Comments on: 115

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:52:08 +0000

§ 115: Being responsible for something

Whoever acts always acts in a world that is already there. This world has many circumstances. My deed changes something in it.

When am I responsible?

In the simplest sense, I am responsible for everything I have changed. That does not yet mean anyone can blame me for it. It only means: I had a part in it.

An example: I put a flowerpot on the windowsill. Someone opens the window, and the pot falls and breaks. Am I responsible? In a very outward sense, yes. If I had not put it there, it would not have broken.

The problem:

Every event has countless causes. You can declare any of them responsible. Take the French Revolution. Was poverty responsible? The king? The thinkers of the Enlightenment? The bad weather before the harvest? The understanding can pick whatever it likes as the cause.

So responsibility in this sense is still very external. What others can truly hold me accountable for is a narrower question.

Summary: I am responsible for what I have changed. But that is only an outward share. What others can hold me accountable for is less.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:28:20 +0000

That can be imputed to me which lay in my purpose, and in the case of crime this is chiefly what matters. But in guilt there lies only the wholly external judgment of whether I have done something or not; and that I am guilty of something does not yet mean that the matter can be imputed to me.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1830)

Hegel (Encyclopedia 1830) — Sat, 18 Sep 1830 23:06:32 +0000

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1830), § 504:

§ 504. Insofar as the action immediately concerns existence, what is mine is to that extent formal, since the external existence is also self-subsistent as against the subject. This externality can distort the subject's action and bring forth something other than what was contained in it. Although every alteration as such, which is posited through the activity of the subject, is a deed of the subject, it does not therefore recognize this as its action, but recognizes only that existence in the deed which lay in its knowledge and will, which was its purpose, as its own—as its guilt.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1827)

Hegel (Encyclopedia 1827) — Thu, 24 May 1827 23:06:32 +0000

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1827), § 504:

§ 504. Insofar as the determinacy of the action initially concerns existence immediately, what is mine is thus formal to this extent, since the external existence is also self-subsistent as against the subject. This externality can distort the subject's action and bring forth something other than what was contained in it. Although every alteration as such, which is posited through the activity of the subject, is a deed of the subject, it does not therefore recognize this as its action, but acknowledges only that in the deed which lay in its knowledge and will, which was its purpose, as its own—as its guilt.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Tue, 07 Jan 1823 08:06:32 +0000

Intent – purpose as distinct from intention.
Accountability – of the action
The objective is what is mine – consequences –
Two kinds of objectivity – with regard to the action
α) what is presupposed, which he wants to change
β) the changed thing itself, what has been brought forth –
The effective [factor], toward what is brought forth – which is thus also present in the product – and, as subjective ground, was present in the activity.
Guilt – what is ground – ground – as active – as that which has acted –

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1817)

Hegel (Encyclopedia 1817) — Wed, 30 Apr 1817 23:06:32 +0000

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1817), § 418:

§ 418. The general conclusion is that the moral subject, as the unity of the opposition existing for itself—an opposition that is likewise self-subsistent in its extremes—is this inner contradiction, and, as identity, is the activity and the drive to sublate it, that is, to act: in one and the same act, to realize the purpose and to make the external world conform to the purpose.