Toward the family and society, the state has two sides.

On the one hand, it is the higher power. Their laws and interests depend on it. Montesquieu showed that even private right depends on the character of a state.

On the other hand, it is their inner purpose. Its strength lies in this: its purpose and the interest of individuals are one. Individuals have duties toward the state to the extent that they also have rights.

An important insight:

In abstract right, this holds: What is right for one is also right for the other. So slaves have no duties, because they have no rights. In the state, duty and right go together, but their content differs. The son does not have the same rights that he has as duties toward his father. The citizen has rights that differ from his duties toward the prince and the government.

One’s own interest:

We must not banish our own interest as something unworthy. Whoever does his duty must also find his satisfaction in it. As a subject, he has duties. As a citizen, he finds in them protection for his person and property. He finds care for his welfare. And he finds the awareness that he is a member of this whole.

In the ancient world, the will of the state was the final word. Today we demand our own insight and our own conscience.

Summary: The state is both the higher power and the inner purpose. In it, duty and right go together. Whoever does his duty also finds his own welfare in it.

[Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844; MEW vol. 40 (Supplementary Volume 1), p. 467 – thanks for the pointer!]

On the one hand, the state is, as against the sphere of the family and civil society, an »external necessity«, a power to which its »laws« and »interests« are »subordinated and dependent«. That the state is, as against family and civil society, an »external necessity« lay already partly in the category of »transition«, partly in their conscious relation to the state. »Subordination« to the state still fully corresponds to this relation of »external necessity«. But what Hegel understands by »dependence« is shown by the following sentence of the Remark to this paragraph:

»That the thought of dependence, in particular also of private-law statutes, on the determinate character of the state, and the philosophical view of considering the part only in its relation to the whole — chiefly Montesquieu […] had in view« etc.

Hegel thus speaks here of the inner dependence, or the essential determination, of private right etc. on the state; but at the same time he subsumes this dependence under the relation of »external necessity« and opposes it, as the other side, to the other relation in which family and civil society stand to the state as their »immanent end«.

By »external necessity« can only be understood that the »laws« and »interests« of the family and of society must, in case of collision, yield to the »laws« and »interests« of the state, are subordinated to it, that their existence is dependent on its own, or that its will and its laws appear to their »will« and their »laws« as a necessity!

But Hegel is not speaking here of empirical collisions; he is speaking of the relation of the »spheres of private right and private welfare, of the family and of civil society« to the state; it is a matter of the essential relation of these spheres themselves. Not only their »interests«, but also their »laws«, their »essential determinations«, are »dependent« on the state and »subordinated« to it. It relates to them as a »higher power« over their »laws and interests«. Their »interest« and »law« relate as its »subordinate«. They live in »dependence« on it. Precisely because »subordination« and »dependence« are external relations that constrain the self-subsistent essence and run counter to it, the relation of »the family« and of »civil society« to the state is that of »external necessity«, a necessity that runs against the inner essence of the matter. This very fact, that »the private-law statutes depend on the determinate character of the state«, are modified according to it, is therefore subsumed under the relation of »external necessity«, precisely because »civil society and the family«, in their true, i.e. in their self-subsistent and complete development, are presupposed to the state as particular »spheres«. »Subordination« and »dependence« are the expressions for an »external«, forced, apparent identity, of which Hegel rightly uses »external necessity« as the logical expression. In »subordination« and »dependence« Hegel has developed further the one side of the two-sided identity, namely the side of estrangement within the unity,

»but on the other hand it is their immanent end and has its strength in the unity of its universal final end and the particular interest of individuals, in that they have duties toward it just insofar as they likewise have rights«.

Hegel here sets up an unresolved antinomy. On the one hand external necessity, on the other immanent end. The unity of the universal final end of the state and the particular interest of individuals is supposed to consist in this: that their duties toward the state and their rights against it are identical (so that, for example, the duty to respect property would coincide with the right to property).

This identity is explicated in the Remark [to § 261] as follows:

»Since duty is, in the first place, conduct toward something that is for me substantial, universal in and for itself, while right, on the other hand, is the existence in general of this substantial element, and hence is the side of its particularity and of my particular freedom, both appear, at the formal stages, distributed to different sides or persons. The state, as ethical, as the interpenetration of the substantial and the particular, contains this: that my obligation toward the substantial is at the same time the existence of my particular freedom, i.e. that in it duty and right are united in one and the same relation.«