Comments on: 267

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:58:42 +0000

§ 267: Disposition and Constitution

The necessity of the state has two sides.

The subjective side is the political disposition. It lives inside the citizens.

The objective side is the structure of the state. This is the properly political state and its constitution.

How should we understand this?

The state divides itself within itself. It sets up differences, and through them it runs its cycle. Like a living body made of organs. The next sections deal with this.

Summary: The state lives subjectively in the disposition of its citizens and objectively in its constitution. Both belong together.

By: Karl Marx

Karl Marx — Wed, 22 Mar 1843 09:59:13 +0000

Here the subject is »necessity in ideality«, the »idea within itself«, and the predicate is political sentiment and the political constitution. Put in plain terms: political sentiment is the subjective, the political constitution the objective substance of the state. The logical development from family and civil society to the state is thus pure semblance, for it is nowhere developed how family sentiment, civil sentiment, the institution of the family and the social institutions as such relate to and are connected with political sentiment and the political constitution.

The transition whereby spirit is »not only as this necessity and as a realm of appearance«, but as »the ideality of the same«, as the soul of this realm actual for itself and possessing a particular existence, is no transition at all, for the soul of the family exists for itself as love etc. But the pure ideality of an actual sphere could only exist as science.

What matters is that Hegel everywhere makes the idea the subject, and the real, actual subject, such as »political sentiment«, the predicate. Yet the development always proceeds on the side of the predicate.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 14:12:11 +0000

The unity of freedom willing and knowing itself is at first present as necessity. The substantial is here now present as the subjective existence of individuals; but the other mode of necessity is the organism, that is, spirit is a process within itself, articulates itself within itself, posits differences within itself, through which it completes its circulation.