Comments on: 140

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:54:09 +0000

§ 140: How evil passes itself off as good

Someone who does evil usually finds a good side in it. He can always present some purpose as a duty. So a person can pass off an evil deed as good. Before others, this is hypocrisy. Before oneself, it is even worse. Then the person takes himself as the measure of good and evil.

There are several stages of this.

The bad conscience:

Someone who does evil with a bad conscience still knows what is good. He is not yet a hypocrite.

Hypocrisy:

The hypocrite knows what is good. He does evil. And he passes it off as good before others. He lies about his deed.

When one reason is enough:

An old doctrine says: A deed is allowed if a single scholar finds a good reason for it. Then the individual decides which reason he follows. Evil becomes a matter of choice.

The good intention:

Another doctrine says: Whoever wills the good acts well. The intention makes the deed holy. Then you can justify almost any deed. People steal to help the poor. People kill out of love for their country.

Conviction:

A further doctrine goes even further: Good is what someone does out of conviction. Then there can be no more hypocrisy. For everyone acts according to his conviction. The criminal too. A law that holds for all disappears.

Irony:

People call the highest stage irony, with a word from Plato. Friedrich Schlegel taught it. The ironist knows the ethical laws. He says: You take the law seriously. So do I, but I stand above it. I can do it this way or another way. It is not the matter that is great. I am. He plays with everything and enjoys only himself. That is the emptiest shape of vanity.

Summary: Evil can pass itself off as good, before others and before itself. This ranges from hypocrisy to irony. In the end, the individual takes himself to be master over good and evil.

By: Cross-reference

Cross-reference — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 14:49:29 +0000

Cross-reference: From the reading group’s excursuses (in German), the following belong here: Phenomenology of Spirit, VII.C: The Revealed Religion – the section that immediately follows conscience and forgiveness

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:37:29 +0000

Representation [Vorstellung] can go further still and turn the evil will into the semblance of the good. Even though it cannot alter evil according to its nature, it can nevertheless lend it the semblance of being good. For every action has something positive to it, and since the determination of the good, as opposed to evil, likewise reduces itself to the positive, I can assert the action, in relation to my intention, to be good. Thus evil stands connected with the good not merely in consciousness, but also from the positive side. If self-consciousness passes the action off as good only for others, this form is hypocrisy; but if it is able to assert the deed as good for itself, this is the still higher pinnacle of a subjectivity that knows itself as the absolute, for which good and evil, in and for themselves, have vanished, and which can pass off as whatever it wills and is able to. This is the standpoint of absolute sophistry, which sets itself up as lawgiver and refers the distinction between good and evil to its own arbitrary will. As for hypocrisy, it includes, for example, chiefly the religious hypocrites (the Tartuffes), who submit to all ceremonies, and may even be pious for themselves, but on the other side do whatever they please. Nowadays one speaks little more of hypocrites, because on the one hand this charge seems too harsh, and on the other hypocrisy has more or less disappeared in its immediate form. This bare lie, this covering-up of the good, has now become too transparent for one not to see through it, and the separation whereby one does the good on one side and evil on the other no longer exists in the same way it once did, since increasing culture [Bildung] has made the opposed determinations waver. The subtler shape, by contrast, that hypocrisy has now assumed is that of probabilism, which consists in seeking to represent a transgression to one's own conscience as something good. It can occur only where the moral and the good are determined by an authority, so that there are as many authorities as there are grounds for asserting evil to be good. Casuistic theologians, especially Jesuits, have worked out such cases of conscience and multiplied them without end.
As these cases are now brought to the highest degree of subtlety, many collisions arise, and the oppositions of good and evil become so unstable that, in relation to the particular case, they prove to turn into one another. What is required is only the probable, that is, the approximation to the good, which can be backed up by some ground or some authority. This standpoint thus has the peculiar determination that it contains only something abstract, while the concrete content is set up as something inessential and is rather left to mere opinion. Thus someone may have committed a crime and yet have willed the good: if, for example, an evil man is murdered, one can pass off as the positive side that one wished to resist evil and to diminish it. The further advance from probabilism is now that it no longer depends on the authority and assertion of another, but on the subject itself, that is, on its own conviction, and that only through it can something become good. The deficiency here is that it is supposed to relate merely to conviction, and that there is no longer any right subsisting in and for itself, for which this conviction would be merely the form. It is indeed not a matter of indifference whether I do something out of habit and custom or imbued with its truth, but objective truth is also distinct from my conviction; for the latter contains no distinction of good and evil at all, since conviction is always conviction, and the only thing that would be bad would be that of which I am not convinced. Since this standpoint is now a supreme one, one that extinguishes good and evil, it is thereby conceded that this supreme thing is also exposed to error, and to that extent it again becomes contingent, falling from its height, and seems to deserve no respect. This form, now, is irony, the consciousness that not much is to be made of such a principle of conviction, and that in this supreme criterion only arbitrariness prevails. This standpoint has actually emerged from Fichtean philosophy, which pronounces the I to be the absolute, that is, as absolute certainty, as universal I-hood, which through further development proceeds toward objectivity. Of Fichte it cannot really be said that in the practical sphere he made the arbitrary will of the subject into a principle; but later, in the sense of particular I-hood, Friedrich von Schlegel set up this particularity itself, with regard to the good and the beautiful, as God, so that the objectively good would be merely a formation of my conviction, obtaining support only through me, and I could let it step forth and vanish as lord and master. In relating myself to something objective, it has at the same time gone under for me, and thus I hover above an immense space, calling forth shapes and destroying them. This supreme standpoint of subjectivity can arise only in a time of high culture, where the earnestness of faith has gone to ruin and has its essence only in the vanity of all things.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1830)

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

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1830), § 510:

§ 510. 13) External objectivity, likewise following the difference that has arisen within the subjective will (§ 503), constitutes, in opposition to the inner determinations of the will, the other independent extreme, a peculiar world of its own. It is therefore contingent whether it coincides with the subjective ends, whether the good realizes itself in it and evil, the end that is null in and for itself, is null in it; - further, whether the subject finds its welfare in it, and more particularly whether the good subject in it becomes happy, and the evil, unhappy. At the same time, however, the world is supposed to let the essential, the good action, be carried out within it, just as it is supposed to grant the good subject the satisfaction of its particular interest, but deny it to the evil one, as well as to annihilate evil itself.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1827)

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

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1827), § 510:

§ 510. δ) External objectivity constitutes, in opposition to the inner side, the other independent extreme, a peculiar world of its own. It is therefore contingent whether it coincides with the subjective ends, whether the good realizes itself in it and evil, the end that is null in and for itself, is null in it; – further, whether the subject finds its welfare in it, and more particularly whether the good subject becomes happy in it, and the evil one unhappy. At the same time the world is supposed to let the essential, the good action, be carried out within it, just as it is supposed to grant the good subject the satisfaction of its particular interest, but deny it to the evil one, as well as to annihilate evil itself.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Mon, 20 Jan 1823 08:06:32 +0000

[zu] § 140.
α) Evil and good
β) Relation – such that the good is made into a semblance. It is semblance, in itself, because still abstract, only something posited.
– only something posited, not subsisting for itself, self-sustaining, truly substantial – because contentless, indeterminate in itself. – Only the concrete is complete within itself –
But there must be content; hence arbitrary –
γ) Modes of this semblance
αα) Desire; some content or other – evil, unreflective –
ββ) Content as ground; – reflected, i.e., the determination of the good given to the particular content – but this determination as contentless, the abstract affirmative.
The objective is here called merely abstract – something positive – existent – something satisfying of mine.
(Conscience acts -) The determination of the good – in evil – is the caput mortuum of the positive, of the existent – not self-contradictory, because all determination, particularization – has been volatilized, the particularization being taken only from my arbitrary will – I recognize no objective content, no determination of content – only objectivity, the good, the formal, as such.
Absolute sophistry – good for the reason that I am convinced – i.e., my theoretical, reflected agreement with myself – my satisfaction within myself from grounds – this the positive – no objectivity at all except this of self-determination – and indeed of abstract – indeterminacy, hence all determination only through my arbitrary will.
Irony is the consciousness of this – Socrates: the representations of his opponents first accepted, allowed to stand – nothing directly opposed to them, but they are thrown into confusion through their consequences, through conceded truths, through themselves – abrupt – thrown more into confusion than actually dissolved within themselves – The objective element of irony is the dialectic, but only a negative result –
Here dialectic, negativity in the form of the absolute ideality of everything objective (Fichtean philosophy) – reflection upon action, upon laws, duties, the divine, the eternal – it has content, determination only through my subjectivity – I am convinced, and know that this conviction is my arbitrary will – And this knowing lies immediately in the being-convinced – for grounds are posited as merely relative, and so on, since my being-convinced is made the criterion, i.e., that the matter holds only through my subjectivity – nothing existent –

[zu § 140 Anm., Absatz a.] α) Does man know that he is doing evil when he does evil?–
αα) Evil in general –
α) Selfishness, passion – persistence in oneself, with the sacrifice, the violation, of the right, of the good.
β) has a purpose, something counts for him as a purpose – something it is not, taken as affirmative, he is mistaken about this – an evil character, like an evil dog –
γ) Man stands absolutely under this judgment – because [he is] spirit, reason – different from ignorance of external circumstances – that is a matter of his will –
δ) this does not mean that whoever knew it was evil would thereby cease to be evil; many know that it is evil, and yet they are so, do such things – from knowledge the deed does not follow – Certainly [someone] can hold fast [to the evil] against better knowledge and conscience – even though he knows it; but it is false that he regards this holding fast, even against the good, as a purpose.
ββ) with an evil conscience – this makes no such essential difference – only worse – in general a very general expression – to hold something to be evil – yet natural validity, the assertion of validity – [taking] external actuality as true, as in itself.
Efficacious grace – man absolutely passive; grace finds nothing immanent to man already there.
a) Evil, b) subjective relation to good – hypocrisy, c) purpose, the good as ground, d) the good itself – arbitrariness of subjectivity, e) conviction – subjective form, f) irony, – consciousness of absolute subjectivity,
a) Evil, contradiction in itself
b) Contradiction against the posited good, of the particular against the good in itself; [regarded] by the subject as semblance, hypocrisy, as subsumption in c etc., itself under the good posited in me, – reflection
c) Evil as affirmative, i.e., posited as good, or inconsistency.
d) The good as abstract, a mere predicate, under which everything can be subsumed – in the subject – ground; in its particularity this connection is contingent – as regards content –
e) my connection itself, as subjective conviction, is what is supposed to have value – reflection upon the particular – indifference of the particular content, which is not in itself. Consciousness of contingency.
On c) objective subsumption; the content is supposed to be good; – to appear to me as good; for me, in my knowledge – as though evil were only a contradiction against the good posited in me, not against the good in itself. – d) the particular is not good in itself; only the good is good. A form that holds for others, not for me, deception – e) likewise subsumption connection itself, into which the subsumption falls. – f) irony.
b) Hypocrisy – for others – the good as a semblance – a means – but hypocrisy is also understood as inconsistency within itself; – piety not in earnest; can indeed be in earnest, without concrete reflection – abstract piety, barbarians withal – evil,
c) for itself – external ground – probabilism – determined in an other – can still be determined in itself

[zu § 140 Anm., Absatz c.] Evil – perversion, in itself
c) Hypocrisy – for itself – external will – ground – positive – probabilism. Hence nowadays there is no hypocrisy, because what is evil in itself is known as good, [and] is determined as good through reflection. This is the affirmation. The initial presupposition: this is good, – or rather, first: I am good, insofar as it appears to me as good; – pardonable, venial sins – even known to be only a semblance –
Sophistry, in itself, – that is, the subject according to its particularity is the absolute end; it does not intend the good as such; does not have this abstraction as its object – Only Socrates and Plato set up such an idea – whereupon probabilism etc. then aims to subsume the particular under it, to relate it to it; whereas [there is] a cultivated sophistry. Everything directed toward some end or other – which for many sophists was the good, for others selfishness, or that culture in general for the purposes of the state, – whatever the good is under given circumstances. Thus sophistry [is] partly culture in general (which has something in common with modern evil), but partly also a form of unreflective evil in general –
Not yet that relation of the will in which it would have the good before it and be the reflection upon the good.
The ground is supposed to be what is decisive, what justifies. As regards content, [it is] a ground –

[zu § 140 Anm., Absatz d.] the determination of the good – without content
d) To make [something] good for oneself, inwardly – first, opining, asserting – that one wills the good – and this abstraction, – this opining, this pretending, is the main thing or the only thing; it is enough to have good will – not whether it is good in itself – but that I think it [to be so]. The ground, the content, is left to my arbitrary choice. – Essentially good [is] the affirmative – whether a determination can be regarded as affirmative, this is the genus within it, the good.
Which good is to be preferred? – The one preferred absorbs the others, which could otherwise likewise be determined as affirmative – collision.
Duties – essentially as a system – objective subordination

[zu § 140 Anm., Absatz e.] Particular content is not connected with the universal through itself. One must recognize this deception – as though we knew what the good is, when something is good as good for the sake of the good –
In itself d) is determined through the subject; – in e) this is posited –
e) merely a matter of opinion – previously leaving it, as it were, an open question whether [something is] objectively good or not – here conviction alone is itself the objective.
No principles.
Philosophy form – principles

[zu § 140, Anm., Absatz e., *] Jacobi himself [holds] the belief [that] faith, immediate knowledge, [is] revealed in and from my reason, and is [both] the believing and the believed – But to arrive at this reason, [there is] only inspiration, immediate knowledge –
Conviction – also has the form of reasons – I need only appeal to conscience – the French, Napoleon in Vienna, [called] the murderer a wild beast – that is, [he] did not acknowledge the universal, the principles – of right, of ethical life, – [there was] no common ground with him –

[zu § 140, Anm., Absatz f.] Still, up to now – subjective honesty
f) Knowing that this principle – is not in earnest about the objective good – irony – that it is itself a bad arbitrariness – conviction, because subjective, depends entirely on me –
α) Vanity – holding firm, β) yearning for objectivity – into the other extreme – becoming Catholic.
Virtuosity, genius, – master of the ethical
*"That he feels himself completely convinced, of that I do not doubt in the least. But how many people do not begin the worst outrages out of just such a felt conviction. So, if this ground may excuse everywhere, then there is no longer any rational judgment of good and evil, honorable and contemptible resolutions; delusion then has equal rights with reason, or reason then has no rights at all any longer, no valid authority; its voice is an absurdity; whoever merely does not doubt is in the truth!
I shudder at the consequences of such a tolerance, which would be an exclusive one, to the advantage of unreason."
Fr. H. Jacobi to Count Holmer, Eutin, 5 Aug. 1800; on Count Stolberg's change of religion (Brennus, Berlin, Aug. 1802).

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1817)

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

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1817), § 428:

§ 428. This highest point of the phenomenon of the will, which has evaporated into this absolute vanity – a being-good that is not objective but certain only of itself, and a certainty of itself in the nullity of the universal – immediately collapses in on itself. Evil, as the pure reflection of subjectivity into itself against the objective and the universal, is wholly abstract semblance, the immediate perverting and annihilating of itself; for it is rather immediately the pure identity with itself; – the act of evil, crime, is (§ 414) the presentation of this perversion, in which the moments of the concept take on the shape of external actuality over against one another. –