The powers of the state do not stand on their own. They also do not belong to any individual. Their final root is the unity of the state. We call this sovereignty.

A look at the Middle Ages:

In the feudal monarchy, the state was sovereign outwardly, but not inwardly. Independent corporations and communities held its tasks. Or the tasks were the private property of individuals. The whole was more a heap than an organism.

A comparison:

In a living body there are no mere parts, only members. When a member cuts itself off and exists for itself, that is disease.

No despotism:

People often confuse sovereignty with mere power and arbitrary will. But despotism is lawlessness. There the particular will counts as law, whether it is the will of a monarch or of the people. Sovereignty exists precisely in the lawful condition. It means: No area is independent. Each serves the whole.

Peace and emergency:

In peace, each area pursues its own purposes. The government leads them back to the whole. But in an emergency, inside or from outside, everything draws together in sovereignty. Then the rescue of the state rests in its hands. The rescue may even cost rights that hold at other times.

Summary: Sovereignty means: All powers have their root in the unity of the state. It is not arbitrary will. It belongs to the lawful condition. In an emergency it carries the rescue of the whole.

Sovereignty, the idealism of the state, therefore exists only as inner necessity: as idea. With this, too, Hegel is content, for it is only a matter of the idea. Sovereignty thus exists, on the one hand, only as unconscious, blind substance. We shall presently come to know its other actuality.