Comments on: 119

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:52:14 +0000

§ 119: Intention

An action at first touches the world at only one point. Someone who holds a match to a pile of wood lights only a small piece of wood. But he knows what fire does. It spreads.

What follows from this?

Someone who thinks always knows more than the single point. He knows the universal nature of what he does. So his purpose turns into an intention. The intention takes in the universal side of the action.

A hard case:

Someone who stabs a person does not just hit a piece of flesh. He hits life. In a living being, everything hangs together. Someone who stabs cannot say: I only wanted to hurt the skin, not the life.

A word about the word:

In German, the word for “intention” comes from a verb that means “to look away from”. We look away from many things and pick out one side. There is a danger in this. People who defend themselves with their intention often pick out a single side of the action. They declare it the real thing and leave out the rest.

An old saying goes: The stone that has left the hand belongs to the devil. Whoever acts exposes himself to what follows from it.

Summary: The intention takes in the universal nature of an action, not just the single point. Someone who thinks knows what his action means as a whole. So he cannot retreat to a small part of it.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:29:33 +0000

It is indeed the case that, in an action, more or fewer circumstances can intervene: in the case of arson, the fire may fail to catch, or, conversely, it may spread further than the perpetrator intended. Nevertheless, no distinction between good fortune and misfortune is to be made here, for the human being, in acting, must engage with externality. An old proverb rightly says: the stone thrown from the hand belongs to the devil. In acting, I expose myself to misfortune; this therefore has a right over me and is an existence of my own willing.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1830)

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

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1830), § 505:

§ 505. The action has, 1. according to its empirically concrete content, a manifold of particular aspects and connections; as regards form, the subject must have known and willed the action according to its essential determination, which comprises these particulars within itself; - right of intention. - Purpose concerns only the immediate existence, but intention concerns the substantial element and its end. 2. The subject likewise has the right that the particularity of the content in the action should not, as regards its matter, be external to it, but should contain the subject's own particularity, its needs, interests and purposes, which, likewise gathered into one purpose, constitute, as in happiness (§ 479), its welfare; - the right of welfare. Happiness is distinguished from welfare only in that the former is represented as an immediate existence as such, while the latter is represented as entitled in relation to morality.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1827)

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

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1827), § 505:

§ 505. According to its particular content, the action has, 1) in its empirically concrete externality, a manifold of particular aspects and connections; the subject must have known and willed the action according to its essential determination, which comprises these particulars within itself; – right of intention. 2) The subject likewise has the right that the particularity of the content should, as regards its matter, not be something external, but rather the subject's own particularity – its needs, interests and purposes – which, likewise gathered into a single purpose, constitute its welfare; – the right of welfare.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Thu, 23 Dec 1824 14:50:49 +0000

(last class of this year)
Here we advance to the more determinate character of the moral ground.
Difference, [something] other than the immediate action, initially a matter of judgment (but generally as a predicate of reflection).
Here purpose, as determinate purpose, in opposition to means in the proper sense; – formal.
a) Purpose – subjectivity in general, abstract knowledge – representation in general, – as in nature.
b) Intention – determination of the action – from self-consciousness, from reflection into itself, from my knowledge of myself.
Action [is] a doing (not mechanical as with an animal – not merely juridical, – the sphere of my personality, – ) as determined by me, and hence as a necessary determination. The sphere of right contains in its principle no determinacy, for it is the universal of the freedom of personality itself. Hence entitlement, permission – but determinacy, particularization, [is] a matter of indifference, – I can do it, or also leave it, take possession, make a contract, [and] am not bound to do so. In the moral [sphere] I bind myself, and find myself [bound], am bound – moral standpoint of determination. – The universal of the will must be determinate – determinacy in the nature of the will. –
Thus action contains something positive – a compulsion positively grounded in the will, a determination toward this or that expression. – Duty – I ought – in reflection, distinction, choice. – I, the particular, distinguished from the universal, which is the substantial. – Particularity [is] an essential moment – hence determining – but it itself [is] determined through the universal.
Judgment of [the] action; – its determination as a universal; order, class.
Action [is] the doing of the thinking human being – hence a universality within it – this is the essential [point].
a) Intention – as such, in general. Formal distinction in general – the universal of some content or other that is not yet determinate. – The immediate content of the action as reflected into itself.
b) Determinate opposition –
α) αα) my (abstract) subjectivity – and
ββ) the matter in general
β) my determinate, concrete subjectivity – welfare
γ) this reflected – universal – also the welfare of others
c) Collision of welfare and right, – of the universal of the will.
Intention – universality is the matter.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1817)

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

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1817), § 419:

§ 419. The action is indeed the absolute determination, through its purpose, of the objectivity that is selfless as against the free subject. But since this objectivity is likewise self-subsistent, it can distort the individual's action and bring to light something other than what lay within it. Although every change as such that is posited through the activity of the subject is its deed, it does not therefore recognize this as its action, but recognizes only that within the deed which lay in its knowledge and will as its own; – as its guilt; – because it counts itself only as an absolutely subjective and self-subsistent will.