148

|159| As these substantial determinations, they are, for the individual — who distinguishes itself from them as the subjective and, in itself, undetermined, or as particularly determined — thereby in a relation to them as to its substantial element: duties, binding for its will.

The ethical doctrine of duties¹ — that is, insofar as it is objective, and is not to be comprised within the empty principle of moral subjectivity, which rather determines nothing (§ 134) — is therefore the systematic development, following in this third part, of the circle of ethical necessity. The distinction of this presentation from the form of a doctrine of duties lies solely in this: that, in what follows, the ethical determinations result as the necessary relations, and the exposition stops there, without the further clause being attached to each of them: therefore this determination is, for the human being, a duty.² — A doctrine of duties, insofar as it is not philosophical science, takes its material from the relations as given, and shows its connection with one’s own representations, with generally current principles and thoughts, purposes, drives, sensations, and so on, and can add, as grounds, the further consequences of each duty in relation to the other ethical relations, as well as to welfare and to opinion. But an immanent and consistent doctrine of duties can be nothing other than the development of the relations that are necessary through the Idea of freedom, and are therefore actual, in their whole compass, in the state.

1. Hegel’s Handexemplar. Ethical – instead of moral – ethical ↩︎
2. Hegel’s Handexemplar. Duty – is right, the existence of his will ↩︎