Comments on: 258

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:58:29 +0000

§ 258: What the state is

The state is what is rational in and for itself. In it, the individual rises above what is merely particular in him. The state is an end in itself. In it, freedom comes to its highest right. And the state has the highest right over individuals. Their highest duty is to be members of the state.

A mix-up:

Many see the state as a club for protection. They think it should secure property and personal freedom. Then the benefit of individuals would be the final purpose. And it would be optional whether you are a member or not. This confuses the state with civil society. Only as a member of the state does the individual have truth and ethical life. His destiny is to lead a universal life.

How did the state come about?

From the power of fathers, from fear, from trust? That is a question for history. Philosophy asks about the concept.

Rousseau:

Rousseau made the will the ground of the state. That is his merit. But he meant only the will of individuals. So the state becomes a contract that depends on the whim of all. In the French Revolution, these thoughts came to power. People wanted to build a great state completely anew, from thought alone. That was a tremendous spectacle. And because the thoughts were empty, it ended in the most terrible and violent of events.

Haller:

The other extreme is Karl Ludwig von Haller. For him, the state rests on strength and weakness, on wealth and want. He knowingly gives up every thought. And he storms against reason in the state with hot passion.

The march of God in the world:

That the state exists is the march of God in the world. Here we must not think of single states. We must look at the Idea. Every state has flaws. It stands in the world, in the realm of chance and error. But even the ugliest human being, a criminal, a sick person, is still a living human being. This life is what matters.

Summary: The state is what is rational, and it is an end in itself. To be a member is the highest duty. It rests neither on a contract of individuals nor on mere strength.

By: Cross-reference

Cross-reference — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 14:49:15 +0000

Cross-reference: From the reading group’s excursuses (in German), the following belong here: The Positivity of the Christian Religion (1795/96): Contract with the State – the young Hegel still conceives the state in terms of contract

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 14:08:22 +0000

The state in and for itself is the ethical whole, the actualization of freedom, and it is the absolute end of reason that freedom should be actual. The state is the spirit that stands in the world and realizes itself therein with consciousness, whereas in nature it actualizes itself only as its other, as spirit asleep. Only as present in consciousness, knowing itself as an existing object, is it the state. With freedom one must not proceed from singularity, from the individual self-consciousness, but only from the essence of self-consciousness, for whether man knows it or not, this essence realizes itself as an independent power in which individual persons are only moments: it is the march of God in the world that the state exists; its ground is the power of reason actualizing itself as will. In considering the idea of the state one must not have particular states before one's eyes, nor particular institutions, but must rather consider the idea, this actual God, for itself. Every state, however much one may declare it bad according to the principles one holds, however much one may recognize this or that deficiency in it, always contains within itself, especially if it belongs among the developed states of our time, the essential moments of its existence. But because it is easier to find faults than to comprehend the affirmative, one easily falls into the error of forgetting, over particular aspects, the inner organism of the state itself. The state is no work of art; it stands in the world, hence in the sphere of arbitrariness, contingency, and error; bad conduct can disfigure it in many respects. But the ugliest human being, the criminal, a sick man and a cripple, is still a living human being; the affirmative, life, persists despite the deficiency, and it is with this affirmative that we are concerned here.

By: Hegel (Natural Right Essay 1802)

Hegel (Natural Right Essay 1802) — Thu, 01 Jul 1802 11:06:32 +0000

Hegel, On the Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Right (Critical Journal of Philosophy, vol. 2, part 2, 1802), p. 427 f.:

The state of nature, and the majesty and divinity of the whole of the condition of right — alien to individuals and therefore itself singular and particular — as well as the relation of the absolute submissiveness of the subjects under that supreme power, are the forms in which the splintered moments of organic ethical life — the moment of absolute unity, and of this unity insofar as it comprehends within itself the opposition of unity and plurality and is absolute totality, and the moment of infinity, or of the nothingness of the realities of the opposition — are fixed as particular essences, and precisely thereby, like the Idea, are inverted. The absolute Idea of ethical life, by contrast, contains the state of nature and majesty as simply identical, since the latter is itself nothing other than absolute ethical nature; and no loss of the absolute freedom that one would have to understand by natural freedom, nor any surrender of ethical nature, can be thought through the real being of majesty.