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2 responses to “262”

1. 

   Eduard Gans (Additions)

   29. May 1833

   In the Platonic state, subjective freedom still counts for nothing, since it is still the authorities who assign individuals their occupations. In many oriental states this assignment takes place by birth. Subjective freedom, however, which must be taken into account, demands the free choice of individuals.

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2. 

   Karl Marx

   4. March 1843

   Let us translate this sentence into prose, and it follows:

   The manner in which the state is mediated with the family and civil society is »circumstance, arbitrariness, and the individual’s own choice of vocation«. The reason of the state, then, has nothing to do with the division of the material of the state among family and civil society. The state arises out of them in an unconscious and arbitrary manner. Family and civil society appear as the dark natural ground from which the light of the state kindles itself. By the material of the state is understood the affairs of the state, family, and civil society, insofar as they form parts of the state, take part in the state as such.

   This development is remarkable in a twofold respect.

   1. Family and civil society are grasped as conceptual spheres of the state, indeed as the spheres of its finitude, as its finitude. It is the state that divides itself into them, that presupposes them, and it does this »in order, out of their ideality, to be for itself infinite actual spirit«. »It divides itself, in order to.« It »thus allots to these spheres the material of its actuality, so that this allotment etc. appears mediated«. The so-called »actual idea« (spirit as infinite, actual) is presented as though it acted according to a determinate principle and to a determinate intention. It divides itself into finite spheres, it does this »in order to return into itself, to be for itself«, and it does this, indeed, in such a way that it is just as it actually is.

   At this point the logical, pantheistic mysticism appears very clearly.

   The actual relation is: »that the allotment of the material of the state to the individual is mediated through circumstance, arbitrariness, and his own choice of vocation«. This fact, this actual relation, is expressed by speculation as appearance, as phenomenon. This circumstance, this arbitrariness, this choice of vocation, this actual mediation, are merely the appearance of a mediation which the actual idea undertakes with itself and which proceeds behind the curtain. Actuality is expressed not as itself, but as another actuality. Ordinary empirical existence does not have its own spirit for its law, but a foreign one, whereas the actual idea has for its existence not an actuality developed out of itself, but ordinary empirical existence.

   The idea is subjectivized, and the actual relation of family and civil society to the state is grasped as their inner, imaginary activity. Family and civil society are the presuppositions of the state; they are what is properly active; but in speculation this is inverted. But if the idea is subjectivized, then here the actual subjects — civil society, family, »circumstance, arbitrariness« etc. — become unreal, objective moments of the idea meaning something else.

   The allotment of the material of the state »to the individual through circumstance, arbitrariness, and his own choice of vocation« is not expressed as the true, the necessary, the in-and-for-itself justified as such; it is not passed off as such for the rational; but on the other hand it is, after all, passed off as such once more, only in such a way that it is presented as an apparent mediation, that it is left as it is, while at the same time receiving the significance of a determination of the idea, of a result, a product of the idea. The difference lies not in the content but in the manner of viewing, or in the manner of speaking. It is a twofold story, an esoteric and an exoteric one. The content lies in the exoteric part. The interest of the esoteric part is always to rediscover, in the state, the story of the logical concept. But it is on the exoteric side that the actual development takes place.

   Rendered rationally, Hegel’s propositions would say only:

   The family and civil society are parts of the state. The material of the state is distributed among them »through circumstance, arbitrariness, and the individual’s own choice of vocation«. The citizens of the state are members of families and members of civil society.

   »The actual idea, spirit, which divides itself into the two ideal spheres of its concept, the family and civil society, as into its finitude« — thus the division of the state into family and civil society is ideal, i.e. necessary, belongs to the essence of the state; family and civil society are actual parts of the state, actual spiritual existences of the will, they are modes of existence of the state; family and civil society make themselves into the state. They are what drives it forward. According to Hegel, by contrast, they are done unto by the actual idea; it is not their own course of life that unites them into the state, but rather the course of life of the idea, which has discerned them out of itself; and indeed they are the finitude of this idea; they owe their existence to a spirit other than their own; they are determinations posited by a third party, not self-determinations; that is why they are also determined as »finitude«, as the peculiar finitude of the »actual idea«. The purpose of their existence is not this existence itself, but rather the idea separates these presuppositions from itself »in order, out of their ideality, to be for itself infinite actual spirit«, i.e. the political state cannot exist without the natural basis of the family and the artificial basis of civil society; they are for it a conditio sine qua non; but the condition is posited as the conditioned, the determining as the determined, the producing as the product of its own product; the actual idea only lowers itself into the »finitude« of the family and of civil society in order, through their sublation, to enjoy and to bring forth its infinity. It thus »allots« (in order to attain its end) »to these spheres the material of this its finite actuality« (this? which? these spheres are indeed its »finite actuality«, its »material«) »the individuals as the mass« (the material of the state is here »the individuals, the mass«, »the state consists of them«; this its subsisting is here expressed as an act of the idea, as an »allotment« which it undertakes with its own material; the fact is that the state arises out of the mass, as it exists in the form of members of families and members of civil society; speculation expresses this fact as an act of the idea — not as the idea of the mass, but as the act of a subjective idea distinguished from the fact itself) — »so that this allotment to the individual« (earlier only the allotment of individuals to the spheres of family and civil society was spoken of) »appears mediated through circumstance, arbitrariness, etc.«. Empirical actuality is thus taken up as it is; it is also expressed as rational, but it is not rational on account of its own reason, but because the empirical fact, in its empirical existence, has a meaning other than itself. The fact from which one proceeds is grasped not as such but as a mystical result. What is actual becomes phenomenon, but the idea has no other content than this phenomenon. Nor does the idea have any other end than the logical one: »to be for itself infinite actual spirit«. In this paragraph the whole mystery of the philosophy of right is laid down, and of the Hegelian philosophy in general.

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