it at first; it is like an animal, it is time, which is for itself, and [it is] the freedom of time as well this pure subject that is free of its content but also master of it, unlike space and time which are selfless. Spirit (Geist) [i.e., mind] starts from this Being and [then] posits it within itself as something that is a not-being, as something in general sublated (aufgehobnes). In so doing, Spirit [mind] is the representational power of imagination (vorstellende Einbildungskraft) as such. It is the Self against itself. At first, Spirit itself is intuition; it places itself in opposition to this Self. The object [i.e. the external thing] is not its object now, but rather its own intuition, i.e., the content of the perception as its own [content]. When I look at something (Im Anschauen), what I look at is in me for it is I, after all, who look at it; it is my looking. Spirit steps out of this looking, and looks at its looking i.e., it looks at the object as its own, at the object [now] cancelled as a being [and taken as] image. In the looking, Spirit is the image. For it, insofar as it is consciousness, [the object] is a being that is severed from the I. For us, however, it is the unity of both [i.e., its independent being and the I]. It becomes clear to Spirit that it [i.e., Spirit itself] is in and for itself (an und fur sich) but to begin with, in the looking, Spirit is only in itself. It complements this [being-in-itself] with the for-itself, with negativity, separation from the in-itself, and goes back into itself. It takes its first self as an object, i.e., the image, Being as mine, as negated (als aufgehobnes). This image belongs to Spirit. Spirit is in possession of the image, is master of it. It is stored in the Spirits treasury, in its Night. The image is unconscious, i.e., it is not displayed as an object for representation. The human being is this Night, this empty nothing which contains everything in its simplicity a wealth of infinitely many representations, images, none of which occur to it directly, and none of which are not present. This [is] the Night, the interior of [human] nature, existing here pure Self [and] in phantasmagoric representations it is night everywhere: here a bloody head suddenly shoots up and there another white shape, only to disappear as suddenly. We see this Night when we look a human being in the eye, looking into a Night which turns terrifying. [For from his
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eyes] the night of the world hangs out toward us. Into this Night the being has returned. Yet the movement of this power is posited likewise. The image is many-sided, its form as its determinacy and this leads to other determinations and to multiplicity in general. The I is the form, not only as simple self but also as movement, the relation of parts of the image positing the form, the relation, as its own. Insofar as it comprises a part of the content it transforms it. [The I] for itself is here free arbitrariness [able] to dismember images and to reconnect them in the most dissociated manner. If the self, in its drawing forth of images, allows itself to go nearer the passive relation, then it is under the domination of the so-called association of ideas an English phrase referring, even today, to the mere image (e.g., of a dog), an idea. The laws of this association of ideas refer to nothing more than the passive ordering of representation (e.g., if two things are usually seen together they tend to be reproduced together, and so on). This arbitrariness is empty freedom, for its content is [merely] sequential, merely formal, and concerns form alone. (b) The object has thereby received form in general, the determination of being mine. And in being looked at again, its being no longer has this pure signification of being [as such], but of [being] mine: e.g., it is familiar to me, or I remind myself of it, or immediately in it I have the consciousness of myself. In the immediate intuition [I had] only the consciousness of it; but if it is familiar it takes on for me this express determination. We are also reminded of something through something else; merely the image of the object is brought in upon us; remembering adds the element of being-for-self (Frsichseyn). I have already seen or heard it; I remind myself of it; I do not merely see or hear the object, but I thereby go into my inner self I remind [erinnere: literally, re-internalize] myself, taking myself out of the mere image, and placing myself into myself. I then place [or: posit] myself vis--vis the object in a special way. (c) This being-for-me, which I add to the object, is that Night, that Self, in which I immersed the object the object which is now brought forth and is an object for me. And what is before me [now] is a synthesis of both content and I. Yet the external object itself was negated (aufgehoben) in that very synthesis, and has become something other than it is. It has come under the domination of the Self, and has lost the significance of being immediate and independent. Not only has a synthesis occurred, but the being of the object has been negated (aufgehoben). The point, therefore, is that the object is not what it is. Its content is not free of its being; its being is Self. Its content is its simple essence as such, [but] this is something other than its being. As a totality, it counts as different, has a different essence; the Self has a different meaning, or counts as a sign. In the sign, it is the being-for-self (as the essence of the object) that is the object, and it is negated according to its totality, its content. Its content no longer has its own free value. Its being is the I itself Idealism, become its own object. [According to this view:] the thing is not what it is. Its being is the Self. My being-for-self is [now] the object as the essence of the thing, connected in memory only synthetically, externally. Here the I, as the inner [aspect] of the thing, is itself the object. As yet this inwardness of the thing is separated from its being; the universal [i.e., the thing qua thing], is not yet posited. This fact that I look at the thing as a mere sign, yet at its essence as I, as meaning, as reflection in itself this itself is [my] object. Only then is it merely immediate inwardness; it must also enter into existence (Daseyn), become an object, so that on the contrary this inwardness is made external a
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return to being (Seyn). This is language, as the name-giving power. The power of imagination provides only the empty form; [it is] the designative power positing the form as internal. Language, on the other hand, posits the internal as being (seyendes). This, then, is the true being of spirit as that of spirit as such. It is there as the unity of two free Selves [i.e., imagination and language] and [as] an entity (Daseyn) that is adequate to its concept. At the same time it immediately negates itself fading, yet perceived. Above all, language speaks only with this Self, with the meaning of the thing; it gives it a name and expresses this as the being of the object. [We might ask, for example,] What is this? We answer, It is a lion, a donkey, etc. [namely] it is. Thus it is not merely something yellow, having feet, etc., something on its own, [existing] independently. Rather, it is a name, a sound made by my voice, something entirely different from what it is in being looked at and this [as named] is its true being. [We might say:] This is only its name, the thing itself is something different; but then we fall back onto the sensory representation. Or [we might say:] It is only a name, in a higher sense, since to begin with, the name is itself only the very superficial spiritual being. By means of the name, however, the object has been born out of the I [and has emerged] as being (seyend). This is the primal creativity exercised by Spirit. Adam gave a name to all things. This is the sovereign right [of Spirit], its primal taking-possession of all nature or the creation of nature out of Spirit [itself]. [Consider] Logos, reason, the essence of the thing and of speech, of object (Sache) and talk (Sage), the category [in respect to all of these,] man speaks to the thing as his. And this is the being of the object. Spirit relates itself to itself: it says to the donkey, You are an inner [subjective] entity, and that Inner is I; your being is a sound which I have arbitrarily invented. The sound, donkey, is altogether different from the sensate entity. Insofar as we see it, and also feel or hear it, we are that entity itself, immediately one with it and fulfilled. Coming back as a name, however, it is something spiritual, altogether different. [In this light] the world, nature, is no longer a realm of images internally suspended (aufgehoben), having no being. Rather, it is a realm of names. The realm of images is the dreaming spirit, concerned with a content lacking all reality, all existence. Its awakening is the realm of names. Here we have a division: Spirit is [only] as consciousness; only now do its images have truth. The dreamer believes this as well, but it is not true the dreamer cannot distinguish himself from the one awake, while the one awake can distinguish himself from the one who is dreaming, in that what is so for him is true. It is true [means] it is no longer merely ones being-for-self that is there, the object [as] images. Rather, the enclosed being-for-self at the same time has the form of being: it is. In names, we actually first overcome the looking (An schauen), the animal [physiological] aspect, as well as space and time. The looked-at [object] is evanescent; its totality is like a simple atmosphere, an aroma, simple individuality, raised out of feeling into a higher spiritual sense. Individuality, actuality as such but it is as yet primal, without its own content, immediate. The name has yet another meaning than what it is. The object, in the sign, has another meaning than what it is the inner. The meaning of a name, on the other hand, is the sensate being. Its content must become equal to its simple existent spirituality. The Spirit goes back into itself from this being of the name that is, its name-giving is an object for
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it as a realm, a multitude of names. They are simple, enclosed in themselves. The many-sidedness of the image is enveloped and suppressed in this Self. The power of imagination takes the object (with its many-sidedness) out of its immediate environment. Yet the name is solitary, without relation or tie. [Names comprise] a series which is not self-supporting, since the name has no determinacy in it, no intrinsic relation to something else. The I is all alone the bearer, the space and substance of these names. It is their order, their interrelation of complete mutual indifference. In themselves they have no rank or relation. Thus the I must now look at itself as ordering this, or look at them as ordered and maintaining this order, so that it is permanent. The I is first of all in possession of names; it must preserve them in its Night as serviceable, obedient to the I. Not only must it regard names in general, it must also look. at them in its space as a fixed order for this is their interrelation and necessity, the intrinsic relation of many different names. It is up to the I to create their content out of itself. Its content consists of undifferentiated (gleichgultigen) names; but in their indifference as a multitude, the Self, as something negative, is not as it truly is. The negative element, in the multitude of names, is the independent relation of each to the other. This relation is ascribed to the names as such; the I holds them fixed in necessity a necessity not yet ascribed to them but only that of a fixed order. Or it is actual memory, having itself still in its object, as understanding which has an object. Memory preserves the name in general, the free and arbitrary connection of this image (or meaning) and a name, so that the image evokes the name, and the name the image. But on a higher level the relation is freed of this inequality, so that a name is related only to another name [or sound] e.g., the words lightning, thunder (Blitz, Donner), in their [phonetic] similarity to the empirical phenomenon but free names are not interrelated. The I is the force of this free order an order not yet posited as necessary, although it is an order [nevertheless]. The I is the free bearer, the free non-objective order it is the first I to grasp itself as force. It itself is necessity, free of representation, the fixing and fixed order. The exercise of memory is therefore the first work of the awakened spirit qua spirit. The inventing and bestowing of names is a creative arbitrariness. In memory this arbitrariness is what disappears first the I has come into being. The name is [now] a fixed sign, a permanent relation, universal. The I has [thus] surrendered its arbitrariness in its being, positing itself as universal. Therefore order, here, is necessary relation as such. Yet this itself is as yet an inner or contingent order an arbitrary necessity [as it were] for its aspects are not yet posited, are not yet in themselves. It is merely a necessity in general, i.e., contingent. Now this holding on to such a relation of the name or names is the immaterial movement and occupation of Spirit with itself. It no longer connects sensory existing representations together arbitrarily, merely reproducing them as they are. Rather, it is a free force and maintains itself as this free force. At the same time, its work is such that the I makes itself into what it is in name-giving, namely a thing, a being (seyendes); it is of the names, and it is a thing. The I makes itself into a thing, in that it fixes the order of names within itself. It fixes them within itself, i.e., it makes itself into this unthinking order, which has the mere appearance of order. In the appearance of order there lies the I necessity, the Self with its aspects. But these aspects are as yet purely indifferent. Only as memory
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can the I make itself into a thing, because the thing into which it makes itself is in itself I. It is now the active I, the movement making itself into that object which (in naming) it immediately is. The foritself of recollection is here its activity [turned] to itself bringing forth itself, negating (negiren) itself. If the name is seen as the object about which the I is active, then the I annuls itself (hebt sich auf). This work is therefore the primary inner effect upon itself, an altogether unsensory occupation and the beginning of the free elevation of the Spirit, for here it has itself as object a far higher work than the childish occupation with external, sensory or painted pictures (plants, animals with a big snout, yellow mane, long tail, etc.). This [concern with] seeing, attention, is the primary necessary activity [ concern with] seeing precisely, with the activity of Spirit, fixing, abstracting, extracting, exertion, and overcoming of what is indeterminate in sensation. Yet this activity is not directed at itself. [In] this concern with itself, [the I has the aim of] producing itself (sich hervorzubringen) the reverse of that [process] which makes a thing into the I. Holding to an order is the Is thinking its own content. The content is not due to the name which the I sees as its own. Rather, it is due to the form, order but as a fixed, arbitrary, contingent [order], it is externality, thingness. I know something by heart [this means that] I have made myself into an indifferent order. I am order, relation, activity but this order is arbitrary. The I is thereby made into a thing. This directedness to the name thus has the opposite significance: namely, that the directedness to the I, with the negation of the name as a being-for-itself, is posited as arbitrary, active. What is posited is the universality with equal value and equal elevation (aufgehobenseyn) given to the active I and the object: namely, the I has become the object. In the name it has only become a being, as opposed to being-for-itself; so that the name is as yet arbitrary, particular. Thing, understanding, necessity: the thing as simple universality, necessity as self-movement. The thing has a necessity to it, since it has the Is selfhood to it. A difference in the thing is a difference in the Self; i.e., it is a negative relation to itself. Understanding, insight is the difference, not in the thing but rather of the thing vis--vis the understanding. Actually it is not the understanding which belongs here, but rather the experience of consciousness [i.e., a phenomenology of spirit]. Thus the I is active in connection with the thing or with universality as such, i.e., the movement of the universal is posited. The difference between the two [I and the thing] is that the I is differentiated from itself it is the universal to which it is opposed as the negativity which it itself contains. This negativity itself, in the form of universality, is particularity. Both [subject and object] are completely indifferent to one another, since each is the universal, i.e., each is the relation of itself to itself. These extreme [poles], however, are at the same time simply related to one another: identical to one another in their indifference or universality, each related to itself but also for the other since each itself is what it is only in opposition to the other. The ground [of everything] has come to be through this movement, enveloping the universal within it in its simplicity only as negativity and concealing it. The particular, on the other hand, as the negative, is negative in excluding the other, the not-negative, the universal. Both relate to themselves and are thus universal, yet at the same time only one of them is the Universal. Each is the negative of the other, yet only one of them is the Negative. The one (the particular) is inwardly universal in its relation to itself to itself, since it excludes the other and its external being, and is negative toward this other. The other (the universal), however, is
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internally negative; it contains the negativity in itself but is universal outwardly. Each thereby has externally what it is internally, as has the other. In other words, the in-itself of each, that which it is not for the other, this is the other; it is that which is for it. Each is its own contrary, both are themselves this movement: this being-other, yet being self-related; relation, too, is the contrary of their equivalence (Gleichgltigkeit) which they have in judgment. The inward being of each is differentiated from its outward being. They are thus divided in themselves, self-negating (sich aufhebende). That inward being is in and for itself. But this too (e.g., negativity, universality) is its other. Thus the universal is self-identical. Thus it is negativity, since this is its inner. Just as it is particularity, it is also universality, the contrary, non-identity. Its true being is its outward being, i.e., only in its relation, not in and for itself. At the same time, the universality of either side [outer and inner] thereby has the significance of being. The two sides are so identical to one another that here too what they are in themselves falls apart into two equivalent aspects. The universality as such is only the one; being, however, is the reality itself, subsistence as multiplicity. Both are therefore universal, and only one is the Universal. They are beings (seyende), and yet they are not identical in this being (Seyn): the one sort of being is the inner, the in-itself of the other, and they are negative. Their unity is itself something other than both extremities, since they are opposed to one another; yet their juxtaposition is such that precisely in that respect wherein they are juxtaposed they are identical and again, in such a way that their juxtaposition is something other than their selfidentity. Yet precisely in their unity and their mutual opposition they are related to one another; and in that both are other than this unity, this otherness is their middle term which relates them. The conclusion is therefore posited: insofar as the two extremes are opposed they are one in some third element; and insofar as they are identical, it is precisely their opposition, that which divides them (das sie dirimirende), that is the [unifying] third element. This third element, however, is such that it is everything the other two are. It is universality, negativity and since there is more than one universal, it is their being. Universality is such that it is immediately identical with itself and is opposed to itself, divided into itself and its contrary. The same is true for negativity. And simple being is immediate multiplicity. It is the unity of contraries the self-moving universal that divides itself into beings which are that unifying third and is thereby the pure negativity. The understanding is reason, and its object is the I itself. The main point is that the thinghood, insofar as it is universality, at the same time presents itself immediately as being, and the negativity or unity is thereby posited. Thinghood, represented as being, comes to its conclusion by way of judgment. Their relation, by means of the contrary, is something other, the third element. Yet each is mediated with the other by means of this third element: the particular, in its self-relation according to its Self, is in itself not there; the understanding is its initself. Likewise, the universal is not there as negativity. This is its in-itself and the same goes for the understanding, since this is the in-itself (das Ansich). The understanding is (a) the inner side of each; but likewise it is (b) the outer side of each, since as negativity it is the external, the existence (Daseyn) of the particular; and as universal it is the external, the existence of the universal. It is likewise (c) the being (Seyn) of many, containing all that is [multifarious and mutually] indifferent. Thus it is this pure movement of universality, which is the inhttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/jl/ch01a.htm Page 6 of 7
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itself and the existence that is differentiated from it. The understanding is reason which is its own object. Reason is the inferred conclusion in its infinitude, dividing itself into extremes each of which, insofar as it exists, immediately has its other as its in-itself. In this light, intelligence has no other object for its content, but having grasped itself it is its own object. The thing, the universal, is for intelligence as the thing is in itself: sublated [negated] being, as positive, as I. Intelligence is actual (wirklich) the possibility of an effect (Wirken). The object is in itself what intelligence is, and this is why the object can be sublated (aufgehoben) but intelligence has not yet been active for itself (for itself in the sense that the intelligence has looked upon the transformation as its own, upon activity as the Self i.e., the change, its objective minus, as it itself). This intelligence is free, yet its freedom is, on the other hand, without content, at whose cost and loss it has freed itself. Its movement is the opposite: to fulfill itself not through passive absorption, but through the creation of a content wherein the intelligence has the consciousness of its own activity, i.e., as its own positing of content or making itself its own content. In theoretical knowing, the intelligence can as well know in terms of imagery, in memory, knowing itself, not as content but as form. Thus the I itself is not the ground [the basis], the universal, upon which the determinations and differentiations of intelligence are presented.
B. Will
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B. Will
Volition [simply] wills, i.e., it wants to posit itself [assert itself], make itself, as itself, its own object. It is free, but this freedom is the empty, the formal the evil. It is in itself determined (beschlossen) it is the termination [Schluss: literally, conclusion] in itself. [It has these aspects:] (a) it is the universal, purpose; (b) it is the particular, the Self, activity, actuality; (c) it is the middle [term] of both these, the drive. The drive is two-sided: [there is] the side that has the content, the universal, which is purpose; and the side that is the active Self [that achieves it]. The one side is the ground, the other the form. (a) Exactly which of these is the determinate content of the drive cannot be specified as yet, since this has not yet been determined. So far, it has none, since we have only got so far as positing the [mere] concept of the will. What impulses the I may have are first revealed in the content of its world; these are its drives. (b) The determinate manner in which that termination [or conclusion] is posited in the I is such that all elements of it are enclosed in the Self as the universal, as global, [so that] it is now the totality, and its opposite is merely an empty form for self-consciousness. This also comprises the force of its conclusion, of its will so that the will, insofar as it expresses an external aspect, is in this taken back into itself without exhibiting a determinate aspect by which it can be grasped: thus, what are velvet paws for one are claws for another; but no matter how we try to grasp the will we feel only smooth satin which we cannot hold on to. The will is thus a totality and therefore unassailable. (c) This global termination, rounded in itself, is at the same time turned outward it is actual consciousness, although it is here regarded as enclosed within the I. Namely, the will is being-for-self which has extinguished all foreign content within itself. But thus it is left without an other, without content and it feels this lack. Nevertheless, it is a lack which is likewise positive. (It is purpose the form by which it is mere purpose is the incomplete being. Being as such has thereby become form.) The negative, exclusive [element] is thus in the will itself so that it is therein concerned only with itself, and is thus that which is excluded from itself. [In this way] purpose stands juxtaposed to the Self; [it is] particularity, actuality for the universal. The feeling of lack is the above mentioned unity of both in the drive [uniting purpose (universal) and activity (particular)] as feeling, as lack of opposition. This conclusion is merely the first: the universal and the particular are locked together in the drive. The extremes have the form of equivalent being for one another thus positing the primary reality, which is incomplete. The second conclusion is the satisfaction of the drive. This is not the same as the satisfaction of a desire which is animal, i.e., its object has the abstract form of actual being, externality. Only in this way is it for the Self. Thus the union is likewise the pure disappearance. But here, being is mere form: thus what is I in its totality is the drive. This the I separates [from itself] and makes its own object. This object is not empty satiety, the simple feeling of Self, which is lost in desire and restored in its satisfaction. Rather, what disappears is the pure form of equivalence of the drives extremes the
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purpose, content, juxtaposed to particularity. And the disappearance of this equivalence is the disappearance of the contrast [thus it is] being, but a fulfilled being. It [the I] becomes regardful (anschauend), through immediacy, the overcoming (Aufheben) of contrast. (In general, the I always goes over into looking and feeling, in this way.) The main point is the content of the object. The object separates itself from its drive, thereby acquiring a different form the quiescent drive, become itself, fulfilled in itself. The lack was in the looking of the empty I for this was object to itself. It held the differences of the conclusion together; it comprised their equivalence, their subsistence, not being as such; it was the primary immediate I, but I as such. The drive having been separated from the I, it is released from the Self the bare content held together by its being. The work of the I: it knows its activity in this, i.e., knows itself as the I, heretofore [hidden] in the interior of being. [It knows itself] as activity (not as in memory), but rather so that the content as such is [revealed] through it; this is because the distinction as such was its own. The distinction makes up the content, and that alone is what is important here that the I has posited the distinction out of itself and knows it as its own. (Name and thing are the former distinction not the distinction, as such, of the I; the latter is simple.) Determination of the object: it is thus the content, the distinction of the conclusion; it is particularity and universality, and their mediation. But [as] a being, immediate, its mediation is dead universality, thinghood, otherness; and its extremes are particularity, determinacy, and individuality. Insofar as it is the other, its activity is that of the I; it has no activity of its own; this extreme falls outside it. As thinghood, it is passivity, the [mere] communication of this activity as fluid, but as having something alien in it. Its other extreme is the opposite: the particularity of its being and of its activity. It is passive, it is for another, touches it, something that can be worn away [in] communication with the other. This is its being, but it is at the same time the active form set against it. Converse relation: in one sense, the activity is merely something communicated, communication itself, purely receptive; in another sense, it is activity directed at another. The gratified impulse is [thus] the transformed labor (aufgehobene Arbeit) of the I; this is the object working in its stead. Labor is ones making oneself into a thing (sich zum Dinge machen). The division of the I beset by drives is this very same self-objectification (sich zum Gegenstande machen). Desire must always begin anew, never succeeding in ridding itself of its labor. The drive, however, is the unity of the I as objectified (als zum Dinge gemachten). The bare activity is pure mediation, movement; the bare satisfaction of desire is the pure extinction of the object. The labor itself as such is not only activity the acid [which dissolves passivity] but it is also reflected in itself, a bringing forth: the one-sided form of the content [as] particular element. But here the drive brings itself forth; it brings forth the labor itself [so that] the drive satisfies itself, [while] the other elements fall into external consciousness. The bringing forth is the content also insofar as it is what is willed, and the means of [fulfilling] desire, its determinate possibility. In the tool and in the ploughed and cultivated field, I possess a possibility, a content as something universal. Thus the tool [as] means is of greater value than the goal of desire, which goal is particular; the tool encompasses all such particularities.
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But a tool does not yet have the activity within it. It is an inert thing; it does not turn back into itself. I still must work with it. Between myself and the external [world of] thinghood, I have inserted my cunning in order to spare myself, to hide my determinacy and allow it to be made use of. What I spare myself is merely quantitative; I still get calluses. My being made a thing is yet a necessary element [since] the drives own activity is not yet in the thing. The tools activity must be placed in the tool itself, so that it is made self-acting. This happens (a) in such a way that its [own] thread is interlaced with it and its two-sidedness is utilized, in order to make it go back on itself in this opposition. In general, its passivity is transformed into activity, in persistent collaboration. Above all, it happens also (b) in order that natures own activity be employed the elasticity of the watchspring, [the power of] water, wind so that, in their sensory existence, these do something other than what they [ordinarily] would do. Their blind doing is made purposeful, in opposition to themselves. [This is the] rational control of natural laws in their external existence. Nothing happens to nature itself; the particular purposes of natural being become a universal purpose. The bird flies thither.... Here the drive withdraws entirely from labor. The drive lets nature consume itself, watches quietly and guides it all with only the slightest effort. [This is] cunning. [Consider] the honor of cunning against power to grasp blind power from one side so that it turns against itself; to comprehend it, to grasp it as something determinate, to be active against it to make it return into itself as movement, so that it negates itself. Thus the destiny of the individual thing is [in the hands of] Man. Through cunning, the will becomes feminine. The outgoing drive, as cunning, is a theoretical contemplation, the unknowing a drive to knowing. There are two powers, two characters, here. This contemplation of how the being, in itself, negates itself (sich aufhebt) is different from the drive; it is the I that has left it and gone back into itself, the I that knows the nullity (Nichtigkeit) of this being, while the drive is tensed within it. The will has [thereby] become doubled, split in two. It is determined, it is character. One sort of character involves this tension, the power in the confrontation of beings. This power, however, is blind, has no consciousness of the nature of this being. It is fully open, straightforward, driving and being driven. The other sort of character is evil, [enclosed] in itself, subterranean, knowing what is there in the light of day, and watching something accomplish its own destruction by its own efforts, or else turning actively against the thing, thereby introducing a negative element into its being, indeed into its self-preservation. The first of these [operates] as a being confronting another being. The second [operates] by using reason, as a being [against] something it does not take with full seriousness as when a cape is offered to the bull which runs against it and, hitting nothing, is hit nonetheless. The will has divided itself into these two extremes, in one of which it is whole and universal, while in the other it is particular. These extremes are to posit themselves in one, the knowledge of the latter going over into cognition (Erkennen). This movement of the conclusion is thereby posited, so that each is in itself what the other is. The one, the universal, is particularity, the knowing Self. Concomitantly, the particular is the universal, since it is self-relatedness. But this must become something for them [something they are aware of], so that this equality becomes a knowledge of this equality. (a) The drive comes to look at itself it returns to itself in that satisfaction. In the same manner, it has
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become knowledge of what it is. The simple return to itself, the knowledge, is likewise the mediation for the division of the conclusion. The drive is outside itself, in the other simple Self, and knows the Self as an independent extreme. At the same time this knowledge knows its essence in the other. There is tension in the drive, the independence of both extremes. (b) In itself there is the supersession (Aufheben) of both: each [of the two selves] is identical to the other precisely in that wherein it opposes it; the other, that whereby it is the other to it, is it itself. In the very fact that each knows itself in the other, each has renounced itself love. Knowledge is precisely this ambiguity: each is identical to the other in that wherein it has opposed itself to the other. The self-differentiation of each from the other is therefore a self-positing of each as the others equal. And this knowledge is cognition in the very fact that it is itself this knowledge of the fact that for it itself its opposition goes over into identity; or this, that it knows itself as it looks upon itself in the other. Cognition means ones knowing what is objective, in its objectivity, as knowledge of ones Self: i.e., a [subjectively] conceptualized content, in the sense of a concept that is object. This cognition is merely a cognition of characters since neither one has as yet determined itself as a Self vis--vis the other. Only the one is knowledge in itself, the other is knowledge as outward activity; and the one is the universal substance directed outward, the rounded substance, [while] the other [is] directed inward. Thus they are only opposed characters, not knowing themselves but either knowing themselves in one another, or else knowing themselves only in themselves. The movement of knowing is thus in the inner realm itself, not in the objective realm. In their first interrelation, the two poles of the tension already fall asunder. To be sure, they approach one another with uncertainty and timidity, yet with trust, for each knows itself immediately in the other, and the movement is merely the inversion whereby each realizes that the other knows itself likewise in its other. This reversal also rests in the fact that each gives up its independence. The stimulus is itself an excitation, i.e., it is the condition of not being satisfied in oneself, but rather having ones essence in another because one knows oneself in the other, negating oneself as being-for-oneself, as different. This self-negation is ones being for another, into which ones immediate being is transformed. Each ones self-negation becomes, for each, the others being for the other. Thus the other is for me, i.e., it knows itself in me. There is only being for another, i.e., the other is outside itself. This cognition is love. It is the movement of the conclusion, so that each pole, fulfilled by the I, is thus immediately in the other, and only this being in the other separates itself from the I and becomes its object. It is the element of [custom or morality], the totality of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) though not yet it itself, but only the suggestion of it. Each one [here exists] only as determinate will, character, as the natural individual whose uncultivated natural Self is recognized. High chivalric love falls within mystic consciousness, which lives in a spiritual world regarded as the true one, a world which now approaches its actuality, and in this world such consciousness glimpses the other world as present. Friendship is only in shared work, and [the emphasis on it] occurs in the period of moral development: e.g., the moderation of Herculean virtue, Theseus and Pirithous, Orestes and Pylades. Love thereby becomes immediately objective for itself. Movement enters into it. Satisfied, it is the
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unity of poles, the unity which had previously been the drive this satisfied love. Distinct from the [two] characters is the third, the engendered. The unity divides itself into poles which are equivalent toward the middle. They are different beings. The satisfied love at first becomes so objective for itself that this third is something other than the two poles [i.e., other than the two individuals involved]; this is the love that is a being-other (Andersseyn), immediate thinghood, wherein the love does not know itself immediately, but rather exists for the sake of an other (just as the tool does not have its activity [inhering] in it itself). Thus both parties realize their mutual love through their mutual service, mediated in a third which is a thing. It is the mean and the means of love. And indeed, just as the tool is the ongoing [objectified] labor, so this third element is a universal as well; it is the permanent, ongoing possibility of their existence. As equivalent poles, they are, This being, since it is a being of the polar extremes, is transitory. As middle, as unity, it is universal. It is a family possession as movement [it is] acquisition. It is from here onward that there is the interest in acquisition and permanent possession, and in the general possibility of existence. It is from here onward, actually, that the desire itself enters in as such, namely, as rational, sanctified (if one so wishes). The desire is satisfied in shared labor. The labor does not occur to satisfy desires as individual but as general. The one who works on a given object does not necessarily consume it. Rather, it becomes a part of the common store, and all are supported by it. Like the tool, it [constitutes] the general possibility of enjoyment and also the general actuality of it. It is an immediate [non-mediated] spiritual possession. Family property has in it the element of activity, higher than the element of instrumentality so that both the polar parties are self-consciously active. But this object does not yet have the element of love in it. Rather, the love is in the polar parties. The cognition on the part of both characters is itself not yet a [fully] cognizant cognition (erkennendes Erkennen). The love itself is not yet the object. The I of love, however, withdraws from love, pushes itself away from itself and becomes its own object. The unity of both characters is only the love, but it does not know itself as the love. It knows itself in the child, in whom the two see their love their self-conscious unity as self-conscious. The unity is the immediate object, a particular entity and the unity of love is at the same time a movement to transcend (aufzuheben) this particularity. On one side this movement means the transcendence of immediate existence: e.g., the death of parents; they are a disappearing process, the self-annulling (sich aufhebend) source. Against the [concept of the] procreated individual there is this movement, as conscious, the becoming of his being-for-himself, education. According to his essence, however, there is the transcendence of love as such. The [idea of the] family is decided in these elements: (a) love, as natural, begetting children; (b) selfconscious love, conscious feeling, sentiment and language of the same; (e) shared labor and acquisition, mutual service and care; (d) education [of offspring]. No single function can be made the entire purpose [of the family]. Love has become its own object, and this a being-for-itself. It is no longer [a function of] character, but has the whole simple essence in it itself. Each [member] is the spiritual recognition itself, which knows itself. The family, as a totality, has confronted another self-enclosed totality, comprising individuals who are complete, free individualities for one another. Only here, then, do we find the actual being for the Spirit, in that it is a self-conscious being-for-itself.
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At the same time they are related to one another and are in a state of tension in regard to one another. Their immediate existence is exclusive. One [family member] has, say, taken possession of a piece of land not of a particular thing, e.g., a tool, but [a part] of the permanent general existence [freely available]. Through his labor he has designated it [as his], giving to the sign his own content as existent: a negative and exclusive significance. Another party is thereby excluded from something which he is. Thus the existence is no longer general [i.e., things are now defined as belonging to individuals].
Conclusion
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Conclusion
This relation is usually what is referred to as the state of nature, the free, indifferent being of individuals toward one another. And the [concept of] natural right should answer the question as to what rights and obligations the individuals have toward one another according to this relation, which is the element of necessity in their behavior as independent self-consciousnesses according to their conception. Their only interrelation, however, lies in overcoming (aufzuheben) their present interrelation: to leave the state of nature. In this interrelation they have no rights, no obligations towards one another, but acquire them only in leaving that situation. What is posited thereby is the concept of freely interrelated self-consciousnesses but only the concept itself. Since it is only a concept, it is still to be realized; i.e., it is to transcend (aufzuheben) itself in the form of a concept and approach reality, in actuality, it itself occurs unconsciously in the dissolution of the problem and in the problem itself unconsciously, i.e., so that the concept does not intrude into the [realm of the] object. The problem is this: What is right and obligation for the individual in the state of nature? The concept of this individual is taken as the basis; out of this concept the full notion is to be developed. I bring to it the definition of right. I show the individual to be a bearer of rights, a person. But this demonstration occurs within me; it is the movement of my thought, although the content is the free Self. This [conceptual] movement, however, does not leave this demonstration as it is; i.e., it is [itself] the movement of this concept. Right is the relation of persons, in their behavior, to others. It is the universal element of their free being the determination, the limitation of their empty freedom. I need not spell out this relation or limitation for myself and produce it; rather, the object, in general, is itself this creation of right, i.e., the relation of recognition. In recognition (Anerkennen), the Self ceases to be this individual; it exists by right in recognition, i.e., no longer [immersed] in its immediate existence. The one who is recognized is recognized as immediately counting as such (geltend), through his being but this being is itself generated from the concept; it is recognized being (anerkanntes Seyn). Man is necessarily recognized and necessarily gives recognition. This necessity is his own, not that of our thinking in contrast to the content. As recognizing, man is himself the movement [of recognition], and this movement itself is what negates (hebt auf) his natural state: he is recognition; the natural aspect merely is, it is not the spiritual aspect. The individuals, as they are toward one another [in the state of nature], do not yet recognize one another; rather, their being is disturbed. One individual, say, has disturbed the situation through his [taking] possession [as just described], although this is not yet property. The right of possession immediately concerns things, not a third party. Man has the right [in the state of nature] to take possession of as much as he can, as an individual. He has the right this is implicit in his concept of what it is to be a Self, by which he is the power over all things. But his taking possession also acquires the significance of excluding a third party. What is it in this significance that binds the other
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person? What may I take possession of, without violating the rights of the third party? Such questions, as well, cannot be answered. Taking possession is the empirical [act of] seizure, and this is to be justified through recognition. It is not justified merely by virtue of its having occurred. [It is as] in-himself that the immediate person takes possession. There is this contradiction, that the immediate comprises the content, the subject, whose predicate is [presumably] to be its right. A thing is my property because it is recognized [to be such] by others. But what is it, exactly, that others recognize? It is that which I have, which I possess. The content [of property] therefore emanates from my possession. Can I therefore have whatever and as much as I want? I cannot take it from a third party and expect recognition [as owner], because what he has is already recognized [as his]. Yet in that I take possession of something immediately i.e., as something belonging to no ones I exclude him, in himself. And thus, in taking possession, the question of recognition comes up again: I take that which could have become his. It merely could become his possession, but it is mine in actuality. His possibility comes after my actuality. He must recognize me as actual. What do I possess, however? (a) My body; (b) the thing I already have, in my mouth or in my hand. Yet I possess not only this, but also that which I have marked with my desiring, my glance, as something wanted, grasped for. Children maintain they have a right to something because they saw it first, or wanted it first. Adults, although they can do nothing else, become angry because someone else got there first. Besides my having grasped something immediately, however, an existent thing is shown to be mine by means of some sign, e.g., my very working on it. Whatever is designated as mine the other person must not do damage to. The designation, however, is at the same time contingent: e.g., an enclosed plot of ground with, [as] a boundary, nothing more than a furrow drawn around it, is designated as mine and yet not [i.e., mine is not a predicate intrinsic to that sign]. The sign has an unlimited range: putting up a stake on an island signifies that I wish to take possession of it; likewise, in working on a metal cup I cannot separate from it the form I have given it. But in the case of a cultivated field or tree I have worked on, where does the imposed form begin and where does it end? The inner side of each clod of earth is left untouched, or moved very slightly, and similarly with the underside, [it is] not moved much, etc. The sensory immediate, to which the universal is applied, does not correspond to this universal, is not encompassed by it. It is a bad infinite division. The sensory immediate is not in itself universal; there is always a contradiction in regard to this content. [Example:] the conformity to the needs of a family, or of an individual, contradicts the concept of pure Self, or of equality, which is the basis of right. There is nothing in itself to be determined here; related to individuality, however, it is the aspect which belongs to chance. There is no reason in it; reason is yet to be introduced in such a way that nothing belongs to someone as the result of direct taking, but only through a contract; i.e., this direct taking of possession does not occur, and is not excluded in itself, but is recognized. The exclusion, in itself, is rather what is not right, and what should not occur, since the excluded is thereby not present as actual consciousness, nor do I thereby relate myself to such a one. Thus what must happen first is recognition: the individuals are love, this being-recognized, without the opposition of the will (i.e., wherein each would be the entire conclusion, [and] wherein they
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enter only as characters, not as free wills). Such recognition is to come about. There must become for them what they [already] are in themselves. Their being for one another is the beginning of it. They are therefore such individuals, the one having excluded from his possession, and the other, the excluded, having become so for himself. They themselves are thus immediate for one another. The conclusion is that each does not know his own essence in the other, as character, but knows his own essence in himself; he is for himself the one, however, as excluded from being, the other as excluding. They are thus juxtaposed and for one another, so that the one finds himself much more negated (negirt) by the other as an essence, a being. If, however, he is not for the other, he is on the other hand for himself. The movement thus begins, here, not with the positive aspect of knowing oneself in another and thereby seeing the self-negation of the other; but on the contrary, with not knowing oneself in the other, and rather seeing his, the others, being-for-self in the other. The conclusion therefore begins with the independence of the polar parties in their being-for-themselves, so that the independence of each is [established] for the other. And indeed [it happens] first on the side of the excluded party, since he is a being-for-himself, because he is not for the other since through the others [action] he is excluded from being. The other, however the family is quietly and impartially for itself. The excluded party spoils the others possession, by introducing his excluded being-for-himself into it, his [sense of] mine. He ruins something in it, annihilating [i.e., negating] it as desire, in order to give himself his self-feeling (Selbstgefhl) yet not his empty self-feeling, but rather positing his own Self in another, in the knowing of another. The activity does not concern the negative aspect, the thing, but rather the self-knowledge of the other. A distinction in the knowledge of the other is thereby posited, which only puts one in the existence of the other. He [the excluded] is also angered thereby; he is divided in himself, and his exclusion from being is turned into an exclusion of knowledge. He becomes aware that he has done something altogether different from what he intended. His intention (Meynen) was the pure relating of his being to itself, his impartial being-forhimself. Thus angered, the two parties stand opposed to one another the one as the insulter, the other as the insulted. The insulter did not intend insult to the other in taking possession, but the insulted did relate himself to the insulter: what the insulter annihilated was not the intrinsic form of the thing, but the form of the others labor or activity. Thus the fact that the excluded party has restored himself does not produce the equality of the two, but rather a new inequality. Equality [demanded] that both parties posit themselves in the thing, [asserting themselves with respect to it]. But [here we have] the higher inequality of the positing of the one in the being-for-himself of the other. The first posited [i.e., asserted] himself in the unowned thing, the other in the thing already possessed. This inequality is to be overcome, negated (aufzuheben). It must already be overcome in itself, however and the activity of both is only so that this may become [true] for both. The overcoming (Aufheben) of the exclusion has already occurred; both parties are outside themselves, both are a knowledge, are objects for themselves. Each is conscious of himself in the other as one who is negated (aufgehobenes), to be sure but in the same way the positive aspect is on the side of each. Each one wants to count as something for the other. It is the aim of each to look upon himself in the other each is outside himself. Each one is the conclusion, one pole of which is outside him
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superseded (aufgehoben) in the other and each is in himself. But both egos, the one in me and the one superseded in the other party, are the same. I provide content for myself as end; i.e., I am positive to myself. My ego is likewise to be positive; i.e., my positive aspect is now enclosed in myself, and has only now become my end. Thus the inequality has the form that (a) the one party has only overcome (aufhob) the being of the other, while the other has negated the being-for-himself of the first; and that (b) each knows himself outside himself: the one (namely the insulted) has lost [something of] his existence, the other has restored his existence to himself but this restoration occurred at the expense of the other, [and] is conditioned thereby: it is not an immediate, free acquisition. Their roles are thus exchanged: for himself, the insulter is satisfied (not in himself, since his being-inhimself is conditioned); the second party is now the annoyed one, in a state of tension an alien being-for-himself has intruded itself into his being-for-self. He resolves not to expose his existence any further, but rather to arrive at a knowledge of himself, i.e., to become recognized . The actual being-for-himself as such is to be posited, not as a [mere] form of the thing (since this form has nothing permanent in it), nor by means of language (since the knowledge is [to be] actual). It is will, the being-for-himself as such. Its actuality has the significance of being recognized by the other, to count as absolute for him. In order to count as absolute, however, it must present itself as absolute, as will, i.e., as someone for whom his existence (which he had as property) no longer counts, but rather this: as his known being-for-himself, that has the pure significance of self-knowledge, and in this way comes into existence. Such presentation, however, is the self-executed negation of the existence that belongs to him. It is the directedness of the will to itself, to the extreme of its individuality. (Character is only directed to itself as universal.) To him as consciousness it appears that in this he must intend the death of the other, although it is his own death that is at issue suicide, in that he exposes himself to danger. Thus he looks upon his negated external existence. This existence is most his own, converting the being-negated (Aufgehobenseyn) of that alien element into his own being-for-himself that is most his own, because it is reason. This restoration is the reception of his existence in the abstraction of knowing. The [element of] cunning is the knowing, the being-in-himself, self-knowledge, as the knowledge of will [as] mere drive. In the drive the extreme poles have the form of equivalence, indifference, the form of being, not yet a knowing. The knowing will is to be fulfilled (a) as the will of love, with the knowledge of the immediate unity of both poles, of their unity as selfless; (b) in recognition, with the polar extremes as free Selves. The former is the fulfilment of the universal extreme, the latter of the particular, i.e., making this the total conclusion. This conclusion has in it the extremes in the form of being-for-themselves. The previous cognition [now] becomes recognition. The two know themselves as being-for-themselves they are separated in this way [by what they have in common]. The movement is the life-and-death struggle. From this, each proceeds in such a way that he sees the other as pure Self, and it is a knowledge of the will; and so that the will of each is cognizant, i.e., reflected completely in itself in its pure unity. The driveless will, the determination enveloped in itself to know being as something not alien. This knowing will is now universal. it is the state of being recognized; juxtaposed to itself in the form of universality, it is being, actuality in general and the individual, the subject, is the person. The will
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of the individual is the universal will and the universal is the individual. It is the totality of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) in general, immediate, yet [as] Right.
Part II.
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The Philosophy of Spirit (Jena Lectures 1805-6) (Also known as Realphilosophie II)
PART II Actual Spirit

Spirit is actual neither as intelligence nor as will, but as will which is intelligence. That is, in the intelligence there is the unity of two universalities, and in the universal will these are complete Selves. They are a knowing of their own being, and their being is this spiritual [element:] the universal will. In this element, the foregoing has now to exhibit itself. In it, the abstract will has now to transcend or supersede itself (sich aufzuheben) just as the abstract intelligence has transcended itself in the will, the objects of that intelligence fulfilling themselves on their own. As thus transcended, the will must produce itself in the element of universal recognition, in this spiritual actuality. Possession thereby transforms itself into [property] right, just as [individual] labor was transformed, previously, into universal labor. What was family property, wherein the marriage partners knew themselves, now becomes the generalized [sphere of] the work and enjoyment of everyone. And the difference between individuals now becomes a knowledge of good and evil, of personal right and wrong.
Part II.
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The Philosophy of Spirit (Jena Lectures 1805-6) PART II. Actual Spirit
A. Recognition
i. Immediate Recognition Being-recognized (Anerkanntseyn) is immediate actuality. And in this element [there is] the person, at first as being-for-himself in general, working and enjoying [the fruits of labor]. Only here does desire have the right to make its appearance for [here] it is actual; i.e., desire itself has universal, spiritual being. Labor is of all and for all, and the enjoyment [of its fruits] is enjoyment by all. Each [one] serves the other and provides help. Only here does the individual have existence, as individual. Prior to this, the individual is merely something abstract, untrue [as a concept]. Spirit can indeed posit itself in an abstraction, analyze itself and give an existence to it (as the animal cannot), where the Self, placing itself in a system, becomes disease. But [then the self] has a merely momentary, evanescent existence. Here [in contrast] desire is. Over against the I as abstract being-for-itself, there stands likewise its inorganic nature, as being (seyend). The I relates itself negatively to it [its inorganic nature], and annuls it as the unity of both but in such a way that the I first shapes that abstract being-for-itself as its Self, sees its own form [in it] and thus consumes itself as well. In the element of being as such, the existence and range of natural needs is a multitude of needs. The things serving to satisfy those needs are worked up (verarbeitet), their universal inner possibility posited [expressed] as outer possibility, as form. This processing (Verarbeiten) of things is itself manysided, however; it is consciousness making itself into a thing. But in the element of universality, it is such that it becomes an abstract labor. The needs are many. The incorporation of their multiplicity in the I, i.e., labor, is an abstraction of universal models (Bilder), yet [it is] a selfpropelling process of formation (Bilden). The I, which is for-itself, is abstract I; but it does labor, hence its labor is abstract as well. The need in general is analyzed into its many aspects what is abstract in its movement is the being-for-itself, activity, labor. Since work is performed only [to satisfy] the need as abstract being-for-itself, the working becomes abstract as well. This is the concept, the truth of the desire existing here. Each individual, because he is an individual here, thus labors for a need. [Yet] the content of his labor goes beyond his need; he labors for the needs of many, and so does everyone. Each satisfies the needs of many, and the satisfaction of ones own many particular needs is the labor of many others. Since his labor is abstract in this way, he behaves as an abstract I according to the mode of thinghood not as an allencompassing Spirit, rich in content, ruling a broad range and being master of it; but rather, having no concrete labor, his power consists in analyzing, in abstracting, dissecting the concrete world into its many abstract aspects. Mans labor itself becomes entirely mechanical, belonging to a many-sided determinacy. But the more abstract [his labor] becomes, the more he himself is mere abstract activity. And consequently he is in a position to withdraw himself from labor and to substitute for his own activity that of external nature. He needs mere motion, and this he finds in external nature. In other words, pure motion is precisely the relation of the abstract forms of space and time the abstract external activity, the machine.
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Among these diverse, abstract, processed needs, a certain movement must now take place, whereby they once again become concrete need[s], i.e., become the needs of an individual, who in turn becomes a subject comprising many needs. The judgment which analyzed them, placed them against itself as determinate abstractions. Their universality to which this judgment rises is [that of] the equality of these needs, or value. In this they are the same. This value itself, as a thing, is money. The return to concretion, to possession, is exchange. In exchange, the abstract thing presents itself [as] what it is, namely, as being this transformation, returning to thinghood in the I, and indeed in such a way that its thinghood consists in being the possession of another. Each one gives his own possession, negating (hebt auf) its existence [as his] and in such a way that that existence is recognized therein; the other receives it with the consent of the first. Both parties are recognized; each receives from the other the possession of the other, in such a way that he receives it only insofar as the other is himself this negative of himself, [consents to this negation of what is his, i.e., receives it] as property, through mediation. Each is the negating (das negirende) of his own being, his property and this is mediated through the negating of the other. Only because the other releases his possession do I do the same; and this equality in the thing, as its inner aspect, constitutes its value, in regard to which I concur entirely with the opinion of the other [a concurrence of] that which is positively mine and likewise his, the unity of my will and his. And my will counts as actual, existing, [for] to be recognized is to exist (das Anerkanntseyn ist das Daseyn). Thereby my will counts, I possess, the possession is transformed into property. In the possession, being has the unspiritual significance of my having, as this individual having. Here, however, the being-recognized [enters] the being of the possession, such that the thing is and I am, and the thing is grasped as in the Self. Here, being is the universal Self, and the having is the mediation through another, i.e., it is universal. Value is what is universal [here]; the movement, as perceptible, is the exchange. This same universality is mediation as conscious movement. Property is thus an immediate having, mediated through being-recognized. That is, its existence is [shaping, recollection, value] it is the spiritual essence. Here the contingency in taking possession is overcome (aufgehoben). All that I have, I have through work and exchange, i.e., in being recognized. (By the same token, I am a universal person, not this particular person, but at the same time family. That is to say, property is the movement of a thing in exchange. Afterward, inheritance [involves] the change of individuals, wherein the family is constant but this does not yet come up here.) The source, the origin of property here is that of labor, my activity itself immediate Self and being recognized [is the] basis. I am the cause, equally because I have willed [the] purpose in the exchange: the cause, the ground, is the universal. I have willed in the exchange, have posited my thing as a value, i.e., internal movement, internal activity, just as [is] labor, sunk in being the same externalization (Entusserung). (a) In laboring, I make myself immediately into the thing, a form which is Being. (b) At the same time I externalize this existence of mine, making it something alien to myself, and preserve myself therein. In the very same thing I see my being-recognized, being as knowing. In the former I see my immediate Self, in the latter my being-for-myself, my personhood. I therefore see my being-recognized as [my] existence, and my will is this counting-for-something (diss Gelten).
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ii. Contract In the exchange, this being-recognized has become object; my will is [recognized as] an existence, as is the will of the other party. The immediacy of being-recognized has [now] come apart. My will is presented as more valid (geltender), not only for myself but also for the other and it amounts to as much as existence itself. The value is my opinion of the thing. This opinion of mine, and my will, has counted (hat gegolten) in the eyes of the other person (mediated through his opinion and will). I have accomplished something, [and] have [thereby] alienated it from myself (habe mich dessen entussert). This negative [element] is positive; this alienation is an acquiring. My opinion of a things value counted (galt) for the other person, and my wanting something he has. The two parties regard one another as [individuals] whose opinion and will have actuality. There is a consciousness, a distinction of the concept of being-recognized: the will of the individual is a shared will (or statement or judgement), and his will is his actuality as [the] externalization of himself which is my will. This knowing is expressed in the contract. It is the same as exchange, but it is an ideal exchange (an offer). (a) [In it] I give nothing away, I externalize nothing, I give nothing but my word, language, [to the effect that] I wish to externalize myself. (b) The other party does the same. This externalizing/alienating (Entussern) of mine is at the same time his will. He is satisfied that I grant him this. (c) It is also his externalizing, it is [our] will in common my externalization (Entusserung) is mediated through his. I want to externalize myself only because he (for his part) wants to externalize himself also, and because his negating is my positing. It is an exchange of declarations, no longer an exchange of objects but it counts as much as the object itself. For both parties, the will of the other counts as such. Will has [thus] gone back into its concept (Willen ist in seinen Begriff zurckgegangen). Here, however, this division appears, that can as readily change into its opposite: the going back into itself [as individual will opposed to the will that is shared]. The will as such has validity; it is set free of actuality. But in that very fact there is the opposite: individual and shared wills are separated; the individual will [appears] as the negative of the universal will. [Thus] there is crime only insofar as I am recognized [as an individual, and] my will is taken as universal, counting as will in itself. Prior to recognition there is no insult, no injury. In other words, in the contract the shared will has only a positive significance for my will, just as my will has for the other: they are in agreement. But it is also possible for them not to agree. I can unilaterally break the contract, since my individual will counts as such not merely insofar as it is shared, but rather the shared will is shared only insofar as my individual will counts. They are equally essential: my individual will is as essential as is the equality [of wills]. My individual will is [the] cause, and the individual and universal here appear so far apart that my will counts insofar as it is mere will, before I have performed anything. But the performance is [something] existent, i.e., it is the existing universal will. Thus the division appears in the presentation of the wills as counting for universal will [as shared] and yet as existing [as individual]. The universal counts for the individual will, yet it is not the same.
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In order really to assert the difference, I break the contract. The other party recognized my nonexistent will and was satisfied with it. The fact that it did not exist, that nothing was done [by me], should indeed have been overcome (aufgehoben) an ought, but he recognized the ought as such. Precisely in the fact that the will counts as such, there lies the indifference to existence and to time. This is one sense [of the autonomy of the will], but the opposite sense is the essentiality of what exists, as existing, and indeed [as existing] against the essentiality of the will as such i.e., against the individual will, there exists the entity that has the significance of the shared will, against the individuality of the will; and this [individual will] is rather to be asserted as prior to [the shared or universal will]. This assertion [of the will as individual] is the overcoming of that existence [i.e., of the will as shared, as universal and with it the overcoming of the] compulsion [that says:] the other must perform; his will (even though it is indeed will) is not [to be] respected, because [in his participation in a] shared will he is opposed to himself. My individual will is essential, but at the same time it is only an element; and in that I have already posited my individual will as a shared will, I have posited myself in the same terms. My word must count not on the moral grounds that I ought to be at one with myself, and not change my inner sentiment or conviction (for I can change these) but [that] my will exists only as recognized. [In going back on my word] I not only contradict myself, but also the fact that my will is recognized; my word cannot be relied upon, i.e., my will is merely mine (mein), mere opinion (Meinung). The person, the pure being-for-himself, thus is not respected as an individual will separating itself from the shared will, but only as that shared will. I become compelled to be a person. (a) The contract comprises the determinate particular will as a universal will; (b) hence its content the thing, which is the medium of the relation is a particular thing, a particular existence from which I can abstract. My contingent will concerns contingent things, as in exchange. The existent thing, which belongs to the medium [of the relation], is something particular. And I appear as a particular will against the other particular will not as person against person. My will is not [directed] to the person, nor is it the person, the universal as such, that makes its appearance. Rather, the universal will is hidden under the determinate thing. The universal will, as shared and as my pure will or personhood is presented in the particular [will]. And my pure will as such is in the language of my declaration. My pure will has therein taken itself back, out of the immediacy of the exchange. But it merely signifies the particular performance; and the shared will [signifies] merely the dissolution, not of the person as such, but of the person as particular existent. The [element of] compulsion [in the contract] does not touch personhood but only its determinacy, its existence [in its particularity]. But according to the concept, the [particular] existence is dissolved in [the concept of] the person, and in the universal will. in other words, that existence is only as pure person and as pure universal will, as pure negativity. This is the force of the contract. just as, in performing [in fulfillment of the contract], I placed my will in a particular existent, but could do this only as a person (i.e., because the will counts as being in general), so in the same way I was compelled as person for in this negation of my [particular] existence, my [universal] being in general was negated (negirt) as well, since these are indivisible. I am reflected in myself. In compulsion, too, this comes to light. [In the contract, it is] not this particularity that is compelled; rather, it is I. The concept is therefore posited, set up, that the universal will absorbs the individual I into itself as an existent which is juxtaposed to it [absorbs] the entire
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individual I, and that I am [eo ipso] recognized for myself as person. Not merely my possession and my property are posited here, but also my personhood i.e., this insofar as my existence includes my all, my honor and life. iii. Crime and Punishment Concerning my honor and life there can be no contract: such a contract is nullified in its very conception, not [merely] as an individual case. The contract placed my will in a separable particularity. This I have given away, as in an exchange, and what has emerged is my existence as pure person. And this is as I now appear, as recognized for my pure will. In the contract [the element of] existence has receded to a mere effect. But in the contract as such the matter is settled. Here the necessary movement appears to be nullified the injury to my honor and life appears as something fortuitous, contingent. Yet this injury is necessary. I was compelled not merely in regard to [the particulars of] my existence, but also in regard to my ego, as reflected in me in my existence. The recognition of my personhood, in the contract, allows me to count as existing, my word to count for the performance. That is: I, my bare will, is not separated from my existence; they are equal. This very will is contradicted by compulsion and force, for these injure me in my existence. I am insulted, as in the movement of recognition (Anerkennen). The other person has damaged my property, not merely in the form which is immediate to me. Rather, he has injured my recognized will as such, which he recognized as existing and as inseparably bound up with my existence. I consider myself injured and indeed as a person, according to that concept. There is an oscillation between my existence as external and as internal (into which I placed my I). The contradiction strikes me as an inequality between my first and second word but it is the same contradiction as that between the I as universal and as particular. In other words: inasmuch as the other party concluded a determinate deal with me he took my pure will as something unequal to itself, as the universal will which has a determinate existence. Against coercion I therefore present my being-for-myself not (as in the movement of recognition) my generally injured self, but rather my injured self [as] recognized. I wish to show the other party that he ought not to be able to compel me; i.e., that my ego, bound to a determinate performance (along with the compulsion which I suffered therein), was an injury to my pure Self. I find my honor aggrieved, my will negated (aufgehoben) only in the respect of this determinate existence, but through this my putative pure will [as well]. I appear as a person against the person of another; I negate his being as universal, the security of his personhood. I show him that in this existence, this determinacy, he has injured me as universal, and thus has conducted himself inequitably, since the matter at issue was only concerning a particular thing. Thus I, in turn, stand up against him. In his performance toward me, his will was not injured; rather, he has had his way and has only alienated [i.e., divested himself of, given up] a specific thing. His compulsion [of me], however, is an alienation of my will. I overcome this inequality, [I regard] him as will, just as he does me. I avenge myself on him not as in the state of nature [where I direct myself] merely as toward self-conscious activity for itself, but as toward a will, i.e., a will that here is likewise intelligence, that thinks of itself, knows itself as universal, a universal knowing, which is my knowing as well in other words, [I avenge myself on him] as on someone who is recognized. In coercion, the other party produced the shared will as something existent and overcame my
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individual will, which I alone recognize. My will as such is for me the equal of the universal will. And since it is injured, deprived of existence, I now produce it [i.e., re-assert it] so that I negate the others being which had posited his will as universal, opposed to my will which did not prevail. I thereby commit crime, acts of violence, theft, injury, etc. The verbal injury transcends all this as a universal crime. [In committing it,] I do not say [about someone] that he has done me this or another evil, but that he is this. The verbal insult places him in the universal, as negated. A judgment posits [e.g.] the tree to be green, [that] it is green i.e., the judgment is not [intended as] subjective but [as] universal. Similarly, the verbal insult transforms the victims totality into something that is in itself a nullity. [On the other hand,] the real injury negates him as a will whether it be that I steal from him [by stealth or] rob him [in a hold-up]: in the former, attacking his unknowing existence, and altogether ignoring his being and will, but acting against it; in the latter, openly acting against his existing selfexpressive will. The one works underhandedly, the other [is openly] injurious. Open murder (not through deception) is finite, is generally the least underhanded, yet is the greatest injury. For underhandedness consists in relating to another person as nonexistent, [while] I retain the form of inwardness, so that my deed does not come to light, cannot be grasped for what it truly is, but remains cunningly reflected in itself. The inner [subjective] source of crime is the coercive force of the law. Exigency and so forth are [merely] external causes, belonging to [ones] animal needs. But crime as such is directed at the person as such and his knowing of it, for the criminal is intelligence: his inner justification is this coercion, the reinstatement of his individual will to power, [his wish] to count for something, to be recognized. He wants to be something (like Herostratus), not necessarily to be famous but only to have his will prevail, in opposition to the universal will. The consummated crime is [a function of] the will that knows itself as individual, as being-for-itself, having come into existence despite the power of the other will that knows itself as universal will. But this crime is the animation, the activation, the arousal (to activity) of the universal will. The universal will is active. The recognized activity is universal, not individual that is to say, it is a transcendence (Aufheben) of the individual will. Punishment is this overturn, it is retribution as [that] of the universal will. The essence of punishment does not rest on a contract [that has presumably been broken], nor [on the aim of] deterring others, nor [on] rehabilitating the criminal. Rather, the essence of punishment, its concept, is this transition, the inversion of the injured universal recognition (Anerkanntseyn). It is revenge, but as justice. That is to say, the recognition which is in itself and was damaged externally is to be restored. The criminal is done by as he has done, inasmuch as he had constituted himself as a power against another, [taking] the universal as his power, and indeed the universal as such not the individual, as in [personal] vengeance. Revenge can be just, but here it is justice. (a) The injured party is recognized in himself; everything proceeds in the element of recognition, of Right. Dolus, the crime, has this significance: that the one doing the injury has previously recognized the injured; that the criminal (usually the thief) knew what he did, not [necessarily] its determinate scope, but its general determinacy; that he knew it to be prohibited, and knew that in this act he does injury to a person, such as is recognized in himself; that he [the criminal] lives in the element of recognition; [and] that whatever exists derives its meaning in such recognition.
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(b) It thereby happens that the injured party suffers no injury to his honor. The honor of the one who is robbed or murdered is not aggrieved, for he is recognized in himself. In other words, his beingrecognized exists not as in the state of nature, [where] honor was attacked through injury done to possessions, i.e., a being-recognized that is as yet only in thought. The verbal injury injures ones honor, but not absolutely; the injured party is not without rights. In himself, the one without honor is also without rights. Through this movement, the being-recognized has been realized, presented as: (a) comprising in itself the determinate existence and the particular will; in the surrender of itself to maintain itself in its expression, retaining its will; (b) this will as such, as the individual will, as the will existing in the contract; return into particularity, crime as though this [individual will] were [the will] as such, crime [as] loss of the particularity of being through the universal will; the reconciled universal will, counting absolutely as such [this is the] deterrent to crime: looking upon the law as the absolute power, not the power of the individual.
B. The Coercive Law

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B. The Coercive Law

The law is the substance of the person, and has these aspects to it: (a) That this substance is the mediation of the person with himself in his immediate existence the substance of his existence, resting entirely on [his being in] community with others, hence the absolute necessity of the same. At the same time, the totality is nothing more than this universal subsistence, in which the individual person is transcended, negated (aufgehoben). That is to say, the totality alone is provided for, not the individual as such, who is rather sacrificed to the universal. (b) The individual counts as possessing property. The universal [element] is the substance of the contract, i.e., this very existence, this validation of the shared will. The individual is person, his security [is] justice, the power which sustains him as pure being, the power of his life, the power over his life, as over the maintenance of his subsisting existence. (c) The individuals existence, within that power, is now his own process of becoming the universal, education. That is, this empowered law has two sides: the individual subsisting in it, and his becoming individual. The subsisting [of the individual], however, is in general his own self-movement. The force of the law is in itself, or the Substance. It is this for the individual an object [for him] which is his essence, his in-itself (sein Ansich) and he himself is the life of that substance. First he becomes, in himself, the universal consciousness, the dead dull consciousness, then a cultivated consciousness, maintaining itself in its own pure abstraction. i. [Law and Marriage] The law as the subsistence of the individuals immediate existence: he is immediately in it, as a natural totality; he exists [as it were] as family. He counts as this natural whole, not as a person (this he has yet to become). He is, first, [in a situation of] immediate beingrecognized; he is someone bound through [the ties of] love. This tie is a totality of many relations [i.e., functions]: natural procreation, a shared life together, care, acquisition, childraising. The tie [makes up] this whole; the individual is absorbed in it. It is as this totality that he exists for the law, for the universal thus it is [in] marriage, not for this or another purpose, but as the universal. This [is] a total movement in itself being-recognized, love, regard in care, activity, work, recapitulation in the child, procreation yet just therein a dissolution [of individuality], a grasp of the totality. This self-enclosed totality is not a contractual tie; the parties contract their property, certainly, but not their bodies. It is a barbaric view on the part of Kant [to regard marriage as a contract] for the use of ones sexual organs, with the rest of the body included in the bargain. (Soldiers could also force the marriage partners together in this fashion.) So that there be no marriage between those too closely related, there is a positive law governing marriage set in opposition to the concept of love. [The partners] are to find each other as independent, naturally free [individuals], not as immersed in immediate [familial] recognition. Those related are of the same blood, the same recognition (Anerkanntseyn). Already in this degree of kinship
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the indeterminacy begins, more so in regard to further aspects. Concurrence of both persons: for the law, marriage is will, insofar as both parties are persons. Both parties [must] concur as to whether they want to marry, whether they want this totality called marriage in the universal sense (not in the individual sense as in the contract); and, since each is to count not as an [isolated] individual but as a family member, the families of both [must also] concur. Marriage is this very mixture of the personality with the impersonality of the natural which determines the divine as something natural (that is the spiritual [element] in this naturalness) and not only determines the will. Accordingly, marriage is a religious act yet as far as the will is concerned it is a civil matter to be brought before the law. The religious and the civil coincide, as in the concurrence of persons and of families. The law, as pure will, is freedom from particularity [ the freedom] of persons, of their natural character, as well as [their freedom from] the particular elements into which the marriage-relation can be analyzed. This free vitality and the pure law are in mutual interplay with one another. The pure volition is the result of the living movement, which has as its being that abstractness, pure thought and the law enters in only from the side of pure volition, the wish to declare oneself. The law is that which has encompassed nothing of the many aspects of individuality; it is not yet the living spirit hence this empirical opposition [between free vitality and purely formal, empty law]. According to the empty law, marriage is indissoluble because the parties have declared their will. But this view is entirely one-sided. The law, as fulfilled, must take account of the vitality that is free of the law: withdrawal from the shared unity of persons in themselves (adultery, wilful desertion, temperamental incompatibility) [can be grounds for dissolution] determinations which affect the laws content. Whether the [higher] purpose of marriage is fulfilled positively is no concern of the law. A marriage has been established: [as to the] possibility of marriage [questions of whether there is] not too great a difference in age, and [of] the possibility of supporting oneself laws remain indeterminate regarding this content. The break-up of marriage reflects the positive will of someone who wishes to be separated. In the eyes of the law, or in itself, marriage is not enacted by the [mere] promise of marriage, nor by cohabitation, but through the declared will the expression is what counts. Similarly, marriage is in itself not dissolved by adultery, wilful desertion, incompatibility, bad economic management but [only] if both parties see these as grounds and want the dissolution. The question is, however, whether what the parties see is [truly] so in itself and conversely, whether what is [truly] so in itself is what the parties want to see. Their prior will to marry is changed, but their subsequent will to separate can change as well. The rigid law could fix itself on the first will and declare the marriage indissoluble, or consider the natural factor, the in-itself, and dissolve the marriage. The natural factor e.g., the impossibility of marriage because of too great a difference in age; dissolution because of adultery; positive injury which is in itself wilful (not an empty in-itself [such as] infertility) is the most determinate, i.e., the form of universality but no [final] determination. Legislation must see how this is to be resolved, to settle on this or another determining factor [the] determination, [the] being [of the marriage] concerning other vital purposes [and factors]: military service, depopulation, the character of social classes, etc. In regard to marriage, the individual is seen in the light of his volition; but as living, [he is seen] only
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as being at one with the family he has renounced his natural isolation. It is in this regard that the family has property: it is the property not of the individual but of the family. If a member dies, this accident does not touch the family, and it remains hence inheritance. It is not the first one who comes along who takes possession; the state of nature does not enter here. [There is the] ground of inheritance. Yet the individual is likewise pure person; it is his property, and as such he is universal: [the pure person, as testator] does not die; it is his declared will which counts in the disposition of his property, not his being alive or dead just as a contract is not annulled by the death of one of the contracting parties, if his will can be fulfilled without his being alive. The dead cannot marry one another, any more than a living person can marry a heavenly spouse. But in order for one person to receive the property of another, the recipient need not [yet] be among the living. Yet this disposition of property by the individual contradicts [the concept of linear] inheritance. This cannot be mediated in any absolute manner, but the one [approach] is to be limited by the other in a determinate way. There are bizarre whims in regard to wills as in the will of Thellusson fortuitousness, but even here one must see how this is to be made right in a reasonable manner, and there must be [some] compromise. The rigidity of the law is to be applied as much as possible, as long as it is not excessively so. The will [of the testator] is to be respected above all. The law is likewise indeterminate with regard to children as such a mixture of their own and yet alien wills. Hence contracts involving minors are not binding before the law. The determining factors are maturity (which becomes less of a determining factor in time), and guardianship. Next the family enters in; but the supervision on the part of the law supplements the familys incompleteness [by serving] as the pure will of immediate parents. ii. [Law and Property] This law [relating to] the individuals immediate existence is, as law, the will of the parents, or sustains their will as such. In the disappearance of the contingent being (death of the parents), the law becomes positive, taking over the existence which they previously were: the state [takes charge]. Law is the actual validation of property, the element of actual existence through the will of all. The law protects the family, leaves it in its being but like the family, the law is the substance and the necessity of the individual. It is the unconscious guardianship over the individual whose family has died out i.e., insofar as he appears as individual. It is the substance and necessity the rigid aspect in which the law presented itself. Law is the universal right, property in general, protecting each one in his immediate possession, inheritance and exchange. But this is merely formal right, which remains quite free in regard to content (the element of chance in inheritance). The individual presents himself as earning by means of labor. Here, his law is only that whatever he works upon or exchanges belongs to him. But the universal is at the same time his necessity, a necessity which sacrifices him in his legal freedom (die ihn bey seiner Rechtsfreiheit aufopfert). (a) The universal [i.e., the social substance] is pure necessity for the individual worker. He has his unconscious existence in the universal. Society is his nature, upon whose elementary, blind movement he depends, and which sustains him or negates him spiritually as well as physically. The individual exists through immediate property or inheritance, completely by chance. He works at an abstract labor; he wins much from nature. But this merely transforms itself into another form of contingency. He can produce more, but this reduces the value of his labor; and in this he does not
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emerge from universal [i.e., abstract] relations. (b) Needs are thereby diversified; each individual need is subdivided into several; taste becomes refined, leading to further distinctions. [In the production of goods a degree of] preparation is demanded which makes the consumable thing ever easier to use. And so that all of the individuals incongruous aspects are provided for (e.g., cork, corkscrew, candlesnuffer), he is cultivated as naturally enjoying [them] (er wird gebildet als naturlich geniessendes). (c) By the same token, however, he becomes through the abstractness of labor more mechanical, duller, spiritless. The spiritual element, this fulfilled self-conscious life, becomes an empty doing (leeres Thun). The power of the Self consists in a rich [all-embracing] comprehension; this power is lost. He can leave some work to the machine, but his own activity thereby becomes more formalized. His dull work constricts him to a single point, and his work becomes more consummate the more onesided it becomes. Yet this multiplicity creates fashion, mutability, freedom in the use of forms. These things the cut of clothing, style of furniture are not permanent. Their change is essential and rational, far more rational than staying with one fashion and wanting to assert something as fixed in such individual forms. The beautiful is subject to no fashion; but here there is no free beauty, only a charming beauty (eine reitzende Schonheit) which is the adornment of another person and relates itself to [yet] another, a beauty aimed at arousing drive, desire, and which thus has a contingency to it. Similarly incessant is the search for ways of simplifying labor, inventing other machines, etc. In the individuals skill is the possibility of sustaining his existence. This is subject to all the tangled and complex contingency in the [social] whole. Thus a vast number of people are condemned to a labor that is totally stupefying, unhealthy and unsafe in workshops, factories, mines, etc. shrinking their skills. And entire branches of industry, which supported a large class of people, go dry all at once because of [changes in] fashion or a fall in prices due to inventions in other countries, etc and this huge population is thrown into helpless poverty. The contrast [between] great wealth and great poverty appears: the poverty for which it becomes impossible to do anything; [the] wealth [which], like any mass, makes itself into a force. The amassing of wealth [occurs] partly by chance, partly through universality, through distribution. [It is] a point of attraction, of a sort which casts its glance far over the universal, drawing [everything] around it to itself just as a greater mass attracts the smaller ones to itself. To him who hath, to him is given. Acquisition becomes a many-sided system, profiting by means or ways that a smaller business cannot employ. In other words, the highest abstraction of labor pervades that many more individual modes and thereby takes on an ever-widening scope. This inequality between wealth and poverty, this need and necessity, lead to the utmost dismemberment of the will, to inner indignation and hatred. This necessity, which is the complete contingency of individual existence, is at the same time its sustaining substance. State power enters and must see to it that each sphere is supported. It goes into [various] means and remedies, seeking new markets abroad, etc., [but] thereby making things all the more difficult for one sphere, to the extent that state power encroaches to the disadvantage of others. Freedom of commerce: interference must be as inconspicuous as possible, since commerce is the field of arbitrariness. The appearance of force must be avoided; and one must not attempt to salvage what cannot be saved, but rather employ the suffering classes in other ways. [The state power] is the
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universal overseer; the individual is merely entrenched in individuality. Commerce is certainly left to its own devices but with the sacrifice of this generation and the proliferation of poverty, poor-taxes and institutions. Yet the [social] substance is not only this regulatory law, as the power that sustains individuals. Rather, it is itself productive [of a] general benefit, the benefit of the whole (Gut des Ganzen). Taxes [are of two types:] direct taxes on fixed property, and indirect taxes. Only the former type is in accordance with the physiocratic system. Raw materials alone are the abstract base, but [this is] itself a distinct particular that appears too limited; it is abandoned. This branch is missing in the totality, and then incomes are lessened. The tax system must establish itself everywhere, make its appearance inconspicuously, taking a little from everyone, but everywhere. If it is disproportionate on one branch, it is abandoned. Less wine is consumed if heavy taxes are imposed on it. For everything there is a substitute that can be found, or one does without. But even so, this necessity turns against itself. The costs of detection become more considerable, the discontent ever greater, since the enjoyment of everything is spoiled and is entangled with complicated details. State wealth must be based as little as possible on the landed estates (Domnen), but rather on taxes. The former are private property and contingent, exposed to waste, since no one seems to lose thereby but either gains or hopes to gain. Taxes are felt by all, and everyone wants to see them used well. iii. [Judicial Force] This elementary necessity or contingency of the individual touches upon judicial force. The individual is contingent in his actual property, ability, and understanding (e.g., that a contract is to be kept); but [seen in] more universal terms, he is essential as possessing property in general, i.e., the abstract right. The state is the existence (Daseyn), the power of right; the keeping of a contract (and of the permanence in its unutilized property); it is the existent unity of the word, of ideal existence and of actuality, as well as the immediate unity of possession and right: property as universal substance, permanence; the being-recognized as what counts. To count is the mediation of the immediate, which has thereby become immediate. Just as it is immediate subsistence, the [social] substance here is also the universal law and the maintenance of this abstraction vis--vis the individual, his known and wanted necessity for him, and the attempted balance of this empty necessity with his existence. (a) This substance is the subsistence and protection of immediate property, the universal will and its power, the power of all individuals. (b) It is the protection of the contract, of the declared common will, the bond of the word and its execution. And if the word is not acted upon, [the social substance provides] the movement producing the action [by enforcing it]. Judicial force: it insists that the contract be fulfilled. What is [a datum] for it is the shared will, which counts as essential. The ambiguity of the ought, an ambiguity embedded in the very concept of contract, has disappeared [in favor of the must]. Posited in it, as what counts, is the will which is distinct from the immediacy of the performance. The will is there (ist da), the other party is satisfied with this. But this being-there (Daseyn) is merely that of the particular something immediate, not mediated. At the moment of agreement it is thus present (vorhanden) yet this same unmediated being-present (Vorhandenseyn) no longer counts, but only a being-present as shared will, as mediated. The meaning (Bedeutung)
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counts. The other party has, to be sure, recognized me as not yet performing [what is specified in the contract], but within the meaning of the shared will. This meaning is what counts in the law. The meaning is the inner, the pure person the law is this meaning. In the death penalty [for example], all ambiguity of meaning or existence is overcome (aufgehoben). I am there as I am in myself, according to the meaning not the meaning I particularly introduce but rather according to the meaning of the common will. The law therefore compels here. Against my particular meaning, the law carries out the common meaning; [carries it out] against my [particular] existence, my in-itself in other words, against my particular Self, [there is posited] my universal Self (gegen mein besonderes Selbst, mein allgemeines). Through this [legal] compulsion, my honor is no longer injured (cultivation) since [external] compulsion does not comprise my [internal] subjection; the disappearance of my selfhood vis--vis another Self. Rather, [what is at issue is] my selfhood with respect to myself, my selfhood as particular with respect to myself as universal and indeed this universal not as [mere] power but as the power of the law, which I recognize. That is, my negative meaning has equally a positive meaning; I am equally sustained in it. This is likewise all to the good for me: I am sustained not only in my thoughts, [or sense of] honor, but also in my being. However, the contingency enters here in other ways. In the concept, this was the contingency in the performance [i.e., fulfilling a contract]. Here, [contingency is in] the determining of the abstract law in its content, generally many-sided, in the manifold determinations of the individual [case]. The simpler the laws, the more indeterminate; the more determinate the laws, the more manifold they are and the further our differentiations are driven. And the concrete individual case is thereby dissected (zerlegt) all the more, and relates itself to that many more laws. Since the universal is here applied directly to the particular (in order that the particular may subsist), there arises the bad infinity. [To aim at] a complete legislation in all its fullness is to set out on the same sort of thing as, for example, wanting to specify all colors. Unending process of legislation. The greater this multiplicity of laws becomes, the more contingent our knowledge of them becomes. Citizens are supposed to know the laws even if they do not understand them, i.e., do not know themselves in the laws [that is, how the laws apply in their particular cases]. But to say nothing of the citizens knowing them it also becomes more difficult for judges to know the laws and even if they do, it is increasingly difficult for them to have the laws in memory in every case. [There is] no collection of laws, [but at best] a mass of contradictory laws, since we do not know what has been bidden or forbidden. The contingency becomes all the greater in regard to the perspicacity of the judge in applying the law skilfully to the case at hand [his] presence of mind. The administration of justice and legal process is thus the carrying out of right. It is the proper protection for carrying out the right of both parties before the law, sustaining their means of defense for them. The legal process is almost more essential than the laws themselves. Here the same contrast enters: to the extent that legal costs are greater, it becomes less possible for the one most in need of legal protection to cover the cost. The more admirable the trial proceedings, the longer they take; in short, it is a great evil to all concerned. Compensation for damages is not completely fortuitous there is an element of time involved. The law must soften its strictness: (a) by seeking accommodation rather than promoting the strict
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[application of the] law, [by establishing] committees of arbitration (with which [as it happens] the jurists are dissatisfied);(b) by the imposition of penalties on parties seeking litigation [for its own sake], and on pettifogging counsel; (c) by increasing the legal costs and, particularly in higher cases, etc., making the laws more difficult, so that people will seek easier ways out. Yet at the same time care must be taken to insure that whoever has the desire can go into a matter in its length and breadth. It is a delusion to want to find an absolute determination in such temporally determinate, concretely sensory things and relations as such.[A] iv. [Law, Life, and Death] The administration of penal justice is the force of the law over the life of the individual. The law is his absolute power itself over his life, since the law is his essence as pure universal will, i.e., as the disappearance of his will as a particular being, a particular life. In the same manner, the law is the release from [the guilt of] crime, and the pardon. It is as much the lord over the evil life as over the pure life. For the law, [which speaks in universal terms], it is as though the [particular] deed had not happened; the existent (das daseyende) as such has no truth for it.[B] This power over all existence, all property and life, and likewise over thought the right and good and evil this is the shared life of the community (Gemeinwesen), the living nation. The law is alive, a complete and self-conscious life. As the universal will, which is the substance of all actuality, [it is] the knowledge of itself as the universal power [over] all that lives, over every determination of the concept and over all essential being. (a) It is universal wealth and universal necessity which comes to be known as such, knowingly recognized as such [and] comes to be sacrificed to this evil; and it thereby allows all individuals in general and their [particular] existence to become a part [of it], so that it can use them. It [i.e., the system of universal wealth and necessity] condemns a multitude of people to a raw life, to stultification in labor and to poverty in order to let others amass wealth and [then] to take it from them. The inequality of wealth is accepted if heavy taxes are levied; this lessens envy and averts the fear of distress and robbery. Aristocrats, who pay no taxes, stand in the greatest danger of losing their wealth through violence, since they cannot find reconciliation by sacrificing it. State power [extends over] the individuals existence and subsistence, his necessity and freedom [all of] which he buys by becoming reconciled to that power. The government wastes its wealth, saves nothing. (b) In the law, the government is regarded as the supposed essence, and gains respect for itself. Likewise it leaves individuals with the delusion that they will attain their rights, and gives them this confused opinion of themselves whereby they see themselves as persons, citizens, as abstract universals worthy of respect at home; respect sustains the abstract universal. The government thereby has the goodness to correct its [system of] right by means of arbitration and reasonableness. It is as much the master of the one as of the other-[over] abstract universality or [particular] existence. (c) Finally, government is the power over life and death, the [element that instils] fear in the individual. But it is the master over pure evil. It is the divine spirit, which knows the absolute other, the evil, the simple other (in thought as such) as itself. These are its forces or abstract elements. It has as yet no existence in which these elements are reflected in themselves. Penal jurisdiction is based on two things: (a) that the universal is the substance of the individual, and
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(b) that it is the substance as known and wanted. He who has given up his right has externalized (entussert) himself as an abstract universal, i.e.: (i) as positive, he counts as someone living, and as pure will against force, and is protected; (ii) as living and as will, he has given himself over into the power of the state. Through the renunciation (Entusserung) of my supposed right I am a pure person, but I am so only insofar as I am law. My existence is the law, i.e., I am utterly dependent upon it.
Notes to this section

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Notes to previous section

(A) The individual is by legal right (rechtlich) a person, and juridical force is the movement that is the externalization (Entusserung) of his legal right of his supposed essence. In regard to his existence, he counts as someone having his will in his existence, and his quiescent particular will is respected. Yet inasmuch as he has surrendered, to the universal, his opinion of right (Meynen von Recht), he counts as pure person; and to the extent that (as pure person, as pure will) he separates himself form the universal, he is accounted as the evil. In civil conflict he counts not as pure will but rather as presumed (gemeyntes) right, against the universal, such that this presumed right ought to count i.e., [as] right, against the particularity of others. Deceit, fraud surrounds his will, yet is directed to his knowledge. (B) By the very fact of having given up his presumed right, the individual presents himself as pure being-recognized (reines Anerkanntseyn), [and] he counts as such. Just as, earlier, his will [had counted] within the common will concerning specific things, so his pure will now counts as such. This pure being-recognized has immediately in itself these two aspects: that of being pure beingrecognized (reines Anerkanntseyn) and [that of] being pure Being reines Seyn zu seyn). (a) As pure being-recognized, as will, the individual is juxtaposed to force, to the alien will which is not the will in common. He is protected against force in connection with his property, his activity, and his life in general. His life is immediately his pure will. Moreover, as pure will he is the abstraction of pure Being; i.e., he is no longer an opinion of his right, as though he existed only through his opinion [as individual]. This he is no longer. [Now] he has no life of his own; i.e., the law has complete power over his life. In his life he stands over against the universal, wherein he is pure abstraction and this is his essence as he recognizes it. [In accepting this] he has renounced [all claim to] his life as opposed to the universal. Just as it is a judge over his presumed right, so it is over his pure being. This is the absolute power over life. The individual knows himself positively in it. (b) The individual standing opposed to this, however, as absolute power for himself, is for himself absolutely infinite will and absolute power i.e., that which is the negating (das Aufhebende) of another absolute individual. This other he can negate because [the other] is being, quantitative, determinable through another, unknowing. He [the first individual] grasps the other in this way and thus has subjugated [him] [as in] murder, crime he is the evil, [but] only against the will, force, or cunning. (c) The law is the actual punishment, this substance which is the inversion of the concept so that, in punishment, the individual has punished himself. The other is his equal, thus [it is] he himself, not something alien. Punishment qua punishment, not as revenge. It is turned against the evil, as evil: e.g., against fraud [a specific crime], not guilt in general. This satisfies the concept, and the law [is] pacified; the law carries out the right. But this pure right is likewise laid open to contingency. In other words, as pure right it is the abstraction that cannot remain with itself absolutely.
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(i) It has to protect the will as such, and to deflect the others force and damage back upon him. But in the individual, it is difficult to say where force and nonforce apply; it can begin in the actual contract. Willing is specific will: it has purpose, is an object for the individual, thus a relation of knowing. It thereby impinges on otherness, the quantitative, the contingent. The object of his knowing can be altered for him, hidden. The link between his ends and his acts or means is a matter of judgment. He can be made to believe that he has achieved his purpose by a certain means, whereby he ruins it [although] no actual force was used against him. [Suppose] he has knowingly and willingly suffered an enormous loss in a contract: the law, for which it is only the declared common will that counts, here has the actual aim (as its inner meaning) of protecting [the individual] against an extraordinary injury [i.e.,] the individual will against the common will which is essentially declared. Here we are to ascertain (uncertainly) where the actual deception as force that is to be punished begins. (ii) Theft, robbery they are just such confusions. They affect a particular existence: the former injuring the will unbeknownst, the latter injuring both will and knowing. Yet they do not injure the absolute will but only [the will in regard to] something determinate; i.e., the will in a particular existent not as pure being, not as life. And the reaction therefore cannot be the absolute one, death. It touches only [the perpetrators] freedom, e.g., the thrashing of this particular being. On the other hand, the apparent security may be too far compromised, so that the pure will is injured therein as well: the thief or robber, in doing injury to the [particular] will, injures the pure will indeed, in a particular being but the will is only as pure will. Thus the criminal can also get the death penalty but contingent circumstances [enter:] the severity of the crime, approximate, many-sided determinations. (iii) Actual murder: the primary thing that is essential is the evil [intent], the imputation [that it is] not accidental killing; but there too the motive is difficult to ascertain; it flies back out of the simple existence of action into the Night of Inwardness. The criminals confession is needed since we mistrust the inference from external circumstances to inner motive. This inner must express itself; it is independent of all circumstances. The law should know that obstinacy against such expression is not to be overcome. (iv) Evil is that which is nothingness in itself, pure self-knowledge; this human darkness in itself (through this itself the absolute will) is not something alien to the law. It must recognize this evil as itself, to pardon it or, as deed, undo it. For even this individual deed is a drop which does not touch the absolute but is [rather] absorbed by it. [The law is] Spirit, and treats the person as Spirit. A deathstroke what does it matter to the whole? And therein, again, it is undone (Ungeschehenes).
Part III
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The Philosophy of Spirit (Jena Lectures 1805-6) (Also known as Realphilosophie II)
PART III Constitution

The state as [common] wealth is as much the being-negated (Aufgehobenseyn) of individualized existence as it is [the negation] of the in-itself in existence and of the pure being-in-itself of the person. In the law alone does the human being have his existence, his being, and thinking. The law knows itself as the absolute force which is wealth, even as it sacrifices the general wealth; which safeguards right [i.e., principle], as much as reasonableness and adjustment [i.e., utility]; which safeguards life, and punishes with life, as it pardons evil and grants life where it is forfeit. Thus this Spirit is the absolute power everywhere, which lives in itself and now must give itself this view of itself as such, i.e., to make itself its own end (Zweck). As force it is only the individual who is the end, i.e., the abstraction of the individual. The Spirits self-preservation, however, is the organization of its life, the spirit of a people, a spirit that intends itself. The concept of Spirit: universality in the complete freedom and independence of the individual. Spirit is the nature of individuals, their immediate substance, and its movement and necessity; it is as much the personal consciousness in their existence as it is their pure consciousness, their life, their actuality. They know the universal will as their particular will, and in such a way that it is their own externalized particular will; and at the same time they know it as their objective [impersonal] essence, their pure power which is their essence, in itself as well as in their knowing [of it]. In the movement of forces there are three aspects to be differentiated: (a) these forces themselves, as having developed through externalization; (b) as the knowledge of them on the part of individuals; and (c) as universal knowing. The development of the forces is the externalization (Entusserung), but not of necessity; rather, the force of the universal becomes known as the [objective] essence. For the sake of this knowledge, each one alienates (entussert) himself [i.e., divests himself of his own forces] not as opposed to some master, but rather as opposed to the forces [i.e., the universal power of enforcement], here taken in the form of his pure knowing, i.e., knowing of himself as externalized, in other words as universal. The general form is this development of the individual to the universal, and the becoming of the universal. This is not a process of blind [i.e., unknowing] necessity, however, but is rather one that is mediated through knowing. Thus each one is thereby his own end, i.e., the end is already the source of movement. Each individual is his own immediate cause; his [individual] interest drives him. Yet at the same time it is the universal that counts for him, the medium, which ties him to his particular [end] and to his actuality. In order that I may have my positive Self in the common will, the being-recognized (as intelligence) is known by me, so that the will is posited by me, so that I therein have it negatively, as my power, as the universal, which is the negative of my own will, through the intuition of its necessity, i.e., through the externalization. On its side, the universal presents itself in such a way that the latter aspect [i.e.,
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the common will] is my necessity, the former aspect [i.e., my positive self] sacrificing itself, and thus letting me approach my own [universality]. In this I gain [my] consciousness as consciousness of myself. Right was the immediate concept of the spirit the force, the necessity of its movement, the externalizing (das Entussern), becoming other. (The universal, in that it safeguards my life and is power over my life, is this immediate unity i.e., of pure will and existence of pure consciousness and my consciousness of myself. Relating myself to the universal as this immediate unity, I have confidence in it in it, but as my negative essence, fear confidence in the universal that is immediately my will. Not only am I in agreement with it, but in that it is my real self, it is I who rule. It is lord, public force, and ruler in these three aspects it is [directed] toward me.) It [the universal] is a people, a group of individuals in general, an existent whole, the universal force. It is of insurmountable strength against the individual, and is his necessity and the power oppressing him. And the strength that each one has in his being-recognized is that of a people. This strength, however, is effective only insofar as it is united into a unity, only as will. The universal will (der allgemeine Willen) is the will as that of all and each, but as will it is simply this Self alone. The activity of the universal is a unity (em Eins). The universal will has to gather itself into this unity. It has first to constitute itself as a universal will, out of the will of individuals, so that this appears as the principle and element. Yet on the other hand the universal will is primary and the essence and individuals have to make themselves into the universal will through the negation of their own will, [in] externalization and cultivation. The universal will is prior to them, it is absolutely there for them they [the two wills] are in no way immediately the same. One imagines for oneself the constituting of the universal will as follows: all citizens come together, they deliberate, give their vote; and thus the majority comprises the universal will. Thus we posit what was said: that the individual must make himself into this [i.e., a partner in the universal will] through negation, self-surrender. The communal entity (Gemeinwesen), the civil union (Staatsverein), [is thus seen to] rest on a primordial contract, to which each individual is presumed to have given his tacit agreement actually, however, in express terms and this determines every subsequent action of the community. And this is the principle of the genuine state, the free state. More realistically, [however,] the group is presented thus: as constituting the community [prior to the constituting of the universal will] whether from the beginning (inasmuch as the community does not yet exist), or that in some way a revolution has dissolved the previous constitution. Here the individuals appear as actual individuals, each one wanting to know his positive will in the universal will. But their positive individuality, since it is not yet externalized, or does not have negativity to it in itself, is a contingency for the universal and this [is] something actually different from these [individuals]. It is not a necessity that everyone want the same; [there is] no [necess]ity. Rather, each one since he is posited and recognized as an individual positive will has the right to leave and to come to terms with others over something else. At the same time, however, it is presupposed that they are a universal will in itself. This in-itself (Ansich) is something other than their actual will, and they have not yet externalized their will, do not yet recognize the universal will. Rather, it is only their individuality that counts in it. Yet their will is an in-itself, it is there, it is their in-itself i.e., it is their external force, which compels them.
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In this way all states were established, through the noble force of great men. It is not [a matter of] physical strength, since many are physically stronger than one. Rather, the great man has something in him by [virtue of] which others may call him their lord. They obey him against their will. Against their will, his will is their will. Their immediate pure will is his, but their conscious will is different. The great man has the former [i.e., their pure will] on his side, and they must obey, even if they do not want to. This is what is preeminent in the great man to know the absolute will [and] to express it so that all flock to his banner [and] he is their god. In this way Theseus established the Athenian state. And thus, in the French Revolution, it was a fearful force that sustained the state [and] the totality, in general. This force is not despotism but tyranny, pure frightening domination. Yet it is necessary and just, insofar as it constitutes and sustains the state as this actual individual. This state is the simple absolute spirit, certain of itself, and for which nothing determinate counts except itself. No concepts of good and bad, shameful and vile, malicious cunning and deceit [can be applied to it]. The state is elevated above all this for in it, evil is reconciled with itself. It is in this great sense that Machiavellis The Prince is written, [saying] that in the constituting of the state, in general, what is called assassination, fraud, cruelty, etc., carries no sense of evil but rather a sense of that which is reconciled with itself. His book has indeed been taken as irony. Yet what deep feeling for the misery of his fatherland, what patriotic inspiration underlies his cold and prudent teaching [all this] he expresses in the preface and conclusion. His fatherland, invaded and ravaged by foreigners, and being without independence every nobleman, every leader, every town regarded itself as sovereign. The only means for establishing the state was the suppression of these sovereignties. And indeed, since each, as immediate individual, wanted to count as sovereign, the only means against the brutality of the leaders was death for them and the fear of death for the rest. Germans, most of all, have abhorred such teachings, and [the term] Machiavellianism expresses what is most evil because they have suffered from the very disease [he speaks of], and have died of it. The indifference of subjects toward their princes, however, and the [reluctance] on the part of princes to be princes, i.e., to behave as princes, makes that tyranny [which Machiavelli speaks of] superfluous, since the stubbornness of the [German] princes has thereby become powerless. Thus the universal is against individuals as such, who want to know their immediate positive will asserted as absolute [as] lord, tyrant, pure force for the universal is something alien to them; and the state power which knows what power is must have the courage, in every case of need where the existence of the totality is compromised, to take completely tyrannous action. Through tyranny we have the immediate alienation (Entusserung) of the individuals actual will transcended, immediate this is education toward obedience. Through this education rather knowing the universal as the actual wills tyranny has become superfluous, replaced by the rule of law. The force exercised by the tyrant is the force of law, in itself. Through obedience, the law itself is no longer an alien force, but rather the known universal will. Tyranny is overthrown by the people because it is abhorrent, vile, etc but in actuality it is overthrown only because it is superfluous. The memory of the tyrant is abhorred. Yet in that very fact, he is also this spirit certain of itself who, like God, acts only in and for himself, and expects only ingratitude from his people. If he were wise, however, he would himself cast off his tyranny when it is superfluous. In this way, however, his divinity is nothing more than the divinity of the animal, the blind necessity, which thus deserves to be abhorred as evil. Robespierre acted in this way his power
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left him because necessity had left him, and thus he was overthrown by force. The necessary happens but every portion of necessity is usually allotted only to individuals. The one is accuser and defender, the other a judge, the third a hangman but all are necessary. The rule of law is now not this legislation, as though there were no [prior] laws. Rather, there are laws there and the relation is the movement of [the individual] educated to obedience toward the community (Gemeinwesen); underlying all is this existent essence. A second [element] is trust, which enters here, i.e., that the individual likewise knows his Self therein, as his essence. He finds himself sustained in it. Indeed, he may not conceive and understand how he is sustained in it, through what connections and arrangements. Thus the universal has a negative and a positive significance simultaneously: the negative as tyranny, the positive in the substenance of the individual, i.e., through the externalization (Entusserung) of the universal. This unity of individuality and the universal is now present in a twofold way, [as] extreme poles of the universal, which is itself individuality (i.e., of state government, [itself] not an abstraction): the individuality of the state, whose end is the universal as such, and the other pole of the same, which has the individual as its end. The two individualities [are] the same [e.g.,] the same individual who provides for himself and his family, who works, enters into contracts, etc., likewise works for the universal as well, and has it as his end. In the first sense he is called bourgeois, in the second sense he is citoyen. The universal will is obeyed as that of the majority, and is constituted through the determinate expression of, and election by, individuals. And those who do not share the opinion of the majority obey as well, even if measures or laws go against their convictions. It is their right to protest, i.e., to retain their convictions, to declare emphatically that they indeed obey, but not from conviction. It is particularly German to attach this tenacity to convictions, this obstinacy of abstract will, of empty right without regard to the matter at hand. In this democracy, the will of the individual is as yet contingent: (a) as opinion in general, he must give it up when opposed to the majority; (b) as actual will as self, or action the will [of the majority] is itself individual, and each individual is subject to it; its implementation posits a genuinely willess obedience, [in which] each surrenders his opinion about the implementation; (c) resolutions, laws, here concern only particular circumstances; the comprehension of the connection between these particular circumstances and the universal this comprehension is the insight of all; but because of their particularity, it is itself contingent. The election of officials, military leaders, belongs to the community, as an [expression of] trust in them, but which is first to be vindicated by success. The circumstances are always different. This is the beautiful [and] happy freedom of the Greeks, which is and has been so envied. The people [as a totality] is comprised of [individual] citizens, and it is at the same time the One individual, the government this One Individual standing only in a reciprocal relation to itself. The externalization of the individuality of the will [i.e., of the citizens] is the immediate support of that will [i.e., of the government]. Yet a higher level of abstraction is needed, a greater [degree of] contrast and cultivation, a deeper spirit. It is the [entire] realm of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) each [individual] is custom (Sitte), [and thus is] immediately one with the universal. No protest takes place here, each knows himself immediately as universal i.e., he gives up his particularity, without knowing it as such, as this Self,
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as the essence. The higher distinction, therefore, is that each individual goes back into himself completely, knows his own Self as such, as the essence, [yet] comes to this sense of self (Eigensinn) of being absolute although separated from the existing universal, possessing his absolute immediately, in his knowing. As an individual, he leaves the universal free, he has complete independence in himself. He gives up his actuality [in the immediate], is significant to himself (gilt sich) only in his knowing. The free universal is the point of individuality. This individuality, free of the knowledge shared by all, is not constituted through them. As the extreme pole of government thus as an immediate, natural individuality there is the hereditary monarch. He is the firm immediate knot [tying together] the totality. The spiritual tie is public opinion; this is the genuine legislative body, [the real] national assemblage. [This requires] general cultivation. [And what must be avoided is] needless elaboration of committees to improve laws. [The primary aim is the] declaration of the universal will which lives in the execution of all commands government officials belong to this spirit. Governing is carried on differently now, and life is now lived differently, in states whose constitution is yet the same, changing little by little in the course of time. Government must not come out on the side of the past and stubbornly defend it. But at the same time it ought to be the last to be convinced to change. Genuine activity, genuine will, through the election of officials every sphere, city, guild [is to be] represented in the administration of their particular affairs. It is bad for a people when it [itself] is the government, as bad as it is irrational. The totality, however, is the medium, the free spirit supporting itself, free of these completely fixed extremities. The totality, however, is independent of the knowledge [on the part of] individuals, just as it is independent of the characters of rulers, [who are] empty knots. This is the higher principle of the modern era, a principle unknown to Plato and the ancients. In ancient times, the common morality consisted of the beautiful public life beauty [as the] immediate unity of the universal and the individual, [the polis as] a work of art wherein no part separates itself from the whole, but is rather this genial unity of the self-knowing Self and its [outer] presentation. Yet individualitys knowledge of itself as absolute this absolute being-within-itself (Insichseyn) was not there. The Platonic Republic is, like Sparta, [characterized by] this disappearance of the selfknowing individuality. Under that principle, the outer actual freedom of individuals, in their immediate existence, is lost. Yet their inner freedom, the freedom of thought, is sustained. Spirit is cleansed of the [elements of] immediate existence; it has entered into its pure element of knowing and is indifferent to existing individuality. Here the spirit begins to be knowledge; i.e., its formal existence is that of self-knowing. Spirit is this Nordic essence that is in itself, although it has its existence in the selfhood of all. (a) According to this principle, the multitude of individuals is a folkgroup (Volksmenge) juxtaposed to one of its individuals who is the monarch. They are many movement, fluidity while he is the immediate, the natural. He alone is the natural element, i.e., the point to which nature has fled, its last residue as positive. The royal family is the one positive element, the others are to be abandoned. The other individual [i.e., the citizen] counts only as externalized, cultivated, as that which he has made of himself. The totality, the communal entity (Gemeinwesen), is as little tied to the one as to the other. it is the self-sustaining, indestructible body. Regardless of the princes or the citizens characteristics, the communal entity is self-enclosed and self-sustaining.
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(b) Just as free as each individual is in his knowing, in his outlook (as varied as it is) so [likewise] free are the forces, the individual aspects of the totality, [its] abstract elements, [e.g.,] labor, production, the legal climate, administration, the military; each develops itself entirely according to its one-sided principle. The organic whole has many internal parts which [are complete in themselves and] develop in their abstractness [contributing to the totality]. Not every individual is a manufacturer, peasant, manual laborer, soldier, judge, etc.; rather, [the roles] are divided, each individual belongs to an abstraction, and he is a totality for himself in his thinking [although the totality exists only in the combination]. There are thus three sorts [of aspects] to be developed here: first, the elements of the totality, the firm outer organization and its internal parts, [and] the forces associated with them; second, the outlook (Gesinnung) of each class, its self-consciousness its being as in itself purely knowing, torn loose from its [immediate] existence; [third,] spirits knowing its member, as such, and [his] elevation above [that immediacy]. The first comprises social mores (Sittlichkeit); the second is morality (Moralitt); the third [aspect] is Religion. The first is the freely released spiritual nature; the second is its knowing of itself, as knowing of that knowing; the third is spirit knowing itself as absolute spirit, [e.g.,] religion.
A. Classes: The Nature of Self-Ordering Spirit

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The Philosophy of Spirit (Jena Lectures 1805-6) PART III. Constitution
A. Classes: The Nature of Self-Ordering Spirit

The spirit knowing itself to be all actuality and all essentiality looks at itself, is its own object; i.e., it is for itself an existing organism. It constructs its consciousness only then is it true spirit, in itself. In each class (Stand), the spirit has (a) a distinct task: to know its own existence and activity in that class; and (b) a particular concept: knowing [its] essentiality. These two are partly to be divided, partly united. The first element is trust; the second is the division of trust in the abstraction of right; the third is absolute mistrust i.e., when what counts as absolute are things, money, representatives, the universal. With this there enters the object that is in itself the universal object: the state as end. [There is a] knowledge of duty, morality but this universal knowing [takes place] in its particular branches, [as in] the business class. Then, [to know] the universal qua universal [this is] the scholar (for whom the most important thing is a certain vanity about his own Self). Finally, to know the negated actual individual, the danger of death [this is] the military class. [All this, in combination, comprises the] absolute individuality of a people. i. The Lower Classes and Their Outlooks (a) The peasant class the class of immediate trust and of crude concrete labor. Absolute trust is the basis and element of the state. In the developed state, however, the trust returns to one class, to the elementary point of departure and to the general element that remains in all, but which takes on its more conscious form. Thus the peasant class is this unindividualized trust, having its individuality in the unconscious individual, the earth. just as, in his mode of work, the peasant is not the laborer of the abstract [i.e., industrial] form, but rather provides approximately for most or all of his needs, so only in his inner life is his work connected to his activity. The connection between his end and its actualization is the unconscious aspect: nature, the seasons, and the trust that what he has put into the ground will come up of itself. He tills the soil, sows, but it is God who makes things grow, the activity being subterranean. He pays taxes and duties because that is how things are these fields and houses have always had these burdens on them it is so, nothing more. [He has] age-old rights and if new taxes are imposed, he does not understand why, but sees this as [the will of] an individual master, sees that the aristocrats need much, and that in general the state has need of [the money]. Yet he does not understand this immediately. He sees only that money is extracted from him, that businessmen must live also, and that the distinguished lord, the prince, is just that the lord, the prince. The peasant therefore allows more than one demand to be imposed upon [his age-old] right; and he asks not that he understand the thing, but only that he be spoken to, that he be told what he should do and for what purpose he is being commanded. [It is] a sharp suggestion [he receives], so that he notices a certain force present here: he must provide, and in this form. For his part, he brings his peasant understanding into play, to show that he is not that dumb, [that he is capable of] saying something at the harvest festivities certain maxims and in response to the force used against him, he says he will do what is asked of him. And insofar as he retains the right of his understanding and his will, to that extent he obeys. It is the formal [aspect] of speaking and comprehending. This formalism of knowing passes over into abstract knowing, just as concrete labor passes over into the abstract.
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Concrete labor is the elementary labor, the substantial sustenance, the crude basis of the whole, like trust. In war, this class comprises the raw mass. [It is] a crude, blind animal, self-satisfied in its insensibility. If its right is denied, it is reflected back into its individuality, and becomes spiteful. And when it strikes out, it rages like a blind mad element, like a deluge which only destroys, or at best leaves a fertile mud and then is spent, having produced no [meaningful] work. (b) This substantiality passes over into the abstraction of labor and the knowledge of the universal: the class of business and of law (Recht). The labor of the Brger class is the abstract labor of individual handicrafts. Its outlook is that of uprightness (Rechtschaffenheit). It has taken labor out of natures hands and has elevated the process of giving shape (das Formiren) above the unconscious level. The Self has [thus] gained independence from the earth (ist ber die Erdeherausgetreten). The form, the self of the work produced is the human Self; the natural self has died; [now the self is] to be considered only in its capacity for use and work. Trust is a closer, more determinate element in consciousness. The Brger class oversees the livelihood of the city, the number of fellow workers, [etc.]. Its activity and skill are [those of] contingency, reverting from the contingency of nature [to the work of this class] and [the products] falling to its share [as its right]. The Brger certainly thinks of himself as a proprietor and not only because he possesses property, but, because it is his right to do so, he asserts that right. He knows himself as recognized in his individuality, and he stamps this on everything. Unlike the crude peasant, he does not enjoy his glass of beer or wine in order to rise above his usual numbness, partly to enliven his prattling gossip and wit but rather to prove to himself, in his fine coat and in the grooming of his wife and children, that he is as good as another and that he has achieved all this. What he enjoys thereby is himself, his worth and uprightness; this he has earned through his work, and it stands to his credit. It is not the pleasure itself he enjoys, as much as the fact that he enjoys it, his self-image (die Einbildung von sich selbst). (c) This imagination of his own worth, and of his universal selfhood in his particularity, becomes an immediate unity, in that the possessing and counting-for-something become synonymous. The imagination ceases to fill up his [sense of] class, [i.e.,] ceases to have elevated his particularity to this universality. What counts is no longer the class as such, but rather the reality of the possession as such. The abstraction of right and class is fulfilled, and it counts only insofar as it is fulfilled. The mercantile class: the merchants work is pure exchange, neither the natural nor the artificial production and forming [of goods]. Exchange is movement, spiritual, the medium that is freed of uses and needs, as it is freed of work and immediacy [e.g., the stock exchange]. This pure movement and activity is the object here. The object itself is divided into two elements: the particular (trade goods) and the abstract (money). [This is] a great invention the thing that is needed has become something merely represented, not something to be enjoyed itself. Thus the object, here, is such that it counts only according to the meaning [placed upon it], no longer in itself i.e., [as fulfilling] the need. It is simply something internal. The outlook of the mercantile class is therefore this understanding of the unity of a thing with its essence: a person is as real as the money he has. The self-image is gone. The [inner] significance has an immediate existence [of its own]. The essence of the thing is the thing itself. Value is hard cash [klingende Muntze: literally, ringing coin]. The formal principle of reason is there. (But this money, which signifies all needs, is
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itself merely an immediate thing.) It is the abstraction from all individuality, character, skills of the individual, etc. This outlook is that harshness of spirit, wherein the individual, altogether alienated, no longer counts. It is strict [adherence to] law: the deal must be honored, no matter what suffers for it family, ones welfare, life, etc. Complete mercilessness. Factories, manufacturing, base their subsistence on the misery of one class. Spirit, in its abstraction, has thus become an object for itself as the selfless inner. Yet this inner is the I itself, and this I is its existence itself. The form of the inner is not that dead thing, money, but is in any case the I. In other words, for the spirit, the state in general is the object of its activity, its effort and end. ii. The Universal Class (a) The public class is immediately this involvement of the universal element in everything individual the blood vessels and nerves that weave through every part, giving it life and sustenance, and bringing it back into the universal. This class is necessity; and its life discharges the particular into the universal. it is the administration and development of public wealth, as well as the exercise of law and then the [executive powers of the] police. The power of government consists in the fact that each system (as though it were alone) develops itself freely and independently according to its concept. And the wisdom of government consists in modifying each system according to its class; i.e., to let go of the strictness of the abstract concept for [the sake of] its living parts, just as the arteries and nerves serve the various parts, developing themselves and accommodating themselves to them. The stiffly abstract allocation of powers for all classes in the same manner makes for the severity of government. If, however, this abstract [approach] is modified, although not surrendered, the result is the satisfaction of the classes with their government. [Thus] taxes, duties, tithes are cruder for the peasant, without great formality. He need not be subjected to the far-reaching formalities that occur in regard to customs duties for mercantile goods. Indirect taxes ought to rest with their entire weight on the Brger class and merchant class, primarily. The peasant becomes more observant and educated in these formalities, but his insensibility must be taken into consideration. Likewise in regard to the judicial aspect: there must be an easier, coarser justice for the peasant class; for the Brger class a more detailed form of justice, so that the Brger may secure his right in all aspects; for the merchant there must be the hard, strict justice of business law. Marriage laws [are to be] varied according to the character of the classes. [Among the] peasantry and Brger class, [the parties] get along more easily with one another they fight and make up again. In the upper classes, however, [there is] a deeper sense, angrier, that is introspective (geht in sich), [that] cannot forget or be reconciled. In regard to penal law as well, there can be differences and modifications in regard to punishment. The stiffly formal equality [of law] does not spare character [differences]. One and the same thing does injury in one class more deeply and irreparably, while doing no disgrace in the other. Punishment is the reconciliation of the law with itself. If there is no death penalty involved, then the punishment ought not to kill a persons civil status. When an offender has served his full time, no further reproach can [justifiably] be made to him about his crime. He is [to be] reintegrated into his class. There is no absolute disgrace. There is injury to feeling in the fact that he cannot return [to
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society], is rejected by his class, his reputation ruined. In his punishment, [his place in] his class must still be secured. (Upper-class offenders [are to be confined in] a fortress, not in prison among criminals of other classes.) As there is a particular administration of justice [for each class], so there is a particular science [governing it] [and a particular] religion [but] our states have not yet got that far. (Free disposition over ones property. Here the [concept of] police enters. [The term comes] from politeia, the public life [of the polis] and the governing and action of the totality itself. This [sense] is now degraded to [mean] the action of the totality regarding public security of all sorts: supervision of business to prevent fraud, realization of general trust, trust in the exchange of goods. Each individual is concerned only for himself, not for the general [interest]. The quiet exercise of his property rights and free disposition of his property involves possible injury to others. [The police are to see to] the limitation, prevention of injury, as well as to [the situation in which everything] is carried on only on the basis of trust. The police are to watch over domestic servants, [to see to it] that a contract is drawn up. Guilds determine the specific rights of masters over apprentices and journeymen, regarding wages and the like.) The public class works for the state. Spirit has [thus] elevated itself to the universal object. The businessman: his work is itself very divided, abstract, [akin to] machine-work. It certainly [contributes] directly to the universal, yet according to a limited and at the same time a fixed aspect whereby the businessman can change nothing. His outlook (Gesinnung) is that he is fulfilling his duty. He elevates his specific generality to the knowing of the universal. In his specific activity he sees the absolute moral outlook spirit has [thus] raised itself above character he performs a universal [task]. (b) The actual businessman is also part scholar. He knows [that he is] to fulfil his duty (Pflicht). This knowing is empty, general. That is, in [fulfilling] the particular duty, it is only the universal element that counts. This empty thinking of his as duty this pure knowing is to be fulfilled, is to give itself content in itself a free content which is at the same time a disinterested object, a content wherein I have my thinking as well as my duty, but so that this thinking of mine is at the same time independent of me. This is science in general. Here the spirit has some object or other, which it treats without relation to desire and need. It is intelligence which knows itself. The object is the concept of any determinate thing at all, ascending from the things sensual characteristics to its essence. It is an object which appears alien, however, [and] an activity that treats the thought as such, [that] externalizes (entussert) itself as intelligence, not as absolute actual self. The concept does not become its own object [as yet]. It elevates its thinking to universality, suppressing its arbitrariness, all of which is in itself and necessary. This missing element is supplied by the military class. That is, the [state as a] totality is an individuality: the activity of this class is for the existing whole; its thought of this whole goes back into the selfhood [of the state as individual]. The totality is an individual, a people, turned against others. [In war there is] the re-creation of the undifferentiated [social] situation (Stand) of individuals toward one another; [it is the] state of nature, [but] here it is real for the first time. The relation
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[between nations] is partly the placid subsistence of individuals independent of one another [i.e.,] sovereignty [and] partly [their] connection through agreements. These agreements do not, however, have the actuality of a true contract. There is no existent power in them, but rather the individual that is the nation (Volksindividuum) is likewise the universal as existing power. [International agreements] must not be regarded, therefore, in the way that civil contracts are. They have no binding force as soon as one of the parties annuls them. This is the eternal deception, in concluding treaties, to obligate oneself and then to let that obligation evaporate. A general confederation of nations (Volkerverein) for permanent peace would mean the supremacy of one nation, or it would mean there is only one nation (the individuality of nations suppressed), a universal monarchy. Morality has no part in these relations, since it is the unfulfilled, unindividualized knowing of duty as such. Insecurity, uncertainty yet security in the absolute certainty of itself. The military class and war are the actual sacrifice of the self the danger of death for the individual, his looking at his abstract immediate negativity, just as he is his immediately positive self. Crime is a necessary element in the concept of right and coercive law: [namely, that] each one, as this individual, makes himself into an absolute power, sees himself as absolutely free, for himself, and real against another as universal negativity. In war this is allowed him it is crime for [i.e., on behalf of] the universal. The end is the maintenance of the totality, against the enemy who is out to destroy it. This externalization must have this same abstract form, must be without individuality death, coldly received and given, not in ongoing battle where the individual has his eye on his opponent and kills him with direct hatred; rather, death emptily given and received, impersonal in the gunsmoke.
B. Government: The Self-Certain Spirit of Nature

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B. Government: The Self-Certain Spirit of Nature

In this individuality, as [an] absolute self and [as the] negativity of the individual person, the government is fulfilled as the peak of the totality. In war, the government, as self-subsisting, shakes up the organization of its classes as well as the all-embracing systems of right, of personal security and property. It becomes apparent that all this vanishes in the power of the universal. What this transition involves in its concept is now at hand: the unsettling [of the entire system], its subjugation and coercion under pure power. No longer are work and advancement, property right and personal security, granted their absolute status; rather, [what we see is] injury done them. The individuals rootedness in his own existence [to the exclusion of the public interest), this sundering of the totality into atoms, here suppresses itself. The individual has his absolute freedom [in his submission to the totality], and this itself is the strength of the government. This immediate pure will is likewise self-conscious will. Government is this willing, the abstract universal willing of right, etc.; it is the resolution, the single will. The wisdom of government, primarily, is to suit these abstract elements to the classes in general, and in individual cases to make exceptions to the law. The implementation, as such, is not this lifeless doing. Rather, the individualization of the universal is at the same time the supersession (aufheben) of the universal, and, in individual cases, acting against it. Government is the spirit that is certain of itself, doing the right [although] independently of spirit, acting in immediacy. Thus spirit is freedom fulfilled. Class, determinate character [now serve] as reality and through it [an] all-embracing abstract system of individual subsistence. [There are] branches of powers yet likewise the freedom of the subsistent as such [i.e., of the individual], and of his immediately conscious spirit.
C. Art, Religion, and Science

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The Philosophy of Spirit (Jena Lectures 1805-6) PART III. Constitution
C. Art, Religion, and Science

The absolutely free spirit, having taken its determinations back into itself, now generates another world. It is a world which has the form of spirit itself, where spirits work is completed in itself and the spirit attains a view (Anschauung) of what is spirit itself, as itself. As intelligence, the existent (das seyende) has the form (Gestalt) of something other; as will it has the form of itself. Being-recognized (Anerkanntseyn) is the spiritual element, but it is as yet indeterminate in itself and is therefore [to be] filled out with manifold content. The coercive law is the movement of this content, i.e., the universal seeing itself as mediation. The constitution is its [i.e., the free spirits] creation of the content out of itself constituting itself, but in the form of object. [The spirit] makes itself into [its] content, and as government it is the self-certain spirit: it knows that this is its content and that it [i.e., spirit] is the power over it [this content] [it is] spiritual content. Accordingly, it must now create this content as such, as self-knowing. Thus, at the immediate [level], spirit is art: the infinite knowledge, which, immediately alive, is its own fulfilment the knowledge which has taken back into itself all the exigency of nature, of outer necessity, and [has bridged] the division between self-knowledge and its truth. Immediately, art is form, indifferent to the content form which could cast itself into any content [and] bring that content to view as something infinite, allowing its inner life, its spirit, to come out, [and] making it its object as spirit. Art sways between form and the pure self of form and thus between plastic and musical art. Music is the pure [experience of] hearing, wherein the formative element brings nothing into being but the transitory sound, and the melody of harmonic motion moves itself to the triad turned back into itself. It is formless motion the dance of this motion itself as the invisible presentation, belonging to time. [At] the other extreme, sculpture is the quiescent presentation of the divine. Between these two [poles] there are painting (the plasticity that takes color [all] to itself, the selfish [medium] in the form of pure sensation in itself); and poetry (plasticity as representation of form in the musical, whose sound, extended to language, has content in itself). Absolute art is that whose content is equal to its form. Everything can be elevated into art. Yet this elevation is an alien fancy: as existing content, seen prosaically, it must itself be equal to the form. This is spirit itself. Hence nature poetry is the worst landscape art, etc. since that which gives it life contradicts the form in which it immediately is. [This is the] modern formalism in art. [There is, it says,] poetry in all things, a yearning for all, not an external force; things are that way in themselves (an sich), in Gods view yet this in themselves (dieses Ansich) is abstract, not equal to their existence. This purely intellectual beauty this music of things has the Homeric plasticity as its opposite. The former is unsensory, the latter a sensory viewing (Anschauung). Here we do not have the form of the symbol, of [figurative] meaning this is touched upon quietly, from a distance. Here the meaning itself is to come forward, but the form is lost. Art is in this contradiction with itself: that
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if it is independent it must be extended to allegory, and then it has vanished as individuality; and with the [figurative] meaning demoted to individuality, [meaning] is not expressed. Art creates the world as spiritual and as open to view. It is the Indian Bacchus not the clear selfknowing spirit but the inspired spirit (begeisterte Geist) which envelops itself in sensation and image, wherein the fearful is hidden. Its element is vision (Anschauung) but vision is the immediacy, which is not mediated. This element is therefore not adequate to the spirit. Art can therefore give its forms only a limited spirit. Beauty is form; it is the illusion of absolute vitality, sufficient to itself, self-enclosed and complete in itself this medium of finitude. Vision cannot grasp the infinite it is merely an intended infinitude. This god as statue, this world of song encompassing heaven and earth, the universal essences in individual mythic form, the particular essences, and self-consciousness all this is [merely] intended, not true representation (Vorstellung); it has no necessity to it [which is] the form of thinking. Beauty is much more the veil covering the truth than the presentation (Darstellung) of it. Thus, as the form of life, the content is not adequate to it, is limited. The artist therefore often demands that the relation to art be only a relation to form, and that one should abstract from content. Yet people will not let this content be taken from them. They demand essence [i.e., meaning], not bare form. The connoisseur, [however,] is the one who contemplates pure poetry and the artists understanding [in a work of art]the motifs, the detail which is determined by the whole and brings it out, selected with understanding, the parts being kept well distinct from one another, etc. Art, in its truth, is closer to religion the elevation of the world of art into the unity of the Absolute Spirit. In the world of art each individual [entity], through beauty, gains a free life of its own. Yet the truth of individual spirits is in their being an element in the movement of the whole. Absolute spirit knowing itself as absolute spirit: [this absolute spirit] itself is the content of art, which is only the selfproduction of itself, as self-conscious life reflected in itself, in general. In art, (a) this individual self, this one, is only a particular self, the artist the enjoyment on the part of others is the selfless universal intuition (Anschauung) of beauty; (b) the determinacy is individual content hence its immediacy as existent, like that of the self [when] separated from beauty, from the unity of individuality and universality, i.e., [the unity] of the self and its universal existence. In religion, however, the spirit becomes its own object, as absolutely universal, or as the essence of all nature , of being and doing and [yet] in the form of the immediate self. The Self is universal knowing, and through this the return into itself. Absolute religion is this knowledge that God is the depth of self-certain Spirit thereby the Self of all. This knowledge is the essence, pure thought yet, alienated (entussert) from this abstraction, He is actual selfhood. He is a Person, having a common spatial and temporal existence and this individual is what all individuals are. The divine nature is not other than the human. All other religions are incomplete [in this regard:] either [religions of] essence alone, the fearful essence of natural power wherein the self is nugatory; or the beautiful religion, the mythic, a game not worthy of the essence, without profundity and depth, where depth is [nothing more than] unknown destiny. The absolute religion, however, is the depth brought to daylight this depth is the I, as the concept, the absolute pure power.
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In it [i.e., the absolute religion], therefore, the spirit is reconciled with its world. Spirit, as existent, is its organization and progress through the social classes, distinct character and distinct duty, each self having a limited purpose and likewise a limited activity. The knowing of itself as essence in right and duty is empty as pure essence and pure knowing; [but] as fulfilled [it is] a limited manysidedness, and the immediate actuality [is] an equally individual [knowing]. Morality, in its activity, is the elevation beyond class, advancing itself and the activity of its class doing something for the universal.) But the government stands over all the spirit that knows itself as universal essence and universal actuality, the absolute Self. In religion, everyone elevates himself to this view of his own self as a universal Self. His nature, his class, fade like a mirage, like an island appearing as a fragrant cloud far at the edge of the horizon [and] he is the equal of the prince; it is his knowing of himself as knowledge of spirit, [so that] for God he is worth as much as any other. it is the alienation of his entire sphere, his entire existing world. It is not that alienation which is only form, cultivation, and whose content is the [world of] sensory existence again but rather the universal [alienation] of the entire actuality. This alienation restores the actual world to itself once again as complete. The two realms actuality and heaven thereby come to be still far apart, however. Only beyond this world is the spirit reconciled with itself, not in its present. If it is satisfied with this world, then it is not the spirit elevating itself above its [immediate] existence. Spirit is to be shaken in this world, and in war and trouble it is shaken, and flees from this existence into thought. Yet there is a longing for heaven, and likewise a longing for earth the former is for want of something better. By means of religion, the spirit has satisfied the trust that the events of this world and nature are reconciled with the spirit and [that] no dissonance, no unreconciled selfless necessity rules in it. Religion, however, is the represented spirit, the Self which does not bring together its pure consciousness with its actual consciousness, [and for which] the content of the former passes over into the latter as something different. The thought the inner idea of absolute religion is this speculative idea that the Self is the actual, is thinking (Denken). Essence (Wesen) and being (Seyn) are [thus] the same. This is posited [in the ideal that God (the other worldly absolute essence) has become man, this actual man. But at the same time this actuality has annulled (aufgehoben) itself, become a thing of the past and this God who is actuality and is [yet] an annulled actuality (i.e., a universal actuality) is the spirit of the community. [The idea] that God is spirit this is the content of this religion and the object of this consciousness: (a) [as object] of pure consciousness, [as] the Eternal Being (Wesen), Son and Spirit; here these are all the same Being, [and] what is posited is not the distinction [between them, but] the indifference of immediate being; (b) God, the essence of pure consciousness, becomes an other to itself: [this other is] the world. But this existence is [as] concept, being-in-itself, evil. And nature, the immediate, must be represented as evil, [the counterpart of God,] each of us coming to an insight into his own evil nature i.e., so that the nature becomes the concept, the evil essence, being-for-itself (against the essence that is in itself) but at the same time the contrary, the essence that is in itself. [Thus, nature is evil in being Gods other, yet is like God in being self-sufficient.]
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That is to say, God appears as actual in nature. [Yet with God immanent in nature,] everything beyond has fled. That this opposition [between the here and the beyond] is itself now void that the evil, the actuality that is for itself is not in itself but is universal this presents itself as well in the sacrifice of the God man: (a) the sacrifice of divinity, i.e., of the abstract Being (Wesen) from beyond, has already occurred in his becoming actual; (b) [the sacrifice is also in] the elevation (Aufheben) of actuality, its becoming universality ([as] universal spirit but this is [merely] a representation for consciousness); likewise [it has become:] (c) the universality of the Self in itself; i.e., the community must renounce its being-for-self and [the world of] immediate nature. That is, it must also view [the world] as evil, and this view of the evil is overcome (hebt sich auf) in the grasp of that representation [of a universal spirit]. Presentation in worship, wherein that self [i.e. the community] gives itself the consciousness of unity with the [supreme] Being (Wesen). Devotion knows itself in him: worship (Kultus). This universal spirit (i.e., the spirit of the community) is [that of] the state, of the church, the existent actual spirit, which has become its own object as spirit but as representation and faith. It is the spirit of the community, but in its representation it flees beyond its own self, far remote from it. That immediate knowing is not united with this otherness. Everything [in this religious expression] has the form of representation, of the beyond without concept, without necessity, [but as mere] occurrence, contingency. Indeed, the word [is] the eternal resolution and will of God yet [it is] only said, not comprehended, not concept, not Self. The church has its opposite in the state, i.e., in the existent spirit. The church is the state elevated (erhoben) in thoughts i.e., man lives in two worlds. In the one, he has his actuality that vanishes, his natural aspect, his sacrifice, his transitoriness; in the other, [he has] his absolute preservation, knows himself as absolute essence. He dies away from the actual world, knowingly and intentionally, in order to gain the eternal, the unactual life in thought, [as] universal Self. Yet this eternal has its existence in the [cultural] spirit of a people (Volksgeist). It is the [cultural] spirit which itself is but spirit [as actually existent, in the state], through this movement [although] opposed to it in form, [yet] identical to it in essence. The government knows this, the cultural spirit knows that it itself is the actual spirit, containing itself and the thought of itself. It is the fanaticism of the church to wish to establish the eternal, the heavenly kingdom as such, on earth i.e., against the actuality of the state, [like] keeping fire in water. [Yet] the actuality of the heavenly kingdom is the state itself: reconciliation, in thinking, of the essences of both, through the church. If they are unreconciled, then state and church are incomplete. The state is the spirit of actuality. What reveals itself in it [i.e., the state], must be commensurate to it [i.e., to the spirit of actuality]. The state need not respect conscience this is the inner, [and] whether it is to count as action or as principle of action must be revealed in those [elements] themselves. The church is the spirit that knows itself as universal: the internal, absolute security of the state. The individual counts as individual; everything external is in itself insecure and unstable. In the state is [the individuals] complete guarantee [of security]. What a person does [on the basis of] religion he does from his thought of himself, insofar as [that self-conception] is not a [broader] insight [of]
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universal thoughts, without ignoring the varying many-sided aspects of the individual. This is duty (Pflicht); i.e., to this I must yield. It is is justified in the absolute essence. Morality [is grounded] in the absolute essence, insofar as it is my knowing [but] there, [as universal, it is] absolute essence in general. Religion as such is in need of the existent world, of the immediate actuality. It is the universal, therefore under the dominance of the state, is used by it, serves it. Used because religion is what lacks actuality (das Wirklichkeitslose), having its selfhood in the actual spirit, [and] thus is as negated (als aufgehobenes). On the other hand, religion is [rather] the thinking which elevates itself above its actuality: this inner stubbornness that [leads one to] give up ones own existence and be ready to die for ones thought; it is the unconquerable [in the individual], who dies for the [sake of] the thought, for whom the pure thought is everything; [religion is] his inner thinking as such, having the meaning of action which otherwise appears as something contingent. So high has thinking as such been raised [in the individual] going to death happily for the sake of faith. The state that subordinates itself to the church, however, has either surrendered to fanaticism and is lost; or else a priestly regime has been established, demanding not the alienation (Entusserung) of action and existence and specific thoughts, but of the will as such and indeed of the will in existence as such and certainly not toward the universal, the being-recognized, but rather toward a single will, as such. Heaven flees from religion in the actual consciousness man falls to earth and finds the religious [aspect] only in the imagination. That is, religion is so intrinsically selfless that it is the spirit merely representing itself i.e., so that its elements have, for it, the form of immediacy and occurrence, without being conceived or comprehended. The content of religion is probably true but this beingtrue (Wahrseyn) is an assurance without insight. This insight is philosophy the absolute science. Its content is the same as that of religion, but its form is conceptual. [It can be divided into:] (a) speculative philosophy [concerning] absolute being which becomes other to itself, becomes relation to itself [in] life and knowledge, and a knowing knowledge, spirit, spirit knowing itself; (b) natural philosophy [concerning the] expression of the Idea in the forms of immediate being. It is the going into itself, evil, becoming spirit, [becoming] the concept existing as concept. This pure intelligence, however, is likewise the opposite, the universal, indeed sacrificing itself and thereby becoming the actual universal and the universal actuality that is a people; [it is] created nature, the reconciled essence in which each one takes his being-for-himself, through his own alienation and [self-]sacrifice. In philosophy it is the I as such that is universal the I that, in the concept, is the knowing of the absolute spirit, in itself, as this. There is no other nature here, not the non-present unity, nor a reconciliation that is to exist and to be enjoyed in the beyond, in the future. Rather, it is here, here the I knows the absolute. It knows, it comprehends, it is no other, [it is] immediate, it is the Self. The I is this indissoluble connection of the individual with the universal of individuality as the universality of all nature, and the universality of all essentiality, all thinking. The immediacy of spirit is the [cultural] spirit of a people (Volksgeist) i.e., as existent absolute spirit. Religion [is] the thinking spirit, but which does not itself think, not about itself. Therefore lit has] no identity with itself, no immediacy. This knowledge on the part of philosophy is the restored immediacy. Philosophy itself is the form of mediation, i.e., of the concept. As immediacy, the selfhttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/jl/ch03c.htm Page 5 of 6
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knowing spirit in general is what is disunited in nature and [in] the knowledge of itself. And this spirit is consciousness, immediate sensory consciousness which is something other to itself in the form of something existent. Spirit is its [own] quiescent work of art, the existing universe, and world history. Philosophy alienates itself from itself at its beginning it arrives at the immediate consciousness which is that same disunited consciousness. Thus philosophy is man in general. And as [it is] the [ultimate significance] of man, so it is for the world; and as with the world, so with man. One stroke creates them both. What was there before this time? [in] the other of time (not another time, but eternity, the thought of time)? In this, the question [itself] is suspended (aufgehoben), since it refers to another time. But in this way, eternity itself is in time, it is a before of time. Thus it is itself a past, it was, was absolutely, is no longer. Time is the pure concept the intuited (angeschaute) empty self in its movement, like space in its rest. Before there is a filled time, time is nothing. Its fulfilment is that which is actual, returned into itself out of empty time. Its view of itself is what time is the nonobjective. But if we speak of [a time] before the world, of time without something to fill it, [we already have] the thought of time, thinking itself, reflected in itself. It is necessary to go beyond this time, every period but into the thought of time. The former [i.e., speaking about what was before the world] is the bad infinity, that never arrives at the thought from which it goes forward. This division is the eternal creation, i.e., the creation of the concept of spirit this substance of the concept, which supports itself and its opposite. The universe [is] thus immediately free of spirit, but must nonetheless revert to it or, rather, [in] spirits own activity, its movement. Spirit is to produce the [final] unity for itself likewise, in the form of immediacy it is world history. In it, this [antithesis] is overcome namely, that only in themselves are nature and spirit one being (Wesen). Spirit becomes the knowing of them [and thereby unites them].
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Who Thinks Abstractly?
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Hegel-by-HyperText

Written: by Hegel c. 1808; Source: Kaufmann, Walter. Hegel: Texts and Commentary; Published: Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1966, pp. 113-118. Think? Abstractly? Sauve qui peut! Let those who can save themselves! Even now I can hear a traitor, bought by the enemy, exclaim these words, denouncing this essay because it will plainly deal with metaphysics. For metaphysics is a word, no less than abstract, and almost thinking as well, from which everybody more or less runs away as from a man who has caught the plague. But the intention here really is not so wicked, as if the meaning of thinking and of abstract were to be explained here. There is nothing the beautiful world finds as intolerable as explanations. I, too, find it terrible when somebody begins to explain, for when worst comes to worst I understand everything myself. Here the explanation of thinking and abstract would in any case be entirely superfluous; for it is only because the beautiful world knows what it means to be abstract that it runs away. Just as one does not desire what one does not know, one also cannot hate it. Nor is it my intent to try craftily to reconcile the beautiful world with thinking or with the abstract as if, under the semblance of small talk, thinking and the abstract were to be put over till in the end they had found their way into society incognito, without having aroused any disgust; even as if they were to be adopted imperceptibly by society, or, as the Swabians say, hereingezunselt, before the author of this complication suddenly exposed this strange guest, namely the abstract, whom the whole party had long treated and recognized under a different title as if he were a good old acquaintance. Such scenes of recognition which are meant to instruct the world against its will have the inexcusable fault that they simultaneously humiliate, and the wirepuller tries with his artifice to gain a little fame; but this humiliation and this vanity destroy the effect, for they push away again an instruction gained at such a price. In any case, such a plan would be ruined from the start, for it would require that the crucial word of the riddle is not spoken at the outset. But this has already happened in the title. If this essay toyed with such craftiness, these words should not have been allowed to enter right in the beginning; but like the cabinet member in a comedy, they should have been required to walk around during the entire play in their overcoat, unbuttoning it only in the last scene, disclosing the flashing star of wisdom. The unbuttoning of the metaphysical overcoat would be less effective, to be sure, than the unbuttoning of the minister's: it would bring to light no more than a couple of words, and the best part of the joke ought to be that it is shown that society has long been in possession of the matter itself; so what they would gain in the end would be the mere name, while the minister's star signifies something real a bag of money. That everybody present should know what thinking is and what is abstract is presupposed in good
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society, and we certainly are in good society. The question is merely who thinks abstractly. The intent, as already mentioned, is not to reconcile society with these things, to expect it to deal with something difficult, to appeal to its conscience not frivolously to neglect such a matter that befits the rank and status of beings gifted with reason. Rather it is my intent to reconcile the beautiful world with itself, although it does not seem to have a bad conscience about this neglect; still, at least deep down, it has a certain respect for abstract thinking as something exalted, and it looks the other way not because it seems too lowly but because it appears too exalted, not because it seems too mean but rather too noble, or conversely because it seems an Espce, something special; it seems something that does not lend one distinction in general society, like new clothes, but rather something that like wretched clothes, or rich ones if they are decorated with precious stones in ancient mounts or embroidery that, be it ever so rich, has long become quasi-Chinese excludes one from society or makes one ridiculous in it. Who thinks abstractly? The uneducated, not the educated. Good society does not think abstractly because it is too easy, because it is too lowly (not referring to the external status) not from an empty affectation of nobility that would place itself above that of which it is not capable, but on account of the inward inferiority of the matter. The prejudice and respect for abstract thinking are so great that sensitive nostrils will begin to smell some satire or irony at this point; but since they read the morning paper they know that there is a prize to be had for satires and that I should therefore sooner earn it by competing for it than give up here without further ado. I have only to adduce examples for my proposition: everybody will grant that they confirm it. A murderer is led to the place of execution. For the common populace he is nothing but a murderer. Ladies perhaps remark that he is a strong, handsome, interesting man. The populace finds this remark terrible: What? A murderer handsome? How can one think so wickedly and call a murderer handsome; no doubt, you yourselves are something not much better! This is the corruption of morals that is prevalent in the upper classes, a priest may add, knowing the bottom of things and human hearts. One who knows men traces the development of the criminal's mind: he finds in his history, in his education, a bad family relationship between his father and mother, some tremendous harshness after this human being had done some minor wrong, so he became embittered against the social order a first reaction to this that in effect expelled him and henceforth did not make it possible for him to preserve himself except through crime. There may be people who will say when they hear such things: he wants to excuse this murderer! After all I remember how in my youth I heard a mayor lament that writers of books were going too far and sought to extirpate Christianity and righteousness altogether; somebody had written a defense of suicide; terrible, really too terrible! Further questions revealed that The Sufferings of Werther [by Goethe, 1774] were meant. This is abstract thinking: to see nothing in the murderer except the abstract fact that he is a murderer, and to annul all other human essence in him with this simple quality. It is quite different in refined, sentimental circles in Leipzig. There they strewed and bound flowers on the wheel and on the criminal who was tied to it. But this again is the opposite abstraction. The Christians may indeed trifle with Rosicrucianism, or rather cross-rosism, and wreathe roses around
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the cross. The cross is the gallows and wheel that have long been hallowed. It has lost its one-sided significance of being the instrument of dishonorable punishment and, on the contrary, suggests the notion of the highest pain and the deepest rejection together with the most joyous rapture and divine honor. The wheel in Leipzig, on the other hand, wreathed with violets and poppies, is a reconciliation la Kotzebue, a kind of slovenly sociability between sentimentality and badness. In quite a different manner I once heard a common old woman who worked in a hospital kill the abstraction of the murderer and bring him to life for honor. The severed head had been placed on the scaffold, and the sun was shining. How beautifully, she said, the sun of God's grace shines on Binder's head! You are not worthy of having the sun shine on you, one says to a rascal with whom one is angry. This woman saw that the murderer's head was struck by the sunshine and thus was still worthy of it. She raised it from the punishment of the scaffold into the sunny grace of God, and instead of accomplishing the reconciliation with violets and sentimental vanity, saw him accepted in grace in the higher sun. Old woman, your eggs are rotten! the maid says to the market woman. What? she replies, my eggs rotten? You may be rotten! You say that about my eggs? You? Did not lice eat your father on the highways? Didn't your mother run away with the French, and didn't your grandmother die in a public hospital? Let her get a whole shirt instead of that flimsy scarf; we know well where she got that scarf and her hats: if it were not for those officers, many wouldn't be decked out like that these days, and if their ladyships paid more attention to their households, many would be in jail right now. Let her mend the holes in her stockings! In brief, she does not leave one whole thread on her. She thinks abstractly and subsumes the other woman scarf, hat, shirt, etc., as well as her fingers and other parts of her, and her father and whole family, too solely under the crime that she has found the eggs rotten. Everything about her is colored through and through by these rotten eggs, while those officers of which the market woman spoke if, as one may seriously doubt, there is anything to that may have got to see very different things. To move from the maid to a servant, no servant is worse off than one who works for a man of low class and low income; and he is better off the nobler his master is. The common man again thinks more abstractly, he gives himself noble airs vis--vis the servant and relates himself to the other man merely as to a servant; he clings to this one predicate. The servant is best off among the French. The nobleman is familiar with his servant, the Frenchman is his friend. When they are alone, the servant does the talking: see Diderot's Jacques et son matre; the master does nothing but take snuff and see what time it is and lets the servant take care of everything else. The nobleman knows that the servant is not merely a servant, but also knows the latest city news, the girls, and harbors good suggestions; he asks him about these matters, and the servant may say what he knows about these questions. With a French master, the servant may not only do this; he may also broach a subject, have his own opinions and insist on them; and when the master wants something, it is not done with an order but he has to argue and convince the servant of his opinion and add a good word to make sure that this opinion retains the upper hand. In the army we encounter the same difference. Among the Austrians a soldier may be beaten, he is canaille; for whatever has the passive right to be beaten is canaille. Thus the common soldier is for the officer this abstractum of a beatable subject with whom a gentleman who has a uniform and port d'epe must trouble himself and that could drive one to make a pact with the devil.
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Note by Walter Kaufman: In the nineteenth-century edition of Hegel's Werke, this article (Wer denkt abstrakt?) appears in volume XVII, 400-5. Rosenkranz discusses it briefly (355 f.) and says that it shows "how much Hegel ... entered into the Berlin manner. Glockner reprints it in his edition of the Werke in vol. XX (1930), which is entitled: Vermischte Schriften aus der Berliner Zeit. He includes it among "four feuilletons that Hegel wrote for local papers during the later years of his Berlin period. But Glockner admits: The exact place of publication is unfortunately unknown to me. Hoffmeister, whose critical edition of Hegel's Berliner Schriften: 1818-1831 (1956) is much more comprehensive than Glockner's (800 pages versus 550), does not include this article. In a footnote he says that it belongs to Hegel's Jena period (1807/08). This is an uncharacteristic slip: at the beginning of 1807 Hegel went to Bamberg, in 1808 to Nrnberg; and in the first weeks of 1807, before he left Jena, he certainly lacked the time and peace of mind to write this article. Of Glockner's "four feuilletons" Hoffmeister retains only one, and that is really a letter to a newspaper, protesting their review of a new play. Hoffmeister gives no reasons for dating this article so much earlier than Rosenkranz and Glockner did. Possibly, the disparaging remark about Kotzebue (a German playwright, 1761-1819) suggests a date before Kotzebue was stabbed to death by a German theology student. That the piece was written in Jena seems most unlikely: it is so very different from the articles and the Phenomenology that Hegel wrote during his harassed and unhappy years in that city. But Hoffmeister could be right that it was written in 1807 or 1808.
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The Philosophical Propadeutic by Hegel 1808-1811
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Hegel 1808-1811
The Philosophical Propadeutic

Written: by Hegel as notes for his lectures, 1808-1811; Translated: partially by W. T. Harris in 1860 and published in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, revised by A.V. Miller, edited by Michael George and Andrew Vincent and published by Basil Blackwell in 1986; CopyLeft: Reproduced in part with permission of the copyright holder, under Fair Use provisions; all rights remain with the editors; Transcribed: for marxists.org by J. L. Wilm; HTML Mark-up: by Andy Blunden. Hegel was editor of the Bamberger Zeitung from March 1807 to 1808, during which time The Phenomenology of Spirit was published. From November 1808 until 1815, Hegel was Rector of the Gymnasium in Nuremberg. In 1812, the first volume of the Science of Logic was published.
Table of Contents
First Course. Lower Class. The Science of Laws, Morals and Religion
Introduction Elucidation of the Introduction. Outlines of the Science of Laws, Morals and Religion
First Part. Science of Law Chapter 1. Law Chapter 2. Political Society Second Part. Science of Duties or Morals Duties to Himself Duties to the Family Duties to the State Duties toward Others Third Part. The Science of Religion
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Second Course. Middle Class. Phenomenology of Spirit and Logic

Introduction. Phenomenology.
First Part. Phenomenology of Spirit
First Stage. Consciousness in General Perception The Understanding Second Stage. Self-Consciousness Desire The Relation of Master and Slave Universality of Self-Consciousness Third Stage. Reason
Second Part Logic.
First Section. Being Second Section. Essence Remark on the Antimonies Third Section. The Notion.
Third Course. Upper Class. The Doctrine of the Notion and the Philosophical Encyclopaedia
First Part. Doctrine of the Notion (See Shorter Logic for this) First Section. The Notion Second Section. The Realisation of the Notion Third Section. The Idea. Second Part. Philosophical Encyclopaedia First Section. Logic. (See Shorter Logic for this) Second Section. Science of Nature. (See Philosophy of Nature for this) Third Section. Science of Spirit. (See Philosophy of Spirit for this)
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Hegel. The Philosophical Propadeutic. 1808-1811
1 The Science of Laws, Morals and Religion [For the Lower Class]
Introduction
1. The object of this science is the Human Will in its relations as the Particular Will to the Universal Will: to the Will which is Lawful and Just or in accordance with Reason. As Will the Mind stands in a practical relation to itself. The practical way of acting [Verhalten], through which it brings determination into its determinateness or opposes other determinations of its own in the place of those already existing in it without its cooperation, is to be distinguished from its theoretical way of acting. 2. Consciousness, as such, is the relation of the Ego to an object; this object may be internal or external. Our Knowing contains objects, some of which we obtain a knowledge of through Sensuous Perception; others, however, have their origin in the Mind itself. The former, taken together, constitute the Sensuous World; the latter, the Intelligible World. Judicial [rechtlichen = legal], ethical and religious conceptions belong to the latter. 3. In the relation of the Ego and object to each other the Ego is (a) passive; in which case the object is regarded as the cause of the determinations in the Ego and the particular ideas [Vorstellungen] which the Ego has are attributed to the impression made upon it by the immediate objects before it. This is the Theoretical Consciousness. Whether it be in the form of perception or of imagination or of the thinking activity its content is always a given and extant something, a content having existence independent of the Ego. On the contrary, (b) the Ego manifests itself as Practical Consciousness when its determinations are not mere ideas and thoughts, but issue forth into external existence. In this process the Ego determines the given things or objects, so that the former is active and the latter are passive, i.e. the Ego is the cause of changes in the given objects. 4. Practical Ability [Vermgen] as such determines itself from within, i.e. through itself. The content of its determinations belongs to it and it recognizes that content for its own. These determinations, however, are at first only internal and, for this reason, separated from the external reality, but they are to become external and be realized. This is done through the [conscious] Act. By such an Act internal practical determinations receive externality: i.e. external Being. Conversely, this process may be regarded as the cancelling of an extant externality and the bringing of the same into harmony with the internal determination. 5. The internal determination of the Practical Consciousness is either Impulse [Trieb] or Will Proper [eigentlicher Wille]. Impulse is a natural self-determination which rests upon circumscribed feelings and has a limited finite end in view which it cannot transcend. In other words, it is the unfree, immediately determined. Lower Appetite [niedere Begehrungsvermgen] according to which man
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ranks as a creature of nature. Through Reflection he transcends Impulse and its limitations, and not only compares it with the means of its gratification but also compares these means one with another and the impulses one with another, and both of these with the object and end of his own existence. He then yields to the decision of Reflection and gratifies the Impulse or else represses it and renounces it. 6. The Will Proper, or the Higher Appetite, is (a) pure indeterminateness of the Ego, which as such has no limitation or a content which is immediately extant through nature but is indifferent towards any and every determinateness. (b) The Ego can, at the same time, pass over to a determinateness and make a choice of some one or other and then actualize it. 7. The Abstract Freedom of the Will consists in this very indeterminateness, or identity of the Ego with itself, wherein a determination occurs only in so far as the Ego makes it its own [assimilates it] or posits it within itself. And yet in this act it remains self-identical and retains the power to abstract again from each and every determination. There may be presented to the Will, from without, a great variety of incitements, motives and laws but man, in following the same, does this only in so far as the Will itself makes these its own determinations and resolves to actualize them. This, too, is the case with the determinations of the Lower Appetites, or with what proceeds from natural Impulses and Inclinations. 8. The Will has Moral Responsibility [Schuld] in so far as (a) its determination is made its own solely from its own self, or by its resolve: i.e. [in so far as] the Ego wills it, and (b) it is conscious of the determinations which are produced through its act as they lie in its resolve or are necessarily and immediately involved in its consequences. 9. A Deed [Tat] is, as such, the produced change and determination of a Being. To an Act [Handlung], however, belongs only what lay in the resolve or was in the consciousness [and] hence what the Will acknowledges as its own. 10. The free Will, as free, is moreover not limited to the determinateness and individuality through which one individual is distinguished from another but is Universal Will and the individual is, as regards his Pure Will, a Universal Being. 11. The Will can, in various ways, take up into itself external content, that is, a content which does not proceed from its own nature and make this content its own. In this the Will remains self-identical only in form. It is, namely, conscious of its power to abstract from each and every content and recover its pure form but it does not remain self-identical as regards its content and essence. In so far as it is such a Will it is really only the Will-of-Choice [Willkr] [or Arbitrariness]. 12. But that the Will may be truly and absolutely free it is requisite that what it wills, or its content, be naught else than the Will itself i.e. the pure self-determination, or the act that is in harmony with itself. It is requisite that it wills only in-itself and has itself for its object. The Pure Will, therefore, does not will some special content or other on account of its speciality but in order that the Will as such may in its deed be free and be freely actualized; in other words, that the Universal Will may be done. The more precise determination and development of these universal maxims of the [rational] Will belong to the Science of Laws, Morals and Religion.
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Table of Contents of the Philosophical Propadeutic

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Elucidation of the Introduction

1. Objects are particular somethings through their determinations as sensuous objects, for example, through their shape, size, weight, colour, through the more or less firm combination of its parts, through the purpose for which they are used, etc. If one, in his conception of it, takes away the determinations of an object, this process is called Abstraction. There remains after the process a less determined object: i.e. an Abstract Object. If, however, I conceive of only one of these determinations, this is called an Abstract Representation [or Abstract Idea]. The object left in its completeness of determination is called a Concrete Object. When I abstract all the determinations I have left only the conception of the absolutely Abstract Object. When one says Thing, though he may mean something quite definite, he says only something quite indefinite since our thought reduces an actual something to this abstraction of mere Thing. Sensuous Perception is in part external, in part internal. Through external [Sensuous Perception] we perceive things which are outside us in time and space, things which we distinguish from ourselves. Through the internal Sensuous Perception we take note of the states and conditions which belong in part to our bodies and in part to our souls. One part of the Sensuous World contains such objects and their determinations, as, for example, colours, that is, objects that have a sensuous basis and have received a mental form. If I say, This table is black, I speak in the first place of this single concrete object but, secondly, the predicate black which I affirm of it is a general [quality] which belongs not merely to this single object but to several objects. Black is a simple idea. We cognize a real concrete object immediately. This act of immediate apprehension is called Intuition. A general Abstract Idea is therefore a mediated Idea for the reason that I know it by means of another, i.e. by means of abstraction or the omission of other determinations which are found united in the Concrete Object. A Concrete Idea is said to be analysed when the determinations which are united in it as concrete are separated. The intelligible world receives its content from Spirit [i.e. from the activity of the Mind], and this content consists of pure universal Ideas such, for example, as Being, Nothing, Attribute, Essence, etc. 2. The first source of our knowledge is called Experience. To Experience belongs this important feature: that we ourselves have perceived it. A distinction must however, be drawn between Perception and Experience. Perception has for its object only a single something which is determined in one way this moment and in another way the next moment. If I repeat the Perception, and in the repeated perceptions take note of what remains the same and hold it fast, this operation is properly termed Experience. Experience contains, for the most part, laws: i.e. [just] such a connection of two phenomena that if one is extant, the other one must result from it in all cases. The Experience contains, however, only the mere generality of such a phenomenon and not the necessity of the connection. Experience teaches only that things are or happen thus and so but not the reasons, not the why thereof. Since there are a multitude of objects concerning which we can have no Experience, for example the past, we are obliged to have recourse to the Authority of others. Moreover, these objects which we
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hold for true upon the Authority of others are objects of Experience (i.e. empirical objects). We believe them upon the Authority of others which is probable. We often hold as probable that which is really improbable and what is improbable often turns out to be the truth. (An event receives its confirmation chiefly through its results and through the manifold circumstances connected with our experience of it. Those who narrate to us an event must be trustworthy, that is, they must have been in a position where it was possible for them to have knowledge of it. We draw conclusions from the tone and manner in which they relate the event, in regard to their degree of earnestness or the selfish purpose subserved by it. When writers, under the reign of a tyrant, are lavish in his praises, we at once pronounce them to be flatterers. But if one makes special mention of a good quality or deed of his enemy we are the more ready to believe his statements.) Experience, therefore, teaches only how objects are constituted and not how they must be or how they ought to be. This latter knowledge comes only from a concept of the Essence or Idea of the object, a knowledge of it as a whole. And this latter knowledge alone is true knowledge. Since we must learn the grounds of an object from its Concept, a knowledge of it in its entire compass, so too, if we would learn the character of the Lawful, Moral and Religious, we must have recourse to the Concepts thereof. In determining what is right and good we may at first hold to Experience and that too of the most external kind, namely, the way of the world. We can see there what passes for right and good or what proves itself to be right and good. Upon this phase it is to be remarked (a) that in order to know what deeds are right or good and what are wrong or wicked, one presupposes himself to be in possession of the Concept of the Right [Lawful] and Good and (b) if anyone chose to hold to that which the way of the world showed to be current as right and good he would not arrive at anything definite. All would depend upon the view with which he undertook the investigation. In the course of the world, wherein there occurs such a variety of events, each one can find his own particular view justified be it ever so peculiar. But there is, secondly, an internal experience concerning the Right [Legal], Good and Religious. We judge upon our Sentiment [Gemt] or Feeling [Gefhl] that a deed of this or that character is good or bad. Moreover, we have a Feeling of Religion; we are affected religiously. What Feeling says of the deed by way of approval or disapproval contains merely the immediate expression, or the mere assurance, that something is so or is not so. Feeling gives no reasons for its decision, nor does it decide with reference to reasons. What kind of Feeling we have, of approval or of disapproval, is the mere experience of a Sentiment. Feeling is, however, inconstant and changeable. It is at one time in one state and at another in a different one. Feeling is, in short, something subjective. An object of Feeling is my object as a particular individual. If I say: I feel thus about it or It is my sentiment toward it, I then say only what belongs to me as an individual. I leave undecided whether it is also the same in other persons. When I, upon any occasion, appeal simply to my Feeling, I do not desire to enter upon the reasons [and] consequently upon universal relations. I withdraw myself within myself and express only what concerns me and not what is in-and-for-itself objective and universal. The Objective, or the universal, is the Intelligible, or the Concept [Notion]. If anyone wishes to know truly what a rose or a pink or an oak is, that is, if he wishes to grasp it in its Concept [or Idea], he must first grasp the higher Concept which lies at its base, namely that of Plant; and further, in order to grasp the Concept of the plant, one must again grasp the higher Concept
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whereupon the Concept of the plant depends, and this is the Concept of an Organic Body. In order to have the representation [idea] of bodies, surfaces, lines, and points, one must have recourse to the Concept of Space, since Space is the generic thereof; hence bodies, surfaces, etc. are only particular determinations of Space. In the same manner the present, past and future presuppose Time as their generic ground. And so it is with Laws, Duties and Religion; they are merely particular determinations of Consciousness, which is their generic ground. 3. In the first stage of Consciousness we are usually aware of the object before us, that is, we are aware only of the object not of ourselves. But it is essentially in these things that the I [Ego] exists. In so far as we think simply of an object we have a Consciousness, that is, a consciousness of the object. In so far as we think of Consciousness we are conscious of Consciousness, that is, we have a consciousness of Consciousness. In our ordinary life we have consciousness but we are not conscious that we are a Consciousness; there is much in use that is even corporeal of which we are unconscious; for example, the vital functions which minister to our self-preservation we possess without being conscious of their precise constitution, this we only acquire through Science. Also, from a spiritual standpoint, we are much more than we know. The external objects of our Consciousness are those which we distinguish from ourselves and to which we ascribe an independent existence. The inner objects, on the other hand, are determinations or faculties, [i.e.] powers of the Ego. They do not subsist in separation from one another but only in the Ego. Consciousness functions theoretically or practically. 4. Theoretical Consciousness considers that which is and leaves it as it is. Practical [Consciousness], on the other hand, is the active consciousness which does not leave what is as it is but produces changes therein and produces from itself determinations and objects. In Consciousness, therefore, two things are present: myself and the object; I am determined by the object or the object is determined by me. In the former case my relationship is theoretical [and in the latter case practical]. [In Theoretical Consciousness] I take up the determinations of the object as they are. I leave the object as it is and seek to make my ideas conform to it. I have determinations in myself and the object also has determinations within it. The content of the Idea about the object should conform to what the object is. The determinations of the object in-itself are rules for me. The truth of my Ideas consists in their correspondence with the constitution and the determinations of the object. The law for our Consciousness, in so far as it is theoretical, is that it must not be completely passive but must direct its activity to receiving the object. Something can be an object for our perception without our having on that account a consciousness of it when we do not direct our activity to it. This activity in reception is called Attention. 5. The Ideas which we acquire through Attention we excite in ourselves through the power of Imagination, whose activity consists in this: that it calls up in connection with the intuition of one object the image of another in some way or other linked with it. It is not necessary that the object, to which the Imagination links the image of another, be present; it may be present only in an idea of it. The most extensive work of the Imagination is Language. Language consists in external signs and sounds through which one makes known what he thinks, feels or senses. Language consists in Words, which are nothing else than signs of thoughts. For these signs there are again found in writing other signs called letters. They make known our thoughts without our having to speak them. Hieroglyphic writing is distinguished from the Alphabetic by its direct presentation of entire thoughts. [Translators Note: Though this passage was written before the Rosetta Stone was discovered and is
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therefore no longer valid in respect of Egyptian hieroglyphs, Hegels comments are still valid for other Asiatic forms of hieroglyphic writing.] In Speech a certain sound is sensuously present and therein we have the intuition of a sound. But we do not stop at this because our Imagination links to it the idea of an absent object. Here then we have two different objects, a sensuous determination and another idea linked to it. Here the idea counts solely as the essence and as the meaning of what is sensuously present which is thus a mere sign. The given content confronts a content which we have produced. 6. In ordinary life, the expressions to have an Idea and to Think [vorstellen as opposed to denken] are used interchangeably and we thus dignify with the name of thought what is only the product of imagination. In Ideas of this sort we have an object before us in its external and unessential existence. In Thinking, on the contrary, we separate from the object its external, merely unessential side, and consider the object merely in its essence. Thinking penetrates through the external phenomenon to the internal nature of the thing and makes it its object. It leaves the contingent side of the thing out of consideration. It takes up a subject not as it is in immediate appearance, but severs the unessential from the essential and thus abstracts from it. In Intuition we have single objects before us. Thinking brings them into relation with each other or compares them. In Comparison it singles out what they have in common with each other and omits that by which they differ and thus it retains only universal ideas. The universal Idea contains less determinateness than the single object which belongs under this universal, since one arrives at the universal only by leaving out something from the single thing; on the other hand, the universal includes more under it or has a much greater extension. In so far as Thinking produces a universal object, the activity of abstracting belongs to it and hence it has the Form of the universal (as, for example, in the universal object Man.) But the content of the universal object does not belong to it as an activity of abstracting but is given to Thinking and is independent of it and present on its own account. To Thinking there belong manifold determinations which express a connection between the manifold phenomena that is universal and necessary. The connection as it exists in Sensuous Intuition is merely an external or contingent one, which may or may not be in any particular form. A stone, for example, makes by its fall an impression upon a yielding mass. In the Sensuous Intuition is contained the fact of the falling of the stone and the fact of an impression made in the yielding mass where the stone touched it. These two phenomena, the falling of the stone and the impression on the yielding mass, have a succession in time. But this connection contains, as yet, no necessity: on the contrary it is possible, for all that is therein stated, that the one might have happened under the same conditions without the other following it. When, on the contrary, the relation of these two phenomena to each other is determined as cause and effect, or as the relation of Causality, then this connection is a necessary one or a connection of the Understanding. This entails that under the same conditions, if one happens, the other is contained in it. These determinations are the forms of Thinking. The Mind posits them solely through its own activity but they are at the same time determinations of existing things [zugleich Bestimmungen des Seienden]. We come first by Reflection to distinguish what is Ground and Consequent, Internal and External, Essential and Unessential. The Mind is not at first conscious that it posits these determinations by its own free will, but thinks that it [Mind] expresses in them [these determinations] something which is present without its assistance.
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7. Whenever we speak of the Ego or the Mind as receiving determinations we presuppose its previous indeterminateness. The determinations of the Mind always belong to the Mind even though it has received them from other objects. Although something may be in the Mind which came from without as a content not dependent upon the Mind, yet the form always belongs to the latter; e.g. although in the Imagination the material may be derived from Sensuous Intuition, the form consists in the method in which this material is combined in a different manner from that present in the original intuition. In a pure Concept, e.g. that of animal, the specific content belongs to Experience but the universal element in it is the form which comes from the Mind. This form is thus of the Minds own determining. The essential difference between the theoretical and the practical functions of the Mind consists in this: that in the theoretical the form alone is determined by the Mind while, on the other hand, in the practical function the content also proceeds from the Mind. In Right, for example, the content is personal freedom. This belongs to the Mind. The practical function recognizes determinations as its own in so far as it wills them. Even if they are alien determinations, or given from without, they must cease to be alien in so far as I will them: I change the content into mine and posit it through myself. Theoretical Activity starts from something externally present and converts it into an Idea. Practical Activity, on the other hand, starts from an internal determination. This is called resolve, intention, or direction and makes the internal actually external and gives to it existence. This transition from an internal determination to externality is called Act. 9. The Act is, in general terms, a union of the internal and external. The internal determination, from which it begins, has to be cancelled and made external as far as its form is concerned, which form is that of a mere internal. The content of this determination is still to remain [after negation of the form]; e.g. the intention to build a house is an internal determination whose form consists in this: that it is only an intention at first; the content includes the plan of the house. If the form now is here cancelled, the content will still remain. The house which is to be built according to the intention and that which is built according to the plan are the same house. Conversely, the Act is likewise a sublation of externality as it is immediately present; e.g. the building of a house necessitates a change in a variety of ways, of the ground, the building-stone, the wood, and the other materials. The shape of the external is changed; it is brought into quite other combinations than existed before. These changes happen in conformity to a purpose, to wit, the plan of the house with which internal something the external is to be made to harmonize. 10. Animals, too, stand in a practical relation to that which is external to them. They act from instinct, with designs and purposes to realize, and thus rationally. Since they do this unconsciously, however, we cannot properly speak of them as authors of Voluntary Acts. They have Desires and Impulses, but no Rational Will. In speaking of mans impulses and desires, it is usual to include the Will. But, more accurately speaking, the Will is to be distinguished from Desire. The Will, in distinction from Desire, is called the Higher Appetite. With animals even Instinct is to be distinguished from their impulses and desires, for though Instinct is an acting from Impulse and Desire it, however, does not terminate with its immediate externalization but has a further, and for the animal likewise necessary, result. It is an acting in which there is involved also a relation to something else; e.g. the hoarding up of grain by many animals. This is not yet quite properly to be called an Act, but it contains a design in it, namely,
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provision for the future. Impulse is, in the first place, something internal, something which begins a movement from itself, or produces a change by its own power. Impulse proceeds from itself. Although it may be awakened by external circumstances, yet it existed already without regard to them; it is not produced by them. Mechanical causes produce mere external or mechanical effects which are completely determined by their causes, in which therefore nothing is contained which is not already present in the cause; e.g. if I give motion to a body, the motion imparted to it is all that it has, or if I paint a body, it has nothing else than the colour imparted to it. On the contrary, if I act upon a living creature my influence upon it becomes something quite different from what it was in me. The activity of the living creature is aroused by my act and it exhibits its own peculiarity in reacting against it. In the second place. Impulse is (a) limited in respect to content [and] (b) is contingent as regards the aspect of its gratification, since it is dependent upon external circumstances. Impulse does not transcend its purpose [end] and is therefore spoken of as blind. It gratifies itself, let the consequences be what they may. Man does not make his own Impulses, he simply has them; in other words, they belong to his nature. Nature is, however, under the rule of necessity because everything in Nature is limited, relative or exists only in relation to something else. But what exists only in relation to something else is not foritself but dependent upon others. It has its ground in that [something else] and is a necessitated being. In so far as man has immediately determined Impulses he is subjected to Nature, and conducts himself as a necessitated and unfree being. 11. But man can, as a thinking being, reflect upon his impulses which have in themselves necessity for him. Reflection signifies, in general, the cutting off from or reduction [Abkrzung] of the immediate. Reflection (in respect of light) consists in this, that the rays [of light] which, inthemselves, beam forth in straight lines are bent back from this direction. Mind has Reflection. It is not confined to the immediate but may transcend it and proceed to something else; e.g. from the event before it, it may proceed to form an idea of its consequences or of a similar event or also of its causes. When the Mind goes out to something immediate it has removed the same from itself. It has reflected itself into itself. It has gone into itself. It has recognized the immediate as a conditioned, or limited, in as much as it opposes to it another. It is, therefore, a very great difference whether one is or has something and whether he knows that he is or has it; for example, ignorance or rudeness of the sentiments or of behaviour are limitations which one may have without knowing it. In so far as one reflects or knows of them he must know of their opposite. Reflection upon them is already a first step beyond them. Impulses, as natural determinations, are limitations. Through reflection upon them man begins to transcend them. The first Reflection concerns the means, whether they are commensurate with the impulse, whether the impulse will be gratified through the means; whether, in the second place, the means are not too important to be sacrificed for this impulse. Reflection compares the different impulses and their purposes with the fundamental end and purpose of Being. The purposes of the special impulses are limited but they contribute, each in its own way, to the attainment of the fundamental purpose. One, however, is better adapted for this than another. Hence Reflection has to compare impulses and ascertain which are more closely allied to the fundamental purpose and are best
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adapted to aid its realization by their gratification. In Reflection begins the transition from lower forms of appetite to the higher. Man is, in Reflection, no longer a mere natural being and stands no longer in the sphere of necessity. Something is necessary when only this and not something else can happen. Reflection has before it not only the one immediate object but also another or its opposite. 12. This Reflection just described is, however, a merely relative affair. Although it transcends the finite, yet it always arrives again at the finite; e.g. when we exceed the limits of one place in space there rises before us another portion of space, greater than before, but it is always only a finite space that thus arises, ad infinitum. Likewise, when we go back in time beyond the present into the past we can imagine a period often thousand or thirty thousand years. Though such reflection proceeds from one particular point in space or time to another, yet it never gets beyond space or time. Such is also the case in the Reflection which is both practical and relational. It leaves some one immediate inclination, desire or impulse and proceeds to another one, and in the end abandons this one also. In so far as it is relative it only falls again into another impulse, moves round and round in a circle of appetites and does not elevate itself above the sphere of impulses as a whole. The practical Absolute Reflection, however, does elevate itself above this entire sphere of the finite; in other words, it abandons the sphere of the lower appetites, in which man is determined by nature and dependent on the outside world. Finitude consists, on the whole, in this: that something has a limit, i.e., that here its non-being is posited or that here it stops, that through this limit it is related to an other. Infinite Reflection, however, consists, in this: that the Ego is no longer related to another, but is related to itself; in other words is its own object. This pure relation to myself is the Ego, the root of the Infinite Being itself. It is the perfect abstraction from all that is finite. The Ego as such has no content which is immediate, i.e. given to it by nature, but its sole content is itself. This pure Form is, at the same time, its content: (a) every content given by nature is something limited: but the Ego is unlimited; (b) the content given by nature is immediate: the pure Ego, however, has no immediate content for the reason that the pure Ego only is by means of the complete abstraction from everything else. 13. In the first place the Ego is the purely indeterminate. It is able, however, by means of reflection, to pass over from indeterminateness to determinateness, e.g. to seeing, hearing, etc. In this determinateness it has become non-self-identical, but it has still remained in its indeterminateness; i.e. it is able, at will, to withdraw into itself again. At this place enters the Act of Resolving [Volition] for Reflection precedes it and consists in this; that the Ego has before it several determinations indefinite as to number and yet each of these must be in one of two predicaments: it necessarily is or is not a determination of the something under consideration. The Act of Resolution cancels that of Reflection, the process to and fro from one to the other, and fixes on a determinateness and makes it its own. The fundamental condition necessary to the Act of Resolving, the possibility of making up ones mind to do something or even of reflecting prior to the act, is the absolute indeterminateness of the Ego. 14. The Freedom of the Will is freedom in general, and all other freedoms are mere species thereof. When the expression Freedom of the Will is used, it is not meant that apart from the Will there is a force or property or faculty which possesses freedom. Just as when the omnipotence of God is spoken of it is not understood that there are still other beings besides him who possess omnipotence. There is
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also civil freedom, freedom of the press, political and religious freedom. These species of freedom belong to the universal concept of Freedom in so far as it applies to special objects. Religious Freedom consists in this: that religious ideas, religious deeds, are not forced upon me, that is, that there are in them only such determinations as I recognize as my own and make my own. A religion which is forced upon me, or in relation to which I cannot act as a free being, is not my own, but remains alien to me. The Political Freedom of a people consists in this: that they form for themselves their own State and decide what is to be valid as the national will, and that this be done either by the whole people themselves or by those who belong to the people, and who, since every other citizen has the same rights as themselves, can be acknowledged by the people as their own [i.e. as their representatives]. 15. Such expressions as these are often used: My will has been determined by these motives, circumstances, incitements, or inducements. This expression implies that I have stood in a passive relation [to these motives, etc.]. In truth, however, the Ego did not stand in a merely passive relation but was essentially active therein. The Will, that is, accepted these circumstances as motives and allowed them validity as motives. The causal relation here does not apply. The circumstances do not stand in the relation of cause nor my Will in that of effect. In the causal relation the effect follows necessarily when the cause is given. As reflection, however, I can transcend each and every determination which is posited by the circumstances. In so far as a man pleads in his defence that he was led astray through circumstances, incitements, etc. and, by this plea, [hopes] to rid himself of the consequences of his deed, he lowers himself to the state of an unfree, natural being; while, in truth, his deed is always his own and not that of another or the effect of something outside himself. Circumstances or motives have only so much control over man as he himself gives to them. The determinations of the Lower Appetites are natural determinations. In so far, it seems to be neither necessary nor possible for man to make them his own. Simply as natural determinations they do not belong to his Will or to his freedom, for the essence of his Will is that nothing be in it which he has not made his own. He, therefore, is able to regard what belongs to his nature as something alien, so that, consequently, it is only in him, only belongs to him in so far as he makes it his own or follows with his volition his natural impulses. 16. To hold a man responsible for an Act means to impute or attribute to him guilt or innocence. Children who are still in a state of nature cannot be held responsible for their deeds, nor can crazy people or idiots. 17. In the distinction of Deed from Act [Tat and Handlung] lies the distinction between the ideas of moral responsibility as they are presented in the tragedies of the ancients and those current in our own time. In the former, among the ancients, Deed was attributed in its entire extent to man. He had to do penance for the entire compass of his actions and no distinction was made if he was conscious of only one aspect of his act and unconscious of the others. He was considered as having an absolute knowledge and not [merely] a relative and contingent knowledge, [in that] whatever he did was considered as his own Deed. Part of him was referred to another Being; e.g. Ajax, when he slew the oxen and sheep of the Greeks in a state of insanity and rage caused by his not receiving the arms of Achilles, did not attribute his crime to his madness, as though he were another being while insane, but he took the whole deed upon himself as its author and slew himself from shame.
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18. If the Will were not universal there could be, properly speaking, no actual statutes and nothing which could be imposed as obligatory upon all. Each one could act according to his own pleasure and would not respect the pleasure of others. That the Will is universal flows from the concept of its freedom. Men, considered as they are in the world, show themselves very different in character, customs, inclinations and particular sentiments that is, they differ in their Will. They are by this different individuals and differ by nature from each other. Each one has natural abilities and determinations which others lack. These differences between individuals do not concern the Will in itself, for it is free. Freedom consists precisely in the indeterminate-ness of the Will or in the fact that it has no determined nature in it. The Will by itself is thus a Universal Will. The particularity or individuality of man does not stand in the way of the universality of the Will but is subordinated to it. An Act which is good legally or morally, although done by some one individual, is assented to by all others. They thus recognize themselves, or their own wills, in it. It is the same case here as with works of art. Even those who could never produce such a work find expressed in it their own nature. Such a work shows itself, therefore, as truly universal. It receives the greater applause the less it exhibits the idiosyncrasy of its author. It can be the case that one is unconscious of his Universal Will. He may believe, indeed, that it is directly opposed to his Will, even though it is his [true] Will. The criminal who is punished may wish, of course, that the punishment be warded off but the Universal Will brings with it the decree that the criminal shall be punished. It must be assumed that the Absolute Will of the criminal demands that he shall be punished. In so far as he is punished the demand is made that he shall see that he is punished justly and, if he sees this, although he may wish to be freed from the punishment as an external suffering yet, in so far as he concedes that he is justly punished, his Universal Will approves of the punishment. 19. The Will-of-Choice [Arbitrariness] is freedom, but only formal freedom or freedom in so far as ones Will relates to something limited. Two aspects must here be distinguished: (a) in how far the Will does not remain identical with itself in it and (b) in how far it does remain so. (a) In so far as the Will wills something it has a determined, limited content. It is, in so far, nonidentical with itself because it is here actually determined, although in-and-for-itself it is undetermined. The limited content which it has taken up is therefore something else than it itself; e.g. if I will to go or to see, I become a going or a seeing one. I thus enter a relation not identical to myself, since the going and seeing is something limited and not identical with the Ego. (b) But in relation to the Form I stand in identity with myself or am free still, since I, all the while, distinguish this state of determination from myself as something alien, for the acts of going and seeing are not posited in me by nature but by myself in my own will. In so far as this is the case it is evidently no alien affair because it is made my own and I have my own will in it. This freedom is only formal freedom because, together with my self-identity, there is present also, at the same time, non-identity with myself or, in other words, there is a limited content in the Ego. When in common life we speak of freedom, we ordinarily understand, under the expression caprice or relative freedom, the liberty to do or to refrain from doing something or other. In the limited Will we can have formal freedom in so far as we distinguish the particular content of our Will from ourselves or reflect upon it, that is, in so far as we are also beyond and above it. If we are in a passion or if we
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act through a natural impulse we have no formal freedom. Since our Ego, in this emotion, gives itself up wholly it seems to us to be something unlimited [or infinite]. Our Ego is not out[side] of it and does not separate itself from it. 20. The Absolute Free Will distinguishes itself from the Relatively Free Will or Will-of-Choice [Arbitrariness] through this: the Absolute Will has only itself for object, while the Relative Will has something limited. With the Relative Will, with, for example, the appetite, the object of that Will [its content] is all that concerns it. But the Absolute [Will] must be carefully distinguished from Wilfulness. The latter has this in common with the Absolute Will: that it concerns itself not merely with the object but also with the will as Will, insisting that its will as such shall be respected. A distinction is here to be made. The stubborn [wilful] man insists on his will simply because it is his will, without offering a rational ground for it, i.e. without showing his will to have general validity. While strength of will is necessary, such as holds unwaveringly by a rational purpose, on the other hand mere stubbornness, such as arises from idiosyncrasy and is repulsive toward others, is to be detested. The true Free Will has no contingent content. It alone is not contingent. 21. The Pure Will has nothing to do with particularity. In so far as particularity comes into the Will it is Arbitrariness, for Arbitrariness has a limited interest and takes its determinations from natural impulses and inclinations. Such a content is a given one and is not posited absolutely through the will. The fundamental principle of the Will is, therefore, that its freedom be established and preserved. Besides this it has indeed many different kinds of determinations: it has a variety of definite purposes, regulations, conditions, etc., but these are not purposes of the Will in-and-for-itself. Still they are purposes for the reason that they are means and conditions for the realization of the freedom of the Will, which [realization] demands regulations and laws for the purpose of restraining caprice and inclination or mere good pleasure. In a word, the impulses and appetites which relate to mere natural ends, e.g. Education, has for its end the elevation of man to an independent state of existence: i.e. to that existence wherein he is a Free Will. On this view many restraints are imposed upon the desires and likings of children. They must learn to obey and consequently to annul their mere individual or particular wills and, moreover, [to annul also] to this end their sensuous inclinations and appetites that, by this means, their Will may become free. 22. Firstly, Man is a free being. This constitutes the fundamental characteristic of his nature. Nevertheless, besides freedom he has other necessary wants, special purposes and impulses, e.g. the impulse for knowledge, for the preservation of his life, health, etc. In these special determinations Law has not man as such for its object. It has not the design to further him in the pursuit of the same or to afford him special help therein. Secondly, Law does not depend upon ones motives. One may do something with the best of intentions and yet the deed be not lawful and just for all this but wrong. On the other hand an act, for example the maintenance of my property, may be perfectly lawful and yet I have a bad motive since I may have sought not what was just and lawful but the injury of another. Upon Law as such the intention or motive has no influence. Thirdly, it is not a matter of conviction as to whether that which I perform is right or wrong. This holds particularly with regard to punishment. Although an effort is made to convince the criminal that he has violated what is Law, yet his conviction or non-conviction has no influence on the justice that
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is meted out to him. Finally, Law pays no regard to the disposition or sentiment under whose influence anything is done. It very often happens that one does what is right merely through fear of punishment or fear of unpleasant consequences, such, for instance, as the loss of reputation or credit. Or it happens that one does right from the conviction that he will be rewarded in another life. Law, however, as such, is independent of these sentiments and convictions. 23. Law must be distinguished from Morality. Something may be well enough from a legal point of view which is not allowable from a moral point of view. The Law grants me the disposition of my property without determining how I shall dispose of it, but Morality contains determinations which restrain me in this respect. It may seem as though Morality permitted many things which the Law does not, but Morality demands not merely the observance of Justice towards others but requires also that the disposition to do right shall be present, that the law shall be respected as Law. Morality demands first that the legal right shall be obeyed and where it ceases enters moral determination. In order that an act may have moral value Insight is necessary into its nature [as to] whether it be right or wrong, good or evil. What one terms the innocence of children or of uncivilized nations is not yet Morality. Children or such uncivilized nations escape the commission of a multitude of bad acts because they have no ideas of them: i.e. because the essential relations are not yet extant under which alone such deeds are possible. Such non-committal of evil acts has no moral value. But they do perform acts which are not in accordance with Morality and yet, for the reason that no insight exists into their nature [as to] whether they are good or bad, they are not strictly Moral acts. Private conviction stands opposed to the mere faith in the authority of another. If my act is to have moral value my conviction must enter into the act. The act must be mine in a whole sense. If I act on the authority of another my act is not fully my own; it is the act of an alien conviction in me. There are, however, relations in which the moral aspect consists precisely in being obedient and acting according to the authority of another. Originally man followed his natural inclinations without reflection or else with reflections that were one-sided, wrong, unjust and under the dominion of the senses. In this condition the best thing for him was to learn to obey, for the reason that his will was not yet a rational one. Through this obedience the negative advantage is gained that he learns to renounce his sensuous appetites and only through such obedience can man attain to independence and freedom. In this sphere he always follows another, whether it be his own will, still immersed in the senses, or whether it be the will of another. As a natural creature he stands under the dominion of external things and his inclinations and appetites are something immediate [and] not free or something alien to his true will. The one who is obedient to the Law of Reason is obedient from the point of view of his unessential nature only, which stands under the dominion of that which is alien to him. On the other hand he is independent self-determination, for this Law has its root in his essence. The Disposition [Gesinnung] is thus in the moral realm an essential element. It consists in this: that one does his duty for its own sake. It is, therefore, an immoral motive to do anything out of fear of punishment or in order to preserve anothers good opinion. This is a heterogeneous motive, for it is not from the nature of the thing itself. In such a case one does not consider the Law as something inand-for-itself but as dependent upon external determinations.
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Yet the consideration whether an action is to be punished or rewarded, although the consequences do not constitute the value of a deed, is of importance. The consequences of a good act may sometimes involve much that is evil and, on the contrary, an evil act involve much good. The thinking upon the consequences of an act is important, for the reason that one does not remain standing by an immediate point of view but proceeds beyond it. Through its manifold consideration one is led to the nature of Acts. According to the standpoint of Law man is his own object as an absolutely free existence; according to the moral standpoint on the contrary he is self-object, an individual in his special existence, a member of the family, a friend, a particular character, etc. If the external circumstances in which one man stands with another are so situated that he fulfils his vocation, that is his Fortune. This well-being depends partly on his own will and partly upon external circumstances and other men. Morality has, also, the particular existence or well-being of man for its object and demands not only that man be left in his abstract freedom but that his happiness be promoted. Well-being, as the adaptation of the external to our internal being, we call Pleasure. Happiness is not a mere individual pleasure but an enduring condition [which is] in part the actual Pleasure itself [and], in part also, the circumstances and means through which one always has, at will, the ability to create a state of comfort and pleasure for himself. The latter form is the pleasure of the mind. In Happiness, however, as in Pleasure, there lies the idea of good fortune [good luck]: that it is an accidental matter whether or no the external circumstances agree with the internal determinations of the desires. Blessedness, on the contrary, consists in this: that no fortune [luck] pertains to it: i.e. that in it the agreement of the external existence with the internal desire is not accidental. Blessedness can be predicated only of God, in whom willing and accomplishment of his absolute power is the same. For man, however, the harmony of the external with his internal is limited and contingent. In this he is dependent. 24. The Moral Will, in regard to its disposition and conviction, is imperfect. It is a Will which aims at perfection but (a) is driven towards the attainment of the same through the impulses of sensuousness and individuality and (b) has not the adequate means in its power and is, therefore, limited to bringing about the good of others. In Religion, on the contrary, we consider the Divine Being the perfection of the Will, according to its two aspects, namely [a] the perfection of the disposition which no longer has any alien impulses within and [b] the perfection of the power to attain holy ends [or purposes].

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Outlines of the Science of Laws, Morals and Religion

First Part. Science of Law
1. Law must be considered: (1) in its Essence, (2) in its Actual Existence in Political Society.
Chapter 1 Law
2. According to Law the Universal Will should have full sway without regard to what may be the intention or conviction of the individual. Law applies to man only in so far as he is a wholly free being. 3. Law consists in this; that each individual be respected and treated by the other as a free being; for only under this condition can the free Will have itself as object and content in the other. Explanatory: The freedom of the individual lies at the basis of Law and the Law consists in this:
that I treat the other as a free being. Reason demands lawful behaviour. Essentially, every man is a free being. Men differ from each other in their special conditions and peculiarities but this difference does not concern the Abstract Will as such. In the Abstract Will all are the same and when a man respects another he respects himself. It follows that by the violation of the rights of one individual the rights of all are violated. This sympathy with others is quite a different thing from the sympathy which one feels at anothers misfortune. For, although the injury or loss which a man suffers in gifts of fortune (which gifts though desirable are not in themselves essential) concerns me, yet I cannot say that it absolutely ought not to have happened. Such misfortunes belong to the particularity of man. In all our sympathy we separate misfortunes from ourselves and look upon them as something apart from us. On the other hand, at the infringement of anothers rights each one feels himself attacked, because Law is something universal. Hence a violation of the Law cannot be looked upon as something foreign [fremdes]. We ourselves feel such an infringement all the more, for the Law is necessary.
4. In so far as each man is recognized and acknowledged as a free being, he is a Person. The proposition of the Law is therefore to be expressed thus: Each should be treated by the other as a Person. Explanatory: The concept of Personality includes in itself selfhood or individuality which is free
or universal. People have Personality through their spiritual nature.
5. It follows, hence, that no man can justly be compelled except for the purpose of annulling the constraint which he has placed upon others.
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Explanatory: There are limitations of freedom and law which permit people to be treated not as
persons but as chattels, e.g. the laws which permit slavery. These are, however, only positive laws or rights, which are opposed to Reason or Absolute Right.
6. That action which limits the freedom of another or does not acknowledge and treat him as a free will is illegal. Explanatory: In an absolute sense no constraint is possible against man because he is a free
being and can assert his will against necessity and can give up all that belongs to his existence. Constraint takes place when some condition is attached to a mans existence in such a way that, if he would maintain his existence, he must submit to the condition. Since mans existence is dependent upon external objects, in that respect, he is liable to alien interferences. Man is externally constrained only when he wills something which involves another; it depends upon his will whether he will have one and with it the other or neither of them. The external constraint, of course, depends upon his will, that is, in how far he places himself under it. Hence the external constraint is only relative. It is legal constraint when it is exercised for the purpose of enforcing justice against the individual. This species of constraint has an aspect according to which it is not a constraint and does not contradict the dignity of a free being, for the reason that the Will in-and-for-itself is also the Absolute Will of each individual. Freedom is not found where the arbitrary will or caprice of the individual [dominates] but where Law prevails.
7. Permitted, but not for this reason commanded, is the legal aspect of all actions that do not limit the freedom of another or annul anothers act. Explanatory: The Law contains properly only prohibitions and no commandments. What is not
expressly forbidden is allowed. Of course legal prohibitions can be positively expressed as commands, as for instance: Thou shalt keep thy contract. The general legal principle, of which all others are only special applications, reads thus: Thou shalt leave undisturbed the property of another. This does not require anything positive to be done or a change of circumstances to be produced but requires only the abstention from the violation of property. When, therefore, the Law is expressed as a positive command, this is only a form of expression, the content of which is always based on a prohibition.
8. The Will, when it subsumes a thing under itself, makes it its own. Possession is the subsumption of a thing under my will. Explanatory: To the subsumption of something there belong two parts: one universal and the
other individual. I subsume something individual when I attribute to it a universal determination. This subsumption occurs in the Act of Judgment. In the Judgment that which subsumes is the Predicate and that which is subsumed is the Subject. The act of taking possession is the expression of the Judgment that a thing becomes mine. Here my will is that which subsumes. I give to the thing the predicate that it is mine. The will is the subsuming activity for all external things, since it is in itself the universal essence. All things which are however, not self-related are only necessitated and not free. This fact gives man the right to take possession of all external things and to make of them something different from what they are. In doing so he treats them only in conformity with their essence.
9. (1) The thing which one takes possession of for the first time must be res nullius, i.e. not already
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subsumed under another will. Explanatory: A thing which already belongs to another cannot be taken possession of by me, not
because it is a chattel, but because it is his chattel. For were I to take possession of the chattel I would then annul its predicate to be his and thereby negate his will. The Will is something absolute and I cannot make it something negative.
10. (2) Property must be openly taken possession of [ergiffen], that is, it must be made known to others that I will to subsume this object under my will, be it through physical seizure [korperliche Ergreifung] or through transformation [Formierung] or at least by designation of the object. Explanatory: The external seizure must be preceded by the internal act of the will which
expresses that the thing is to be mine. The first kind of appropriation is that of Physical Seizure. It has this defect, that the objects to be seized must be so constituted that I can take hold of them with the hand or cover them with my body and, furthermore, that the appropriation is not [a] permanent [one]. The second, more complete kind of appropriation, is that of Transforming [Formierung] a thing, as for example cultivating a field [and] making gold into a cup. In this case the form of what is mine is directly connected with the object and is, therefore, in and for itself a sign that the material also belongs to me. To this kind [of taking possession] belongs, among other things, the planting of trees [and the] taming and feeding of animals. An imperfect form of property in land is the use of a territory without its cultivation; e.g. when nomadic peoples use territory for pasturage, hunters for hunting grounds [and] fishermen the sea coast or river bank for their purposes. Such an appropriation is still superficial because the actual use is only a temporary one [and] not a permanent form of possession closely attached to the object. Appropriation by merely Designation of the object is imperfect. That designation which does not, as in an improvement, constitute the essential nature of the thing is a mere external affair; what meaning it has is more or less foreign to its own essence but it also has, as well, a meaning peculiarly it own which is not connected with the nature of the thing designated. The designation is thus arbitrary. It is more or less a matter of convenience what the designation of a thing shall be.
11. A Possession becomes Property or a Legal [Possession] when it is acknowledged by everyone else that the thing which I have made mine is mine, just as I acknowledge the Property of others as theirs. My possession is acknowledged for the reason that it is an act of the free will, which is something absolute in itself [and] in which lies the universal [condition] that I regard the will of others as something absolute. Explanatory: Possession and Property are two different determinations. It is not necessary that
Possession and Property be always connected. It is possible for me to have Property without being in Possession of it. When, for example, I lend something to another the property still remains mine though I part with the possession of it. Possession and Property are implied in the concept that I have Dominium [i.e. control or dominion] over something. Property is the legal side of the Dominium and Possession is only the external side, namely that something is in my power. The legal right is the side of my absolute free will which has declared something to be someone elses. This will must be acknowledged by others because it is in-and-for-itself and, in so far as the already stated conditions have been observed. Property has, therefore, an internal and an external side. The latter, by itself, is the Appropriation, the former is the Act of Will which must be acknowledged as such. It seems contingent or arbitrary whether the acknowledgement of others should be added to the fact of taking possession. This is necessary, however, for it lies in the nature of the transaction.
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Acknowledgement is not based on reciprocity. I do not acknowledge your right because you acknowledge mine, nor vice versa, but the ground of this reciprocal acknowledgement is the nature of the transaction itself. I acknowledge the will of others because the will is to be acknowledged absolutely.
12. I can Dispose of [or Alienate] [entaussern] my property, and it can become the property of another, through an act of my free will. Explanatory: My Powers and Skills are my property in the most peculiar sense, but they have
also an external aspect. Abstractly considered they are external, [that is] in so far as I can distinguish them from myself, the simple Ego. But also in themselves Powers and Skills are single and limited and they do not constitute my essence. My essence, the intrinsic universal, is distinct from these particular determinations. Finally, they are external in their use. In the very act of using them I convert them to an external form and the product is some external existence. Power, as such, does not lie in the use thereof but preserves itself notwithstanding that it is externalized and that this, its externalization, has made it a separate existence. This expression of Power is also an externality in so far as it is something limited and finite. In so far as something is my property I have connected it with my will but this connection is not absolute. For if it were my will would necessarily be involved. But I have, in this case, only particularized my will and, because it is free, can overcome this particularity.
13. Those possessions are inalienable which are not so much my property as they are constituent elements of my innermost person or essence; such, for example, as the freedom of the will, ethical law, religion, etc. Explanatory: Only those possessions are alienable which already, by their nature, are of an
external character. Personality, for example, cannot be viewed as external to me, for in so far as a man has given up his personality he has reduced himself to a thing. But such an alienation would be null and void. For instance, a man would alienate his ethical nature [Sittlichkeit] were he to bind himself to another to perform all manner of acts, crimes as well as [morally] indifferent acts. But such a bond would have no binding force because it alienates the freedom of the will and, in the latter, each one must stand for himself. Right or wrong acts belong to him who commits them and, because they are so constituted, I cannot alienate them. Nor can I alienate my religion. If a religious community, or even an individual, leaves it for a third party to determine what shall constitute its faith, such an obligation could be set aside by either party. No wrong at least could be done to the party with whom the agreement had been made because what I have given over to him could never become his property.
14. On the other hand, I can alienate the specific use of my mental and bodily energies as well as the chattel which I may possess. Explanatory: One can alienate only a limited use of his powers, since this use, or the
circumscribed effect, is distinct from the Power itself. But the permanent use, or the effect in its entire extent, cannot be distinguished from the Power in-itself. The Power is the inner or universal, as opposed to its expression. The expressions are an existence in time and space. The Power initself is not exhausted in such a single existence and is, moreover, not tied to one of its contingent effects. But, secondly, the Power must act and express itself, otherwise it is not a power. Thirdly, the entire extent of its effects is again, itself, the universal which the Power is. For this reason man
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cannot alienate the entire use of his powers; he would, in so doing, alienate his personality.
15. An alienation to another involves my consent to resign the property to him, and his consent to accept it. This twofold consent, in so far as it is reciprocally declared and expressed as valid, is called Contract (Pactum). Explanatory: Contract is a special mode by which one becomes the owner of property which
already belongs to another. The mode, already explained, of becoming an owner was that of immediate appropriation of some thing that was res nullius.
(1) The simplest form of contract is the Gift-Contract: in this only one of the parties gives and another receives, no equivalent being returned. A valid donation is a Contract because the wills of both parties must be involved: the one willing to resign the property to the other without receiving an equivalent thereof and the other being willing to receive the property. (2) The Exchange-Contract, [or] Barter, consists in this: I give something to another on condition that he gives something of equivalent value [to me]. To this belongs the twofold consent on the part of each: to give something to and to receive something from the other. (3) Buying and Selling is a particular kind of exchange, that of goods for money. Money is the universal form of goods; hence, as abstract value, it cannot itself be used for the purpose of satisfying a particular want. It is only the universal means by which to satisfy particular needs. The use of money is only a mediated one. A material is not in-and-for-itself Money because it possesses such and such qualities but it becomes Money only by general agreement. (4) Rent consists in this: that I grant to someone my possession or the use of my property while I reserve the ownership to myself. There are two cases: it may happen that the one to whom I have leased something is bound to return the same identical thing or that I have reserved the right to property the same in kind and amount or of equal value. 16. The declaration of will contained in the contract is not sufficient to complete the transfer of my property or labour to another. This transfer, on the basis of the contract, is Performance. Explanatory: My promise in the contract contains the acknowledgement on my part that I have
parted with the title to the property and that the other party has acquired title to the same. The piece of property becomes immediately the property of another through the contract in so far as it had its ground in my will. But, if I do not also place the other party in possession in accordance with the contract, to that extent I despoil him of his property. I am therefore bound by the contract to give possession. (Treat here of acquisition by Testament.)
17. An Encroachment [Trespass] upon the sphere of my freedom by another may occur (a) through his having my property in his possession as his own; i.e. through his claiming it on the ground that he has the right to it and acknowledging, at the same time, that if I, instead of himself, had the right to it he would surrender it to me. In this he respects Law as such and only asserts that in this instance it is on his side, (b) His action may imply that he does not recognize my will at all and consequently violates the law as Law. Explanatory: The ideas which we have been considering contain the nature of legality, its laws,
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and its necessity. But Law is not necessary in the sense that necessity is used when speaking of physical nature, e.g. the necessity which holds the sun in its place. A flower must wholly conform to its nature. If it, for example, does not complete its growth this comes from the intervention of some external influence, not from itself. Spirit, on the contrary, by reason of its freedom, can act in contravention of the laws. Thus there can be contravention of Law itself. A distinction must here be made between (a) Universal Law, Law qua Law, and (b) Particular Law as it relates to the rights of an individual person in a particular matter.
The Universal Law is that [concept] through which everybody, independent of his or her property, is a legal person. A contravention of the law may take the shape of a mere refusal to concede to an individual some particular right, or some particular piece of property. In this case, the Universal Law is not violated. One stands in relation to his opponent as a legal person. Such a Judgment can be regarded as a merely negative one in which the particular is denied in the predicate, as for example, when I assert This stove is not green, I negate merely the predicate of greenness but not thereby all predicates. In the second case of a contravention of the law I assert not only that a particular thing is the property of another but I deny also that he is a legal person. I do not treat him as a person. I do not lay claim to something on the ground that I have a right to it or believe that I have; I violate the law as Law. Such a Judgment belongs to the kind of Judgment called infinite. The infinite Judgment negates not only the particular but also the universal of the predicate; e.g. This stove is not a whale or it is not memory. Since not only the particular but also the universal of the predicate is negated nothing remains for the subject. Such Judgments are therefore absurd, though correct in form. So, likewise, the violation of law as Law is something possible, and indeed also happens, but it is absurd and self-contradictory. Cases of the first kind come under the Civil Law, those of the second kind under the Criminal Law. 18. In the first case [Civil Law] the mere explication of the legal grounds is all that is necessary to show to whom the contested particular right belongs. But for the decision of the case between the two contending parties a third party is necessary, one who is free from all interest in the matter, in order to see that the Law as such is carried out. Explanatory: Under the first case come, therefore, civil disputes. In these the right of another is
called into question but on the basis of Law. The two contending parties agree in this, that they recognize the law as Law. The possession is to be given only to him who has the lawful right and not to the one who has influence, power, or is more deserving. The parties differ only in regard to the subsumption of the particular or of the universal. Hence it follows that there is no personal illwill between the judge and the parties in dispute, either towards the judge by the dissatisfied party or on the part of the judge towards the party whose legal right he has denied. Since no attack is here made against the person, it follows that the party who has illegally seized the property of the other is not punished.
19. The second case [Criminal Law], on the other hand, concerns the violation of my personal external freedom, of my life and limb or even of my property, by violence. Explanatory: The second case concerns the illegal deprivation of my freedom by imprisonment
or slavery. I am deprived of natural external freedom when I cannot go where I want to go and [by] similar restrictions. [This case] also includes injury to my life and limb. This is much more important than robbing me of my property. Although life and limb, like property, is something
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external, my personality is also injured, since in my body is my immediate feeling of self.
20. The constraint which is effected by such an act must not only be removed, i.e. the internal nugatoriness of such an act be exhibited only negatively, but there must be a positive restitution made. (The form of rationality in general must be made valid against it, the universality or equality restored.) Since the perpetrator is a rational being his action implies that it is something universal. If you despoil another, you despoil yourself: if you kill anyone then you kill all and yourself. The action is a law which you set up and, in your deed, you have fully recognized its validity. The perpetrator may therefore himself be subjected to the same form of treatment as that which he has meted out and, in so far, the equality that he has violated may again be restored (Jus talionis). Explanatory. Retaliation is based on the rational nature of the wrong-doer [and] it consists in
this: that the unlawful act must be converted into a lawful one. The unlawful action is indeed a single irrational action. But, since it is performed by a rational being, it is, according to form though not according to content, rational and universal. Furthermore, it is to be considered as a principle or as Law. But, as such, it is valid only for the one who committed it because he alone recognizes it by his action and no one else. He himself, therefore, is essentially subject to this principle or Law and it must be carried out upon him. The injustice which he has done is lawful when visited [back] upon him because through this second action, which he has recognized, equality is restored. This is merely formal justice.
21. The Retaliation, however, ought not to be meted out by the injured party or by his relatives, because with them the general regard for Law is bound up at the same time with the contingency of the passions. Retaliation must be lawfully administered by a third party who merely makes valid and executes the universal. In so far it is Punishment. Explanatory: The difference between Revenge and Punishment is that Revenge is Retaliation in
so far as it is carried out by the injured party; Punishment is administered by the judge. Retaliation must be carried out in the form of Punishment because, in the case of revenge, passion has an influence and justice is spoilt by it. Moreover, revenge has the form not of Law but of caprice, since the injured party always acts under the impulse of feeling or of subjective motives. On this account justice, administered as revenge, constitutes a new offence and is felt only as an individual deed and perpetuates itself unreconciled ad infinitum.
Chapter 2 Political Society

22. The concept of Law, as the power which holds sway independently of the motives of the individual, has its actualization only in Political Society. 23. The Family is the natural society whose members are united through love, trust and natural obedience (pietas). Explanatory: The Family is a natural society, firstly, because one does not belong to the family
through his free act but through nature, and secondly, because the relations and the behaviour of the members of a family toward each other rest not so much upon reflection and deliberate choice but upon feeling and impulse. The relations are necessary and rational but there is lacking the form of
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conscious deliberation. It is more akin to instinct. The love of the family circle rests upon the fact that each Ego constitutes a unity with the other Egos. They do not regard each other as independent individuals. The family is an organic whole. The parts are, properly speaking, not parts but members which have their substance only in the whole and which lack independence when separated from the whole. The confidence which the different members of the family repose in each other consists in this: that each does not seek his own interest apart from the rest but only the common interest of the whole. The natural obedience within the family rests upon the circumstance that in this whole there is only one will: that, namely, of the head of the family. In so far the family constitutes only one person. (Nation)
24. The State is human society governed by legal relationships in which all count as persons and not on the basis of particular natural relations which arise from natural inclinations and feelings. The personality of each is respected as a matter of course. If a family has expanded into a nation, and the State and the nation coincide, this is a great good fortune. Explanatory: A people is knit together by language, manners, customs and culture. This
connection, however, is not sufficient to form a State. Besides these the morality, religion, prosperity and wealth of all its citizens are very important things for the State. It must care for the promotion of these conditions but even they do not constitute for it the immediate object of its existence, which is to secure the actualization of Law.
25. The natural condition is the condition of barbarism, of violence and injustice. Man must issue forth from such condition into that of political society because in the latter alone the legal relation has actuality. Explanatory: The State of Nature is frequently depicted as the perfect state of man both as to
happiness and ethical development. In the first place it is to be remarked that innocence, as such, has no moral value, in so far as it consists in mere unconsciousness of evil and rests upon the absence of those needs and wants which promote the existence of evil. Secondly, this state of nature is rather one of violence and injustice, for the precise reason that men in this state act towards each other according to their natures. But in this they are unequal, both in regard to bodily power and in mental endowments, and they make these differences felt, one against the other, through brute violence and cunning. Although reason exists in the state of nature it is there subordinate to nature. Man must, therefore, pass over from this state to one in which the rational will has sway.
26. Law is the abstract expression of the Universal Will that exists in-and-for-itself. Explanatory: Law is the General Will in so far as it accords with Reason. This does not mean
that each individual shall have found this will in himself or be conscious of it. Moreover, it is not necessary that each individual shall have declared his will and from this a universal result has been obtained. That is why in actual history it has not happened that each individual citizen of a people has proposed a law and then that all have agreed to it by a common vote. Law contains the necessity of mutual legal relationships. The legislators have not given arbitrary prescriptions. They have prescribed not the product of their particular likes and dislikes but what they have recognized through their incisive minds as the truth and essence of what is just and right.
27. Government is the individuality of Will that is rationally determined. It is the power to make the laws and to administer or execute them.
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Explanatory: The State has laws. These are the Will in its general abstract essence which is, as
such, inactive; just as principles and maxims express or contain at first only the general nature of the will and not an actual will. To these generalities only the Government is the active and actualizing will. Law has indeed an existence as manners and customs but Government is the conscious power of unconscious custom.
28. The general power of the State contains sundry particular powers subsumed under it: 1. The Legislative as such; 2. The Administrative and Financial, the power of creating the means for the actualization of its freedom; 3. The [independent] Judiciary and Police [or the Public Authority]; 4. The Military, and the power to Wage War and Make Peace. Explanatory: The form of the constitution is determined principally by the question whether
these particular powers are exercised directly by the central government and, moreover, whether several of them are united in one authority or are separated: i.e. whether the prince or regent himself administers the laws or whether particular, special courts are established for this purpose and whether the regency also exercises the ecclesiastical power, etc. It is also an important distinction to note whether in a constitution the highest central power of the government has the financial power in its hands without restriction, so that it can levy taxes and spend them quite arbitrarily and whether several authorities are combined in one, e.g. whether the judicial and the military power are united in one official. The form of a constitution is, furthermore, essentially determined through the circumstance whether or not all citizens, in so far as they are citizens, have a part in the government. Such a constitution as permits this general participation is called a Democracy. The degenerate form of a Democracy is called an Ochlocracy or mob rule, when, namely, that part of the people who have no property and are not disposed to deal justly prevent, by violent means, the law-abiding citizens from carrying out the business of the State. Only in the case of simple, uncorrupted ethical principles, and in states of small territorial extent, can a Democracy exist and flourish. Aristocracy is the constitution in which only certain privileged families have the exclusive right to rule. The degenerate form thereof is an Oligarchy, when, namely, the number of families who belong to the governing class is small. Such a condition of affairs is dangerous because in an Oligarchy all particular powers are directly exercised by a council. Monarchy is the constitution in which the government is in the hands of one individual and remains hereditary in his family. In a Hereditary Monarchy conflicts and civil wars, such as are liable to happen in an elective kingdom when a change of the occupancy of the throne takes place, vanish because the ambition of powerful individuals cannot, in that case, lead them to aspire to the throne. Moreover, the entire power of the government is not vested immediately in the Monarch but a portion of it is vested in the special Ministries (Bureaus) [and/]or also in the Estates which, in the name of the king and under his supervision and direction, exercise the power entrusted to them by law. In a Monarchy civil freedom is protected to a greater degree than under other constitutions. The degenerate form of a Monarchy is Despotism, wherein, namely, the ruler directly governs according to his caprice. It is essential in a Monarchy that the government have appropriate powers to hold in check the private interests of the individual but, on the other hand, the rights of the citizens must be protected by law. A Despotic government has indeed absolute power but in such a constitution the rights of the
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citizen are sacrificed. The Despot has indeed supreme power and can use the forces of his realm arbitrarily; herein lies the greatest danger. The form of government of a people is not merely an external affair. A people can have one form just as well as another. It depends essentially upon the character, manners and customs, degree of culture, its way of life, and the territorial extent [of the nation].
29. The citizens, as individuals, are subordinated to the power of the State and must obey the same. The content and object of the political power is the actualization of the natural, that is, absolute, rights of the citizens. None of these rights is renounced or given up to the State but they are rather only enjoyed in their full employment and cultivation in the State. 30. The constitution of the State defined as the Internal Political Law is the relationship of the particular powers not only to the central administration, their highest unity, but to each other, as well as the relation of the citizens to them or their participation therein. International Law concerns the relation of independent peoples to each other through their governments and rests principally upon special Treaties (Jus Gentium). Explanatory: States are found rather in a natural than in a legal relation towards each other.
There is, therefore, a continual state of strife between them until they conclude Treaties with each other and thereby enter into a legal relation towards each other. On the other hand, however, they are quite absolute and independent of each other. The law is, therefore, not actually in force between them. They can, therefore, break treaties in an arbitrary manner and, on this account, there always remains a certain degree of distrust between them. As natural entities they behave towards each other as external forces and, in order to maintain their rights, must, if needs be, wage war for the purpose.

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Second Part. Science of Duties or Morals
32. Whatever can be demanded on the ground of Law is a Civil Obligation [Schuldigkeit] but, in so far as moral grounds are to be observed, it is a Duty [Plicht]. Explanatory: The word Duty is frequently used of legal relationships. Legal Duties are defined
as perfect and Moral Duties as imperfect because the former must be done, and have an external necessity, while the latter depend on a subjective will. But one might, with good reason, invert this classification in as much as the Legal Duty as such demands only an external necessity, in which the disposition is not taken into account, or in which I may even have a bad motive. On the contrary, for a Moral Duty both are demanded, the right deed as regards its content and, likewise according to form, the subjective side, the Good Intention.
33. Law, in general, leaves the disposition out of consideration. Morality, on the other hand, is concerned essentially with the intention and demands that the deed should be done out of simple regard [Achtung] for Duty. So too the legally right conduct is moral in so far as its moving principle is the regard for the right. 34. The Disposition is the subjective side of the moral deed or the form of the same. There is in it as yet no content present but the content is as essential as the actual performance. Explanatory: With legally right conduct the moral aspect should also be essentially connected. It
may, however, be the case that with legally right action there is no sentiment of Law present; nay, more, that an immoral intent may accompany it. The legally right act, in so far as it is done out of regard for the Law, is, at the same time, also moral. The legally right action, associated at the same time with a moral disposition, is to be carried out unconditionally before there can be room for the moral action in which there is no legal command, that is, legal obligation. Men are very ready to act from a merely moral ground, for example, to give away with an air of generosity rather than pay their honest debts; for in a generous action they congratulate themselves on account of a special perfection, while, on the contrary, in the performance of just action they would only perform the completely universal act which makes them equal with all.
Everything Actual contains two aspects: the true Concept and the Reality of this Concept: for example, the concept of the State is the guarantee and actualization of justice. To the reality belong the special regulations of the constitution, the relation of the individual powers to each other, etc. To the actual man belong also, even on his practical side, the concept and the reality of the concept. To the former belongs pure personality, or abstract freedom, to the latter, the particular determination of existence and existence itself. Although there is in this something more than is contained in the concept, yet this must also be in conformity to the concept and determined by it. The pure concept of practical existence, the Ego, is the object of Law. 35. Moral action refers to man not as an abstract person but according to the universal and necessary
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determinations of his particular determinate existence [Daseins]. The moral code therefore is not merely prohibitory, as with the legal code, which only ordains that the freedom of another must be left inviolate, but it ordains a positive course of action towards another. The prescriptions of Morality refer to individual actuality [i.e. to the concrete situations in which the individual may be placed]. 36. Human impulse in respect of mans particular determinate existence as considered by morality is directed towards the harmony of the outer world with his internal determinations, to the production of Pleasure and Happiness. Explanatory: Man has impulses, i.e. he has internal determinations in his nature or in that respect
according to which he is simply an actual being. These determinations are therefore defective [imperfect] in as much as they are merely internal. They are impulses in so far as they are directed to the overcoming of this defect or want: i.e. they demand their realization, which is the harmony of the outer and inner. This harmony is Pleasure. It is preceded, therefore, by a reflection: a comparison between the inner and the outer, whether this proceeds from me or from good luck. Pleasure may spring from the most varied sources. It does not depend upon the content but concerns only the form. In other words, it is the feeling of something merely formal, namely, of the given harmony. The doctrine which makes Pleasure, or rather Happiness, its aim, has been called Eudaemonism. But that doctrine does not decide in what Pleasure or Happiness consists. Hence, there can be a coarse, crude Eudaemonism and a refined one, that is, both good and bad actions can be based on this principle.
37. This harmony is, as Pleasure, a subjective feeling and something contingent, which can be linked with this or that impulse and its object and in which I regard myself only as a natural being and am an end only as a single individual. Explanatory: Pleasure is something subjective and relates to me as a particular individual. There
is in it nothing of an objective, universal, intelligible nature. On this account it is not a standard or rule whereby a thing is to be decided or judged. If I say that a thing pleases me, or if I appeal to my pleasure, I only express the relation of the thing to me and thereby ignore the relation I have to others as a rational being. It is contingent as regards its content because it may attach to this or that object and, since it does not concern the content, it is something purely formal. Moreover, according to its external being. Pleasure is contingent, dependent upon circumstances. The means which I use to attain it are external and do not depend upon me. But the thing that I have obtained through the use of means, in so far as it is to add to my pleasure, must become for me, come to me. But this is a contingent affair. The consequences of what I do therefore, do not return to me. I have not the enjoyment of them as a necessary consequence. Pleasure thus arises from two different kinds of circumstances: firstly, from an existence which must be sought after and which depends entirely upon good fortune, and secondly, upon a condition of being which I myself produce. Though this condition of things depends, as effect of my action, upon my will, yet only the act as such belongs to me, hence the result does not necessarily return to me and, accordingly, the enjoyment of the act is contingent. In such an act as that of Decius Mus for his native country the effect of the same could not come back to him as enjoyment. Results cannot be made the principle of action. The results of an action are contingent for the reason that they are an externality which depends upon other circumstances or may be annulled altogether. Pleasure is a secondary affair merely concomitant of an act. When substantial purposes are realized, pleasure accompanies them in so far as one recognizes in his work his own subjective self.
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Whosoever seeks Pleasure merely seeks his own self according to its accidental side. Whosoever is busied with great works and interests strives only to bring about the realization of the object itself. He directs his attention to the substantial and does not think of himself but forgets himself in the object. Men who perform great services, and have charge of great interests, are often commiserated with by people for having little pleasure, that is, for living only in the object and not in their own accidentality.
38. Reason annuls that indeterminateness which feels pleasure in mere objects, purifies the content of our propensities from what is subjective and contingent, and teaches how to recognize what is universal and essentially the solely desirable and rather inculcates the disposition to do worthy actions for their own sake. Explanatory: The Intellect or Reflection transcends in its activity all immediate pleasures but
does not, by this, change its aim or guiding principle. It transcends single pleasures only in so far as to compare the impulses one with another and to prefer one over another. Since it aims not at pleasure in detail, but only on the whole, it aims at happiness. This reflection holds fast to the sphere of subjectivity and has pleasure for its end and aim, though in a larger, more comprehensive sense. Since it makes distinctions in pleasures and seeks the agreeable on all its different sides, it refines the grossness, the untamed and merely animal element of pleasure and softens the customs and dispositions. In so far therefore as the understanding busies itself with satisfying the means, the needs generally of gratification, it facilitates this gratification and attains the possibility of devoting itself to higher ends. On the other hand, this refinement of pleasures weakens man in as much as he dissipates his powers upon so many things and gives himself so many different aims, and these grow more and more insignificant in so far as their different sides are discriminated. Thus his power is weakened and he becomes less capable of the concentration of his mind wholly upon one object. When man makes pleasure his object he annuls with such a resolution his impulse to transcend pleasure and do something higher. Pleasure is indefinite in regard to content for the reason that it can be found in the pursuit of all sorts of objects. Therefore, the difference between pleasures is no objective one, but only a quantitative one. The Understanding, which takes account of results only, prefers the greater to the less. Reason, on the contrary, makes a qualitative distinction, i.e. a distinction in regard to content. It prefers the worthy object of pleasure to the unworthy one. It therefore enters upon a comparison of the nature of objects. In so far it does not regard the subjective as such, i.e. the pleasant feeling, but rather the objective. It teaches, therefore, what kind of objects men should desiderate for themselves. On account of the universality of his nature man has such an infinite variety of sources of pleasure open before him that the path to the agreeable is beset with illusions and he may be easily led astray through this infinite variety itself: i.e. diverted from a purpose which he ought to make his special object. The urge for what is agreeable may harmonize with Reason, i.e. both may have the same content [and] reason may legitimate the content. The form of impulse is that of a subjective feeling or it has for its object the obtaining of what is pleasant for the subject. In dealing with a universal object the object itself is the end and aim. On the other hand the desire for pleasure is always selfish.
39. Impulses and Inclinations are, considered by themselves, neither good nor bad; i.e. man has them directly from nature. Good and bad are moral predicates and pertain to the will. The Good is that
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which corresponds to Reason. But Impulses and Inclinations cannot be considered apart from their relation to the will; this relation is not a contingent one and man is no indifferent twofold being. Explanatory: Morality has for its object man in his particularity. This seems at first to contain
only a multiplicity of peculiarities wherein men are unlike and differ from each other. Men differ from each other in what is contingent or dependent on nature and external circumstances. In the particular, however, there also dwells something universal. The particularity of a man consists in his relation to others. In this relation there are also essential and necessary determinations. These constitute the content of Duty.
40. The first essential determination of man is his Individuality; [secondly], he belongs to a natural totality, the Family; [thirdly], he is a member of the State; [fourthly], he stands in relation to Other Men in General. Consequently his duties are fourfold: (1) Duties to Himself; (2) Duties to his Family; (3) Duties to the State; (4) Duties towards Other Men in General.
Duties of the Individual to Himself

41. Man, as an individual, stands in relation to himself. He has two aspects: his individuality and his universal essence. His Duty to Himself consists partly in his duty to care for his physical preservation, partly in his duty to educate himself, to elevate his being as an individual into conformity with his universal nature. Explanatory: Man is, on the one hand, a natural being. As such he behaves according to caprice
and accident as an inconstant, subjective being. He does not distinguish the essential from the unessential. Secondly, he is a spiritual, rational being and as such he is not by nature what he ought to be. The animal stands in no need of education, for it is by nature what it ought to be. It is only a natural being. But man has the task of bringing into harmony his two sides, of making his individuality conform to his rational side or of making the latter become his guiding principle. For instance, when man gives way to anger and acts blindly from passion he behaves in an uneducated way because, in this, he takes an injury or affront for something of infinite importance and seeks to make things even by injuring the transgressor in undue measure. It is a lack of education to attach oneself to an interest which does not concern him or in which he cannot accomplish anything through his activity. For it is reasonable to engage ones powers upon such an interest as is within the scope of ones activity. Moreover, if a man becomes impatient under the regular course of events [Schicksals] and refuses to submit to the inevitable he elevates his particular interest to a higher degree of importance than his relation to other men and the circumstances warrant.
42. To Theoretic Education there belong variety and definiteness of knowledge and the ability to see objects from points of view from which things are to be judged. In addition one should have a sense for objects in their free independence without introducing a subjective interest. Explanatory: Variety of knowledge in-and-for-itself belongs to education for the reason that
man, through this, elevates himself above the particular knowledge of insignificant things that
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surround him to a universal knowledge through which he attains to a greater share in the common stock of information valid for other men and comes into the possession of universally interesting objects. When man goes out beyond his immediate knowledge and experience he learns that there are better modes of behaviour and of treating things than his own and that his own are not necessarily the only ones. He separates himself from himself and comes to distinguish the essential from the unessential. Accuracy of information relates to essential distinctions, those distinctions which appertain to objects under all circumstances. Education implies the forming of an opinion regarding relations and objects of the actual world. For this it is requisite that one knows what the nature and the purpose of a thing is and what relations it has to other things. These points of view are not immediately gained through sensuous intuition but through attentive study of the thing, through reflection on its purpose and essence, and of whether the means of realizing the same are adequate. The uneducated man remains in the state of simple sensuous intuition, his eyes are not open and he does not see what lies at his very feet. With him it is all subjective seeing and apprehension. He does not see the essential thing. He knows only the nature of things approximately and this never accurately, for it is only the knowledge of general points of view that enables one to decide what is essential. They present the important aspects of things and contain the principal categories under which external existences are classified, and thus the work of apprehending them is rendered easier and more accurate. The opposite of not knowing how to judge is to make rash Judgments about everything without understanding them. Such rash judgments are based on partial views, in which one side is seized and the others overlooked, so that the true concept of the thing is missed. An educated man knows at once the limits of his capacity for Judgment. Moreover, there belongs to culture the sense for the objective in its freedom. It consists in this: that I do not seek my special subjectivity in the object but consider and treat the objects as they are in-and-for-themselves in their free idiosyncrasy: that I interest myself in them without seeking any gain for myself. Such an unselfish interest lies in the study of the sciences when one cultivates them for themselves. The desire to make use of natural objects involves the destruction of those objects. The interest for the fine arts is also an unselfish one. Art exhibits things in their living independence and leaves out the imperfect and ill formed and what has suffered from external circumstances. The objective treatment consists in this: that it has the form of the universal without caprice, whims or arbitrariness and is freed from what is strange or peculiar, etc. and, if ones aim is the genuine object itself and not a selfish interest, it must be grasped in the inner essential nature.
43. Practical Education [Bildung] entails that man, in the gratification of his natural wants and impulses, shall exhibit that prudence and temperance which lie in the limits of his necessity, namely, self-preservation. He must (a) stand away from and be free from the natural (b) on the other hand, be absorbed in his avocation, in what is essential and therefore, (c) be able to confine his gratification of the natural wants not only within the limits of necessity but also to sacrifice the same for higher duties. Explanatory: The freedom of man, as regards natural impulses, consists not in his being rid of
such impulses altogether and thus striving to escape from his nature but in his recognition of them as a necessity and as something rational; and in realizing them accordingly through his will, he finds himself constrained only in so far as he creates for himself accidental and arbitrary impressions and purposes in opposition to the Universal. The specific, accurate measure, to be followed in the gratification of wants, and in the use of physical and spiritual powers, cannot be accurately given but each can learn for himself what is useful or detrimental to him. Temperance in
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the gratification of natural impulses and in the use of bodily powers is, as such, necessary to health. Health is an essential condition for the use of mental powers in fulfilling the higher vocation of man. If the body is not preserved in its proper condition, if it is injured in any one of its functions, then it obliges its possessor to make of it a special object of his care and, by this means, it becomes something dangerous, absorbing more than its due share of the attention of the mind. Furthermore, excess in the use or disuse of the physical or mental powers results in dullness and debility. Finally, moderation is closely connected with Prudence. The latter consists in reflecting on what one is doing, so that in his enjoyment or work he is not wholly given up to this or that individual state, but remains open to consider something else which may also be necessary. A prudent person distinguishes himself mentally from his condition, his feeling, his occupation. This attitude of not being completely absorbed in ones condition is on the whole requisite in the case of impulses and aims which though necessary are not essential. On the other hand, in the case of a genuine aim or occupation, ones mind must be present in all its earnestness and not at the same time be aloof from it. Hence Prudence consists in being aware of all the details and aspects of the work.
44. As to what concerns ones specific calling, which appears as Fate, this should not be thought of in the form of an external necessity. It is to be taken up freely, and freely endured and pursued. Explanatory: With regard to the external circumstances of his lot and all that he immediately is,
a man must so conduct himself as to make it his own; he must deprive them of the form of external existence. It makes no difference in what external condition man finds himself through good or bad fortune, provided that he is just and right in what he is and does, i.e. that he fulfils all sides of his calling. The Vocation of a man, whatever his condition in life may be, is a manifold substance. It is, as it were, a material or stuff which he must elaborate in every direction until it has nothing alien, brittle and refractory within it. In so far as he has made it perfectly his own for himself, he is free therein. A man becomes the prey of discontentment chiefly through the circumstance that he does not fulfil his calling. He enters into a relation which he fails to assimilate thoroughly; at the same time he belongs to this calling: he cannot free himself from it. He lives and acts, therefore, in an adverse relation to himself.
45. To be Faithful and Obedient in his vocation as well as submissive to his fate and self-denying in his acts, these virtues have their ground in the giving up of vanity, self-conceit, and selfishness in regard to things that are in and for themselves necessary. Explanatory: The Vocation is something universal and necessary, and constitutes a side of the
social life of humanity. It is, therefore, one of the divisions of human labour. When a man has a Vocation, he enters into cooperation and participation with the Whole. Through this he becomes objective. The Vocation is a particular, limited sphere, yet it constitutes a necessary part of the whole, and, besides this, is in-itself a whole. If a man is to become something he must know how to limit himself that is, make some speciality his Vocation. Then his work ceases to be an irksome restraint to him. He then comes to be at unity with himself, with his externality, with his sphere. He is a universal, a whole. Whenever a man makes something trifling, i.e. unessential or nugatory, his object and aim, then the interest lies not in an object as such, but in it as his object. The trifling object is of no importance by itself, but has importance only to the person who busies himself with it. One sees in a trifling object only oneself; there can be, for example, a moral vanity, when a man thinks on the excellence of his acts and is more interested in himself than in the thing. The man who
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does small things faithfully shows himself capable of greater ones, because he has shown his obedience, his self-sacrifice in regard to his own wishes, inclinations and fancies.
46. Through intellectual and moral education a man receives the capacity for fulfilling duties toward others, which duties may be called real duties since the duties which relate to his own education are, in comparison, of a more formal nature. 47. In so far as the performance of duties appears more as a subjective attribute of the individual, and to pertain chiefly to his natural character, it is properly called Virtue. 48. In as much as Virtue in part belongs to the natural character it appears as a peculiar species of morality and of greater vitality and intensity. It is at the same time not so closely connected with the consciousness of duty as is Morality proper.
Duties to the Family

49. When a man is developed by education he has attained a capacity for practical action. In so far as he does act he is necessarily brought into relation to others. The first necessary relation in which the individual stands to others is that of the Family-relation. This indeed has a legal side but it is subordinated to the side of moral sentiment, that of love and confidence. Explanatory: The Family constitutes essentially only one substance, only one person. The
members of the family are not persons in their relation to each other. They enter such a relation first when by some calamity the moral bond is destroyed. Among the ancients, the sentiment of family love and action based thereon was called pietas. Piety has with us the sense of devoutness or godliness, which it has in common with the ancient meaning of the word in that both presuppose an absolute bond, the self-existent unity in a spiritual substance, a bond which is not formed through particular caprice or accident.
50. This sentiment, precisely stated, consists in this: that each member of the Family has his essence not in his own person, but that only the whole of the Family constitutes his personality. 51. The union of persons of opposite sex which Marriage is, is not merely a natural, animal union, nor, at the other extreme, is it a mere civil contract, rather it is essentially a moral union of sentiment [Gesinnung] in reciprocal love and confidence which constitutes them one person. 52. The duty of parents towards children is to care for their support and education; that of the children to obey their parents until they grow up and become independent and to honour and respect them through life; that of brothers and sisters, to treat each other with the utmost consideration.
Duties to the State

53. The natural whole, which constitutes the family, expands into a whole of a People and a State in which the individuals have for themselves an independent will.
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Explanatory: The State, in one respect, is able to dispense with the goodwill and consent of
citizens, i.e. in so far as it must be independent of the will of the individual. It prescribes, therefore, to the individual his obligations, namely, the part which he must perform for the whole. It cannot leave this to his goodwill because he may be self-interested and oppose himself to the interest of the State. In this way the State becomes a machine, a system of external dependencies. But, on the other hand, it cannot dispense with the [good] disposition of its citizens. The order issued by the government can contain only what is general. The actual deed, the fulfilment of the States aim, requires a special form of activity. This can come only from individual intelligence and from the goodwill and consent of men.
54. The State holds society not only under legal relations but mediated as a true, higher, moral commonwealth, the union in customs, education and general form of thinking and acting, since each one views and recognizes in the other his universality in a spiritual manner. 55. In the Spirit of a People each individual citizen has his spiritual substance. Not only does the preservation of the individual depend on the preservation of this living whole, but this living whole is the universal spiritual nature or the essence of each one as opposed to his individuality. The preservation of the whole takes precedence, therefore, over the preservation of the individual and all citizens should act on this conviction. 56. Considered according to the merely legal side, in so far as the State protects the private rights of the individual and the individual looks after his own rights, there is indeed possible a sacrifice of a part of his property for the preservation of the rest. Patriotism, however, is not founded on this calculation, but on the consciousness of the absoluteness of the State. This disposition to offer up property and life for the whole is the greater in a people the more the individuals can act for the whole from their own will and self-activity and the greater the confidence they have in the whole. (Speak here of the beautiful patriotism of the Greeks; also of the distinction between bourgeois and citoyen.) 57. The disposition to obey the commands of the government, attachment to princes and the constitutional form of government, the feeling of national honour, all these are virtues of the citizen in every well-ordered State. 58. The State rests not upon an express contract of one with all or of all with one or between the individual and the government. The Universal Will of the whole is not simply the expressed will of the individual but is the Absolute Universal Will which is in-and-for-itself binding on the individual.
Duties toward Others

59. The duties toward others are, first, the legal duties which must be linked with the disposition to do the lawful for the sake of Law. The rest of these duties are founded on the disposition to regard others not merely as abstract persons but also, in their particularity, as possessing equal rights and to regard their welfare or bad fortune as ones own concern and to manifest this feeling by active help. 60. This moral mode of thinking and acting goes further than is demanded by the mere legal right. But Integrity, the observance of the strict duties toward others, is the first duty and lies at the basis of all others. There may be noble and generous actions which lack integrity. In that case they have their
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ground in self-love and in the consciousness of having done something special, whereas that which integrity demands is valid for all and is no arbitrary duty. 61. Among the special duties to others, the first is Truthfulness in speech and action. It consists in the identity of that which is and of which one is conscious, with what he expresses and shows to others. Untruthfulness is the disagreement and contradiction between what one is in his own consciousness and what he is for others, hence between his inner being and his actuality, and is therefore a nullity in itself. 62. It is especially untruthful when what one imagines to be a good intention or disposition is in fact bad and harmful. (This disagreement between the disposition and the action could at least be called clumsiness but, in so far as the doer is responsible, if he does what is bad he must be regarded as also meaning his action to be bad.) 63. It implies the existence of a special relation between individuals to give one of them the right to speak truthfully regarding the others behaviour. When one undertakes to do this without the right he is himself, in so far, untrue, since he assumes a relation to another which has no existence. Explanatory: It is of the first importance to speak the truth in so far as one knows that it is the
truth. It is mean not to speak the truth when it is ones duty to speak it, because thereby one is demeaned in ones own eyes and in the eyes of the other. But also one should not speak the truth where he is not called upon to do so or does not even have the right to do so. When one speaks the truth merely for the sake of having his say and without following it up, this is at least superfluous, for what is important is not that I have spoken but that the matter in hand should be achieved. Speaking is not yet the deed or act; the latter is superior. The truth then is spoken in the right place at the right time when it serves to bring about the matter in hand. Speech is an astonishingly great means but to use it correctly demands great understanding.
64. Malicious Gossip is akin to Slander which is an actual lie. The former is the retailing of matters which compromise the honour of a third party and which are not absolutely evident to the narrator. It usually happens out of a zealous disapproval of immoral actions, usually with the comment that the narrator cannot vouch for the truth of the stories and wishes he had not said anything about them, but in this case there is associated the dishonesty of alleging that he does not want to spread the stories and yet by his action actually does so. He is guilty of hypocrisy in pretending to speak in the interest of morality and at the same time behaving badly. Explanatory: Hypocrisy consists in behaving badly while assuming the appearance of having a
good intention, of wanting to do something good. The external deed is, however, not different from the internal one. In the case of a bad deed the intention was also essentially bad and not good. It may be the case that a man has accomplished something good or at least not improper but it is not permissible to make of that which is in its own self evil a means with which to achieve a good end. The end or the intention does not sanctify the means. Moral principle concerns chiefly the disposition or the intention. It is, however, just as essential that not only the intention but also the action be good. Moreover, a man must not persuade himself that he has excellent and important purposes in the common acts of his individual life. In that case it frequently happens that while he bases his own deeds on good intentions and seeks to make his unimportant deeds great by his reflections he is apt, on the other hand, to attribute a selfish or bad motive to the great or at least
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good deeds of others.
65. The disposition to injure others, knowingly and willingly, is Evil. The disposition which permits itself to violate duties to others and also to itself, and from weakness to resist its inclinations, is Bad. Explanatory: Good stands opposed to Evil [bose] as also to Bad [schlecht]. To be Evil involves
an act of the will; it presupposes a strength of will which is also a condition of the Good, but the Bad, on the contrary, is something devoid of will. The Bad individual follows his inclinations and neglects duties. It would be perfectly satisfactory to him to fulfil the duties if he could do so without effort but he has not the will to master his inclinations or habits.
66. The Services we are able to perform for others depend upon the contingent relations in which we happen to stand with them and upon the special circumstances in which we are situated. When we are in a position to do another a Service we have only to consider two things: that he is a human being and has a need. Explanatory: The first condition precedent to rendering help to others consists in this: that we
have a right to regard them as in need and to act toward them as sufferers. Help must not be given, therefore, without their willingness to receive it. This presupposes a certain degree of acquaintance or confidence. The needy are as such not on the same footing as regards equality with those not in need. It is a matter for him to decide whether or not he wants to appear as one in need. He consents to this when he is convinced that I regard him as my equal, and treat him as such in spite of this inequality of condition. In the second place, I must have in hand the means with which to help him. Finally, there may happen cases where his want is of so evident a character as to render unnecessary an express consent on his part to receive assistance.
67. The duty of the Universal Love of Humanity also includes those cases wherein we love those with whom we stand in relations of acquaintance and friendship. The original unity of mankind must be the basis from which arise voluntarily, much closer, connections as involve more particular duties. (Friendship rests on likeness of character and especially of interest, engagement in a common work, rather than in liking for the person of another as such. One should cause his friends as little trouble as possible. To require no services of friends is the most delicate way. One should spare no pains to avoid laying others under obligations to him.) 68. The duty of Prudence [Policy] appears, at first, in so far as the end is a selfish one, as a duty toward oneself in his relations to others. True selfishness is, however, essentially attained through moral conduct and this, consequently, is the true Prudence. It is a principle of moral conduct that private gain may be a result but must never constitute the motive. 69. In as much as private gain does not constitute the direct result of moral conduct but depends rather upon the particular and, on the whole, accidental goodwill of others, there is to be found the sphere of mere inclination or favour, but Prudence consists in this: that one does not interfere with the inclinations of others but acts in their interest. But also, in this respect, that which proves politic is really that which recommends itself for its own sake, namely, to leave others free where we have neither duty nor right to disturb them and, through our correct conduct, to win their favour. 70. Courtesy [Politeness] is the mark of a well-wishing disposition and also of a readiness to do a service to others, especially to those with whom we stand in a nearer relation of acquaintance or
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friendship. It is false when it is connected with the opposite disposition. True Courtesy is, however, to be regarded as a duty because we ought to have benevolent intentions toward each other in general in order to open by means of polite actions the way to closer union. To do a service, an act of politeness, something pleasant to a stranger, is Courtesy. The same thing should, however, be done to an acquaintance or friend. Toward strangers and those with whom we stand in no nearer relations there is the appearance of goodwill and this is all that is required. Refinement and Delicacy consist in doing or saying no more than is allowed by the relation in which one stands to other parties. (Greek Humanity and Urbanity in the time of Socrates and Plato)

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Third Part. The Science of Religion
71. The Moral Law within us is the Eternal Law of Reason which we must respect without reserve and by which we must feel indissolubly bound. We see, however, the immediate incommensurateness of our individuality with it and recognize it as higher than ourselves, as a Being independent from us, self-existent and absolute. 72. This Absolute Being is present in our pure consciousness and reveals Himself to us therein. The knowing of Him is, as mediated through our pure consciousness, for us immediate and called Faith. 73. The elevation above the sensuous and finite constitutes in a negative form the mediation of this knowing, but only in so far as having originated from a sensuous and finite. The latter is at the same time abandoned and recognized in its nullity. But this knowing of the Absolute is itself an absolute and immediate knowing and cannot have anything finite as its positive ground or be mediated through anything that is not itself a proof. 74. This knowing must determine itself more closely and not remain a mere inner feeling, a faith in an undefined Being in general, but become a cognition of it. The cognition of God is not above Reason, for Reason is only Gods image and reflection and is essentially the knowledge of the Absolute. But such cognition is above the Understanding, the knowledge of what is finite and relative. 75. Religion itself consists in the employment or exercise of feeling and thought in forming an idea or representation of the Absolute Being, wherewith is necessarily connected forgetfulness of ones own particularity and actions from this disposition [Sinn] in regard to the absolute Being. 76. God is the Absolute Spirit, i.e. he is the pure Being that makes himself his own object and in this contemplates only himself, or who is, in his other-being, absolutely returned into himself and selfidentical. 77. God is, according to the moments of his Being: (1) Absolutely Holy, in as much as he is in himself the purely universal Being; (2) Absolute Power, in as much as he actualizes the universal and preserves the individual in the universal or is the Eternal Creator of the Universe; (3) Wisdom, in so far as his power is only holy power; (4) Goodness, in so far as he allows the individual in his actual existence to be a free agent; and (5) Justice, in so far as he eternally brings the individual back to the universal. 78. Evil is alienation from God in so far as the individual, in his freedom, separates himself from the universal and strives by excluding himself from it to become absolute for himself. In so far as it is the nature of the finite free being to reflect itself into this individuality, this nature is to be regarded as Evil.
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79. But the freedom of the individual being is at the same time implicitly, or in-itself, an identity of the divine Being with himself or it is, in-itself, of divine nature. This knowledge, that human nature is not truly alien to the divine nature, is assured to man by Divine Grace; which Grace allows him to lay hold of this knowledge whereby through it the reconciliation of God with the world is achieved or mans alienation from God disappears. 80. The Divine Service is the specific occupation of the thought and feelings with God whereby the individual strives to bring about his union with God and to become conscious and assured of this union. The harmony of his will with the divine will should be demonstrated by the spirit in which he acts in his daily life.

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2. Phenomenology
[For the Middle Class] Introduction
[1.] Our ordinary Knowing has before itself only the object which it knows, but does not at the same time make an object of itself, i.e. of the Knowing. But the whole which is present in the act of knowing is not the object alone but also the I [Ego] that knows and the relation of the Ego and the object to each other, i.e. Consciousness. 2. In Philosophy the determinations of Knowing are not considered one-sidedly only as determinations of things but as, at the same time, determinations of the Knowing to which they belong in common at least with the things. In other words they are not taken merely as objective but also as subjective determinations or rather as specific kinds of the relation of the object and subject to each other. 3. Since things and their determinations are in the Knowing it is possible, on the one hand, to think of them as in-and-for-themselves outside of Consciousness, as given to the latter in the shape of alien and already existing material for it. On the other hand, since Consciousness is equally essential to the Knowing of these [material things] it is also possible to think that Consciousness itself posits this, its world, and produces or modifies, either wholly or in part, the determinations of the same through its behaviour and its activity. The former point of view is called Realism the latter Idealism. Here we are to consider the universal determinations of things simply as the specific relation of the object to the subject. 4. The subject, thought of more specifically, is Mind [or Spirit]. It is phenomenal [erscheinend] when essentially relating to an existent object: i.e. in so far it is Consciousness. The Science of Consciousness is, therefore, called The Phenomenology of Mind [or Spirit]. 5. But Mind as spontaneously active within itself and as self-referential [Beziehung auf sich] and independent of all reference to others is considered in the Doctrine of Mind or Psychology. 6. Consciousness is, in general, the knowing of an object, whether external or internal, without regard to whether it presents itself without the help of Mind or whether it be produced by it. Mind is to be considered in its activities in so far as the determinations of its Consciousness are ascribed to itself. 7. Consciousness is the specific relation of the Ego to an object. In so far as one starts from the object, consciousness can be said to vary according to the diversity of the objects which it has. 8. At the same time, however, the object is essentially determined in its relation to Consciousness. Its diversity is, therefore, to be considered conversely as dependent upon the further development of Consciousness. This reciprocity proceeds in the phenomenal sphere of Consciousness itself and leaves the matters in paragraph 3 above undecided.
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9. Consciousness has, in general, three stages [Stufen] according to the diversity of the object. It [the object] is namely [a] either the object standing opposed to the Ego or [b] the Ego itself or [c] something objective which belongs likewise equally to the Ego, [e.g.] Thought. These determinations are not empirically taken up from without but are moments of Consciousness itself. Hence Consciousness is: (1) Consciousness in General; (2) Self-Consciousness; (3) Reason
First Stage. Consciousness in General

10. Consciousness in General is: (a) Sensuous; (b) Perceiving; (c) Understanding.
The Sensuous Consciousness

11. The simple Sensuous Consciousness is the immediate certainty of an external object. The expression for the immediacy of such an object is that it is, and indeed is this object, a Now according to time and a Here according to space, [and is] completely different from all other objects and completely determined in-itself. 12. Both this Now and this Here are vanishing determinatenesses. Now is no more even while it is and another Now has taken its place, and this latter Now has likewise immediately vanished. But the Now abides all the same. This abiding Now is the universal Now which is both this and the other Now, and also neither of them. This Here which I mean, and point out has a right and left, an above and a below, a behind and a before, etc. ad infinitum, i.e. the Here pointed out, is not a simple and hence specific Here but a totality of many Heres. Therefore what in truth is before us is not the abstract, sensuous determinateness but the universal.
Perception
13. Perception has no longer for [its] object the sensuous in so far as it is immediate but, in so far as it is also universal, it is a mingling of sensuous determinations with those of Reflection. 14. The object of this Consciousness is, therefore, the Thing with its Properties. The sensuous properties (a) are for-themselves not only inmiediately in Feeling but also at the same time determined through the relation to others and mediated; (b) belong to a Thing and, in this respect, on the one hand are included in the individuality of the same, [and] on the other hand have universality in accordance with which they transcend this individual thing and are at the same time independent of one another.
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15. In so far as Properties are essentially mediated they have their subsistence in an Other and are alterable. They are only Accidents. Things, however, since they subsist in their properties, for the reason that they are distinguished by means of these, perish through the alteration of those properties and are an alternation of coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be. 16. In this alternation it is not merely the something that sublates itself and becomes an Other but the Other also ceases to be. But the Other of the Other, or the alteration of the alterable, is the Becoming of the enduring [Werden des Bleibenden], of that which subsists in-and-for-itself and is inner.
The Understanding
17. The object has now this determination: it has (a) a purely accidental side but (b) also an essential and permanent side. Consciousness, in that the object has for it this character, is the Understanding in which the Things of perception pass for mere phenomena and it [the Understanding] contemplates the Inner of Things. 18. On the one hand, the Inner of Things is that in them which is free from their appearances, namely, their Manifoldness which constitutes an outer in opposition to the inner, [and] on the other hand, however, the inner is that which is related to them through its concept. It is therefore: (1) simple Force, which passes over in Determinate Being into its Expression [or Manifestation]. (2) Force remains with this difference the same in all the sensuous variety of Appearance. The law of Appearance is its quiescent, universal image. It is a relation of universal abiding determinations whose distinctions are external to the law. The universality and persistence of this relation does indeed lead to its necessity but without the difference being one determined in-and-for-itself or inner, in which one of the determinations lies immediately in the concept of the other. 20. This concept, applied to Consciousness itself, gives another stage thereof. Hitherto it was in relation to its object as something alien and indifferent. Since now the difference in general has become a difference which at the same time is no difference, the previous mode of the difference of Consciousness from its object falls away. It has an object and is related to an Other, which, however, is at the same time no Other; in fine, it has itself for object. 21. In other words, the Inner of Things is the Thought or Concept of them. While Consciousness has the Inner as object it has Thought or equally its own Reflection or Form and, [consequently], simply has itself for object.
Second Stage. Self-Consciousness

22. As Self-Consciousness the Ego intuits itself, and the expression of this in its purity is Ego = Ego, or: I am I.
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23. This proposition of Self-Consciousness is devoid of all content. The urge of Self-Consciousness consists in this: to realize its concept and in everything to become conscious of itself. It is, therefore, active (a) in overcoming the otherness of objects and in positing them as the same as itself [and] (b) in externalizing itself and thereby giving itself objectivity and determinate being. These two are one and the same activity. Self-Consciousness in becoming determined is at the same time a selfdetermining and, conversely, it produces itself as object. 24. Self-Consciousness has, in its formative development or movement, three stages: (1) Of Desire in so far as it is directed to other things; (2) Of the relation of Master and Slave in so far as it is directed to another SelfConsciousness unlike itself; (3) Of the Universal Self-Consciousness which recognizes itself in other SelfConsciousnesses and is identical with them as they are identical with it.
Desire
25. Both sides of Self-Consciousness, the positing and the sublating, are thus united with each other immediately. Self-Consciousness posits itself through negation of otherness and is practical Consciousness. If, therefore, in Consciousness proper, which also is called theoretical [Consciousness], the determinations of it and of the object altered themselves in-themselves, this now happens through the activity of Consciousness itself and/or it. It is aware that this sublating activity belongs to it. In the concept of Self-Consciousness lies the determination of the as yet unrealized difference. In so far as this difference does make its appearance in it there arises a feeling of an otherness in consciousness itself, a feeling of a negation of itself or the feeling of a lack, a need. 26. This feeling of its otherness contradicts its identity with itself. The felt necessity to overcome this opposition is Impulse, Negation or Otherness, [and] presents itself to consciousness as an external thing different from it, but which is determined by Self-Consciousness, (a) as a something suited to gratify the Impulse and (b) as something in-itself negative whose subsistence is to be sublated by the Self and posited in identity with it. 27. The activity of Desire thus overcomes the otherness of the object and its subsistence and unites it with the subject, whereupon the Desire is satisfied. This is accordingly conditioned, (a) by an object existing externally or indifferent to it, or through Consciousness; and (b) by its activity producing the gratification only through overcoming the object. Self-Consciousness comes therefore only to its feeling of Self. 28. In Desire, Consciousness stands in relation to itself as an individual. It is related to a selfless object which is, in-and-for-itself, an other than the Self-Consciousness. The latter therefore only attains self-identity as regards the object by overcoming the latter. Desire is in general destructive [and], in its gratification therefore, it only gets as far as the self-feeling of the subjects being-for-self as an individual: [i.e.] to the indeterminate concept of the subject in its connection with objectivity.
The Relation of Master and Slave

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29. The concept of Self-Consciousness as a Subject which is at the same time objective, yields the relation that another Self-Consciousness exists for Self-Consciousness. 30. A Self-Consciousness which is for another is not for it a mere object but is its other self. The Ego is no abstract universality in which, as such, there is no distinction or determination. Since Ego is, therefore, object for the Ego the object is, in this relation, the same as that which the Ego is. It beholds in the other its own self. 31. This beholding of oneself in another is the abstract moment of self-sameness. But each has also the determination of appearing to the other as an external object and, in so far, as an immediate, sensuous and concrete existence. Each exists absolutely for-itself as an individual opposed to the other and demands to be regarded and treated as such by the other and to behold in the other its own freedom as an independent being or to be acknowledged by it. 32. In order to make itself valid as a free being and to obtain recognition, Self-Consciousness must exhibit itself to another as free from natural existence. This moment is as necessary as that of the freedom of Self-Consciousness within itself. The absolute identity of the Ego with itself is essentially not an immediate identity but one which has been achieved by overcoming sensuous immediacy and, by so doing, has also made itself free and independent of the sensuous for another. It thus shows itself to conform to its concept and must be recognized because it gives reality to the Ego. 33. But independence is freedom not so much outside of and [apart] from sensuous immediate existence, as rather a freedom in it. The one moment is as necessary as the other but they are not of the same value, since inequality enters, namely, that to one of the two Self-Consciousness[es] freedom passes for the essential in opposition to sensuous existence, while with the other the opposite occurs. With the reciprocal demand for recognition there enters into determinate actuality the relation of master and slave between them or, in general terms, that of service and obedience, so far as this diversity of independence is present through the immediate agency of nature. 34. Since of the two Self-Consciousness[es] opposed to each other each must strive to prove and maintain itself as an absolute being-for-self against and for the other, that one enters into a condition of Slavery who prefers life to freedom and thereby shows that he is incapable of making abstraction from his sensuous existence by his own efforts in order to achieve his independence. 35. This purely negative freedom, which consists in the abstraction from natural existence, does not, however, correspond to the concept of Freedom, for this latter is self-sameness in otherness, that is, in part the beholding of oneself in another self and in part freedom not from existence but in existence, a freedom which itself has an existence. The one who serves lacks a self and has another self in place of his own; so that in the Master he has alienated and annulled himself as an individual Ego and now views another as his essential self. The Master, on the contrary, sees in the Servant the other Ego as annulled and his own individual will as preserved. (History of Robinson Crusoe and Friday.) 36. The Servants own individual will, considered more closely, is suppressed in the fear of the Master, in the inner feeling of its own negativity. Its labour for the service of another is an alienation of its own will, partly in principle, partly at the same time, with the negation of its own desire, the positive transformation of external things through labour; since through labour the self makes its own determinations into the forms of things and in its work views itself as an objective self. The
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renunciation of the unessential arbitrary will constitutes the moment of true obedience. (Pisistratus taught the Athenians to obey. Through this he made the Code of Solon an actual power and, after the Athenians had learned this, the dominion of a Ruler over them was superfluous.) 37. This renunciation of Individuality as Self is the moment by which Self-Consciousness makes the transition to being the Universal Will: [i.e.] the transition to Positive Freedom.
Universality of Self-Consciousness
38. The Universal Self-Consciousness is the intuition of itself not as a particular existence distinct from others but as the implicit universal self. Thus it recognizes itself and the other SelfConsciousnesses within it and is, in turn, recognized by them. 39. Self-Consciousness is, according to this its essential universality, only real to itself in so far as it knows its reflection in others. (I know that others know me as themselves.) And as pure spiritual universality, as belonging to the family, ones native land, etc., [it] knows itself as an essential self. This Self-Consciousness is the basis of every virtue, of love, honour, friendship, bravery, all selfsacrifice, all fame, etc.
Third Stage. Reason

40. Reason is the highest union of consciousness and self-consciousness or of the knowing of an object and of the knowing of itself. It is the certainty that its determinations are just as much objective, i.e. determinations of the essence of things, as they are our own thoughts. It is equally the certainty of itself, subjectivity, as being or objectivity in one and the same thinking activity. 41. Or what we see through the insight of Reason is (a) a content which does not consist in our mere subjective ideas or thoughts which we make for ourselves but which contains the absolute essence of objects and possesses objective reality, and (b) a content which is, for the Ego, nothing alien, nothing given from without but is throughout penetrated and assimilated by the Ego and therefore, to all intents, produced by the Ego. 42. The knowing of Reason is therefore not mere subjective certainty but also Truth, because Truth consists in the agreement, or rather unity, of certainty and being or of certainty and objectivity.

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