Philosophy of Right
Note.—The special history of a world-historic nation
contains the nnfnTrMnCT of its prinfiiplA from its nnfiftvfilnp afl i nfancy up to the tim e when, in the. fall manhood of fsee AiViipa.1 ap.lf.nnnsdinnaTipgji it presses in upon univ ersal hiiSi^ii it contains, moreover, the period of decline and destruction, the rise of a higher principle bein g ma rked init si mply as the negative of its own. Hence, the spirit passes over into that higher principle, and thus indicates to world-history another nation. From that time onward the first nation. has lost absolute interest, absorbs the higher principle positively, it may be, and fashions itself in accordance with it, but is, after all, only a recipient, and has no indwelling vitality and freshness. Perhaps it loses its independence, perhaps continues to drag itself on as a particular state or circle of states, and spends itself in. various random civil enterprises and foreign broils.
348At the summit of all actions, includixjg worldhistorical actions, stand individuals. Each of these individuals is a subjectivity who realizes what is substantive (§ 279, note). He is a living embodiment of the substantive deed of the world-spirit, and is, therefore, directly identical with this deed. It is concealed even from himself, and is not his object and end (§ 344). Thus they do not receive honour and thanks for their acts either from their contemporaries (§ 344), or from the public opinion of posterity. By this opinion they are viewed merely as formal subjectivities, and, as such, are simply given their part in immortal fame.
349A people is not as yet a state. The transition from the family, horde, clan, or multitude into a state constitutes the formal realization in it of the idea. If the ethical substance, which every people has implicitly, lacks this form, it is without that objectivity which comes from laws and thought-out regulations. It has neither for itself nor for others any universal or generally admitted reality. It will not be recognized. Its independence, being devoid of objective law or secure realized rationality, is formal only and not a sovereignty.
Note.—From the ordinary point of view we do not caU the patriarchal condition a constitution, or a people in this condition a state, or its independence sovereignty. Before the beginning of actual history there are found uninteresting stupid .innocence and the bravery arising out of the formal struggle for recognition and out of revenge (§§ 331, 57, note).
350It is the a.hRolnte^right”f the irlej). to come visibly forth ,_ and proceeding from marriage and agriculture (§ 203, note) realize itself j n laws and objective institutions. This is true whether its realization appears in the form of divine law and beneficence or in the form of force and wrong. This right is the right of heroes to found states.
851In the same way civilized nations may treat as barbarians the peoples who are behind them in the essential elements of the state. Thus, the rights of ipere herdsmen, hunters, and tillers of the soil are inferior, and their independence is merely formal.
Note.—Wars and contests arising under such circumstances are struggles for recognition in behalf of a certain definite content. It is this feature of them which is significant in world-history.
352The concrete ideas, which embody the national minds or - Spirits, h as its truth in the concrete idea i n its absolute, jiniversality. This is the spirit of the world, around whose throne stand the other spirits as perfecters of its actuality, and witnesses and ornaments of its splendour.”Since it is, as spirit, only the movement of its activity in order to know itself absolutely, to free its consciousness from mere direct naturalness, and to come to. itself, the principles of the different forms of its self-consciousness, as they appear in the process of liberation, are fgufc They a re the princ i ples of the four world -historic kingdoms.
353In its first and direct revelation the world-spirit has as its principle the forin of the sub stantive sp irit, in whose identity individaality jg_in its essen ce submer ged a nd without explicit j ustifi cation.
In the second principle the substantive spirit is aiWaje-of itself^ Hg£e jpirit isjt]ie.pQ |itigfe-COBtgBt-ainrl filling,^ a nd is also at the same time the livingjonn, which is in its nature seK-referred.
^ The third principle is the r etreat int oitself-o L this con-
M scious sel f -referred existence. There thus arises an abstract
“^ universali ty., and with it an infinite opposition to ob jectivity.
wh khis regarded as bereft oLsjiri t.’ ~
In the fourth principlethis opposition of the spirit is o verturned Jn order that spirit may receive into its inner self its truth and^ concrete essence. It thus becomes at home with objectivity, and the^twoare r econcile d. Because the spirit has come back to its formal substantive realit y by returninp: ftnt-of-thia infinite opp osition, it seeks to pggduc e and know its truth^as thought,, and as a world o f established, reality.
364”rrn accordance with these four principles the four world-historic empires are (1) the Oriental, (2) the Greek, (3) the Koman, and (4) the Grermanic.
355(1) The Oriental Empire:—The first empire is the substantive world-intuition, which proceeds from the natural whole of patriarchal times. It has no internal divisions. Its worldly government is theocracy, its ruler a high priest or God, its constitution and legislation are at the same time its religion, and its civic and legal regulations are religious and moral commands or usages. In the splendour of this totality the individual personality sinks without rights; external nature is directly divine or an ornament of God, and the history of reaUty is poetry. The distinctions, .which develop themselves in customs, government, and the state, serve instead of laws, being converted by mere social usage into clumsy, diffuse, and superstitious ceremonies, the accidents of personal power and arbitrary rule. The division into classes becomes a caste fixed as the laws of nature. Since in the Oriental empire there is nothing stable, or rather what is firm is petrified, it has life only in a movement, which goes on from the outside, and becomes an elemental violence and desolation. Internal repose is merely a private Ufe, which is sunk in feebleness and lassitude.
Note.—The element of substantive natural spirituality is present in the first forming of every state, and constitutes the absolute starting-point of its history. This assertion is presented and historically established by Dr. Stuhr in his well-reasoned and scholarly treatise” Vom Untergange der Naturstaaten “(Berlin, 1812), who, moreover, suggests in this work a rational method of viewing constitutional history and history in general. The principle of subjectivity and self-conscious freedom he ascribes to the German nation. But since the treatise is wholly taken up with the decline of the nature-states, it simply leads to the point at which this modern principle makes its appearance. At that time it assumed in part the guise of restless movement, human caprice, and corruption, in part the particular guise of feeling, not having as yet developed itself into the objectivity of self-conscious substantivity or the condition of organized law.
356(2) The Greek Empire:—This empire still contains the earlier substantive unity of the finite and infinite, but only as a mysterious background, suppressed and kept down in gloomy reminiscence, in caves and in traditional imagery. This background under the influence of the seKdistinguishing spirib is recreated into individual spirituality.
and exalted into the daylight of consciousness, where it is tempered and clarified into beauty and a free and cheerful ethical life. Here arises the principle of personal individuality, although it is not as yet self-centred, but held in its ideal unity. One result of this incompleteness is that the whole is broken up into a number of particular national minds or spirits. Further, the final decision of will is not as yet intrusted to the subjectivity of the independent self consciousness, but resides in a power, which is higher than, and lies beyond it (§ 279, note). Moreover, the particularity, which is found in wants, is not yet taken up into freedom, but segregated in a class of slaves.
357(3) The Roman Empire:—In this empire the distinctions of spirit are carried to the length of an infinite rupt ure of the ethical life into two extremes, p firsonal
/ priva te _aelf-consciousness. and abstract universality .^ The antagonism, arising between the substantive intuitiori of an aristocracy and the principle of f ree personality in democratic form, developed on the side of the aristocracy into superstition and the retention of cold self-seeking power, and on the side of the democracy into the corrupt mass. The dissolution of the whole culminates in universal misfortune, ethical life dies, national individualities, having merely the bond of union of a Pantheon, perish, and individuals are degraded to the level of that equality, in which they are merely private persons and have only formal rights.
358(4) The GtEEMAn Empire:—Owing to the loss of itself and its world, and to the infinite pain caused by it, a loss ci which the Jewish people were already held to be the tvpe/ spirit is pressed ba.ck into itselfAa.-nfi fi nds itself in the_ fflLiiffimp”f absolute negativity. But this extreme is the absolute turning-point, and in it spirit finds the infinite and ^t positive nature of its own inner being. This new discovery is the qaitg!LQ£_the rlivine amd the human. By means of it obj ective truth is re f^nripilft d with freedo-m, a nd that, too, inside of self-consciousness and subjectivity. This new basis, infinite and yet positive, it has been charged upon the northern principle of the Germanic nations to bring to completion.
359The internal aspect of this northern principle exists in feelin g as_faith^Jove. and h ope.^ Although it is in this form still abstract, it^i s the reconciliation and solution of aU^jo ntrad iction.^ It proceeds to unfold its content in order to raise it to reality and self-conscious rationality. It thus, constructs a kingdom of this world, based upon the feeling, trust, and fellowship nf fretunep. This kingdom in this its subjectivity is an actual kingdom of rude caprice and barbarism in contrast with the world beyond. It is an int ellect ual empire, whose content is indeed the t ruth of i ts^piriL But as it is yet not thought out, and still is veiled in the barbarism of picture-thinking, it^exists as _a spiritual force, which exercises over the actual mind a despotic and tyrannical iufluenue.
360These kingdoms are based upon the distinction, which has now won the form of absolute antagonism, and yet at the same time are rooted in a single unity and idea. In the obdurate struggle, which thus ensues, the spiritual has to lower its heaven to the level of an earthly and temporal condition, to common worldliness, and to ordinary life and thought. On the other hand the abstract actuality of the worldly is exalted to thought, to the principle of rational being and knowing, and to the rationality of right and law. As a result of these two tendencies, the contradiction has become a marrowless phantasm. The present has stripped off its barbarism and its lawless caprice, and truth has stripped off its beyond and its casualness. The true atonement and reconciliation has become objective, and unfolds the state as the image and reality of reason. In the state, self-consciousness finds the organic development of its real substantive knowing and will, in religion it finds in the form of ideal essence the feeling and the vision of this its truth, and in science it finds the. free conceived knowledge of this truth, seeing it to be one and the same in all its mutually completing manifestations, namelv, the state, nature, and the ideal world.