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279

2. Sovereignty — at first merely the universal thought of this ideality — exists only as the self-certain subjectivity, and as the abstract, and to that extent groundless, self-determination of the will, in which the ultimate moment of decision resides. This is the individuality of the state as such, which is itself thereby only one. But subjectivity, in its truth, exists only as subject, and personality only as person; and in a constitution matured to real rationality, each of the three moments of the concept has its own distinct configuration, actual for itself. This absolutely decisive moment of the whole is therefore not individuality in general, but an individual, the monarch.

The immanent development of a science — the derivation of its entire content from the simple concept (for otherwise a science does not even deserve the name of a philosophical science) — displays the peculiarity that one and the same concept, here the will, which at the beginning is abstract because it is the beginning, preserves itself, while its determinations condense — likewise solely through itself — and in this way it acquires a concrete content. Thus it is the basic moment of personality, at first abstract in immediate right, which has developed itself through its various forms of subjectivity, and which here, in absolute right, the state — the fully concrete objectivity of the will — is the personality of the state, its certainty of itself: this ultimate moment, which supersedes all particularities within the simple self, cuts short the weighing of reasons and counter-reasons between which one can forever vacillate back and forth, and by the words “I will” resolves them and initiates all action and actuality. — Personality and subjectivity in general, however, further, as an infinite relating of itself to itself, has strictly only truth — and indeed its nearest, immediate truth as a person, a subject existing for itself; and that which exists for itself is likewise strictly one. The personality of the state is actual only as one person, the monarch. — Personality expresses the concept as such, while the person also contains the actuality of the concept, and the concept, only with this determination, is Idea, truth. — A so-called moral person — a society, a community, a family — however concrete it may be in itself, has personality only as a moment, abstract within it; it has not thereby attained the truth of its existence. The state, however, is precisely this totality in which the moments of the concept attain actuality according to their distinctive truth. — All these determinations have already been discussed for themselves and in their configurations throughout the whole course of this treatise, but they have been repeated here because, while one readily grants them in their particular configurations, one fails to recognize and grasp them precisely where they occur in their true position — not in isolation, but according to their truth, as moments of the Idea. — The concept of the monarch is therefore the most difficult concept for ratiocination, i.e. for the reflective consideration of the understanding, because the understanding remains fixed in isolated determinations and hence knows only reasons, finite points of view, and derivation from reasons. It thus represents the dignity of the monarch as something derived, not only in form but also in its very determination; whereas his concept is, on the contrary, not something derived, but rather that which absolutely begins from itself. The conception that comes closest to the truth here is therefore that which regards the right of the monarch as grounded in divine authority, for this contains the unconditioned character of that right. But it is well known what misunderstandings have attached themselves to this notion, and the task of philosophical consideration is precisely to comprehend this divine element.

Popular sovereignty can be spoken of in the sense that a people is in general something self-sufficient externally and constitutes its own state, as does the people of Great Britain; but the people of England or Scotland, Ireland, or of Venice, Genoa, Ceylon, etc., are no longer sovereign peoples, since they have ceased to have their own princes or supreme governments. — One may likewise say of internal sovereignty that it resides in the people, provided one is speaking of the whole in general — just as it was shown earlier (§ 277, 278) that sovereignty belongs to the state. But popular sovereignty, taken in opposition to the sovereignty existing in the monarch, is the usual sense in which people have, in more recent times, begun to speak of popular sovereignty; and in this opposition, popular sovereignty belongs among those confused notions grounded in the wild conception of the people. The people, taken without its monarch and the articulation of the whole that is necessarily and directly bound up with this, is the formless mass which is no longer a state, and to which none of the determinations pertain that are present only in a whole formed within itself — sovereignty, government, courts of law, magistracy, estates, and the like. Once such moments, which relate to an organization, to the life of the state, emerge within a people, it ceases to be this indeterminate abstraction which, in a merely general conception, is called the people. — If by popular sovereignty is understood the form of the republic, and more specifically of democracy (for by republic one comprehends various other empirical admixtures which, in any case, do not belong in a philosophical consideration), then what is necessary has in part already been said above (in the Remark to § 273), and in part such a conception can no longer be spoken of in relation to the Idea as developed here. — In a people that is conceived neither as a patriarchal tribe, nor in the undeveloped condition in which the forms of democracy or aristocracy are possible (see the Remark to the same paragraph), nor in any other arbitrary and unorganized condition, but is thought of as a totality developed within itself, truly organic, sovereignty exists as the personality of the whole, and this, in the actuality corresponding to its concept, as the person of the monarch.

At the stage previously noted, at which the division of constitutions into democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy was made — the standpoint of a substantial unity still remaining within itself, which has not yet arrived at its infinite internal differentiation and deepening — the moment of the ultimate, self-determining decision of the will does not emerge for itself as an immanent organic moment of the state in its distinctive actuality. It is true that, even in those less developed configurations of the state, an individual apex must always be present — either, as in the monarchies belonging to that stage, existing for itself, or, as in aristocracies, and above all in democracies, arising among statesmen and generals according to the contingency and particular need of the circumstances; for all action and actuality has its beginning and its accomplishment in the resolved unity of a leader. But, enclosed within the still solid union of the powers, such subjectivity of decision must be, in part, contingent in its origin and emergence, and in part subordinate altogether; hence the unmixed, pure act of decision — a fate determining from without — could lie nowhere else than beyond such conditioned apexes. As a moment of the Idea, it had to enter into existence, but rooted outside human freedom and the sphere that the state encompasses. — Herein lies the origin of the need to seek, from oracles, the daimon (in the case of Socrates), from the entrails of animals, from the devouring and flight of birds, and so forth, the ultimate decision on great affairs and on the important moments of the state — a decision which human beings, not yet having grasped the depth of self-consciousness and not yet having advanced from the solidity of substantial unity to this being-for-itself, did not yet have the strength to see as lying within human being itself. — In the daimon of Socrates (cf. above, § 138) we can see the beginning of the will, previously transposing itself only beyond itself, coming to locate itself within itself and to recognize itself there — the beginning of a self-knowing, and thus truthful, freedom. It is this real freedom of the Idea — since it consists precisely in giving to each of the moments of rationality its own present, self-conscious actuality — which thus assigns to the function of a consciousness the ultimate self-determining certainty that constitutes the apex in the concept of the will. But this ultimate self-determination can fall within the sphere of human freedom only insofar as it holds the position of an apex set apart for itself, exalted above all particularity and condition; for only in this way is it actual in accordance with its concept.

DE

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2 responses to “279”

  1. Eduard Gans (Additions) Avatar
    Eduard Gans (Additions)

    In the organization of the state — here, that is, in constitutional monarchy — one must have nothing before one but the necessity of the idea in itself: all other points of view must disappear. The state must be regarded as a great architectonic edifice, as a hieroglyph of reason presenting itself in actuality. Everything, then, that relates merely to utility, externality, and the like is to be excluded from philosophical treatment. That the state is the self-determining and perfectly sovereign will, the ultimate self-decision, is easily grasped by representational thought. The more difficult thing is that this “I will” should be grasped as a person. This is not meant to say that the monarch may act arbitrarily: on the contrary, he is bound to the concrete content of the deliberations, and when the constitution is firmly established, he often has nothing more to do than sign his name. But this name is important: it is the summit beyond which one cannot go. One might say that an organic articulation was already present in the beautiful democracy of Athens, but we see at once that the Greeks derived their ultimate decision from wholly external appearances — from oracles, from the entrails of sacrificial animals, from the flight of birds — and that they related to nature as to a power that there proclaims and pronounces what is good for human beings. Self-consciousness in this age had not yet arrived at the abstraction of subjectivity, not yet at the point where an “I will,” concerning what is to be decided, must be pronounced by the human being himself. This “I will” constitutes the great difference between the ancient and the modern world, and so it must have its own peculiar existence within the great edifice of the state. Unfortunately, however, this determination is regarded merely as an external and arbitrary one.

  2. Karl Marx Avatar
    Karl Marx

    »Sovereignty — at first only the general thought of this ideality — exists only as subjectivity certain of itself, and as the abstract, and in that sense groundless, self-determination of the will in which the ultimate moment of decision resides. This is the individual moment of the state as such, which in this respect is itself only One. But subjectivity, in its truth, exists only as a subject, and personality only as a person; and in a constitution that has matured to real rationality, each of the three moments of the concept has its own actual, distinctly separated shape. This absolutely decisive moment of the whole is therefore not individuality in general, but One individual: the monarch.«

    1. »Sovereignty — at first only the general thought of this ideality — exists only as subjectivity certain of itself […]. Subjectivity, in its truth, exists only as a subject, personality only as a person. In a constitution that has matured to real rationality, each of the three moments of the concept […] has its own actual, distinctly separated shape.«

    2. Sovereignty »exists only […] as the abstract, and in that sense groundless, self-determination of the will in which the ultimate moment of decision resides. This is the individual moment of the state as such, which in this respect is itself only One […] (and in a constitution that has matured to real rationality, each of the three moments of the concept has its own actual, distinctly separated shape). This absolutely decisive moment of the whole is therefore not individuality in general, but One individual: the monarch.«

    The first sentence means nothing other than that the general thought of this ideality, whose sorry existence we have just seen, would have to be the self-conscious work of subjects and, as such, would have to exist for them and within them.

    Had Hegel started out from the actual subjects as the bases of the state, he would not have needed to let the state subjectify itself in a mystical manner. »But subjectivity,« Hegel says, »in its truth, exists only as a subject, personality only as a person.« This too is a mystification. Subjectivity is a determination of the subject, personality a determination of the person. Instead of grasping them as predicates of their subjects, Hegel makes the predicates independent and then, in a mystical manner, has them subsequently transform themselves into their subjects.

    The existence of the predicates is the subject: hence the subject is the existence of subjectivity, etc. Hegel makes the predicates, the objects, independent, but he makes them independent apart from their real independence, from their subject. Afterward the real subject then appears as a result, whereas one ought to start from the real subject and consider its objectification. Thus the mystical substance becomes the real subject, and the real subject appears as something else, as a moment of the mystical substance. Precisely because Hegel starts out from the predicates of the general determination instead of from the real ens (hypokeimenon, subject) — and yet there must be a bearer of this determination — the mystical Idea becomes this bearer. This is the dualism: that Hegel does not regard the universal as the real essence of the really finite, i.e., of the existing, the determinate, or the real ens as the true subject of the infinite.

    Thus sovereignty, the essence of the state, is here first regarded as an independent essence, made into an object. Then, of course, this objective thing must in turn become subject. But this subject then appears as a self-embodiment of sovereignty, whereas sovereignty is nothing other than the objectified spirit of the subjects of the state.

    Apart from this fundamental defect of the development, let us consider this first sentence of the paragraph. As it stands, it means nothing but this: sovereignty, the idealism of the state as person, as »subject,« exists, of course, as many persons, many subjects, since no single person absorbs into itself the sphere of personality, no single subject the sphere of subjectivity. What kind of idealism of the state would it be, after all, that was one person, one subject, instead of being the real self-consciousness of the citizens, the common soul of the state? Hegel has developed nothing more than this in this sentence. But let us now consider the second sentence, interwoven with this one. Hegel’s concern here is to present the monarch as the real »God-man,« as the real embodiment of the Idea.

    »Sovereignty … exists only … as the abstract, and in that sense groundless, self-determination of the will in which the ultimate moment of decision resides. This is the individual moment of the state as such, which in this respect is itself only One … in a constitution that has matured to real rationality, each of the three moments of the concept has its own actual, distinctly separated shape. This absolutely decisive moment of the whole is therefore not individuality in general, but One individual: the monarch.«

    We have already drawn attention to this sentence above. The moment of deciding, of the arbitrary decision — arbitrary because it is a determinate decision — is the princely power of the will as such. The idea of the princely power, as Hegel develops it, is nothing other than the idea of the arbitrary, of the decision of the will.

    But whereas Hegel had just conceived sovereignty as the idealism of the state, as the real determination of the parts through the idea of the whole, he now turns it into »the abstract, and in that sense groundless, self-determination of the will in which the ultimate moment of decision resides. This is the individual moment of the state as such.« A moment ago the discussion was of subjectivity; now it is of individuality. The state, as sovereign, must be One, must be One individual, must possess individuality. The state is »not only,« then, One in this individuality; individuality is only the natural moment of its unity, the natural determination of the state. »This absolutely decisive moment is therefore not individuality in general, but One individual: the monarch.« Whence? Because »each of the three moments of the concept, in a constitution that has matured to real rationality, has its own actual, distinctly separated shape.« One moment of the concept is »singularity« — but this alone is not yet One individual. And what kind of constitution would this even be, in which universality, particularity, singularity each had »its own actual, distinctly separated shape«? Since what is at issue here is not some abstraction at all, but the state, society, one may even accept Hegel’s classification. What would follow from it? The citizen of the state, determining as the universal, is legislator; deciding as the singular, as really willing, is prince. What should it mean, then, that the individuality of the will of the state is »an individual,« a particular individual distinguished from all others? Universality, too — legislation — has »its own actual, distinctly separated shape.« Could one not therefore conclude: »Legislation is these particular individuals«?

    The common man says: 2. The monarch holds the sovereign power, sovereignty. Hegel says: 2. The sovereignty of the state is the monarch.

    The common man says: 3. Sovereignty does what it wants. Hegel says: 3. Sovereignty is »the abstract, and in that sense groundless, self-determination of the will in which the ultimate moment of decision resides.«

    Hegel turns all the attributes of the constitutional monarch of present-day Europe into absolute self-determinations of the will. He does not say: the will of the monarch is the ultimate decision, but rather: the ultimate decision of the will is the monarch. The first sentence is empirical. The second twists the empirical fact into a metaphysical axiom.

    Hegel entangles the two subjects — sovereignty »as subjectivity certain of itself« and sovereignty »as the groundless self-determination of the will, as the individual will« — with one another, in order to construct »the Idea« as »One individual.«

    It goes without saying that self-certain subjectivity must also really will, must also will as a unity, as an individual. But who has ever doubted that the state acts through individuals? Had Hegel wished to develop the point that the state must have an individual as the representative of its individual unity, he would not thereby have derived the monarch. As the positive result of this paragraph we retain only this: in the state, the monarch is the moment of individual will, of groundless self-determination, of arbitrariness.

    Hegel’s remark on this paragraph is so remarkable that we must examine it more closely.

    »The immanent development of a science, the derivation of its whole content from the simple concept … exhibits the peculiarity that one and the same concept — here the will, which at the beginning, because it is the beginning, is abstract — preserves itself, but at the same time, purely through itself, condenses its own determinations and in this way gains a concrete content. Thus it is the fundamental moment of personality — abstract at first in immediate right — which has developed itself further through its various forms of subjectivity, and which here, in absolute right, the state, the wholly concrete objectivity of the will, is the personality of the state, its certainty of itself — this ultimate moment which sublates all particularities within the simple self, cuts short the weighing of reasons and counter-reasons between which one may forever waver back and forth, and, through the ›I will,‹ decides, and with which all action and actuality begins.«

    In the first place, it is not a »peculiarity of science« that the fundamental concept of the matter always recurs.

    Nor, in the second place, has any advance taken place. Abstract personality was the subject of abstract right; it has not changed; it is again, as abstract personality, the personality of the state. Hegel ought not to have been surprised that the real person — and it is persons who make up the state — recurs everywhere as its essence. He ought rather to have been surprised at the opposite, and still more at the fact that the person, as person of the state, recurs in the very same meager abstraction as the person of private right.

    Here Hegel defines the monarch as »the personality of the state, its certainty of itself.« The monarch is »personified sovereignty,« »sovereignty become man,« the bodily consciousness of the state — whereby all others are thereby excluded from this sovereignty, from personality, and from the consciousness of the state. At the same time, however, Hegel knows how to give this »souveraineté personne« no other content than the »I will,« the moment of arbitrariness within the will. The »reason of state« and the »consciousness of the state« are a »single« empirical person to the exclusion of all others; but this personified reason has no content other than the abstraction of the »I will.« L’État c’est moi.

    »Personality and subjectivity in general, however, as an infinite self-relation, have truth absolutely only in this way, namely, their proximate, immediate truth as a person, a subject being for itself — and that which is for itself is likewise absolutely a One.«

    It goes without saying that, since personality and subjectivity are only predicates of the person and the subject, they exist only as person and subject, and the person is indeed a One. But, Hegel ought to have continued, the One has truth absolutely only as many Ones. The predicate, the essence, never exhausts the spheres of its existence in one One, but in the many Ones.

    Instead, Hegel concludes: »The personality of the state is actual only as one person, the monarch.« So because subjectivity exists only as a subject, and the subject only as a One, the personality of the state is actual only as one person. A fine conclusion. Hegel might just as well conclude: because the individual human being is a One, the human species is only a single human being.

    »Personality expresses the concept as such, while the person at the same time contains the actuality of the concept, and the concept is Idea, truth, only with this determination.«

    Personality, to be sure, is only an abstraction without the person; but the person is only the real Idea of personality in its generic existence, as the persons.

    »A so-called moral person — a society, a community, a family, however concrete it is in itself — has personality only as a moment, abstractly within it; it has not thereby come to the truth of its existence, whereas the state is precisely this totality in which the moments of the concept attain actuality according to their peculiar truth.«

    There reigns a great confusion in this sentence. The moral person, society, etc., is called abstract — yet these are precisely the generic configurations in which the real person brings its real content into existence, objectifies itself, and abandons the abstraction of the »person quand même.« Instead of recognizing this realization of the person as the most concrete thing, the state is supposed to have the distinction that »the moment of the concept,« »singularity,« attains a mystical »existence.« The rational does not consist in the reason of the real person, but in the fact that the moments of the abstract concept attain actuality.

    »The concept of the monarch is therefore the most difficult concept for ratiocination, that is, for reflective understanding, because such understanding remains fixed in isolated determinations and therefore knows only reasons, finite points of view, and derivation from reasons. It thus represents the dignity of the monarch as something derived — not merely in form, but in its determination; whereas, on the contrary, his concept is not something derived, but rather something absolutely self-originating. Closest to this« (indeed!) »therefore comes the conception which regards the right of the monarch as grounded in divine authority, for therein is contained its unconditioned character.«

    »Absolutely self-originating« is, in a certain sense, true of every necessary existence; in this respect, the louse is as much self-originating as the monarch. Hegel has thus said nothing particular about the monarch. But if something specifically different from all other objects of science and of the philosophy of right is supposed to hold of the monarch, that is a real folly — correct only insofar as the »idea of one person« is indeed something derivable only from the imagination and not from the understanding.

    »Popular sovereignty can be spoken of in the sense that a people is in general something independent externally and constitutes a state of its own,« etc.

    This is a triviality. If the prince is the »real sovereignty of the state,« then externally, too, »the prince« would have to be able to count as an »independent state,« even without the people. But is he sovereign? Insofar as he represents the unity of the people, he is himself only a representative, a symbol of popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty exists not through him; rather, conversely, he exists through it.

    »In this way one can also say of sovereignty internally that it resides in the people — provided one speaks only of the whole in general, exactly as was shown above (§§ 277, 278) that sovereignty belongs to the state.«

    As though the people were not the real state! The state is an abstraction. The people alone is the concrete thing. And it is remarkable that Hegel, who without hesitation ascribes a living quality such as sovereignty to the abstraction, does so only hesitantly and with qualifications in the case of the concrete thing.

    »But popular sovereignty, taken in opposition to the sovereignty existing in the monarch, is the ordinary sense in which people have in recent times begun to speak of popular sovereignty — and in this opposition, popular sovereignty belongs among the confused thoughts that rest on a wild conception of the people.«

    The »confused thoughts« and the »wild conception« are found here entirely on Hegel’s side. To be sure: if sovereignty exists in the monarch, then it is folly to speak of an opposing sovereignty in the people; for it lies in the concept of sovereignty that it cannot have a double, and indeed opposed, existence. But: (1) the very question is precisely this — is the sovereignty absorbed in the monarch not an illusion? Sovereignty of the monarch or of the people — that is the question. (2) One can indeed also speak of a sovereignty of the people in opposition to the sovereignty existing in the monarch. But then what is at issue is not one and the same sovereignty arising on two sides, but rather two wholly opposed concepts of sovereignty, of which the one is such that it can come into existence only in a monarch, the other such that it can come into existence only in a people. It is just as when one asks: is God the sovereign, or is man the sovereign? One or the other is an untruth — even if it is an existing untruth.

    »The people, taken without its monarch and the articulation of the whole that is necessarily and immediately bound up with this, is the formless mass which is no longer a state and to which none of the determinations belong that are present only in the whole formed within itself — sovereignty, government, courts, authorities, estates, and whatever else there may be. As soon as such moments, relating to an organization, to the life of the state, emerge in a people, it ceases to be this indeterminate abstraction which, in the merely general conception, is called ›the people.‹«

    This whole passage is a tautology. If a people has a monarch and an articulation necessarily and immediately bound up with him — that is, if it is articulated as a monarchy — then indeed, taken out of this articulation, it is a formless mass and a merely general conception.

    »If by popular sovereignty is understood the form of the republic, and more specifically that of democracy […], then […] such a conception can no longer come into question as against the developed Idea.«

    That is indeed correct — if one has only »such a conception« and no »developed Idea« of democracy at all.

    Democracy is the truth of monarchy; monarchy is not the truth of democracy. Monarchy is necessarily democracy in inconsistency with itself; the monarchical moment is no inconsistency within democracy. Monarchy cannot be comprehended out of itself; democracy can. In democracy none of the moments attains a significance other than what properly belongs to it; each is really only a moment of the whole demos. In monarchy one part determines the character of the whole. The entire constitution has to modify itself around this fixed point. Democracy is the genus of constitution. Monarchy is a species — and indeed a bad species. Democracy is content and form; monarchy is supposed to be only form, but it falsifies the content.

    In monarchy the whole, the people, is subsumed under one of its modes of existence, the political constitution; in democracy the constitution itself appears only as one determination, and indeed as a self-determination, of the people. In monarchy we have the people of the constitution; in democracy, the constitution of the people. Democracy is the solved riddle of all constitutions. Here the constitution is constantly brought back — not merely in itself, according to its essence, but according to its existence, its actuality — to its real ground, the real human being, the real people, and posited as this people’s own work. The constitution appears as what it is: a free product of man. One might say that this holds, in a certain respect, of constitutional monarchy as well; but the specific difference of democracy is that here the constitution is always only one moment of existence of the people — that it is not the political constitution by itself that constitutes the state.

    Hegel starts out from the state and turns man into the state made subjective; democracy starts out from man and turns the state into man made objective. Just as it is not religion that creates man, but man who creates religion, so it is not the constitution that creates the people, but the people that creates the constitution. In a certain respect, democracy relates to all other forms of the state as Christianity relates to all other religions. Christianity is the religion kat’ exochên — the essence of religion, deified man, as a particular religion.

    So democracy is the essence of every constitution of the state, socialized man, as a particular constitution of the state; it relates to the other constitutions as the genus relates to its species — except that here the genus itself, as existence, appears, in contrast to the existences that do not correspond to the essence, as itself a particular species. Democracy relates to all other forms of the state as their Old Testament. Man does not exist for the sake of the law; rather, the law exists for the sake of man — it is human existence, whereas in the others man is legal existence. That is the fundamental difference of democracy.

    All other constitutions of the state are a certain, determinate, particular form of the state. In democracy the formal principle is at the same time the material principle. It is therefore the true unity of the universal and the particular. In monarchy, for example, and in the republic as merely a particular form of the state, the political human being has his particular existence alongside the unpolitical, the private human being. Property, contract, marriage, civil society appear here (as Hegel quite correctly develops for these abstract forms of the state — only that he believes he is developing the Idea of the state) as particular modes of existence alongside the political state, as the content to which the political state relates as the organizing form — really only as the determining, restricting understanding, now affirming, now denying, in itself devoid of content.

    In democracy the political state, insofar as it sets itself alongside this content and distinguishes itself from it, is itself only a particular content, only a particular form of existence of the people. In monarchy, for example, this particular thing, the political constitution, has the significance of the universal that dominates and determines everything particular. In democracy, the state, as particular, is only particular, and as universal it is the real universal — that is, it is not a determinateness in distinction from the other content. The more recent French writers have grasped this by holding that, in true democracy, the political state perishes. This is correct insofar as, qua political state, as constitution, it no longer counts for the whole.

    In all states distinct from democracy, the state, the law, the constitution is the ruling element, without really ruling — that is, without materially penetrating the content of the other, non-political spheres. In democracy, the constitution, the law, the state itself is only a self-determination of the people, and a determinate content of the people, insofar as it is a political constitution.

    It goes without saying, moreover, that all forms of the state have democracy as their truth, and are therefore untrue precisely insofar as they are not democracy.

    In the ancient states the political state constitutes the content of the state to the exclusion of the other spheres; the modern state is an accommodation between the political and the unpolitical state.

    In democracy the abstract state has ceased to be the ruling moment. The dispute between monarchy and republic is itself still a dispute within the abstract state. The political republic is democracy within the abstract form of the state. The abstract form of the state proper to democracy is therefore the republic; but here it ceases to be merely a political constitution.

    Property, etc. — in short, the entire content of law and the state — is, with few modifications, the same in North America as in Prussia. There, then, the republic is a mere form of the state, just as the monarchy is here. The content of the state lies outside these constitutions. Hegel is therefore right when he says: the political state is the constitution, i.e., the material state is not political. Only an external identity, a reciprocal determination, obtains here.

    Of the various moments of the life of the people, it was the political state, the constitution, that was hardest to bring forth. It developed itself as the universal reason confronting the other spheres, as something beyond them. The historical task then consisted in its reappropriation; but in this the particular spheres do not have the consciousness that their private essence falls together with the beyond-essence of the constitution or of the political state, and that its existence as something beyond them is nothing other than the affirmation of their own estrangement.

    Up to now the political constitution has been the religious sphere, the religion of the life of the people, the heaven of its universality set over against the earthly existence of its actuality. The political sphere was the sole sphere of the state within the state, the sole sphere in which content as well as form was generic content, the truly universal — but at the same time in such a way that, because this sphere stood opposed to the others, its content, too, became something formal and particular. Political life, in the modern sense, is the scholasticism of the life of the people. Monarchy is the completed expression of this estrangement; the republic is its negation within its own sphere. It goes without saying that the political constitution as such is developed only where the private spheres have attained an independent existence. Where trade and landed property are unfree, not yet made independent, there, too, the political constitution does not yet exist. The Middle Ages were the democracy of unfreedom.

    The abstraction of the state as such belongs only to the modern age, because the abstraction of private life belongs only to the modern age. The abstraction of the political state is a modern product.

    In the Middle Ages there were serfs, feudal estates, craft guilds, corporations of scholars, etc. — that is, in the Middle Ages, property, trade, society, man are political; the material content of the state is posited through its form; every private sphere has a political character or is a political sphere, or politics is also the character of the private spheres. In the Middle Ages the political constitution is the constitution of private property, but only because the constitution of private property is a political constitution. In the Middle Ages, the life of the people and the life of the state are identical. Man is the real principle of the state, but unfree man. He is thus the democracy of unfreedom, estrangement carried through completely. The abstract, reflected opposition belongs only to the modern world. The Middle Ages is the real dualism, the modern age is abstract dualism.

    »At the stage previously noted, at which the division of constitutions into democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy was made — the standpoint of a substantial unity that still remains within itself, that has not yet come to its infinite differentiation and deepening within itself — the moment of the ultimate, self-determining decision of the will does not yet emerge, as an immanent organic moment of the state, into a distinct actuality of its own.«

    In immediate monarchy, democracy, or aristocracy, there is as yet no political constitution distinct from the real, material state, or from the remaining content of the life of the people. The political state does not yet appear as the form of the material state. Either, as in Greece, the res publica is the real private affair, the real content of the citizens, and the private individual is a slave — the political state, as political, is the true and sole content of their life and will; or, as in Asiatic despotism, the political state is nothing but the private arbitrariness of a single individual, or the political state, like the material one, is a slave. The difference between the modern state and these states of substantial unity between people and state does not consist, as Hegel would have it, in the fact that the various moments of the constitution have been developed into a particular actuality; it consists rather in the fact that the constitution itself has been developed into a particular actuality alongside the real life of the people — that the political state has become the constitution of the remaining state.

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