By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:54:04 +0000

§ 137: True conscience and mere conscience

What is a true conscience? A conscience that wills what is really good. It has firm principles. These principles hold for all, not only for me.

Conscience is holy:

Conscience is a sanctuary. Whoever violates it commits a sacrilege. For in conscience, my knowing joins with what is good.

But:

This does not yet tell us whether a particular conscience is really good. Only its content shows that. What is right belongs to no one alone. We can put it into laws and principles that anyone can test. Whoever appeals only to his feeling contradicts what a conscience claims to be.

An example: Someone refuses to pay taxes and says: “My conscience forbids it.” The state cannot simply accept this. In the same way, a mere opinion does not count in science just because someone firmly believes it.

The danger:

Here, at the stage of morality, conscience has no fixed content yet. It is only the certainty of a single person. This person can break away from the good and take himself as the measure. This ambiguity lies in conscience itself. Firm principles that all share exist only in ethical life.

Summary: The true conscience wills what is really good and has firm principles. Only its content shows whether a conscience is true. A conscience that is merely one’s own can break away from the good.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:35:30 +0000

When we speak of conscience, it can easily be supposed that, on account of its form, which is the abstractly inward, it is already in and for itself the truthful. But conscience as truthful is this determination of itself: to will what is in and for itself the good and duty. Here, however, we are dealing only with the abstract good, and conscience is still without this objective content, is as yet only the infinite certainty of itself.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Fri, 17 Jan 1823 08:06:32 +0000

[zu § 137] γ) on α) relation, β) content – γ) conscience – determining – αα) conscience ββ) dialectical, evil – (§ 132) right of the subjective will – that it should know what the good is – conscience – as arbitrary choice, as deciding.
Right of duty, of the good, addressed to conscience – you ought to have known this – absolute, not like external circumstances – Here no excuse helps –
δ) no principle of determination other than subjectivity, i.e. objectivity is the universal particularity, the determining, the positing of difference.
Conscience is the good, as (subjectively) determining, willing, resolving itself. The good in identity with the certainty of itself – I, – vitality. – The innermost, the substantial.
Certainty of itself – as conscience, knowledge of the good – being and positing – the mystery of freedom – that it is its own self-determination, – in itself – concept.
True conscience is formal, i.e. presupposes the duties – the determinate good – expresses that I am in conformity with them, my subjectivity – certainty of myself – duties are for me as the higher certainty of myself. I cannot do this.
A conscientious man, who does his duties – but does not first make them out of himself – they are, eternal – (no one knows whence they came) – the eternal laws of the gods
Being – they are – distinguished from being-posited.
This system of duties is not yet present here, for we stand at the standpoint of reflection, which indeed has the idea of the good before it, but takes from it its determinacy, – or rather, the determinacy is as yet grasped only abstractly.
This is against my conscience, conscience does not permit it – act according to conscience – in a collision of advantages and duties – to procure such an advantage for myself, or for you – an advantage at another's expense, – against conscience – an advantage for oneself, when it is contrary to no duty and not unjust, – would in itself well be permitted – only an evil – as against right and duty –
There are, admittedly, collisions in which duty conflicts with duty – welfare with welfare – extraordinary cases – to these subtle reflection gladly clings – partly for the sake of empty subtlety – I do not know how to decide – pushing his accomplice off the plank also good – partly in order to contrive, out of the extraordinary, the exception, a universal release from duty and right. If I say, you must respect right – and whatever universal proposition of this kind – then an instance can be brought against me. – In extraordinary cases, where the objective vanishes, – the universal in itself, – and for all cases is very different – like the determinacy of bird and fish, – although there are flying fish.

[zu § 137 Anm.] There is an absolute standard of conscience, and indeed it is so – conscience itself possesses it – I did not know it, my conscience did not tell me so – that is just a bad conscience – divine conscience – God as witness – God is the God of truth – not to yield against oneself –
Bad conscience – this judgment is none of my concern – it is simply my conscience; because principles of right etc. are not in my conscience, they have no claim upon me; I take only what I find in my conscience, no other source – an erring conscience – With this a man gives up his dignity, his substantiality. His assurance counts for nothing, it is contrary to his absolute honor – if it is as he says, then he is like a harmful animal, whose nature is nothing but evil and destructive, [an animal] to be struck dead, – or at least to be driven out of society – such [creatures] society cannot use. – Nor shall you use me; I am for myself, an end in myself. – Very well, so be it – but for you [to be] used, i.e. to stand in legal, ethical community – not merely in contract – and even contract presupposes trust. The actions, the utterances of human beings are such particulars over against one another that we are secure and at ease in their presence only through the general assurance, the trust, that they are seriously meant, or at least unprejudiced. – A crowd of people passes by in the street; I speak with a crowd, I rely on it that they do not want to plunder me, murder [me], etc. – they approach me, are clothed (among Orientals one searches [their] clothes). If I had to presuppose that they were erring consciences, that they recognized as right only what they found in their subjective conscience, so that in it they found the opposite of everything that is right and ethical, then I would be worse off than among robbers, for of the latter I know that they are robbers – but those [others] have the outward appearance and all the phrases – even those of religion, of right, of the good, of conscience –
Many misunderstandings on the part of religion – of the Christian standpoint – in its earliest appearance – To the righteous no law is given. α) Only to the righteous – easily twisted in such a way – that everyone at once, already in and for himself, takes himself to be the righteous one – and indeed on the ground that no law is recognized by him, this negativity is supposed to constitute the righteous one; rather
β) what the righteous one does – is the law itself – αα) [it] is not given to him – as with Jewish laws – police laws etc.; every law-abiding person does [so] – people are often resentful that such things are ordained, that such a law is given – as though the presupposition lying in this ordaining were that they would not do it, would be unlawful, etc. ββ) The laws, the universal principles, are indeed limited – all the more, the more positive their content is – eating the showbread, plucking ears of grain on the Sabbath – but in case of need – not universally – majesty of conscience – but only in extraordinary cases, i.e. itself conscientious.
What can truly volatilize subjectivity – are its own deeds, its own particularities – to make what has happened, within itself, unhappened – to absolve itself – not from the good, the law, but from evil – this infinite energy, majesty of conscience, I as abstract, as infinite, in which the finite vanishes – but only insofar as this certainty is identical with the substantial, the true.

Comments on: 137

By: Hegel (Simple)

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

By: Hegel (Notes)