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132

The right of the subjective will is that what it is to recognize as valid should be seen by it as good, and that an action, as the purpose entering into external objectivity, should be imputed to it as right or wrong, good or evil, lawful or unlawful, according to its knowledge of the value that the action has in this objectivity.

The good is, in general, the essence of the will in its substantiality and universality — the will in its truth — and it is therefore purely and simply only in thought and through thought. The assertion, therefore, that man cannot know the true but has to do only with appearances, that thinking is harmful to the good will — such notions, and others like them, take away from spirit all intellectual, and equally all ethical, worth and dignity. — The right to recognize nothing that I do not see to be rational is the highest right of the subject, but through its subjective determination it is at the same time formal, while the right of the rational, as the objective, over against the subject remains firmly fixed nonetheless. — Because of its formal determination, insight is just as capable of being true as of being mere opinion and error. That the individual attain to that right of his insight belongs, on the standpoint of the still moral sphere, to his particular subjective formation. I can make the demand upon myself, and regard it as a subjective right in me, that I should see an obligation on good grounds and hold the conviction of it, and, still more, that I should recognize it out of its concept and nature. But what I demand for the satisfaction of my conviction regarding the good, the permitted, or the impermissible character of an action, and thus regarding its accountability in this respect, does no injury to the right of objectivity. — This right of insight into the good is distinguished from the right of insight (§ 117) with respect to the action as such; the right of objectivity has, according to the latter, the shape that, since the action is a change that is to exist in an actual world, and thus wants to be recognized therein, it must in general be in accordance with what holds good there. Whoever wishes to act in this actuality has, by that very fact, submitted himself to its laws and recognized the right of objectivity. — Equally, in the state, as the objectivity of the concept of reason, judicial imputation must not stop short at what someone holds to be in accordance with his own reason or not — at his subjective insight into rightfulness or wrongfulness, into good or evil — and at the demands that he makes for the satisfaction of his conviction. In this objective field, the right of insight holds good as insight into what is lawful or unlawful, into valid right, and it is limited to its nearest meaning, namely knowledge as acquaintance with what is legal and, in this respect, obligatory. Through the publicity of the laws and through general custom, the state takes from the right of insight the formal side and the contingency for the subject that this right still has on the present standpoint. The right of the subject to know an action in the determination of good or evil, lawful or unlawful, has, in the case of children, imbeciles, and madmen, the consequence of diminishing or annulling accountability from this side as well. A determinate boundary cannot, however, be fixed for these conditions and their accountability. But to make momentary blindness, the irritation of passion, drunkenness — in general, what is called the strength of sensuous incentives (insofar as what grounds a right of necessity, § 120, is excluded) — into grounds for the imputation and determination of crime itself and its punishability, and to regard such circumstances as if the criminal’s guilt were thereby removed, is likewise (compare § 100, § 119 Remark) not to treat him according to the right and honour of a human being, whose nature is precisely to be essentially something universal, not an abstractly momentary and isolated instance of knowledge. — Just as the arsonist has not set fire to this inch-large surface of wood that he touched with the flame, taken in isolation, but rather, in it, the universal — the house — so too, as a subject, he is not the single instance of this moment or this isolated sensation of the heat of vengeance; were he so, he would be an animal, which, because of its harmfulness and the insecurity of being subject to fits of rage, would have to be knocked on the head. — That the criminal must, at the moment of his action, have had a distinct representation of the wrong and the punishability of the deed before it can be imputed to him as a crime — this demand, which seems to preserve for him the right of his moral subjectivity, in fact denies him the intelligent nature dwelling within him, which, in its active presence, is not tied to the Wolffian-psychological form of distinct representations, and is only, in the case of actual madness, so deranged as to be severed from the knowing and doing of particular things. — The sphere in which those circumstances come into consideration as grounds for the mitigation of punishment is a different one from that of right — the sphere of clemency.

DE

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  1. Hegel (Notes) Avatar
    Hegel (Notes)

    [zu § 132] Relation. α) Knowledge – the good – as determinate, present, given. The good as fixed and settled. – Formal – presupposed, as determined in and for itself – eternal laws of the gods – unwritten law – laws of the state
    Third, accountability – all depend on knowledge – as does actuality for me – is in knowledge, is consciousness – theoretical – (otherwise merely animal) – not as I feel – but as I know – freedom, subjectivity in knowledge –
    but my interest, of what kind – return to freedom, to the concept.
    a) The good is supposed to be subjective, my knowledge – for this is precisely what the good is, namely subjectivity as such having its existence within itself – I am a thinking being – free – in that which is in and for itself I am supposed to be with myself – conviction thus [is] the form, the subjective – the good in and for itself – it [being] the substantial ground. This formal element, taken in isolation, is the standpoint of insight for itself, see the following page [§ 135].
    α) Insight, as regards formal right, wholly external – right – the right of coercion – is commanded or forbidden – posited as good – later, the nature of the laws
    β) moral – is my content – is duty [as] something particular

    [zu § 132 Anm.] Knowledge as implicit – recognition in general – the rest belongs to the contingency of the subject – belief. First, against opinions, each with his own particular insight, conviction – unity, cohesion, a will alien [to him], a good alien [to him] – indeed force –
    I can err, but so can the laws, the rulers –
    The subject’s right to insight, to conviction – is formal, one-sided – Something can be very true and yet not be grasped by an individual’s insight. One regards the right of subjective insight as something infinite, absolute, on which alone it is supposed to depend whether I am obligated to something or not – i.e. not merely externally, but inwardly. Now, α) the possibility of error must be conceded – and it soon turns out that one person is convinced this way, another that way. – Hence [there is] contingency of insight and conviction, and yet for me – because it is for me – this contingent thing is supposed to be the ultimate. I myself am thus something contingent that persists in its contingency. But the good, the grounds themselves, is precisely that in which contingency is supposed to have vanished – a universal.
    Insight, conviction – to clear away that persistence as something contingent – this concerns raising the particular into the universal, [that is,] culture/education [Bildung]; – vanity, arrogance, other such dispositions – refuse to be convinced, to be brought to insight – it is the most sublime, most flattering [thing] – I need only follow my own insight –
    Culture/education [Bildung] often has to begin quite from the beginning, through discipline, to learn and become habituated to taking one’s own insight as something contingent, which does not hold, does not carry weight – the reasoning understanding is unconquerable – or [it is mere] obstinacy: I simply do not see it – The idea underlying that discipline is the good itself – the idea that what is right holds [good]. My conviction, insofar as it deviates from, or has not yet arrived at, what is [generally] valid, is only one authority – a subjective reliance on grounds – the others, the state, the world, are also authority, an immense authority – it is only my authority that I set up against that one. The feeling of the higher [character] of such authority as against mine – is reverence, respect in general – this vanishes in the face of that subjectivity, – [mere] dread of the universal, fear for its own particularity.
    What is the holy? – that which holds human beings together, were it only lightly, as the rush binds the wreath – what is the holiest? – that which forever makes spirits at one and ever more at one – a truly substantial bond – in which precisely that self-isolating subjectivity, which I want to preserve for myself, has gone under and is absolutely satisfied – so infinitely powerful in itself that I myself am wholly within it.
    An empty notion, [to think] that I depend only on my own conviction and insight – as on something particular. Those grounds, notions, on closer inspection, are themselves drawn from the general stream of representation, and if they indeed lie so far outside of what is generally valid, they are skimmed off from the sweepings, from the dross and scum floating right on the surface – a child of the age, and indeed of its most superficial shape. – In any case, whatever is still positive, substantial in and about me belongs, I myself think, to that substantial coherence, to the holy. [It would be] utterly crude, common unconsciousness about what I am, what my being convinced, my grounds, my insight, and the like, [really] is.
    The right of the subjective will [is] that it know, has known – has been able to know – that something is good or not good – lawful or not right, and so forth. Here it is left wholly indeterminate of what kind and manner this knowledge is. If I demand – from the standpoint of reflection – that I be convinced on grounds, that I possess insight – then that is my own affair, left to me – for in doing so I place myself on the particular standpoint. It may be desirable that people know the grounds, the deeper source of right – [but] this is not objectively necessary. Trust, belief, sound reason, custom [Sitte] is the general, objective mode of justification.
    : Here and later Hegel is alluding to Goethe’s Distichs 76 and 77 from the “Seasons” [“Die Jahreszeiten”]:
    What is holy? It is that which binds many souls
    together; even if it bound them only lightly, as the rush binds the wreath.
    What is the holiest? That which, today and forever, ever more deeply felt,
    makes spirits only ever more at one.

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