By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:53:40 +0000

§ 120: The right of intention

Intention has a right. I must have known the universal quality of my action. Only then does it really belong to me.

There is also the other side. The action has a right against me. It may demand that I, as a thinking person, knew what I did. I cannot play dumb.

Who are the exceptions?

Children often cannot see the consequences of what they do. So we do not impute their actions to them, or only in part. The same goes for people whose thinking a severe mental illness has destroyed.

But only such clear cases count. Otherwise the rule is: We treat every adult as a thinking person. That is his honor. We take him seriously as someone who knows what he wants. A weak hour does not cancel this honor.

Summary: Intention has the right that only what I knew counts. The action has the right that a thinking person knew it. Exceptions hold only for children and for severe illness.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Wed, 08 Jan 1823 08:08:32 +0000

[zu § 119/120] Intention belongs to the completeness of the action, see below. – In purpose – guilt – as development of the consequence – the necessity of the consequences is the nature of acting, because [it is] connection, universal – (Guilty or Innocent – inner and outer [aspect] of the action – differ.) – Being guilty, as the development of the necessary consequence, constitutes the transition to purpose. – Action divides itself, in its consequences, – into individual external ones and universal ones. – This division is α) in the action as such, according to purpose itself, see above – β) different – the inner and the whole of the action; – the inner is intention, and action [is] means, end – Orestes a) kills, b) avenges his father. – Murder, purpose; the judge still asks, to what end, in what interest? – seems indifferent – that is enough – at first; whether conspiracy, universal end;
Intention [is] the subjective essentiality of which the action is a consequence. In α) the action has consequences, its universality present in it as a whole – β) it itself is also a consequence, according to the determination of externality that it has in it. – γ) Intention, particula[r,] whose content αα) formally, my interest, ββ) content, inclination, satisfaction initially of my particularity. δ) Opposition to right –
Action divides itself into universality and particularity.
α) Action, according to singularity, has a nature in general – extern[al,] immediate universality. The possibility that lies therein, – precisely the possibility itself, that contingencies attach themselves to it.
β) What do I gain by the action – its closer content – external change; – not to make an external thing into mine, – but rather (change in relation to the will of others) – not the acquisition of a property (which can be involved, but not as acquisition, property being the essential thing) but rather to assert it as the content of my subjectivity – eating (taking into possession and using) and hunger (this the moral side); – something as mine – content a subjective [matter]: what do I attain? that is, do I satisfy myself? – that is, my particular interest – § 121-122. Is the soul of the action, the universal, that which I will –
αα) Closer determination – from my natural particularity – the subjective not yet universal (good), nor concretely determined within itself.
ββ) Well-being, the sum total of my subjective particular satisfaction. People want things to go well for them. – Wohl – volo – this is what their willing is – in language these are thus connected, well-being made into the essential will.
γγ) Well-being – of others. Is called primarily moral.
δδ) Well-being in opposition to right – the particular against the universal – freedom as such itself. Such a moral end always concerns only the particular.
Dolus indirectus – the dangerousness of the action – life forfeited. α) Theft, robbery, wounding – a part, something external is injured – not life, the infinite scope of everything external. β) but the universal nature of the action – in society – makes the whole of society insecure, injures the entire nexus; – my property here [is] not individual possession, a signature on a bill of exchange is not merely black on white, but of a univ[ersal] nature in society. My property has the same guarantee as all property in society – universal possession – possessing, societal security is having as universal validity; – this universal existence is injured.
First – action α) concrete – in general what is mine
The other form of imputability β) its universal nature, however, only the nearest genus.
The third is the good –

[zu § 120 Anm.] The feeble-minded, children, well know that they strike, burn, but not that in doing so they kill, can kill – this possibility is the universal [element] of the action – in the purpose there can only have lain the striking – a hundred times in brawls – striking with a chair, a beer-mug on the head – with an armed hand – but the right of intention [belongs] to the thinking human being, to know the nature of the action, to know that it is a possibility of killing.
Even if the determinate [aspect of the] action – murder – was not consciously present in the purpose at this moment, – still he knows, as a thinking being, that such a thing lies in such conduct.
b) Peculiar content. – The good is absolute content –
Determinate opposition: my subjectivity is the simple particularity reflected into itself. – Life, composite particularity. –
Action in general something determinate – that determinacy proceed from me, issue from me – objectivity. Execution of the action, execution of my end, determined by myself.
Murder, arson, theft – universal predicates – but the genus of the action as external existence – not my content, mine as such – that proceeds externally from me – I have willed it; the will has some content or other, it is not subjectivity itself that is the content – arson for the sake of arson, murder for the sake of murder? – I [am] satisfied; that is my content – universality is my form; but not yet my content. External action only a means.
The action is ours only according to its content – motive – distinguished from what is peculiar to it as external – in the narrower sense moral.

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By: Hegel (Simple)

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