Comments on: 138

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:54:06 +0000

§ 138: Conscience as judge over everything

Conscience has an enormous power. It can call everything into question: every law, every duty, every custom. It asks: Does this hold for me? Do I see its point? And it alone decides what is good.

At the same time, it is the power that first makes the good actual. Without a person who decides and acts, the good remains a mere thought.

When do people withdraw into themselves like this?

In history, this happens at certain times. It happens when the existing order has become hollow. When what counts as right no longer satisfies a better will. So it was with Socrates in Athens. So it was with the Stoics in Rome. The world outside had become untrue to them. So they looked for what is right within themselves.

They had a right to do this. But one question remains open: What content does conscience then give itself? Does it really find the good out of itself?

Summary: Conscience can dissolve everything that holds, and it decides for itself what is good. That is why people withdraw into themselves in hollow times. It remains open what content conscience finds.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:35:49 +0000

Let us examine this volatilizing more closely, and, seeing that all determinations must dissolve into this simple concept and again proceed from it, we find that it consists first of all in this: that everything we recognize as right or as duty can be shown by thought to be something null, limited, and by no means absolute. On the other hand, subjectivity, just as it volatilizes all content within itself, may also in turn develop that same content out of itself. Everything that arises in ethical life is brought forth through this activity of spirit. On the other hand, the defect of this standpoint is that it is merely abstract. If I know my freedom as substance within me, then I am inactive and do not act. But if I proceed to actions, if I seek principles, then I reach for determinations, and the demand then is that these be derived from the concept of the free will. If, therefore, it is right to volatilize right and duty into subjectivity, it is, on the other hand, wrong if this abstract foundation does not in turn develop itself. Only in times when actuality is a hollow existence, devoid of spirit and of steadfastness, may the individual be permitted to flee back from actual into inward life. Socrates arose in the time of the corruption of Athenian democracy: he volatilized what existed and fled back into himself, in order to seek there what is right and good. In our time too it occurs, more or less, that reverence for what subsists is no longer present, and that man wants to have what is valid as his own will, as that which he himself has recognized.

By: Hegel (Notes)

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

External condition of its emergence –
Standpoint of abstract conscience, of abstract subjective freedom within itself.
This the principal standpoint and the sickness of this age.
Dissolution – of reverence toward the existing objective [order] in customs – reflection – one wants to see it only in the form that I, this [particular one], will it.
Complete instability of the inner [life]; only external force, police, common advantage.