Comments on: 274

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:59:39 +0000

§ 274: Every People Has Its Constitution

A state is the spirit of a people. It lives in the people’s laws, customs and consciousness. So the constitution depends on how far the people’s education and culture have come. Only in this way is it more than a thought on paper.

An example:

Napoleon wanted to give the Spanish a ready-made constitution. It was more rational than their old order. Still, the Spanish rejected it as foreign. They were not yet ready.

What follows from this?

A constitution is not simply a thing that someone made. It is the work of centuries. The people must feel it as their right. Otherwise it exists only on paper. Individuals may wish for a better constitution. But it takes time before a whole people is full of this wish.

So every people has the constitution that suits it and belongs to it.

Summary: The constitution depends on the consciousness and the culture of a people. No one can force it on a people from outside. Every people has the constitution that fits it.

By: Karl Marx

Karl Marx — Sun, 16 Apr 1843 01:13:04 +0000

From Hegel’s reasoning it follows only that the state in which the »mode and formation of self-consciousness« and the »constitution« contradict one another is no true state. That a constitution which was the product of a past consciousness can become an oppressive fetter for one more advanced, etc. etc., is surely a truism. What would follow from this, rather, is only the demand for a constitution which has within itself the determination and the principle of advancing together with consciousness; of advancing together with the actual human being — which first becomes possible once »man« has become the principle of the constitution. Hegel a sophist here.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 14:16:14 +0000

The state must pervade all relations within its constitution. Napoleon, for example, wanted to give the Spaniards a constitution a priori, but this went badly enough. For a constitution is not something merely made: it is the work of centuries, the idea and the consciousness of the rational, to the extent that this has been developed within a people. No constitution is therefore created merely by subjects. What Napoleon gave the Spaniards was more rational than what they had had before, and yet they rejected it as something foreign to them, since they were not yet educated up to that level. A people must have, toward its constitution, the feeling of its right and of its condition, otherwise the constitution may indeed be externally present, but it has no meaning and no value. It is true that in individuals there can often be found the need and the longing for a better constitution, but that the whole mass should be pervaded by such a representation is something quite different and follows only later. The principle of morality, of the inwardness of Socrates, was necessarily generated in his own days, but it took time before it became universal self-consciousness.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1830)

Hegel (Encyclopedia 1830) — Sat, 18 Sep 1830 23:06:32 +0000

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1830), § 538:

§ 538. The laws express the content-determinations of objective freedom. First: for the immediate subject, whose self-sufficient arbitrary will and particular interest they are limits. But they are, secondly, absolute final end and the universal work; thus they are brought forth through the functions of the various estates that further individuate themselves out of the universal particularization, and through all the activity and private concern of individuals; and thirdly, they are the substance of their willing, free therein, and of their disposition, and are thus presented as prevailing custom.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1827)

Hegel (Encyclopedia 1827) — Thu, 24 May 1827 23:06:32 +0000

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1827), § 538:

§ 538. The laws express the content-determinations of objective freedom. First, as immediate, they are limits on the immediate subject, on self-sufficient arbitrary will and particular interest. But the laws are, secondly, absolute final end and the universal work, and thus they are brought forth through the functions of the various estates that further individuate themselves out of their universal particularization, and through all the activity and private concern of individuals; and inasmuch as they are the substance of their willing and their disposition, they are presented as prevailing custom.

By: Hegel (Natural Right Essay 1803)

Hegel (Natural Right Essay 1803) — Sat, 15 Jan 1803 11:06:32 +0000

Hegel, On the Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Right (Critical Journal of Philosophy, vol. 2, part 3, 1803), p. 470:

It must also present itself in the form of universality and of cognition, as a system of legislation; such that this system perfectly expresses the reality, or the living, present customs; so that it does not happen, as is often the case, that what is right and is in actuality in a people cannot be recognized from its laws — which incapacity to bring true customs into the form of laws, and this anxiety about thinking these customs, about regarding and acknowledging them as one's own, is the mark of barbarism.