Philosophy of Right
Author’s Preface
The immediate occasion for publishing these outlines is the need of placing in the hands of my hearers a guide to my professional lectures upon the Philosophy of Right. Hitherto I have used as lectures that portion of the “Encyclopaedia of the Philosophic Sciences” (Heidelberg, 1817,) which deals with this subject. The present work covers the same ground in a more detailed and systematic way.
But now that these outlines are to be printed and given to the general public, there is an opportunity of explaining points which in lecturing would be commented on orally. Thus the notes are enlarged in order to include cognate or conflicting ideas, further consequences of the theory advocated, and the like. These expanded notes will, it is hoped, throw light upon the more abstract substance of the text, and present a more complete view of some of the ideas current in our own time. Moreover, there is also subjoined, as far as was compatible with the purpose of a compendium, a number of notes, ranging over a still greater latitude. A compendium proper, like a science, has its subject-matter accurately laid out. With the exception, possibly, of one or two slight additions, its chief task is to arrange the essential phases of its material. This material is regarded as fixed and known, just as the form is assumed to be governed by well-ascertained rules. A treatise in philosophy is usually not expected to be constructed on such a pattern, perhaps because people suppose that a philosophical product is a Penelope’s web which must be started anew every day.
This treatise differs from the ordinary compendium mainly in its method of procedure. It must be understood at the outset that the philosophic way of advancing from one matter to another, the general speculative method, which is the only kind of scientific proof available in philosophy, is essentially different from every other. Only a clear insight into the necessity for this difference can snatch philosophy out of the ignominious condition into which it has fallen in our day. True, the logical rules, such as those of definition, classification, and inference are now generally recognized to be inadequate for speculative science. Perhaps it is nearer the mark to say that the inadequacy of the rules has been felt rather than recognized, because they have been counted as mere fetters, and thrown aside to make room for free speech from the heart, fancy and random intuition. But when reflection and relations of thought were required, people unconsciously fell back upon the old-fashioned method of inference and formal reasoning.—In my “Science of Logic” I have developed the nature of speculative science in detail. Hence in this treatise an explanation of method will be added only here and there. In a work which is concrete, and presents such a diversity of phases, we may safely neglect to display at every turn the logical process, and may take for granted an acquaintance with the scientific procedure. Besides, it may readily be observed that the work as a whole, and also the construction of the parts, rest upon the logical spirit. From this standpoint, especially, is it that I would like this treatise to be understood and judged. In such a work as this we are dealing with a science, and in a science the matter must not be separated from the form.
Some, who are thought to be taking a profound view, are heard to say that everything turns upon the subjectmatter, and that the form may be ignored. The business of any writer, and especially of the philosopher, is, as they say, to discover, utter, and diffuse truth and adequate conceptions. In actual practice this business usually consists in warming up and distributing on all sides the same old cabbage. Perhaps the result of this operation may be to fashion and arouse the feelings; though even this small merit may be regarded as superfluous, for “they have Moses and the prophets: let them hear them.” Indeed, we have great cause to be amazed at the pretentious tone of those who take this view. They seem to suppose that up till now the dissemination of truth throughout the world has been feeble. They think that the warmed-up cabbage contains new truths, especially to be laid to heart at the present time. And yet we see that what is on one side announced as true, is driven out and swept away by the same kind of worn-out truth. Out of this hurly-burly of opinions, that which is neither new nor old, but permanent, cannot be rescued and preserved except by science.
Further, as to rights, ethical observances, and the state, the truth is as old as that in which it is openly displayed and recognized, namely, the law, morality, and religion. But as the thinking spirit is not satisfied with possessing the truth in this simple way, it must conceive it, and thus acquire a rational form for a content which is already rational implicitly. In this way the substance is justified before the bar of free thought. Free thought cannot be satisfied with what is given to it, whether by the external positive authority of the state or human agreement, or by the authority of internal feelings, the heart, and the witness of the spirit, which coincides unquestioningly with the heart. It is the nature of free thought rather to proceed out of its own self, and hence to demand that it should know itself as thoroughly one with truth.
The ingenuous mind adheres with simple conviction to the truth which is publicly acknowledged. On this foundation it builds its conduct and way of life. In opposition to this naive view of things rises the supposed difficulty of detecting amidst the endless differences of opinion anything of universal application. This trouble may easily be supposed to spring from a spirit of earnest inquiry. But in point of fact those who pride themselves upon the existence of this obstacle are in the plight of him who cannot see the woods for the trees. The confusion is all of their own making. Nay, more: this confusion is an indication that they are in fact not seeking for what is universally valid in right and the ethical order. If they were at pains to find that out, and refused to busy themselves with empty opinion and minute detail, they would adhere to and act in accordance with substantive right, namely the commands of the state and the claims of society. But a further difficulty lies in the fact that man thinks, and seeks freedom and a basis for conduct in thought. Divine as his right to act in this way is, it becomes a wrong, when it takes the place of thinking. Thought then regards itself as free only when it is conscious of being at variance with what is generally recognized, and of setting itself up as something original.
The idea that freedom of thought and mind is indicated only by deviation from, or even hostility to what is everywhere recognized, is most persistent with regard to the state. The essential task of a philosophy of the state would thus seem to be the discovery and publication of a new and original theory. When we examine this idea and the way it is applied, we are almost led to think that no state or constitution has ever existed, or now exists. We are tempted to suppose that we must now begin and keep on beginning afresh for ever. We are to fancy that the founding of the social order has depended upon present devices and discoveries. As to nature, philosophy, it is admitted, has to understand it as it is. The philosophers’ stone must be concealed somewhere, we say, in nature itself, as nature is in itself rational. Knowledge must, therefore, examine, apprehend and conceive the reason actually present in nature. Not with the superficial shapes and accidents of nature, but with its eternal harmony, that is to say, its inherent law and essence, knowledge has to cope. But the ethical world or the state, which is in fact reason potently and permanently actualized in self-consciousness, is not permitted to enjoy the happiness of being reason at all.’ On the contrary the
^ There are two kinds of laws, laws of nature and laws of right. The laws of nature are simply there, and are valid as they are. They cannot be gainsaid, although in certain cases they may be transgressed. In order to know laws of nature, we must set to work to ascertain them, for they are true, and only our ideas of them can be false. Of these laws the measure is outside of us. Our knowledge adds nothing to them, and does not further their operation. Only our knowledge of them expands. The knowledge of right is partly of the same nature and partly different. The laws of right also are simply there, and we have to become acquainted with them. In this way the citizen has a more or less firm hold of them as they are given to him, and the jurist also abides by the same standpoint. But there is also a distinction. In connection with the laws of right the spirit of investigation is stirred up, and our attention is turned to the fact that the laws, because they are different, are not absolute. Laws of right are established and handed down by men. The inner voice must necessarily collide or agree with them. Man cannot be limited to what is presented to him, but maintains that he has the standard of right within himself. He may be subject to the necessity and force of external authority, but not in the same way as he is to the necessity of nature; for always his inner being says to him how a thing ought to be, and within himself he finds the confirmation or lack of confirmation of what is generally accepted. In nature the highest truth is that a law is. In right a thing is not valid because it is, since every one demands that it shall conform to his standard. Hence arises a possible conflict between what is and what ought to be, between absolute unchanging right and the arbitrary decision of what ought to be right. Such division and strife occur only on the soil of the spirit. Thus the unique privispiritual universe is looked upon as abandoned by God, and given over as a prey to accident and chance. As in this way the divine is eliminated from the ethical world, truth must be sought outside of it. And since at the same time reason should and does belong to the ethical world, truth, being divorced from reason, is reduced to a mere speculation. Thus seems to arise the necessity and duty of every thinker to pursue a career of his own. Not that he needs to seek for the philosophers’ stone, since the philosophizing of our day has saved him the trouble, and every would-be thinker is convinced that he possesses the stone already without search. But these erratic pretensions are, as it indeed happens, ridiculed by all who, whether they are aware of it or not, are conditioned in their lives by the lege of the spirit would appear to lead to discontent and unhappiness, and frequently we are directed to nature in contrast with the fluctuations of life. But it is exactly in the opposition arising between absolute right, and that which the arbitrary will seeks to make right, that the need lies of knowing thoroughly what right is. Men must openly meet and face their reason, and consider the rationality of right. This is the subject-matter of our science in contrast with jurisprudence, which often has to do merely with contradictions. Moreover the world of to-day has an imperative need to make this investigation. In ancient times respect and reverence for the law were universal. But now the fashion of the time has taken another turn, and thought confronts everything which has been approved. Theories now set themselves in opposition to reality, and make as though they were absolutely true and necessary. And there is now more pressing need to know and conceive the thoughts upon right. Since thought has exalted itself as the essential form, we must now be careful to apprehend right also as thought. It would look as though the door were thrown open for every casual opinion, when thought is thus made to supervene upon right. But true thought of a thing is not an opinion, but the conception of the thing itself. The conception of the thing does not come to us by nature. Every man has fingers, and may have brush and colours, but he is not by reason of that a painter. So is it with thought. The thought of right is not a thing which every man has at first hand. True thinking is thorough acquaintance with the object. Hence our knowledge must be scientific.
state, and find their minds and wills satisfied in it. These, who include the majority if not all, regard the occupation of philosophers as a game, sometimes playful, sometimes earnest, sometimes entertaining, sometimes dangerous, but always as a mere game. Both this restless and frivolous reflection and also this treatment accorded to it might safely be left to take their own course, were it not that betwixt them philosophy is brought into discredit and contempt. The most cruel despite is done when every one is convinced of his ability to pass judgment upon, and discard philosophy without any special study. No such scorn is heaped upon any other art or science.
In point of fact the pretentious utterances of recent philosophy regarding the state have been enough to justify any one who cared to meddle with the question, in the conviction that he could prove himself a philosopher by weaving a philosophy out of his own brain. Notwithstanding this conviction, that which passes for philosophy has openly announced that truth cannot be known. The truth with regard to ethical ideals, the state, the government and the constitution ascends, so it declares, out of each man’s heart, feeling, and enthusiasm. Such declarations have been poured especially into the eager ears of the young. The words “God giveth truth to his chosen in sleep” have been applied to science; hence every sleeper has numbered himself amongst the chosen. But what he deals with in sleep is only the wares of sleep. Mr. Fries, one of the leaders of this shallow-minded host of philosophers, on a public festive occasion, now become celebrated, has not hesitated to give utterance to the following notion of the state and constitution: “When a nation is ruled by a common spirit, then from below, out of the people, will come life sufficient for the discharge of all public business.
' I have already had occasion to notice the shallowness of his science. See” Science of Logic “(Nürnberg, 1812), Introduction, p. 17.
Living associations, united indissolubly by the holy bond of friendship, will devote themselves to every side of national service, and every means for educating the people.” This is the last degree of shallowness, because in it science is looked upon as developing, not out of thought or conception, but out of direct perception and random fancy. Now the organic connection of the manifold branches of the social system is the architectonic of the state’s rationality, and in this supreme science of state architecture the strength of the whole is made to depend upon the harmony of all the clearly marked phases of public life, and the stability of every pillar, arch, and buttress of the social edifice. And yet the shallow doctrine, of which we have spoken, permits this elaborate structure to melt and lose itself in the brew and stew of the “heart, friendship, and inspiration.” Epicurus, it is said, believed that the world generally should be given over to each individual’s opinions and whims; and according to the view we are criticising the ethical fabric should be treated in the same way. By this old wives’ decoction, which consists in founding upon the feelings what has been for many centuries the labour of reason and understanding, we no longer need the guidance of any ruling conception of thought. On this point Goethe’s Mephistopheles, and the poet is a good authority, has a remark, which I have already used elsewhere:
“Verachte nur Verstand und Wissenschaft, des Menschen allerhöchste Gaben—So hast dem Teufel dich ergeben und musst zu Grunde gehn.”
It is no surprise that the view just criticised should appear in the form of piety. Where, indeed, has this whirlwind of impulse not sought to justify itself? In godliness and the Bible it has imagined itself able to find authority for despising order and law. And, in fact, it is piety of a sort which has reduced the whole organized system of truth to elementary intuition and feeling. But piety of the right kind leaves this obscure region, and comes out into the daylight, where the idea unfolds and reveals itself. Out of its sanctuary it brings a reverence for the law and truth which are absolute and exalted above all subjective feeling.
The particular kind of evil consciousness developed by the wishy-washy eloquence already alluded to, may be detected in the following way. It is most unspiritual, when it speaks most of the spirit. It is the most dead and leathern, when it talks of the scope of life. When it is exhibiting the greatest self-seeking and vanity it has most on its tongue the words “people” and “nation.” But its peculiar mark, found on its very forehead, is its hatred of law. Right and ethical principle, the actual world of right and ethical life, are apprehended in thought, and by thought are given definite, general, and rational form, and this reasoned right finds expression in law. But feeling, which seeks its own pleasure, and conscience, which finds right in private conviction, regard the law as their most bitter foe. The right, which takes the shape of law and duty, is by feeling looked upon as a shackle or dead cold letter. In this law it does not recognize itself and does not find itself free. Yet the law is the reason of the object, and refuses to feeling the privilege of warming itself at its private hearth. Hence the law, as we shall occasionally observe, is the Shibboleth, by means of which are detected the false brethren and friends of the so-called
Inasmuch as the purest charlatanism has won the name of philosophy, and has succeeded in convincing the public that its practices are philosophy, it has now become almost a disgrace to speak in a philosophic way about the state. Nor can it be taken ill, if honest men become impatient, when the subject is broached. Still less is it a surprise that the government has at last turned its attention to this false philosophizing. With us philosophy is not practised as a private art, as it was by the Greeks, but has a public place, and should therefore be employed only in the service of the state. The government has, up till now, shown such confidence in the scholars in this department as to leave the subject matter of philosophy wholly in their hands. Here and there, perhaps, has been shown to this science not confidence so much as indifference, and professorships have been retained as a matter of tradition. In France, as far as I am aware, the professional teaching of metaphysics at least has fallen into desuetude. In any case the confidence of the state has been ill requited by the teachers of this subject. Or, if we prefer to see in the state not confidence, but indifference, the decay of fundamental knowledge must be looked upon as a severe penance. Indeed, shallowness is to all appearance most endurable and most in harmony with the maintenance of order and peace, when it does not touch or hint at any real issue. Hence it would not be necessary to bring it under public control, if the state did not require deeper teaching and insight, and expect science to satisfy the need. Yet this shallowness, notwithstanding its seeming innocence, does bear upon social life, right and duty generally, advancing principles which are the very essence of superficiality. These, as we have learned so decidedly from Plato, are the principles of the Sophists, according to which the basis of right is subjective aims and opinions, subjective feeling and private conviction. The result of such principles is quite as much the destruction of the ethical system, of the upright conscience, of love and right, in private persons, as of public order and the institutions of the state. The significance of these facts for the authorities will not be obscured by the claim that the holder of these perilous doctrines should be trusted, or by the immunity of office.
The authorities will not be deterred by the demand that they should protect and give free play to a theory which strikes at the substantial basis of conduct, namely, universal principles, and that they should disregard insolence on the ground of its being the exercise of the teacher’s function. To him, to whom God gives office, He gives also understanding is a well-worn jest, which no one in our time would like to take seriously.
In the methods of teaching philosophy, which have under the circumstances been reanimated by the government, the important element of protection and support cannot be ignored. The study of philosophy is in many ways in need of such assistance. Frequently in scientific, religious, and other works may be read a contempt for philosophy. Some, who have no conspicuous education and are total strangers to philosophy, treat it as a cast-off garment. They even rail against it, and regard as foolishness and sinful presumption its efforts to conceive of God and physical and spiritual nature. They scout its endeavour to know the truth. Reason, and again reason, and reason in endless iteration is by them accused, despised, condemned. Free expression, also, is given by a large number of those, who are supposed to be cultivating scientific research, to their annoyance at the unassailable claims of the conception. When we, I say, are confronted with such phenomena as these, we are tempted to harbour the thought that old traditions of tolerance have fallen out of use, and no longer assure to philosophy a place and public
^ The same view finds expression in a letter of Joh. v. Müller (“Works,” Part VIII., p. 56), who, speaking of the condition of Rome in the year 1803, when the city was under French rule, writes, “A professor, asked how the puhlic academies were doing, answered, ' On les tolère comme les bordels! ‘” Similarly the so-called theory of reason or logic we may still hear commended, perhaps under the belief that it is too dry and unfruitful a science to claim any one’s attention, or, if it be pursued here and there, that its formulae are without content, and, though not of much good, can be of no great harm. Hence the recommendation, so it is thought, if useless, can do no injury.
These presumptuous utterances, which are in vogue in our time, are, strange to say, in a measure justified by the shallowness of the current philosophy. Yet, on the other hand, they have sprung from the same root as that against which they so thanklessly direct their attacks. Since that self-named philosophizing has declared that to know the truth is vain, it has reduced all matter of thought to the same level, resembling in this way the despotism of the Roman Empire, which equalized noble and slave, virtue and vice, honour and dishonour, knowledge and ignorance. In such a view the conceptions of truth and the laws of ethical observance are simply opinions and subjective convictions, and the most criminal principles, provided only that they are convictions, are put on a level with these laws. Thus, too, any paltry special object, be it never so flimsy, is given the same value as an interest common to all thinking men and the bonds of the established social
Hence it is for science a piece of good fortune that that kind of philosophizing, which might, like scholasticism, have continued to spin its notions within itself, has been brought into contact with reality. Indeed, such contact was, as we have said, inevitable. The real world is in earnest with the principles of right and duty, and in the full light of a consciousness of these principles it lives. With this world of reality philosophic cob-web spinning has come into open rupture. Now, as to genuine philosophy it is precisely its attitude to reality which has been misapprehended. Philosophy is, as I have already observed, an inquisition into the rational, and therefore the apprehension of the real and present. Hence it cannot be the exposition of a world beyond, which is merely a castle in the air, having no existence except in the terror of a onesided and empty formalism of thought. In the following treatise I have remarked that even Plato’s “Republic,” now regarded as the byword for an empty ideal, has grasped the essential nature of the ethical observances of the Greeks. He knew that there was breaking in upon Greek life a deeper principle, which could directly manifest itself only as an unsatisfied longing and therefore as ruin. Moved by the same longing Plato had to seek help against it, but had to conceive of the help as coming down from above, and hoped at last to have found it in an external special form of Greek ethical observance. He exhausted himself in contriving how by means of this new society to stem the tide of ruin, but succeeded only in injuring more fatally its deeper motive, the free infinite personality. Yet he has proved himself to be a great mind because the very principle and central distinguishing feature of his idea is the pivot upon which the world-wide revolution then in process turned:
What is rational is real; And what is real is rational.
Upon this conviction stand not philosophy only but even every unsophisticated consciousness. From it also proceeds the view now under contemplation that the spiritual universe is the natural. When reflection, feeling, or whatever other form the subjective consciousness may assume, regards the present as vanity, and thinks itself to be beyond it and wiser, it finds itself in emptiness, and, as it has actuality only in the present, it is vanity throughout. Against the doctrine that the idea is a mere idea, figment or opinion, philosophy preserves the more profound view that nothing is real except the idea. Hence arises the effort to recognize in the temporal and transient the substance, which is immanent, and the eternal, which is present. The rational is synonymous with the idea, because in realizing itself it passes into external existence. It thus appears in an endless wealth of forms, figures and phenomena. It wraps its kernel round with a robe of many colours, in which consciousness finds itself at home.
Through this varied husk the conception first of all penetrates, in order to touch the pulse, and then feel it throbbing in its external manifestations. To bring to order the endlessly varied relations, which constitute the outer appearance of the rational essence is not the task of philosophy. Such material is not suitable for it, and it can well abstain from giving good advice about these things. Plato could refrain from recommending to the nurses not to stand still with children, but always to dandle them in their arms. So could Fichte forbear to construe, as they say, the supervision of passports to such a point as to demand of all suspects that not only a description of them but also their photograph, should be inserted in the pass. Philosophy now exhibits no trace of such details. These superfine concerns it may neglect all the more safely, since it shows itself of the most liberal spirit in its attitude towards the endless mass of objects and circumstances. By such a course Science will escape the hate which is visited upon a multitude of circumstances and institutions by the vanity of a better knowledge. In this hate bitterness of mind finds the greatest pleasure, as it can in no other way attain to a feeling of self-esteem.
This treatise, in so far as it contains a political science, is nothing more than an attempt to conceive of and present the state as in itself rational. As a philosophic writing it must be on its guard against constructing a state as it ought to be. “Philosophy cannot teach the state what it should be, but only how it, the ethical universe, is to be known.
ἰδοὺ Ῥόδος, ἰδοὺ καὶ τὸ πήδημα. Hic Rhodus, hic saltus.
To apprehend what is is the task of philosophy, because what is is reason. As for the individual, every one is a son of his time; so philosophy also is its time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as foolish to fancy that any philosophy can transcend its present world, as that an individual could leap out of his time or jump over Rhodes. If a theory transgresses its time, and builds up a world as it ought to be, it has an existence merely in the unstable element of opinion, which gives room to every wandering fancy.
With little change the above saying would read:
Here is the rose, here dance.
The barrier which stands between reason, as self-conscious spirit, and reason as present reality, and does not permit spirit to find satisfaction in reality, is some abstraction, which is not free to be conceived. To recognize reason as the rose in the cross of the present, and to find delight in it, is a rational insight which implies reconciliation with reality. This reconciliation philosophy grants to those who have felt the inward demand to conceive clearly, to preserve subjective freedom while present in substantive reality, and yet though possessing this freedom to stand’ not upon the particular and contingent, but upon what is self-originated and self-completed.
This also is the more concrete meaning of what was a moment ago more abstractly called the unity of form and content. Form in its most concrete significance is reason, as an intellectual apprehension which conceives its object. Content, again, is reason as the substantive essence of social order and nature, The conscious identity of form and content is the philosophical idea.
It is a self-assertion, which does honour to man, to recognize nothing in sentiment which is not justified by thought. This self-will is a feature of modern times, being indeed the peculiar principle of Protestantism. What was initiated by Luther as faith in feeling and the witness of the spirit, the more mature mind strives to apprehend in conception. In that way it seeks to free itself in the present, and so find there itself. It is a celebrated saying that a half philosophy leads away from God, while a true philosophy leads to God. (It is the same halfness, I may say in passing, which regards knowledge as an approximation to truth.) This saying is applicable to the science of the state. Reason cannot content itself with a mere approximation, something which is neither cold nor hot, and must be spued out of the mouth. As little can it be contented with the cold scepticism that in this world of time things go badly, or at best only moderately well, and that we must keep the peace with reality, merely because there is nothing better to be had. Knowledge creates a much more vital peace.
Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least always comes too late. Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready. History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counterpart to the real, apprehends the real world in its substance, and shapes it into an intellectual kingdom. When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.
But it is time to close this preface. As a preface it is its place to speak only externally and subjectively of the standpoint of the work which it introduces. A philosophical account of the essential content needs a scientific and objective treatment. So, too, criticisms, other than those which proceed from such a treatment, must be viewed by the author as unreflective convictions. Such subjective criticisms must be for him a matter of indifference.
Berlin, June 25th, 1820.
I. The philosophic science of right has as its object the idea of right, i.e., the conception of right and the realization of the conception.
Note.—Philosophy has to do with ideas or realized thoughts, and hence not with what we have been accustomed to call mere conceptions. It has indeed to exhibit the onesidedness and untruth of these mere conceptions, and to show that, while that which commonly bears the name” conception,”is only an abstract product of the understanding, the true conception alone has reality and gives this reality to itself. Everything, other than the reality which is -established by the conception, is transient surface existence, external accident, opinion, appearance void of essence, untruth, delusion, and so forth. Through the actual shape, which it takes upon itself in actuality, is the conception itself understood. This shape is the other essential element of the idea, and is to be distinguished from the form, which exists only as conception.
Addition.—The conception and its existence are two sides, distinct yet united, like soul and body. The body is the same life as the soul, and yet the two can be named independently. A soul without a body would not be a living thing, and vice versa. Thus the visible existence of the conception is its body, just as the body obeys the soul which produced it. Seeds contain the tree and its whole power.
though they are not the tree itself; the tree corresponds accurately to the simple structure of the seed. If the body does not correspond to the soul, it is defective. The unity of visible existence and conception, of body and soul, is the idea. It is not a mere harmony of the two, but their complete interpenetration. There lives nothing, which is not in some way idea.—The idea of right is freedom, which, if it is to be apprehended truly, must be known both in its conception and in the embodiment of the conception.
2The science of right is a part of philosophy. Hence it must develop the idea, which is the reason of an object, out of the conception. It is the same thing to say that it must regard the peculiar internal development of the thing itself. Since it is a part, it has a definite beginning, which is the result and truth of what goes before, and this, that goes before, constitutes its so-called proof. Hence the origin of the conception of right falls outside of the science of right. The deduction of the conception is presupposed in this treatise, and is to be considered as already given.
Addition.—Philosophy forms a circle. It has, since it must somehow make a beginning, a primary, directly given matter, which is not proved and is not a result. But this starting-point is simply relative, since from another point of view it appears as a result. Philosophy is a consequence, which does not hang in the air or form a directly new beginning, but is self-enclosed.
According to the formal unphilosophic method of the sciences, definition is the first desideratum, as regards, at least, the external scientific form. The positive science of right, however, is little concerned with definition, since its special aim is to give what it is that is right, and also the particular phases of the laws. For this reason it has been said as a warning, Omnis definitio in jure civili periculosa; and in fact the more disconnected and contradictory the phases of a right are, the less possible is a definition of it.
A definition should contain only universal features; but these forthwith bring to light contradictions, which in the case of law are injustice, in all their nakedness. Thus in Roman law, for instance, no definition of man was possible, because it excluded the slave. The conception of man was destroyed by the .fact of slavery. In the same way to have defined property and owner, would have appeared to be perilous to many relations.—But definitions may perhaps be derived from etymology, for the reason, principally, that in this way special cases are avoided, and a basis is found in the feeling and imaginative thought of men. The correctness of a definition would thus consist in its agreement with existing ideas. By such a method everything essentially scientific is cast aside. As regards the content there is cast aside the necessity of the self-contained and self-developed object, and as regards the form there is discarded the nature of the conception. In philosophic knowledge the necessity of a conception is the main thing, and the process, by which it, as a result, has come into being, is the proof and deduction. After the content is seen to be necessary independently, the second point is to look about for that which corresponds to it in existing ideas and modes of speech. But the way in which a conception exists in its truth, and the way it presents itself in random ideas not only are but must be different both in form and structure. If a notion is not in its content false, the conception can be shown to be contained in it and to be already there in its essential traits. A notion may thus be raised to the form of a conception. But so little is any notion the measure and criterion of an independently necessary and true conception, that it must accept truth from the conception, be justified by it, and know itself through it.—If the method of knowing, which proceeds by formal definition, inference and proof, has more or less disappeared, a worse one has come to take its place. This new method maintains that ideas, as, e.g., the idea of right in all its aspects, are to be directly apprehended as mere facts of consciousness, and that natural feeling, or that heightened form of it which is known as the inspiration of one’s own breast, is the source of right. This method may be the most convenient of all, but it is also the most unphilosophic. Other features of this view, referring not merely to knowledge but directly to action, need not detain us here.
While the first or formal method went so far as to require in definition the form of the conception, and in proof the form of a necessity of knowledge, the method of the intuitive consciousness and feeling takes for its principle the arbitrary contingent consciousness of the subject.—In this treatise we take for granted the scientific procedure of philosophy, which has been set forth in the philosophic logic.
3Right is positive in general (a) in its form, since it has validity in a state; and this established authority is the principle for the knowledge of right. Hence we have the positive science of right. (b) On the side of content this right receives a positive element (a) through the particular character of a nation, the stage of its historical development, and the interconnection of all the relations which are necessitated by nature: (β) through the necessity that a system of legalized right must contain the application of the universal conception to objects and cases whose qualities are given externally. Such an application is not the speculative thought or the development of the conception, but a subsumption made by the understanding: (γ) through the ultimate nature of a decision which has become a reality.
Note.—Philosophy at least cannot recognize the authority of feeling, inclination and caprice, when they are set in opposition to positive right and the laws.—It is an accident, external to the nature of positive right, when force or tyranny becomes an element of it. It will be shown later (§§ 211–214), at what point right must become positive. The general phases which are there deduced, are here only mentioned, in order to indicate the limit of philosophic right, and also to forestall the idea or indeed the demand that by a systematic development of right should be produced a law-book, such as would be needed by an actual state.—To convert the differences between right of nature and positive right, or those between philosophic right and positive right, into open antagonism would be a complete misunderstanding. Natural right or philosophic right stands to positive right as institutions to pandects.—With regard to the historical element in positive right, referred to in the paragraph, it may be said that the true historical view and genuine philosophic standpoint have been presented by Montesquieu. He regards legislation and its specific traits not in an isolated and abstract way, but rather as a dependent element of one totality, connecting it with all the other elements which form the character of a nation and an epoch. In this interrelation the various elements receive their meaning and justification.—The purely historical treatment of the phases of right, as they develop in time, and. a comparison of their results with existing relations of right have their own value; but they are out of place in a philosophic treatise, except in so far as the development out of historic grounds coincides with the development out of the conception, and the historical exposition and justification can be made to cover a justification which is valid in itself and independently. This distinction is as manifest as it is weighty. A phase of right may be shown to rest upon and follow from the circumstances and existing institutions of right, and yet may be absolutely unreasonable and void of right. This is the case in Roman law with many aspects of private right, which were the logical results of its interpretation of paternal power and of marriage. Further, if the aspects of right are really right and reasonable, it is one thing to point out what with regard to them can truly take place through the conception, and quite another thing to portray the manner of their appearance in history, along with the circumstances, cases, wants and events, which they have called forth. Such a demonstration and deduction from nearer or more remote historic causes, which is the occupation of pragmatic history, is frequently called exposition, or preferably conception, under the opinion that in such an indication of the historic elements is found all that is essential to a conception of law and institutions of right. In point of fact that which is truly essential, the conception of the matter, has not been so much as mentioned.—So also we are accustomed to hear of Roman or German conceptions of right, and of conceptions of right as they are laid down in this or that statute-book, when indeed nothing about conceptions can be found in them, but only general phases of right, propositions derived from the understanding, general maxims, and laws.—By neglect of the distinction, just alluded to, the true standpoint is obscured and the question of a valid justification is shifted into a justification based upon circumstances; results are founded on presuppositions, which in themselves are of little value; and in general the relative is put in place of the absolute, and external appearance in place of the nature of the thing. When the historical vindication substitutes the external origin for the origin from the conception, it unconsciously does the opposite of what it intends. Suppose that an institution, originating under definite circumstances, is shown to be necessary and to answer its purpose, and that it accomplishes all that is required of it by the historical standpoint. When such a proof is made to stand for a justification of the thing itself, it follows that, when the circumstances are removed, the institution has lost its meaning and its right. When, e.g., it is sought to support and defend cloisters on the grounds that they have served to clear and people the wilderness and by teaching and transcribing to preserve scholarship, it follows that just in so far as the circumstances are changed, cloisters have become aimless and superfluous.—In so far as the historic significance, or the historical exposition and interpretation of the origin of anything is in different spheres at home with the philosophic view of the origin and conception of the thing, one might tolerate the other. But, in illustration of the fact that they neither here nor in science, preserve this peaceful attitude, I quote from Mr. Hugo’s” Lehrbuch der Geschichte des römischen Rechts.”’ In this work Mr. Hugo says (5th edition § 53) that” Cicero praises the twelve tables with a side glance at philosophy,”” but the philosopher Phavorinus treats them exactly as many a great philosopher since has treated positive right.”Mr.
Hugo makes the ultimate reply to such a method as that of Phavorinus, when he says of him that he”understood the twelve tables just as little as the philosophers understood positive right.”—The correction of the philosopher Phavorinus by the jurist Sextus Caecilius (Gellius,” Noct. Attic.”XX. 1) expresses the lasting and true principle of the justification of that which is in its content merely positive.” Non ignoras,”as Caecilius felicitously remarks to Phavorinus,” legum opportunitates et medelas pro temporum moribus, et pro rerum publicarum generibus, ac pro utilitatum praesentium rationibus, proque vitiorum, quibus medendum est, fervoribus mutari ac flecti, neque uno statu consistere, quin, ut facies coeli et maris, ita rerum atque fortunae tempestatibus varientur. Quid salubrius visum est rogatione illa Stolonis, etc., quid utilius plebiscite Voconio, etc., quid tam necessarium existimatum est, quam lex Licinia, etc.? Omnia tamen haec obliterata et operta sunt civitatis opulentia,”etc.—These laws are positive so far as they have meaning and appropriateness under the circumstances, and thus have only an historic value. For this reason they are in their nature transient. Whether the legislator or government was wise or not in what it did for its own immediate time and circumstances is a matter quite by itself and is for history to say. ‘” Text-book of the History of Roman Law.”
History will the more profoundly recognize the action of the legislator in proportion as its estimate receives support from the philosophic standpoint.—From the vindications of the twelve tables against the judgment of Phavorinus I shall give a further example because in them Caecilius furnishes an illustration of the fraud which is indissolubly bound up with the methods of the understanding and its reasonings. He adduces a good reason for a bad thing, and supposes that he has in that way justified the thing. Take the horrible law which permitted a creditor, after the lapse of a fixed term of respite, to kill a debtor or sell him into slavery. Nay, further, if there were several creditors, they were permitted to cut pieces off the debtor, and thus divide him amongst them, with the proviso that if any one of them should cut off too much or too little, no action should be taken against him. It was this clause, it may be noticed, which stood Shakespeare’s Shylock in” The Merchant of Venice “in such good stead, and was by him most thankfully accepted. Well, for this law Caecilius adduces the good argument that by it trust and credit were more firmly secured, and also that, by reason of the very horror of the law, it never had to be enforced. Not only does he in his want of thought fail to observe that by the severity of the law that very intention of securing trust and credit was defeated, but he forthwith himself gives an illustration of the way in which the disproportionate punishment caused the law to be inoperative, namely through the habit of giving false witness.—But the remark of Mr. Hugo that Phavorinus had not understood the law is not to be passed over. Now any school-boy can understand the law just quoted, and better than anyone else would Shylock have understood what was to him of such advantage. Hence, by” understand “Mr. Hugo must mean that form of understanding which consists in bringing to the support of a law a good reason.—Another failure to understand, asserted by Csecilius of Phavorinus, a philosopher at any rate may without blushing acknowledge: jumentum, •which without any arcera was the only legal way to bring a sick man into court as a witness, was held to mean not only a horse but also a carriage or wagon. Further on in this law Caecilius found more evidence of the excellence and accuracy of the old statutes, which for the purpose of non-suiting a sick man at court distinguished not only between a horse and a wagon, but also, as Caecilius explains, between a wagon covered and cushioned and one not so comfortably equipped. Thus one would have the choice between utter severity on one side, and on the other senseless details. But to exhibit fully the absurdity of these laws and the pedantic defence offered in their behalf would give rise to an invincible repugnance to all scholarship of that kind.
But in his manual Mr. Hugo speaks also of rationality in connection with Roman law, and I have been struck with the following remarks. He first of all treats of the epoch extending from the origin of the Republic to the twelve tables (§§ 38, 89), noticing that [in Rome] people had many wants, and were compelled in their labour to use draught animals and beasts of burden, as we ourselves do, and that the ground was an alternation of hill and valley, and that the city was set upon a hill, etc. These statements might, perhaps, have answered to the sense of Montesquieu’s thought, though in them it would be wellnigh impossible to find his genius. But after these preliminary paragraphs, he goes on to say in § 40, that the condition of the law was still very far from satisfying the highest demands of reason. This remark is wholly in place, as the Roman family-right, slavery, etc., give no satisfaction to the smallest demands of reason. Yet when discussing the succeeding epochs, Mr. Hugo forgets to tell us in what particulars, if any, the Roman law has satisfactorily met the highest demands of reason. Still of the classic jurists, who flourished in the era of the greatest expansion of Roman law as a science, it is said (§ 289) “it has been long since been observed that the jurists were educated in philosophy,” but “few know” (more will know now through the numerous editions of Mr. Hugo’s manual) “that there is no class of writers, who, as regards deduction from principles, deserved to be placed beside the mathematicians, and also, as regards the quite remarkable way in which they develop their conceptions, beside the modern founder of metaphysic; as voucher for this assertion is the notable fact that nowhere do so many trichotomies occur as in the classic jurists and in Kant.” This form of logical reasoning, extolled by Leibnitz, is certainly an essential feature of the science of right, as it is of mathematics and every other intelligible science; but the logical procedure of the mere understanding, spoken of by Mr. Hugo, has nothing to do with the satisfaction of the claims of reason and with philosophic science. Moreover, the very lack of logical procedure, which is characteristic of the Roman jurists and praetors, is to be esteemed as one of their chief virtues, since by means of it they obviated the consequences of unrighteous and horrible institutions. Through their want of logic they were compelled callide to put sense into mere verbal distinctions, as they did when they identified Bonorum possessio with inheritance, and also into silly evasions, for silliness is a defect of logic, in order to save the letter of the tables, as was done in the fictio or viroKpiata that a filia patroni was a filius (Heinecc. “Antiq. Rom.,” lib. i. tit. ii. § 24). But it is absurd to place the classic jurists, with their use of trichotomy, along with Kant, and in that way to discern in them the promise of the development of conceptions.
4The territory of right is in general the spiritual, and its more definite place and origin is the will, which is free. Thus freedom constitutes the substance and essential character of the will, and the system of right is the kingdom of actualized freedom. It is the world of spirit, which is produced out of itself, and is a second nature.
Addition.—Freedom of will is best explained by reference to physical nature. Freedom is a fundamental phase of will, as weight is of bodies. When it is said that matter is heavy, it might be meant that the predicate is an accident; but such is not the case, for in matter there is nothing which has not weight; in fact, matter is weight. That which is heavy constitutes the body, and is the body. Just so is it with freedom and the will; that which is free is the will. Will without freedom is an empty word, and freedom becomes actual only as will, as subject. A remark may also be made as to the connection of willing and thinking. Spirit, in general, is thought, and by thought man is distinguished from the animal. But we must not imagine that man is on one side thinking and on another side willing, as though he had will in one pocket and thought in another. Such an idea is vain. The distinction between thought and will is only that between a theoretical and a practical relation. They are not two separate faculties. The will is a special way of thinking; it is I thought translating itself into reality; it is the impulse of thought to give itself reality. The distinction between thought and will may be expressed in this way. When I think an object, I make of it a thought, and take from it the sensible. Thus I make of it something which is essentially and directly mine. Only in thought am I self-contained. Conception is the penetration of the object, which is then no longer opposed to me. From it I have taken its own peculiar nature, which it had as an independent object in opposition to me. As Adam said to Eve, “thou art flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone,” so says the spirit, “This object is spirit of my spirit, and all alienation has disappeared.” Any idea is a universalizing, and this process belongs to thinking. To make something universal is to think. The “I” is thought and the universal. When I say “I,” I let fall all particularity of character, natural endowment, knowledge, age. The I is empty, a point and simple, but in its simplicity active. The gaily coloured world is before me; I stand opposed to it, and in this relation I cancel and transcend the opposition, and make the content my own. The I is at home in the world, when it knows it, and still more when it has conceived it.
So much for the theoretical relation. The practical, on the other hand, begins with thinking, with the I itself. It thus appears first of all as placed in opposition, because it exhibits, as it were, a separation. As I am practical, I am active; I act and determine myself; and to determine myself means to set up a distinction. But these distinctions are again mine, my own determinations come to me; and the ends are mine, to which I am impelled. Even when I let these distinctions and determinations go, setting them in the so-called external world, they remain mine. They are that which I have done and made, and bear the trace of my spirit. That is the distinction to be drawn between the theoretical and the practical relations.
And now the connection of the two must be also stated. The theoretical is essentially contained in the practical. Against the idea that the two are separate runs th e fact that man has no will without intelligence. The will holds within itself the theoretical, the will determines itself, and this determination is in the first instance internal. That which I will I place before my mind, and it is an object for me. The animal acts according to instinct, is impelled by something internal, and so is also practical. But it has no will, because it cannot place before its mind what it desires. Similarly man cannot use his theoretic faculty or think without will, for in thinking we are active. The content of what is thought receives, indeed, the form of something existing, but this existence is occasioned by our activity and by it established. These distinctions of theoretical and practical are inseparable; they are one and the same; and in every activity, whether of thought or will, both these elements are found.
It is worth while to recall the older way of proceeding with regard to the freedom of the will. First of all, the idea of the will was assumed, and then an effort was made to deduce from it and establish a definition of the will. Next, the method of the older empirical psychology was adopted, and different perceptions and general phenomena of the ordinary consciousness were collected, such as remorse, guilt, and the like, on the ground that these could be explained only as proceeding out of a will that is free. Then from these phenomena was deduced the so-called proof that the will is free. But it is more convenient to take a short cut and hold that freedom is given as a fact of consciousness, and must be believed in.
The nature of the will and of freedom, and the proof that the will is free, can be shown, as has already been observed (§ 2), only in connection with the whole. The ground principles of the premises—that spirit is in the first instance intelligence, and that the phases, through which it passes in its development, namely from feeling, through imaginative thinking to thought, are the way by which it produces itself as will, which, in turn, as the practical spirit in general, is the most direct truth of intelligence—I have presented in my “Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences””(Heidelberg, 1817), and hope some day to be able to give of them a more complete exposition. There is, to my mind, so much the more need for me to give my contribution to, as I hope, the more thorough knowledge of the nature of spirit, since, as I have there said, it would be difficult to find a philosophic science in a more neglected and evil plight than is that theory of spirit, which is commonly called psychology.—Some elements of the conception of will, resulting from the premises enumerated above are mentioned in this and the following paragraphs. As to these, appeal may moreover be made to every individual to see them in his own self-consciousness. Everyone will, in the first place, find in himself the ability to abstract himself from all that he is, and in this way prove’ himself able of himself to set every content within himself, and thus have in his own consciousness an illustration of all the subsequent phases.
6The will contains (a) the element of pure indeterminateness, i.e., the pure doubling of the I back in thought upon itself. In this process every limit or content, present though it be directly by way of nature, as in want, appetite or impulse, or given in any specific way, is dissolved. Thus we have the limitless infinitude of absolute abstraction, or universality, the pure thought of itself.
Note.—Those who treat thinking and willing as two special, peculiar, and separate faculties, and, further, look upon thought as detrimental to the will, especially the good will, show from the very start that they know nothing of the nature of willing—a remark which we shall be called upon to make a number of times upon the same attitude of mind.—The will on one side is the possibility of abstraction from every aspect in which the I finds itself or has set itself up. It reckons any content as a limit, and flees from it. This is one of the forms of the self-direction of the will, and is by imaginative thinking insisted upon as of itself freedom. It is the negative side of the will, or freedom as apprehended by the understanding. This freedom is that of the void, which has taken actual shape and is stirred to passion. It, while remaining purely theoretical, appears in Hindu religion as the fanaticism of pure contemplation; but becoming actual it assumes both in politics and religion the form of a fanaticism, which would destroy the established social order, remove all individuals suspected of desiring any kind of”order, and demolish any organization which then sought to rise out of the ruins. Only in devastation does the negative will feel that it has reality. It tends, indeed, to bring to pass some positive social condition, such as universal equality or universal religious life. But in fact it does not will the positive reality of any such condition, since that would carry in its train a system, and introduce a separation by way of institutions and between individuals. But classification and objective system attain self consciousness only by destroying negative freedom. Negative freedom is actuated by a mere solitary abstract idea, whose realization is nothing but the fury of desolation.
Addition.—This phase of will implies that I break loose from everything, give up all ends, and bury myself in abstraction. It is man alone who can let go everything, even life. He can commit suicide, an act impossible for the animal, which always remains only negative, abiding in a state foreign to itself, to which it must merely get accustomed. Man is pure thought of himself, and only in thinking has he the power to give himself universality and to extinguish in himself all that is particular and definite. Negative freedom, or freedom of the understanding, is one-sided, yet as this one-sidedness contains an essential feature, it is not to be discarded. But the defect of the understanding is that it exalts its onesidedness to the sole and highest place. This form of freedom frequently occurs in history. By the Hindus, e.g., the highest freedom is declared to be persistence in the consciousness of one’s simple identity with himself, to abide in the empty space of one’s own inner being, like the colourless light of pure intuition, and to renounce every activity of life, every purpose and every idea. In this way man becomes Brahma; there is no longer any distinction between finite man and Brahma, every difference having been swallowed up in this universality. A more concrete manifestation of this freedom is the fanaticism of political and religious life. Of this nature was the terrible epoch of the French Revolution, by which all distinctions in talent and authority were to have been superseded. In this time of upheaval and commotion any specific thing was intolerable. Fanaticism wills an abstraction and not an articulate association. It finds all distinctions antagonistic to its indefiniteness, and supersedes them. Hence in the French Revolution the people abolished the institutions which they themselves had set up, since every institution is inimical to the abstract self-consciousness of equality. 1
6. (β) The I is also the transition from blank indefiniteness to the distinct and definite establishment of a definite content and object, whether this content be given by nature or produced out of the conception of spirit. Through this establishment of itself as a definite thing the I becomes a reality. This is the absolute element of the finitude or specialization of the I. I
Note. This second element in the characterization of the I is just as negative as the first, since it annuls and replaces the first abstract negativity. As the particular is contained in the universal, so this second phase is contained already in the first, and is only an establishing of what the first is implicitly. The first phase, if taken independently, is not the true infinitude, i.e., the concrete universal, or the conception, but limited and onesided. In that it is the abstraction from all definite character, it has a definite character. Its abstract and one-sided nature constitutes its definite character, its defect and finitude. i
The distinct characterization of these two phases of the I is found in the philosophy of Fichte as also in that of Kant. Only, in the exposition of Fichte the I, when, taken. as unlimited, as it is in the first proposition of his “Wissenschaftslehre,” is merely positive. It is the universality and identity made by the understanding. Hence this abstract I is in its independence to be taken as the -truth, to which by way of mere addition comes in the second proposition, the limitation, or the negative in general, whether it be in the form of a given external limit or of an activity of the I.—To apprehend the negative as immanent in the universal or self-identical, and also as in the I, was the next step, which speculative philosophy had to make. Of this want they have no presentiment, who like Fichte never apprehend that the infinite and finite are, if separated, abstract, and must be seen as immanent one in the other.
Addition.—This second element makes its appearance as the opposite of the first; it is to be understood in its general form: it belongs to freedom but does not constitute the whole of it. Here the I passes over from blank indeterminateness to the distinct establishment of a specific character as a content or object. I do not will merely, but I will something. Such a will, as is analysed in the preceding paragraph, wills only the abstract universal, and therefore wills nothing. Hence it is not a will. The particular thing, which the will wills is a limitation, since the will, in order to be a will, must in general limit itself. Limit or negation consists in the will willing something. Particularizing is thus as a rule named finitude. Ordinary reflection holds the first element, that of the indefinite, for the absolute and higher, and the limited for a mere negation of this indefiniteness. But this indefiniteness is itself only a negation, in contrast with the definite and finite. The I is solitude and absolute negation. The indefinite will is thus quite as much one-sided as the will, which continues merely in the definite.
7. (γ) The will is the unity of these two elements. It is particularity turned back within itself and thus led back to universality; it is individuality; it is the self-direction of the I. Thus at one and the same time it establishes itself as its own negation, that is to say, as definite and limited, and it also abides by itself, in its self -identity and universality, and in this position remains purely self -enclosed.—The I determines itself in so far as it is the reference of negativity to itself; and yet in this self -reference it is indifferent to its own definite character. This it knows as its own, that is, as an ideal or a mere possibility, by which it is not bound, but rather exists in it merely because it establishes itself there.—This is the freedom of the will, constituting its conception or substantive reality. It is its gravity, as it were, just as gravity is the substantive reality of a body.
Note.—Every self-consciousness knows itself as at once universal, or the possibility of abstracting itself from everything definite, and as particular, with a fixed object, content or aim. These two elements, however, are only abstractions. The concrete and true,—and all that is true is concrete,—is the universality, to which the particular is at first opposed, but, when it has been turned back into itself, is in the end made equal.—This unity is individuality, but it is not a simple unit as is the individuality of imaginative thought, but a unit in terms of the conception (“Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences,” §§ 112–114). In other words, this individuality is properly nothing else than the conception. [The first two elements of the will, that it can abstract itself from everything, and that it is definite through either its own activity or something else—are easily admitted and comprehended, because, in their separation they are untrue, and characteristic of the mere understanding. But into the third, the true and speculative—and all truth, as far as it is conceived, must be thought speculatively—the understanding declines to venture, always calling the conception the inconceivable. The proof and more detailed explanation of this inmost reserve of speculation, of infinitude as the negativity which refers itself to itself, and of this ultimate source of all activity, life and consciousness, belong to logic, as the purely speculative philosophy. Here it can be noticed only in, passing that, in the sentences, “The will is universal,” “The will directs itself,” the will is already regarded as presupposed subject or substratum; but it is not something finished and universal before it determines itself, nor yet before this determination is superseded and idealized. It is will only when its activity is self -occasioned, and it has returned into itself.
Addition.—What we properly call will contains the two above-mentioned elements. The I is, first of all, as such, pure activity, the universal which is by itself. Next this universal determines itself, and so far is no longer by itself, but establishes itself as another, and ceases to be the universal. The third step is that the will, while in this limitation, i.e., in this other, is by itself. While it limits itself, it yet remains with itself, and does not lose its hold of the universal. This is, then, the concrete conception of freedom, while the other two elements have been thoroughly abstract and one-sided. But this concrete freedom we already have in the form of perception, as in friendship and love. Here a man is not one-sided, but limits himself willingly in reference to another, and yet in this limitation knows himself as himself. In this determination he does not feel himself determined, but in the contemplation of the other as another has the feeling of himself. Freedom also lies neither in indeterminateness nor in determinateness, but in both. The wilful man has a will which limits itself wholly to a particular object, and if he has not this will, he supposes himself not to be free. But the will is not bound to a particular object, but must go further, for the nature of the will is not to be one-sided and confined. Free will consists in willing a definite object, but in so doing to be by itself and to return again into the universal.”
8If we define this particularizing (β § 6) further, we reach a distinction in the forms of the will, (a) In so far as the definite character of the will consists in the formal opposition of the subjective to the objective or external direct existence, we have the formal will as a self consciousness, which finds an outer world before it. The process by which individuality turns back in its definiteness into itself, is the translation of the subjective end, through the intervention of an activity and a means, into objectivity. In the absolute spirit, in which all definite character is thoroughly its own and true (” Encyclop.”§ 363), consciousness is only one side, namely, the manifestation or appearance of the will, a phase which does not require detailed consideration here.
Addition.—The consideration of the definite nature of the will belongs to the understanding, and is not in the first instance speculative. The will as a whole, not only in the sense of its content, but also in the sense of its form, is determined. Determinate character on the side of form is the end, and the execution of the end. The end is at first merely something internal to me and subjective, but it is to be also objective and to cast away the defect of mere subjectivity. It may be asked, why it has this defect. When that which is deficient does not at the same time transcend its defect, the defect is for it not a defect at all. The animal is to us defective, but not for itself. The end, in so far as it is at first merely ours, is for us a defect, since freedom and will are for us the unity of subjective and objective. The end must also be established as objective; but does not in that way attain a new one-sided character, but rather its realization.
9 (b). In so far as the definite phases of will are its own peculiar property or its particularization turned back into itself, they are content. This content, as content of the will, is for it, by virtue of the form given in (a), an end, which exists on its inner or subjective side as the imaginative will, but by the operation of the activity, which converts the subjective into the objective, it is realized, completed end.
10The content or determinate phase of will is in the first instance direct or immediate. Then the will is free only in itself or for us, i.e., it is the will in its conception. Only when it has itself as an object is it also for itself, and its implicit freedom becomes realized.
Note.—At this standpoint the finite implies that whatever is in itself, or according to its conception, has an existence or manifestation different from what it is for itself. For example the abstract separateness of nature is in itself space, but for itself time. Here, two things are to be observed, (1) that because the truth is the idea, when any object or phase is apprehended only as it is in itself or in conception, it is not as yet apprehended in its truth, and yet (2) that, whatever exists as conception or in itself, at the same time exists, and this existence is a peculiar form of the object, as e.g. space. The separation of existencein-itself or implicit existence from existence-for-itself or explicit existence is a characteristic of the finite, and constitutes its appearance or merely external reality. An example of this is to hand in the separation of the natural will from formal right. The understanding adheres to mere implicit existence, and in accordance with this position calls freedom a capacity, since it is at this point only a possibility. But the understanding regards this phase as absolute and perennial, and considers the relation of the will to what it wills or reality as an application to a given material, which does not belong to the essence of freedom. In this way the understanding occupies itself with mere abstractions, and not with the idea and truth.
Addition.—The will, which is will only according to the conception, is free implicitly, but is at the same time not free. To be truly free, it must have a truly fixed content; then it is explicitly free, has freedom for its object, and is freedom. What is at first merely in conception, i.e., implicit, is only direct and natural. We are familiar with this in pictorial thought also. The child is implicitly a man, at first has reason implicitly, and is at first the possibility of reason and freedom. He is thus free merely according to the conception. That which is only implicit does not yet exist in actuality. A man, who is implicitly rational, must create himself by working through and out of himself and by reconstructing himself within himself, before he can become also explicitly rational.
11. The will, which is at first only implicitly free, is the direct or natural will. The distinctive phases, which the self-determining conception sets up in the will, appear in the direct will, as a directly present content. They are impulses, appetites, inclinations, by which the will finds itself determined by nature. Now this content, with all its attendant phases, proceeds from the rationality of the will, and is therefore implicitly rational; but let loose in its immediate directness it has not as yet the form of rationality. The content is indeed for me and my own, but the form and the content are yet different. The will is thus in itself finite.
Note.—Empirical psychology enumerates and describes these impulses and inclinations, and the wants which are based upon them. It takes, or imagines that it takes this material from experience, and then seeks to classify it in the usual way. It will be stated below, what the objective side of impulse is, and what impulse is in its truth, apart from the form of irrationality which it has as an impulse, and also what shape it assumes when it reaches existence.
Addition.—Impulse, appetite, inclination are possessed by the animal also, but it has not will; it must obey impulse, if there is no external obstacle. Man, however, is the completely undetermined, and stands above impulse, and may fix and set it up as his. Impulse is in nature, but it depends on my will whether I establish it in the I. Nor can the will be unconditionally called to this action by the fact that the impulse lies in nature.
12The system of this content, as it occurs directly in the will, exists only as a multitude or multiplicity of impulses, every one of which is mine in a general way along with others, but is at the same time universal and undetermined, having many objects and ways of satisfaction. The will, by giving itself in this two-fold indefiniteness the form of individuality (§ 7), resolves, and only as resolving is it actual.
Note.—Instead of to”resolve,”i.e. to supersede the indefinite condition in which a content is merely possible, our language has the expression” decide “(” unfold itself “). The indeterminate condition of the will, as neutral but infinitely fruitful germ of all existence, contains within itself its definite character and ends, and brings them forth solely out of itself.
13By resolution will fixes itself as the will of a definite individual, and as thereby distinguishing itself from another. However apart from this finite character which it has as consciousness (§ 8), the immediate will is in virtue of the distinction between its form and its content formal. Hence its resolution as such is abstract, and its content is not yet the content and work of its freedom.
Note.—To the intelligence, as thinking, the object or content remains universal; the intelligence retains the form merely of a universal activity. Now the universal signifies in will that which is mine, i.e. it is individuality. And yet, also, the direct and formal will is abstract; its individuality is not yet filled with its free universality. Hence at the beginning the peculiar finitude of the intelligence is in will, and only by exalting itself again to thought and giving itself intrinsic universality does the will transcend the distinction of form and content and make itself objective infinite will. It is therefore a misunderstanding of the nature of thought and will to suppose that in the will man is infinite, while in thought and even in reason he is limited. In so far as thought and will are still distinct, the reverse is rather the case, and thinking reason, when it becomes will, assigns itself to finitude.
Addition.—A will which resolves nothing, is not an actual will; that which is devoid of definite character never reaches a volition. The reason for hesitation may lie in a sensitiveness, which is aware that in determining itself it is engaged with what is finite, is assigning itself a limit, and abandoning its infinity; it may thus hold to its decision not to renounce the totality which it intends. Such a feeling is dead, even when it aims to be something beautiful.” Who will be great,”says Goethe,” must be able to limit himself.”By Volition alone man enters actuality, however distasteful it may be to him; for indolence will not desert its own self-brooding, in which it clings to a universal possibility. But possibility is not yet actuality. Hence the will, which is secure simply of itself, does not as yet lose itself in any definite reality.
14The finite will, which has merely from the standpoint of form doubled itself back upon itself, and has become the infinite and self-secluded I (§ 5), stands above its content of different impulses and also above the several ways by which they are realized and satisfied. At the same time, as it is only formally infinite, it is confined to this very content as the decisive feature of its nature and external actuality, although it is undetermined and not confined to one content rather than another (§§ 6, 11). As to the return of the I into itself such a will is only a possible will, which may or may not be mine, and the I is only the possibility of deputing itself to this or that object. Hence amongst these definite phases, which in this light are for the I external, the will chooses.
15Freedom of the will is in this view of it caprice, in which are contained both a reflection, which is free and abstracted from everything, and a dependence upon a content or matter either internally or externally provided. Since the content is in itself or implicitly necessary as an end, and in opposition to this reflection is a definite possibility, caprice, when it is will, is in its nature contingent.
Note.—The usual idea of freedom is that of caprice. It is a midway stage of reflection between the will as merely natural impulse and the will as free absolutely. When it is said that freedom as a general thing consists in doing what one likes, such an idea must be taken to imply an utter lack of developed thought, containing as yet not even a suspicion of what is meant by the absolutely free will, right, the ethical system, etc. Reflection, being the formal universality and unity of self-consciousness, is the will’s abstract certitude of its freedom, but it is not yet the truth of it, because it has not as yet itself for content and end; the subjective side is still different from the objective. Thus the content in such a case remains purely and completely finite. Caprice, instead of being will in its truth, is rather will in its contradiction.
In the controversy carried on, especially at the time of the metaphysic of Wolf, as to whether the will is really free, or our consciousness of its freedom is a delusion, it was this caprice which was in the minds of both parties. Against the certitude of abstract self-direction, determinism rightly opposed a content, which was externally presented, and not being contained in this certitude came from without. It did not matter whether this” without “were impulse, imagination, or in general a consciousness so filled that the content was not the peculiar possession of the self-determining activity as such. Since only the formal element of free self -direction is immanent in caprice, while the other element is something given to it from without, to take caprice as freedom may fairly be named a delusion. Freedom in every philosophy of reflection, whether it be the Kantian or the Friesian, which is the Kantian superficialized, is nothing more than this formal self -activity.
Addition.—Since I have the possibility of determining myself in this or that way, since I have the power of choice, I possess caprice, or what is commonly called freedom. This choice is due to the universality of the will, enabling me to make my own this thing or another. This possession is a particular content, which is therefore not adequate to me, but separated from me, and is mine only in possibility, just as I am the possibility of bringing myself into coincidence with it. Hence choice is due to the indeterminateness of the I, and to the determinateness of a content. But as to this content the will is not free, although it has in itself formally the side of infinitude. No such content corresponds to will; in no content can it truly find itself. In caprice it is involved that the content is not formed by the nature of my will, but by contingency. I am dependent upon this content. This is the contradiction contained in caprice. Ordinary man believes that he is free, when he is allowed to act capriciously, but precisely in caprice is it inherent that he is not free. When I will the rational, I do not act as a particular individual but according to the conception of ethical observance in general. In an ethical act I establish not myself but the thing. A man, who acts perversely, exhibits particularity. The rational is the highway on which every one travels, and no one is specially marked. When a great artist finishes a work we say:” It must be so.”The particularity of the artist has wholly disappeared and the work shows no mannerism. Phidias has no mannerism; the statue itself lives and moves. But the poorer is the artist, the more easily we discern himself, his particularity and caprice. If we adhere to the consideration that in caprice a man can will what he pleases, we have certainly freedom of a kind; but again, if we hold to the view that the content is given, then man must be determined by it, and in this light is no longer free.
16What is resolved upon and chosen (§ 14) the will may again give up (§ 5). Yet, even with the possibility of transcending any other content which it may substitute, and of proceeding in this way ad infinitum, the will does not advance beyond finitude, because every content in turn is different from the form and is finite. The opposite aspect, namely indeterminateness, irresolution or abstraction, is also one-sided.
17Since the contradiction involved in caprice (§ 16) is the dialectic of the impulses and inclinations, it is manifested in their mutual antagonism. The satisfaction of one demands the subjection and sacrifice of the satisfaction of another. Since an impulse is merely the simple tendency of its own essential nature, and has no measure in itself, to subject or sacrifice the satisfaction of any impulse is a contingent decision of caprice. In such a case caprice may act upon the calculation as to which impulse will bring the greater satisfaction, or may have some other similar purpose.
Addition.—Impulses and inclinations are in the first instance the content of will, and only reflection transcends them. But these impulses are self-directing, crowding upon and jostling one another, and all seeking to be satisfied. To set all but one in the background, and put myself into this one, is to limit and distort myself, since I, in so doing, renounce my universality, which is a system of all the impulses. Just as little help is found in a mere subordination of them, a course usually followed by the understanding. There is available no criterion by which to make such an arrangement, and hence the demand for a subordination is usually sustained by tedious and irrelevant allusions to general sayings.
18With regard to the moral estimate of impulses, dialectic appears in this form. The phases of the direct or natural will are immanent and positive, and thus good. Hence man is by nature good. But natural characteristics, since they are opposed to freedom and the conception of the spirit, and are, hence, negative, must be eradicated. Thus man is by nature evil. To decide for either view is a matter of subjective caprice. Addition.—The Christian doctrine that man is by nature evil is loftier than the opposite that he is naturally good, and is to be interpreted philosophically in this way. Man as spirit is a free being, who need not give way to impulse.
Hence in his direct and unformed condition, man is in a situation in which he ought not to be, and he must free himself. This is the meaning of the doctrine of original sin, without which Christianity would not be the religion of freedom.
19In the demand that impulses must be purified is found the general idea that they must be freed from the form of direct subjection to nature, and from a content that is subjective and contingent, and must be restored to their substantive essence. The truth contained in this indefinite demand is that impulses should be phases of within a rational system. To apprehend them in this way as proceeding from the conception is the content of the science of right.
Note.—The content of this science may, in all its several elements, right, property, morality, family, state, be represented in this way, that man has by nature the impulse to right, the impulse to property, to morality, to sexual love, and to social life. If instead of this form, which belongs to empirical psychology, a philosophic form be preferred, it may be obtained cheap from what in modern times was reputed and still is reputed to be philosophy. He will then say that man finds in himself as a fact of consciousness that he wills right, property, the state, etc. Later will be given still another form of the content which appears here in the shape of impulses, that, namely, of duties.
20The reflection which is brought to bear upon impulses, placing them before itself, estimating them, comparing them with one another, and contrasting them with their means and consequences, and also with a whole of satisfaction, namely happiness, brings the formal universal to this material, and in an external way purifies it of its crudity and barbarism. This propulsion by the universality of thought is the absolute worth of civilization (§ 187).
Addition.—In happiness thought has already the upper hand with the force of natural impulse, since it is not satisfied with what is momentary, but requires happiness as a whole. This happiness is dependent upon civilization to the extent to which civilization confirms the universal. But in the ideal of happiness there are two elements. There is (1) a universal that is higher than all particulars; yet, as the content of this universal is in turn only universal pleasure, there arises once more the individual, particular and finite, and retreat must be made to impulse; (2) Since the content of happiness lies in the subjective perception of each individual, this universal end is again particular; nor is there present in it any true unity of content and form.
21But the truth of this formal universality, which taken by itself is undetermined and finds definite character in externally given material, is the self -directing universality which is will or freedom. Since the will has as its object, content and end, universality itself, and thus assumes the form of the infinite, it is free not only in itself or implicitly, but for itself or explicitly. It is the true idea.
Note.—The self-consciousness of the will in the form of appetite or impulse is sensible, the sensible in general indicating the externality of self-consciousness, or that condition in which self-consciousness is outside of itself. Now this sensible side is one of the two elements of the reflecting will, and the other is the abstract universality of thought. But the absolute will has as its object the will itself as such in its pure universality. In this universality the directness of the natural will is superseded, and so also is the private individuality which is produced by reflection and infects the natural condition. But to supersede these and lift them into the universal, constitutes the activity of thought. Thus the self-consciousness, which purifies its object, content or end, and exalts it to universality, is thought carrying itself through into will. It is at this point that it becomes clear that the will is true and free only as thinking intelligence. The slave knows not his essence, his infinitude, his freedom; he does not know himself in his essence, and not to know himself is not to think himself. (The self-consciousness, which by thought apprehends that itself is essence, and thus puts away from itself the accidental and untrue, constitutes the principle of right, morality, and all forms of ethical observance. They who, in speaking philosophically of right, morality, and ethical observance, would exclude thought and turn to feeling, the heart, the breast, and inspiration, express the deepest contempt for thought and science. And science itself, overwhelmed with despair and utter insipidity, makes barbarism and absence of thought a principle, and so far as in it lay robbed men of all truth, dignity, and worth.
Addition.—In philosophy truth is had when the conception corresponds to reality. A body is the reality, and soul is the conception. Soul and body should be adequate to each other. A dead man is still an existence, but no longer a true existence; it is a reality void of conception. For that reason the dead body decays. So with the true will; that which it wills, namely, its content, is identical with it, and so freedom wills freedom.
22The will which exists absolutely is truly infinite, because its object being the will itself, is for it not another or a limitation. In the object the will has simply reverted into itself. Moreover, it is not mere possibility, capacity, potentiality (potentia), but infinitely actual (infinitum actu), because the reality of the conception or its visible externality is internal to itself.
Note.—Hence when the free will is spoken of without the qualification of absolute freedom, only the capacity of freedom is meant, or the natural and finite will (§ 11), and, notwithstanding all words and opinions to the contrary, not the free will. Since the understanding comprehends the infinite only in its negative aspect, and hence as a beyond, it thinks to do the infinite all the more honour the farther it removes it into the vague distance, and the more it takes it as a foreign thing. In free will the true infinite is present and real; it is itself the actually present self-contained idea.
Addition.—The infinite has rightly been represented as a circle. The straight line goes out farther and farther, and symbolizes the merely negative and bad infinite, which, unlike the true, does not return into itself. The free will is truly infinite, for it is not a mere possibility or disposition. Its external reality is its own inner nature, itself.
23Only in this freedom is the will wholly by itself, because it refers to nothing but itself, and all dependence upon any other thing falls away.—The will is true, or rather truth itself, because its character consists in its being in its manifested reality, or correlative opposite, what it is in its conception. In other words, the pure conception has the perception or intuition of itself as its end and reality.
24The will is universal, because in it all limitation and particular individuality are superseded. These one-sided phases are found only in the difference between the conception and its object or content, or, from another standpoint, in the difference between the conscious independent existence of the subject, and the will’s implicit, or self-involved existence, or between its excluding and concluding individuality, and its universality.
Note.—The different phases of universality are tabulated in the logic (” Encyclop. of the Phil. Sciences,”§§ 118–126). Imaginative thinking always takes universality in an abstract and external way. But absolute universality is not to be thought of either as the universality of reflection, which is a kind of consensus or generality, or, as the abstract universality and self -identity, which is fashioned by the understanding (§6, note), and keeps aloof from the individual. It is rather the concrete, self-contained, and self -referring universality, which is the substance, intrinsic genus, or immanent idea of self-consciousness. It is a conception of free will as the universal, transcending its object, passing through and beyond its own specific character, and then becoming identical with itself.—This absolute universal is what is in general called the rational, and is to be apprehended only in this speculative way.
25. The subjective side of the will is the side of its selfconsciousness and individuality (§ 7), as distinguished from its implicit conception. This subjectivity is (a) pure form or absolute unity of self-consciousness with itself. This unity is the equation” I = I,”consciousness being characterized by a thoroughly inward and abstract selfdependence. It is pure certitude of itself in contrast with the truth; (β) particularity of will, as caprice with its accidental content of pleasurable ends; (γ) in general a one-sided form (§ 8), in so far as that which is willed is at first an unfulfilled end, or a content which simply belongs to self-consciousness.
26(a) In so far as the will is determined by itself, and is in accord with its conception and true, it is wholly objective will. (β) But objective self-consciousness, which has not the form of the infinite, is a will sunk in its object or condition, whatever the content of that may be. It is the will of the child, or the will present in slavery or superstition, (γ) Objectivity is finally a one-sided form in opposition to the subjective phase of will; it is direct reality, or external existence. In this sense the will becomes objective only by the execution of its ends.
Note.—These logical phases of subjectivity and objectivity, since they are often made use of in the sequel, are here exposed, with the express purpose of noting that it happens with them as with other distinctions and opposed aspects of reflection; they by virtue of their finite and dialectic character pass over into their opposites. For imagination and understanding the meanings of antithetic phases are not convertible, because their identity is still internal. But in will, on the contrary, these phases, which ought to be at once abstract and yet also sides of that which can be known only as concrete, lead of themselves to identity, and to an exchange of meanings. To the understanding this is unintelligible.—Thus, e.g., the will, as a freedom which exists in itself, is subjectivity itself; thus subjectivity is the conception of the will, and therefore its objectivity. But subjectivity is finite in opposition to objectivity, yet in this opposition the will is not isolated, but in intricate union with the object; and thus its finitude consists quite as much in its not being subjective, etc.—What in the sequel is to be meant by the subjective or the objective side of the will, has each time to be made clear from the context, which will supply their positions in relation to the totality.
Addition.—It is ordinarily supposed that subjective and objective are blank opposites; but this is not the case. Rather do they pass into one another, for they are not abstract aspects like positive and negative, but have already a concrete significance. To consider in the first instance the expression” subjective,” this may mean an end which is merely the end of a certain subject. In this sense a poor work of art, that is not adequate to the thing, is merely subjective. But, further, this expression may point to the content of the will, and is then of about the same meaning as capricious; the subjective content then is that which belongs merely to the subject. In this sense bad acts are merely subjective. Further, the pure, empty I may be called subjective, as it has only itself as an object, and possesses the power of abstraction from all further content. Subjectivity has, moreover, a wholly particular and correct meaning in accordance with which anything, in order to win recognition from me, has to become mine and seek validity in me. This is the infinite avarice of subjectivity, eager to comprehend and consume everything within the simple and pure I.
Similarly we may take the objective in different ways. By it we may understand anything to which we give existence in contrast to ourselves, whether it be an actual thing or a mere thought, which we place over against ourselves. By it also we understand the direct reality, in which the end is to be realized. Although the end itself is quite particular and subjective, we yet name it objective after it has made its appearance. Further, the objective will is also that in which truth is; thus, God’s will, the ethical will also, are objective. Lastly, we may call the will objective, when it is wholly submerged in its object, as, e.g., the child’s will, which is confiding and without subjective freedom, and the slave’s will, which does not know itself as free, and is thus a will-less will. In this sense any will is objective, if it is guided in its action by a foreign authority, and has not yet completed the infinite return into itself.
27The absolute character or, if you like, the absolute impulse of the free spirit (§ 21) is, as has been observed, that its freedom shall be for it an object. It is to be objective in a two-fold sense: it is the rational system of itself, and this system is to be directly real (§ 26). There is thus actualized as idea what the will is implicitly. Hence, the abstract conception of the idea of the will is in general the free will which wills the free will.
28The activity of the will, directed to the task of transcending the contradiction between subjectivity and objectivity, of transferring its end from subjectivity into objectivity, and yet while in objectivity of remaining with itself, is beyond the formal method of consciousness (§ 8), in which objectivity is only direct actuality. This activity is the essential development of the substantive content of the idea (§ 21). In this development the conception moulds the idea, which is in the first instance abstract, into the totality of a system. This totality as substantive is independent of the opposition between mere subjective end and its realization, and in both of these forms is the same.
29. That a reality is the realization of the free will, this is what is meant by a right. Right, therefore, is, in general, freedom as idea.
Note.—In the Kantian doctrine (Introduction to Kant’s”Theory of Right”), now generally accepted,” the highest factor is a limitation of my freedom or caprice, in order that it may be able to subsist alongside of every other individual’s caprice in accordance with a universal law.”This doctrine contains only a negative phase, that of limitation. And besides, the positive phase, the universal law or so-called law of reason, consisting in the agreement of the caprice of one with that of another, goes beyond the well-known formal identity and the proposition of contradiction. The definition of right, just quoted, contains the view which has especially since Rousseau spread widely. According to this view neither the absolute and rational will, nor the true spirit, but the will and spirit of the particular individual in their peculiar caprice, are the substantive and primary basis. When once this principle is accepted, the rational can announce itself only as limiting this freedom. Hence it is not an inherent rationality, but only a mere external and formal universal. This view is accordingly devoid of speculative thought, and is rejected by the philosophic conception. In the minds of men and in the actual world it has assumed a shape, whose horror is without a parallel, except in the shallowness of the thoughts upon which it was founded.
30Right in general is something holy, because it is the embodiment of the absolute conception and self-conscious freedom. But the formalism of right, and after a while of” duty also, is due to distinctions arising out of the development of the conception of freedom. In contrast with the more formal, abstract and limited right, there is that sphere or stage of the spirit, in which spirit has brought to definite actuality the further elements contained in the idea. This stage is the richer and more concrete; it is truly universal and has therefore a higher right.
Note.—Every step in the development of the idea of freedom has its peculiar right, because it is the embodiment of a phase of freedom. When morality and ethical observance are spoken of in opposition to right, only the first or formal right of the abstract personality is meant. Morality, ethical observance, a state-interest, are every one a special right, because each of these is a definite realization of freedom. They can come into collision only in so far as they occupy the same plane. If the moral standpoint of spirit were not also a right and one of the forms of freedom, it could not collide with the right of personality or any other right. A right contains the conception of freedom which is the highest phase of spirit, and in opposition to it any other kind of thing is lacking in real substance. Yet collision also implies a limit and a subordination of one phase to another. Only the right of the world-spirit is the unlimited absolute.
31The scientific method by which the conception is self-evolved, and its phases self -developed and self-produced, is not first of all an assurance that certain relations are given from somewhere or other, and then the application to this foreign material of the universal. The true process is found in the logic, and here is presupposed.
Note.—The efficient or motive principle, which is not merely the analysis but the production of the several elements of the universal, I call dialectic. Dialectic is not that process in which an object or proposition, presented to feeling or the direct consciousness, is analyzed, entangled, taken hither and thither, until at last its contrary is derived. Such a merely negative method appears frequently in Plato. It may fix the opposite of any notion, or reveal the contradiction contained in it, as did the ancient scepticism, or it may in a feeble way consider an approximation to truth, or modern half-and-half attainment of it, as its goal. But the higher dialectic of the conception does not merely apprehend any phase as a limit and opposite, but produces out of this negative a positive content and result. Only by such a course is there development and inherent progress. Hence this dialectic is not the external agency of subjective thinking, but the private soul of the content, which unfolds its branches and fruit organically. Thought regards this development of the idea and of the peculiar activity of the reason of the idea as only subjective, but is on its side unable to make any addition. To consider anything rationally is not to bring reason to it from the outside, and work it up in this way, but to count it as itself reasonable. Here it is spirit in its freedom, the summit of self-conscious reason, which gives itself actuality, and produces itself as the existing world. The business of science is simply to bring the specific work of the reason, which is in the thing, to consciousness.
32The phases of the development of the conception are themselves conceptions. And yet, because the conception is essentially the idea, they have the form of manifestations. Hence the sequence of the conceptions, which arise in this way, is at the same time a sequence of realizations, and are to be by science so considered.
Note.—In a speculative sense the way, in which a conception is manifested in reality, is identical with a definite phase of the conception. But it is noteworthy that, in the scientific development of the idea, the elements, which result in a further definite form, although preceding this result as phases of the conception, do not in the temporal development go before it as concrete realizations. Thus, as will be seen later, that stage of the idea which is the family presupposes phases of the conception, whose result it is. But that these internal presuppositions should be present in such visible realizations as right of property, contract, morality, etc., this is the other side of the process, which only in a highly developed civilization has attained to a specific realization of its elements.
Addition.—The idea must always go on determining itself within itself, since at the beginning it is only abstract conception. However, this initial abstract conception is never given up, but only becomes inwardly richer, the last phase being the richest. The earlier and merely implicit phases reach in this way free self-dependence, but in such a manner that the conception remains the soul which holds everything together, and only through a procedure immanent within itself arrives at its own distinctions. Hence the last phase falls again into a unity with the first, and it cannot be said that the conception ever comes to something new. Although the elements of the conception appear to have fallen apart when they enter reality, this is only a mere appearance. Its superficial character is revealed in the process, since all the particulars finally turn back again into the conception of the universal. The empirical sciences usually analyze what they find in pictorial ideas, and if the individual is successfully brought back to the general, the general property is then called the conception. But this is not our procedure. We desire only to observe how the conception determines itself, and compels us to keep at a distance everything of our own spinning and thinking. But what we get in this way is one series of thoughts and another series of realized forms. As to these two series, it may happen that the order of time of the actual manifestations is partly different from the order of the conception. Thus it cannot, e.g., be said that property existed before the family, and yet, in spite of that it is discussed before the family is discussed. The question might also be raised here, Why do we not begin with the highest, i.e., with concrete truth? The answer is, because we desire to see truth in the form of a result, and it is an essential part of the process to conceive the conception first of all as abstract. The actual series of realizations of the conception is thus for us in due course as follows, even although in actuality the order should be the same. Our process is this, that the abstract forms reveal themselves not as self-subsistent but as untrue.
Division of the Work.
33According to the stages in the development of the idea of the absolutely free will,
A. The will is direct or immediate; its conception is therefore abstract, i.e., personality, and its embodied reality is a direct external thing. This is the sphere of abstract or formal right.
B. The will, passing out of external reality, turns back into itself. Its phase is subjective individuality, and it is contrasted with the universal. This universal is on its internal side the good, and on its external side a presented world, and these two sides are occasioned only by means of each other. In this sphere the idea is divided, and exists in separate elements. The right of the subjective will is in a relation of contrast to the right of the world, or the right of the idea. Here, however, the idea exists only implicitly. This is the sphere of morality.
C. The unity and truth of these two abstract elements. The thought idea of the good is realized both in the will turned back into itself, and also in the external world. Thus freedom exists as real substance, which is quite as much actuality and necessity as it is subjective will. The idea here is its absolutely universal existence, viz., ethical observance. This ethical substance is again, a. Natural spirit; the family,
b. The civic community, or spirit in its dual existence and mere appearance, c. The state, or freedom, which, while established in the free self-dependence of the particular will is also universal and objective. This actual and organic spirit (a) is the spirit of a nation, (β) is found in the relation to one another of national spirits, and (γ) passing through and beyond this relation is actualized and revealed in world history as the universal world-spirit, whose right is the highest.
Note.—It is to be found in the speculative logic, and here is presupposed, that a thing or content, which is established first of all according to its conception, or implicitly, has the form of direct existence. The conception, however, when it has the form of the conception is explicit, and no longer is a direct existence. So, too, the principle, upon which the division of this work proceeds, is presupposed. The divisions might be regarded as already settled by history, since the different stages must be viewed as elements in the development of the idea, and therefore as springing from the nature of the content itself. A philosophic division is not an external classification of any given material, such a classification as would be made according to one or several schemes picked up at random, but the inherent distinctions of the conception itself. Morality and ethical observance, which are usually supposed to mean the same thing, are here taken in essentially different meanings. Meanwhile even imaginative thought seems to make a distinction between them. In the usage of Kant the preference is given to the term morality, and the practical principles of his philosophy limit themselves wholly to this standpoint, making impossible the standpoint of ethical observance, and indeed expressly destroying and abolishing it. Although morality and ethics have the same meaning according to their etymology, yet these different words may be used for different conceptions.
Addition.—When we speak of right, we mean not only civil right, which is the usual significance of the word, but also morality, ethical observance and world-history. These belong to this realm, because the conception taking them in their truth, brings them all together. Free will, in order not to remain abstract, must in the first instance give itself reality; the sensible materials of this reality are objects, i.e., external things. This first phase of freedom we shall know as property. This is the sphere of formal and abstract right, to which belong property in the more developed form of contract and also the injury of right, i.e., crime and punishment. The freedom, we have here, we name person, or, in other words, the subject who is free, and indeed free independently, and gives himself a reality in things. But this direct reality is not adequate to freedom, and the negation of this phase is morality. In morality I am beyond the freedom found directly in this thing, and have a freedom in which this directness is superseded. I am free in myself, i.e., in the subjective. In this sphere we come upon my insight, intention, and end, and externality is established as indifferent. The good is now the universal end, which is not to remain merely internal to me, but to realize itself. The subjective will demands that its inward character, or purpose, shall receive external reality, and also that the good shall be brought to completion in external existence. Morality, like formal right, is also an abstraction, whose truth is reached only in ethical observance. Hence ethical observance is the unity of the will in its conception with the will of the individual or subject. The primary reality of ethical observance is in its turn natural, taking the form of love and feeling. This is the family. In it the individual has transcended his prudish personality, and finds himself with his consciousness in a totality. In the next stage is seen the loss of this peculiar ethical existence and substantive unity. Here the family falls asunder, and the members become independent one of another, being now held together merely by the bond of mutual need. This is the stage of the civic community, which has frequently been taken for the state. But the state does not arise until we reach the third stage.
that stage of ethical observance or spirit, in which both individual independence and universal substantivity are found in gigantic union. The right of the state is, therefore, higher than that of the other stages. It is freedom in its most concrete embodiment, which yields to nothing but the highest absolute truth of the world-spirit.
34The completely free will, when it is conceived abstractly, is in a condition of self -involved simplicity. What actuality it has when taken in this abstract way, consists in a negative attitude towards reality, and a bare abstract reference of itself to itself. Such an abstract will is the individual will of a subject. It, as particular, has definite ends, and, as exclusive and individual, has these ends before itself as an externally and directly presented world.
Addition.—The remark that the completely free will, when it is taken abstractly, is in a condition of self-involved simplicity must be understood in this way. The completed idea of the will is found when the conception has realized itself fully, and in such a manner that the embodiment of the conception is nothing but the development of the conception itself. But at the outset the conception is abstract. All its future characters are implied in it, it is true, but as yet no more than implied. They are, in other words, potential, and are not yet developed into an articulate whole. If I say,”I am free,”the I, here, is still implicit and has no real object opposed to it. But from the standpoint of morality as contrasted with abstract right there is opposition, because there I am a particular will, while the good, though within me, is the universal. Hence, at that stage, the will contains within itself the contrast between particular and universal, and in that way is made definite. But at the beginning such a distinction does not occur, because in the first abstract unity there is as yet no progress or modification of any kind. That is what is meant by saying that the will has the mark of self-involved simplicity or immediate being. The chief thing to notice at this point is that this very absence of definite features is itself a definite feature. Absence of determinate character exists where there is as yet no distinction between the will and its content. But when this lack of definiteness is set in opposition to the definite, it becomes itself something definite. In other words, abstract identity becomes the distinguishing feature of the will, and the will thereby becomes an individual will or person.
35This consciously free will has a universal side, which consists in a formal, simple and pure reference to itself as a separate and independent unit. This reference is also a self-conscious one though it has no further content. The subject is thus so far a person. It is implied in personality that I, as a distinct being, am on all sides completely bounded and limited, on the side of inner caprice, impulse and appetite, as well as in my direct and visible outer life. But it is implied likewise that I stand in absolutely pure relation to myself. Hence it is that in this finitude I know myself as infinite, universal and free.
Note.—Personality does not arise till the subject has not merely a general consciousness of himself in some determinate mode of concrete existence, but rather a consciousness of himself as a completely abstract I, in which all concrete limits and values are negated and declared invalid. Hence personality involves the knowledge of oneself as an object, raised, however, by thought into the realm of pure infinitude, a realm, that is, in which it is purely identical with itself. Individuals and peoples have no personality, if they have not reached this pure thought and self-consciousness. In this way, too, the absolute or completed mind or spirit may be distinguished from its mere semblance. The semblance, though self-conscious, is aware of itself only as a merely natural will with its external objects. The other, as an abstract and pure I, has itself as its end and object, and is therefore a person. Addition.—The abstract will, the will which exists for itself, is a person. The highest aim of man is to be a person, and yet again the mere abstraction”person”is not held in high esteem. Person is essentially different from subject. Subject is only the possibility of personality. Any living thing at all is a subject, while person is a subject which has its subjectivity as an object. As a person I exist for myself. Personality is the free being in pure self-conscious isolation. I as a person am conscious of freedom. I can abstract myself from everything, since nothing is before me except pure personality. Notwithstanding all this I am as a particular person completely limited. I am of a certain age, height, in this space, and so on. Thus a person is at one and the same time so exalted and so lowly a thing. In him is the unity of infinite and finite, of limit and unlimited. The dignity of personality can sustain a contradiction, which neither contains nor could tolerate anything natural.
36(1) Personality implies, in general, a capacity to possess rights, and constitutes the conception and abstract basis of abstract right. This right, being abstract, must be formal also. Its mandate is: Be a person and respect others as persons.
37(2) The particularity of the will, that phase of the will, namely, which implies a consciousness of my specific interests, is doubtless an element of the whole consciousness of the will (§ 34), but it is not contained in mere abstract personality. It is indeed present in the form of appetite, want, impulse, and random desire, but is distinct as yet from the personality, which is the essence of freedom.—In treating of formal right therefore, we do not trench upon special interests, such as my advantage or my well-being, nor have we here to do with any special reason or intention of the will.
Addition.—Since the particular phases of the person have not as yet attained the form of freedom, everything relating to these elements is so far a matter of indifference. When anyone bases a claim upon his mere formal right, he may be wholly selfish, and often such a claim comes from a contracted heart and mind. Uncivilized man, in general, holds fast to his rights, while a more generous disposition is alert to see all sides of the question. Abstract right is, moreover, the first mere possibility, and in contrast with the whole context of a given relation is still formal. The possession of a right gives a certain authority, it is true, but it is not, therefore, absolutely necessary that I insist upon a right, which is only one aspect of the whole matter. In a word, possibility is something, which means that it either may or may not exist.
38In contrast with the deeper significance of a concrete act in all its moral and social bearings, abstract right is only a possibility. Such a right is, therefore, only a permission or indication of legal power. Because of this abstract character of right the only rule which is unconditionally its own is merely the negative principle not to injure personality or anything which of necessity belongs to it. Hence we have here only prohibitions, the positive form of command having in the last resort a prohibition as its basis.
39(3) A person in his direct and definite individuality is related to a given external nature. To this outer world the personality is opposed as something subjective. But to confine to mere subjectivity the personality, which is meant to be infinite and universal, contradicts and destroys its nature. It bestirs itself to abrogate the limitation by giving itself reality, and proceeds to make the outer visible existence its own.
40. Right is at first the simple and direct concrete existence which freedom gives itself directly. This unmodified existence is
(a) Possession or property. Here freedom is that of the abstract will in general, or of a separate person who relates himself only to himself.
(b) A person by distinguishing himself from himself becomes related to another person, although the two have no fixed existence for each other except as owners. Their implicit identity becomes realized through a transference of property by mutual consent, and with the preservation of their rights. This is contract.
(c) The will in its reference to itself, as in (a), may be at variance not with some other person, (b), but within itself. As a particular will it may differ from and be in opposition to its true and absolute self. This is wrong and crime.
Note.—The division of rights into personal right, real right, and right to actions is, like many other divisions, intended to systematize the mass of unorganized material. But this division utterly confuses rights which presuppose such concrete relations as the family or the state with those which refer to mere abstract personality. An example of this confusion is the classification, made popular by Kant, of rights into Real Rights, Personal Rights, and Personal Rights that are Real in kind. It would take us too far afield to show how contorted and irrational is the classification of rights into personal and real, a classification which lies at the foundation of Roman law. The right to actions concerns the administration of justice, and does not fall under this branch of the subject. Clearly it is only personality which gives us a right to things, and therefore personal right is in essence real right. A thing must be taken in its universal sense as the external opposite of freedom, so that in this sense my body and my life are things. Thus real right is the right of personality as such. In the interpretation of personal right, found in Roman law, a man is not a person till he has reached a certain status (Heineccii”Elem. Jur. CIt.,”§ Ixxv.). In Roman law personality is an attribute of a class and is contrasted with slavery. The so-called personal right of Roman law includes not only a right to slaves, a class to which probably belong the children, not only a right over the class which has been deprived of right (capitis diminutio), but also family relations. With Kant, family relations are wholly personal rights which are real in kind.—The Roman personal right is not the right of a person as such, but of a special person. It will be afterwards shown that, the family relation is really based upon the renunciation of personality. It cannot but seem an inverted method to treat of the rights of persons who belong to definite classes before the universal right of personality.—According to Kant personal rights arise out of a contract or agreement that I should give or perform something; this is the jus ad rem of Roman law which has its source in an obligatio. Only a person, it is true, can perform a thing through contract; and further, only a person can acquire the right to such a performance. Yet we cannot, therefore, call such a right personal. Every sort of right is right of a person; but a right, which springs out of contract, is not a right to a person, but only to something external to him, or to be disposed of by him;
and this is always a thing.
FIRST SECTION. Property.
41A person must give to his freedom an external sphere, in order that he may reach the completeness implied in the idea. Since a person is as yet the first abstract phase of the completely existent, infinite will, the external sphere of freedom is not only distinguishable from him but directly different and separable.
Addition.—The reasonableness of property consists not in its satisfying our needs, but in its superseding and replacing the subjective phase of personality. It is in possession first of all that the person becomes rational. The first realization of my freedom in an external object is an imperfect one, it is true, but it is the only realization possible so long as the abstract personality has this firsthand relation to its object.
42That which is defined as different from the free spirit is both in its own nature and also for this spirit the external. It is an object, something not free, impersonal and without rights.
Note.—” Thing,”like” objective,”has two opposite meanings. When we say” That is the thing or fact,”” It depends on the thing itself, not on the person,”we mean by” thing “that which is real and substantive. But it is also contrasted with person, which here includes more than a particular subject, and then it means the opposite of the real and substantive, and is something merely external.—What is external for the free spirit, which is different from mere consciousness, is absolutely external. Hence nature is to be conceived as that which is external in its very self.
Addition.—Since a thing has no subjectivity it is external not merely to a subject, but to itself. Space and time are external. I, as sensible, am external, spatial, and temporal. My faculty of sense-perception is external to itself. An animal may perceive, but the soul of the animal has as its object not itself, but something external.
43The person in his direct conception and as a separate individual has an existence which is purely natural. This existence is something partly inalienable, partly akin in its nature to the external world.—As the individual is considered in his first abstract simplicity, reference is here made only to those features of personality with which he is directly endowed, not to those which he might proceed to acquire by voluntary effort.
Note.—Mental endowments, science, art, such matters of religion as sermons, masses, prayers, blessings of consecrated utensils, inventions also, are objects of exchange, recognized things to be bought and sold. It is possible to ask, also, if an artist or scholar is in legal possession of his art, science, or capacity to preach or read mass; and the question is put on the presumption that these objects are things. Yet one hesitates to call such gifts, knowledge, powers, mere things, because although they may be bargained for as a thing, they have an inner spiritual side. Hence the understanding becomes confused as to how they are to be regarded at law. Before the understanding always arises an exclusive disjunction, which in this case is that something must be either a thing or not a thing. It is like the disjunctive judgment that a thing must be either finite or infinite. But, though knowledge, talents, etc., are the possession of the free mind, and therefore internal to it, they may be relinquished and given an external existence. (See below.) They would then fall under the category of things. They are not direct objects at the first, but the spirit lowers its inner side to the level of the directly external.
According to the unjust and immoral finding of the Roman law, children were things for their father, and he was in legal possession of them. At the same time he was related to them ethically by the tie of love, although the value of this relation was much weakened by the legal usage. In this legal relation there occurs a completely wrong union of thing and not-thing.
The essential feature of abstract right is that its object is the person as such, with only those elements added which, belonging to the external and visible embodiment of his freedom, are directly different from him and separable. Other phases it can include only after the conscious operation of the subjective will. Mental endowments, the sciences, etc., come up for treatment only from the standpoint of legal possession. The possession of the body and the mind, which is acquired by education, study and habit, is an inward property of the spirit, and does not fall to be considered here. The process by which a mental possession passes into the external world and comes under the category of a legal property, will be taken up later, under relinquishment.
44A person has the right to direct his will upon any object, as his real and positive end. The object thus becomes his. As it has no end in itself, it receives its meaning and soul from his will. Mankind has the absolute right to appropriate all that is a thing.
Note.—There is a philosophy which ascribes to the impersonal, to separate things, as they are directly apprehended, an independent and absolutely complete reality. There is also a philosophy which affirms that the mind cannot know what the truth or the thing in itself is. These philosophies are directly contradicted by the attitude of the free will to these things. Although the so-called external things seem to have an independent reality in consciousness as perceiving and imagining, the free will is the idealization or truth of such reality.
Addition.—A man may own anything, because he is a free will, and is therefore self-contained and self-dependent. But the mere object is of an opposite nature. Every man has the right to turn his will upon a thing or make the thing an object of his will, that is to say, to set aside the mere thing and recreate it as his own. As the thing is in its nature external, it has no purpose of its own and contains no infinite reference to itself; it is external to itself. An animal also is external to itself, and is, so far, a thing. Only the will is the unlimited and absolute, while all other things in contrast with the will are merely relative. To appropriate is at bottom only to manifest the majesty of my will towards things, by demonstrating that they are not self -complete and have no purpose of their own. This is brought about by my instilling into the object another end than that which it primarily had. When the living thing becomes my property it gets another soul than it had. I give it my will. Free will is thus the idealism which refuses to hold that things as they are can be self-complete. Realism on the other hand declares them to be absolute in their finite form. But this realistic philosophy is not shared in by the animal, which by consuming things proves that they are not absolutely independent.
45. To have something in my power, even though it be externally, is possession. The special fact that I make something my own through natural want, impulse or caprice, is the special interest of possession. But, when I as a free will am in possession of something, I get a tangible existence, and in this way first becomes an actual will. This is the true and legal nature of property, and constitutes its distinctive character.
Note.—Since our wants are looked upon as primary, the possession of property appears at first to be a means to their satisfaction; but it is really the first embodiment of freedom and an independent end.
46Since property makes objective my personal individual will, it is rightly described as a private possession. On the other hand, common property, which may be possessed by a number of separate individuals, is a mark of a loosely joined company, in which a man may or may not allow his share to remain at his own choice.
Note.—The elements of nature cannot become private property.—In the agrarian laws of Rome may be found a conflict between collective and private ownership of land. Private possession is the more reasonable, and, even at the expense of other rights, must win the victory.—Property bound up with family trusts contains an element which is opposed to the right of personality and private ownership. Yet private possession must be kept subject to the higher spheres of right, to a corporate body, e.g., or to the state, as happens when private ownership is entrusted to a so-called moral person, as in mortmain. Yet these exceptions are not to be based on chance, private caprice or personal benefit, but only on the rational organization of the state. The idea of Plato’s “Republic” does a wrong to the person, in regarding him as unable to hold property. The theory of a pious, friendly, or even compulsory brotherhood of men, who are to possess all their goods in common, and to banish the principle of private ownership, easily presents itself to one who fails to understand the nature of freedom of spirit, and the nature of right, through mistaking their definite phases. There is a moral or religious side, also. When the friends of Epicurus proposed to establish a community of goods, he dissuaded them on the ground that the plan indicated a lack of confidence in one another, and that those who mistrusted one another could not be friends (“Diog. Laert.” 1. x. n. vi).
Addition.—In property my will is personal. But the person, it must be observed, is this particular individual, and, thus, property is the embodiment of this particular will. Since property gives visible existence to my will, it must be regarded as “this” and hence as “mine.” This is the important doctrine of the necessity of private property. If exceptions may be made by the state, the state alone can be suffered to make them. But frequently, and especially in our time, it has restored private possession. Thus, for instance, many states have rightly abolished cloisters, because persons, living together in these institutions, have ultimately no such right to property, as the person has.
47As a person, I am an individual in only its simplest aspect; more definitely, I am alive in a particular bodily organism. My body is as to its content my universal undifferentiated external existence; it is the real possibility of all definite phases. But also as a person I have my life and body, as I have other things only in so far as they express my will.
Note.—The view that the individual, not in his actualized existence but in his direct conception, is to be taken simply as living and having a physical organism follows from the conception of that phase of life and spirit, which we know as soul. The details of this conception are found in the philosophy of nature.
I have organs and life only so far as I will. The animal cannot mutilate or kill itself, but a human being can.
Addition.—Animals do in a manner possess themselves. Their soul is in possession of their body. But they have no right to their life, because they do not will it.
48The body, merely as it stands, is not adequate to spirit. In order to be a willing instrument and vitalized means, it must first be taken possession of by the spirit (§ 67). Still for others I am essentially a free being in my body, as I directly have it.
Note.—It is only because I in my living body am a free being, that my body cannot be used as a beast of burden. In so far as the I lives, the soul, which conceives and, what is more, is free, is not separated from the body. The body is the outward embodiment of freedom, and in it the I is sensible. It is an irrational and sophistic doctrine, which separates body and soul, calling the soul the thing in itself and maintaining that it is not touched or hurt when the body is wrongly treated, or when the existence of a person is subject to the power of another. I can indeed withdraw out of my existence into myself and make my existence something external; I can regard any present feeling as something apart from my real self, and may in this way be free even in chains. But that is an affair of my will. I exist for others in my body; that I am free for others is the same thing as that I am free in this outward life. If my body is treated roughly by others, I am treated roughly.
Since it is I that am sensible, violence offered to my body touches me instantly and directly. This is the difference between personal assault and injury to any external property. In property my will is not so vividly present as it is in my body.
49. In my relation to external things, the rational element is that it is I who own property. But the particular element on the other hand is concerned with ends, wants, caprices, talents, external circumstances, etc. (§ 45). Upon them, it is true, mere abstract possession depends, but they in this sphere of abstract personality are not yet identical with freedom. Hence what and how much I possess is from the standpoint of right a matter of indifference.
Note.—If we can speak of several persons, when as yet no distinction has been drawn between one person and another, we may say that in personality all persons are equal. But this is an empty tautological proposition, since a person abstractedly considered is not as yet separate from others, and has no distinguishing attribute. Equality is the abstract identity set up by the mere understanding. Upon this principle mere reflecting thought, or, in other words, spirit in its middle ranges, is apt to fall, when before it there arises the relation of unity to difference. This equality would be only the equality of abstract persons as such, and would exclude all reference to possession, which is the basis of inequality. Sometimes the demand is made for equality in the division of the soil of the earth, and even of other kinds of wealth. Such a claim is superficial, because differences of wealth are due not only to the accidents of external nature but also to the infinite variety and difference of mind and character. In short, the quality of an individual’s possessions depends upon his reason, developed into an organic whole. We cannot say that nature is unjust in distributing wealth and property unequally, because nature is not free and, therefore, neither just nor unjust. It is in part a moral desire that all men should have sufficient income for their wants, and when the wish is left in this indefinite form it is well-meant, although it, like everything merely well-meant, has no counterpart in reality. But, further, income is different from possession and belongs to another sphere, that of the civic community.
Addition.—Since wealth depends upon application, equality in the distribution of goods would, if introduced, soon be disturbed again. What does not permit of being carried out, ought not to be attempted. Men are equal, it is true, but only as persons, that is, only with reference to the source of possession. Accordingly every one must have property. This is the only kind of equality which it is possible to consider. Beyond this is found the region of particular persons, and the question for the first time comes up. How much do I possess? Here the assertion that the property of every man ought in justice to be equal to that of every other is false, since justice demands merely that every one should have property. Indeed, amongst persons variously endowed inequality must occur, and equality would be wrong. It is quite true that men often desire the goods of others; but this desire is wrong, for right is unconcerned about differences in individuals.
50It is a self-evident and, indeed, almost superfluous remark that an object belongs to him who is accidentally first in possession of it. A second person cannot take into possession what is already the property of another.
Addition.—So far we have been chiefly concerned with the proposition that personality must find an embodiment in property. From what has been said, it follows that he who is first in possession is likewise owner. He is rightful owner, not because he is first, but because he is a free will. He is not first till some one comes after him.
51In order to fix property as the outward symbol of my personality, it is not enough that I represent it as mine and internally will it to be mine; I must also take it over into my possession. The embodiment of my will can then be recognized by others as mine. That the object, of which I take possession be unowned is a self-evident, negative condition (§ 50). Rather it is more than a bare negative, since it anticipates a relation to others.
Addition.—A person’s putting his will into an object is the conception of property, and the next step is the realizing of it. The inner act of my will, which says that something is mine, must be made recognizable for others. When I make an object mine, I give it a predicate, which must be manifested in its outer form, and not remain merely in my inner will. Children often affirm this earlier act of will against the real possessing of a thing by others. But for adults such a will is not enough. The form of subjectivity must be removed by working itself out into something objective.
52Active possession makes the material of an object my property, since the material is not independently its own.
Note.—The material opposes itself to me. Indeed its very nature is to furnish opposition to me. It exhibits its abstract independence to my abstract or sentient consciousness. The sentient imagination, it may be said in passing, puts the truth upside down when it regards the sentient side of mind as concrete, and the rational as abstract. In reference therefore to the will and property this absolute independence of the material has no truth. Active possession, viewed as an external activity, by which the universal right of appropriating natural things becomes actualized, is allied to physical strength, cunning, skill, all the means, in short, by which one is able to take hold corporeally of a thing. Owing to the qualitative differences of natural objects, the mastery over and possession of them has an infinitely diversified meaning, and a corresponding limitation and contingency. Moreover, no one kind of matter, such as an element, can be wholly possessed by any number of separate persons. In order to become a possible object of possession, it must be taken in separate parts, as a breath of air or draught of water. The impossibility of owning one kind of matter, or an element, depends finally, not upon external physical incapacity, but upon the fact that the person, as will, is not only individual, but directly individual, and that the external exists for him, therefore, only as a collection of particulars. (§ 13, note to § 43.)
The process, by which we become master and external owner, is in a sense infinite, and must remain more or less undetermined and incomplete. None the less, however, has the material an essential form, because of which alone it is anything. The more I appropriate this form, so much the more do I come into real possession of the object. The consumption of food is a through-and-through change of its quality. The cultivation of skill in my body, and the education of my mind, are also more or less an active possession by means of thorough-going modification. Mind or spirit is above all that which I can make my own. But this possession is different from property. Property is completed in its relation to the free will. In the external relation of active possession something of externality remains as a residue, but with regard to the free will the owned object has reserved nothing. A matter without qualities, a something which in property is supposed to remain outside of me, and to belong wholly to the object, is an empty abstraction, which thought must expose and defeat.
Addition.—Fichte has raised the question, whether, if I have fashioned an object, its material is also mine. According to his view, if I have made a cup out of gold, any one may take the gold, provided that he does no injury to my handiwork. Though we may imagine that form and substance are separable in that way, the distinction is an empty subtlety. If I take possession of a field, and plough it, not only is the furrow mine, but also the ground which belongs to it. It is my will to take possession of the ma- terial, even the whole object. Hence the material is not masterless; it is not its own. Even if the material remains outside of the form which I give the object, the form is a sign that the object is to be mine. Hence the thing does not stay outside of my will or purpose. There is consequently nothing in it which can be taken hold of by another.
53. Property has its more direct phases in the relation of the will to the object. This relation is (a) direct and active taking of possession, in so far as the will is embodied in the object as in something positive. (β) In so far as this object is negative towards the will, the will is visibly embodied in it as something to be negated. This is use. (γ) The return of the will into itself out of the object; this is relinquishment. These three phases are the positive, negative, and infinite judgments of the will concerning the object.
A. The Act of Possession.
54Taking possession is partly the simple bodily grasp, partly the forming and partly the marking or designating of the object.
Addition.—These modes of taking possession exhibit the progress from the category of particularity to that of universality. Bodily seizure can be made only of particular objects, while marking an object is done by a kind of picture-thinking. In marking I keep before me a representation, by which I intend that the object shall be mine in its totality, and not merely the part which I can hold in my hand.
55(a) Corporeal possession, in which I am present directly, and my will is directly visible, appeals at once to the senses, and from that standpoint is the most complete kind of possession. But it is after all only subjective, temporary and greatly limited as well by surroundings as by the qualities of the object. But if I can connect an object with anything I have already, or if the two become connected accidentally, the sphere of direct physical prehension is to some extent enlarged.
Note.—Mechanical forces, weapons, instruments extend the compass of my power. If my ground is washed by the sea or a river, or lies adjacent to a bit of good hunting country or a pasturage, if it contains stone or other minerals, if there is any treasure in it or upon it, in each of these ways possession may be enlarged. It is the same if the enlargement occurs after I have possession and accidentally, as is the case with so-called natural accretions, such as alluvial deposits, and with objects that are stranded. Everything that is born is also an extension of my wealth, fetura as they are called; but as they involve an organic relation, and are not external additions to an object already in my possession, they are different from the other accessories. All these adjuncts, some of them mutually exclusive, are possibilities by which one owner rather than another may the more easily take a piece of land into possession, or work it up; they may also be viewed as mere accidental accompaniments of the object to which they are added. They are in fact external concomitants which do not include any conception or living union. Hence it devolves upon the understanding to bring forward and weigh reasons for or against their being mine, and to apply the positive edicts of the law, so that a decision may be reached in accordance with the relative closeness of the connection between the object and its accessory.
Addition.—The act of possession assumes a separation of parts in the object. I take no more into my possession than I can touch with my body. But, secondly, external things have a wider range than I am able to cover physically. Something else stands in connection with what I own. Through the hand I exercise the act of ownership, but the compass of the hand can be enlarged. No animal has this noble member. What I grasp with it can itself become a means to further prehension. When I come into possession of a thing, the understanding goes at once over into it, and as a consequence not only what is directly laid hold upon is mine, but likewise what is connected with it. At this juncture positive law must introduce its prescripts, because nothing more than this can be deduced from the law.
56. (β) When something that is mine is formed, it becomes independent of me, ceasing to be limited to my presence in this space or time, or to the presence of my consciousness and will.
Note.—The fashioning of a thing is the kind of active possession which is most adequate to the idea, because it unites the subjective and the objective. It varies infinitely according to the quality of the object and the purpose of the subject. To this head belongs likewise the formation or nurture of living things, in which my work does not remain something foreign, but is assimilated, as in the cultivation of the soil, the care of plants, and the taming, feeding, and tending of animals. It includes also any arrangement for the more efficient use of natural products or forces, as well as the effect of one material upon another, etc.
Addition.—This act of forming may in practice assume the greatest variety of aspects. The soil, which I till, is formed. The forming of the inorganic is sometimes indirect. When I, for instance, build a windmill, I have not formed the air, but I form something which will utilize the air. Yet, as I have not formed the air, I dare not call it mine. Moreover the sparing of a wild animal’s life may be viewed as a forming, since my conduct is the preservation of the object. It is the same kind of act as the training of animals, only that training is more direct, and proceeds more largely from me.
57In his direct life, before it is idealized by self -consciousness, man is merely a natural being, standing outside of his true conception. Only through the education of his body and mind, mainly by his becoming conscious of himself as free, does he take possession of himself, become his own property, and stand in opposition to others. This active possession of himself, conversely, is the giving of actuality to what he is in conception, in his possibilities, faculties, and disposition. By this process he is for the first time securely established as his own, becomes a tangible reality as distinguished from a simple consciousness of himself, and is capable of assuming the form of an object (§ 43, note).
Note.—We are now in a position to consider slavery. We may set aside the justification of slavery based upon the argument that it originates in superior physical force, the taking of prisoners in war, the saving and preserving of life, upbringing, education, or bestowal of kindnesses. These reasons all rest ultimately on the ground that man is to be taken as a merely natural being, living, or, it may even be, choosing a life which is not adequate to his conception. Upon the same footing stands the attempted justification of ownership as merely the status of masters, as also all views of the right to slaves founded on history. The assertion of the absolute injustice of slavery on the contrary, clinging to the conception that man, as spiritual, is free of himself, is also a one-sided idea, since it supposes man to be free by nature. In other words, it takes as the truth the conception in its direct and unreflective form rather than the idea. This antinomy, like all others, rests upon the external thinking, which keeps separate and independent each of two aspects of a single complete idea. In point of fact, neither aspect, if separated from the other, is able to measure the idea, and present it in its truth. It is the mark of the free spirit (§ 21) that it does not exist merely as conception or naturally, but that it supersedes its own formalism, transcending thereby its naked natural existence, and gives to itself an existence, which, being its own, is free.
Hence the side of the antinomy, which maintains the conception of freedom, is to be preferred, since it contains at least the necessary point of departure for the truth. The other side, holding to the existence, which is utterly at variance with the conception, has in it nothing reasonable or right at all. The standpoint of the free will, with which right and the science of right begin, is already beyond the wrong view that man is simply a natural being, who, as he cannot exist for himself, is fit only to be enslaved. This untrue phenomenon had its origin in the circumstance that the spirit had at that time just attained the level of consciousness. Hence through the dialectical movement of the conception arises the first inkling of the consciousness of freedom. There is thus by this movement brought to pass a struggle for recognition, and, as a necessary result, the relation of master and slave. But in order that the objective spirit, which gives substance to right, may not again be apprehended only on its subjective side, and that it may not again appear as a mere unsupported command, intimating that man in his real nature is not appointed to slavery, it must be seen that the idea of freedom is in truth nothing but the state.
Addition.—If we hold fast to the side that man is absolutely free, we condemn slavery. Still it depends on the person’s own will, whether he shall be a slave or not, just as it depends upon the will of a people whether or not it is to be in subjection. Hence slavery is a wrong not simply on the part of those who enslave or subjugate, but of the slaves and subjects themselves. Slavery occurs in the passage from the natural condition of man to his true moral and social condition. It is found in a world where a wrong is still a right. Under such a circumstance the wrong has its value and finds a necessary place.
58. (γ) The kind of possession, which is not literal but only representative of my will, is a mark or symbol, whose meaning is that it is I who have put my will into the object. Owing to the variety of objects used as signs, this kind of possession is very indefinite in its meaning.
Addition.—Of all kinds of possession this by marking is the most complete, since the others have more or less the effect of a mark. When I seize or form an object, in each case the result is in the end a mark, indicating to others that I exclude them, and have set my will in the object. The conception of the mark is that the object stands not for what it is, but for what it signifies. The cockade, e.g., means citizenship in a certain state, although its colour has no connection with the nation, and represents not itself but the nation. In that man acquires possession through the use of a sign, he exhibits his mastery over things.
B. Use of the Object.
59. The object taken into my possession receives the predicate “mine,” and the will is related to it positively. Yet in this identity the object is established as something negative, and my will becomes particularized as a want or desire. But the particular want of one separate will is the positive, which satisfies itself; while the object is negative in itself, and exists only for my want and serves it. Use is the realization of my want through the change, destruction, or consumption of the object, which in this way reveals that it has no self, and fulfils its nature.
Note.—The view that use is the real nature and actuality of property floats before the mind of those who consider that property is dead and ownerless, if it is being put to no use. This they advance as reason for laying violent and unlawful hands upon property. But the will of an owner, by virtue of which a thing is his own, is the fundamental principle, of which use is only an external, special, and subordinate manifestation.
Addition.—In use is involved a wider relation than in possession by symbol, because the object, when used, is not recognized in its particular existence, but is by me negated. It is reduced to a means for the satisfaction of my wants. When the object and I come together, one of the two must lose its qualities, if we are to become identical. But I am a living thing who wills and truly affirms himself, while the object is only a natural thing. Therefore it must go to ground and I preserve myself. This constitutes the superiority and reason of the organic over the inorganic.
60. Using an object in direct seizure is a single separate act. But when we have a recurring need, use repeatedly a product which replaces itself, and seek to preserve its power to replace itself, a direct and single act of seizure becomes a sign. It is universalized and denotes the possession of the elemental or organic basis, the conditions of production.
61A thing has in contrast with me, its possessor, no end of its own (§ 42). Its substance as an independent thing is thus a purely external and unsubstantial existence. As this externality when realized is the use, to which I put it, so the total use or service of the object is the object itself in its whole extent. When I am admitted to the complete use of a thing, I am the owner of it. Apart from the entire range of use, nothing is left over to be the possession of another.
Addition.—The relation of use to property is the same as that of substance to accident, of internal to external, of force to its manifestation. But the force must be manifested; a farm is a farm only as it bears produce. He who has the use of a farm is the possessor of the whole, and to suppose another ownership in addition is an empty abstraction.
62Partial or temporary use, and partial or temporary possession, or possibility of use, however, are to be distinguished from actual ownership. The total use of a thing cannot be mine, while the abstract property is somebody else’s. The object would in that case contain a contradiction. It would be wholly penetrated by my will and yet contain something impenetrable, namely, the empty will of another. The relation of my positive will to the thing would be objective and yet not objective. Accordingly, possession is essentially free and complete.
Note.—The distinction between right to total use and abstract possession is due to the empty and formal understanding. To it the idea, which in this case is the unity of possession or the personal will with the realization of this will, is not true. On the contrary, it holds as true these two elements in their separation. This distinction of the understanding implies that an empty mastership of things is an actual relation. If we could extend the term “aberration” beyond the mere imagination of the subject, and the reality, with which he is directly at variance, we might call such a view of property an aberration of personality. How can what is mine in one single object be without qualification my individual exclusive will, and also the individual exclusive will of someone else?
In the “Institut.” libr. ii. tit. iv. it is said: “Usufructus est jus alienis rebus utendi, fruendi salva rerum substantia,” and again: “Ne tamen in universum inutiles essent proprietates, semper abscendente usufructu; placuit certis modis extingui usumfructum et ad proprietatem reverti.” “Placuit ' '—as though it were optional, whether or not to give sense to the formal distinction of the understanding. A proprietas semper abscendente usufructu would not only be inutiles, but no longer a proprietas. Many distinctions regarding property, such as that into res mancipi and nee mancipi, and that into dominium Quiritarium and Bonitarium, are merely historical dainties and do not belong to this place, because they have no relation to the conception of property. But the relation of the dominium directum to the dominium utile, and that of the contract which gives heritable right in another’s land, and also the various ways of dealing with estates in fee, with their ground rents and other rents and impositions, have a clear bearing upon the distinction now under discussion. When these charges are irredeemably imposed, this formal distinction is indeed present, but it is again transcended when by the association of certain charges with the dominium utile, the dominium utile and the dominium directum become the same. If these relations contained no more that the formal distinction of the understanding, there would be opposed to each other not two masters (domini), but an owner and an empty master. But by virtue of the charges or taxes it is two owners, who stand in relation to each other, though they are not related by a common possession. In this relation is to be found the transition from property to use, a transition already operating when ownership, which was formerly reckoned as the more honourable, is given a secondary place, while the utile or produce of a dominium directum is regarded as the essential and rational.
It is fully fifteen hundred years since through the influence of Christianity the freedom of the person began to flourish, and at least in a small section of the human race take rank as a universal principle. But the recognition here and there of the principle of the freedom of property is, as it were, a thing of yesterday. This is a good illustration from world-history, of the length of time needed by the spirit to reach self -consciousness, and is a rebuke also to the impatience of opinion.
63In use the object is a single one, definite in quality and quantity, and answers to a special need. But its special usefulness, when fixed quantitatively, can be compared with other objects capable of being put to the same use, and a special want, served by the object, and indeed any want may be compared with other wants; and their corresponding objects may be also compared. This universal characteristic, which proceeds from the particular object and yet abstracts from its special qualities is the value. Value is the true essence or substance of the object, and the object by possessing value becomes an object for consciousness. As complete owner of the object, I am owner of its value as well as of its use.