By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:35:37 +0000

§ 28: What actually happens in willing

We already know: The will has a plan and carries it out. What was first inside then stands outside in the world. And the will does not lose itself in the process. It stays with itself in what it has created.

This is how it looks when we only look at the individual. He wants something, and then he does it.

What do we see when we look more closely?

This book is about more. With every step of the will, a content unfolds. This content is freedom itself. At first it is only a thin thought. Then it gives itself one shape after another: property, contract, conscience, family, state. In the end there is a whole structure, a system.

This system does not belong only to the head, and not only to the world. It is the same in both.

A comparison: A language lives in the head and in conversation. Its rules are the same whether I think silently or speak aloud. It is the same with the rational. It stays the same whether it is my plan or an order that already exists.

Summary: When the will acts, it does not just bring single plans into the world. Through the will, freedom unfolds into a whole system. This system is the same inside and outside. From now on, we follow its shapes.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Tue, 12 Nov 1822 08:10:32 +0000

[zu § 26-28] Spirit wills to be Idea — concept and existence.
In the preceding § [26], after an elucidation — of universal logical determinations — a return is made to § 21.
Objectivity — is a new sense of it — on γ) in the preceding § — externality as particularization. In this respect one can say, only an uncultivated condition. Human beings, peoples are still subjective, as was the case in § 11 β).
In § 28 a determination is singled out that in § 27 is merely inserted, namely this mode of the objectification of the concept — which is a particularization, a development of the determinations of the concept. § 32 belongs here.

[zu § 28, „Totalität ihres Systems“] Namely, the whole science — the edifice of the world of right — depends on the positing, the mode of existence — With the abstract concept of the will, §§ 6, 8, 9, the particularization consists in content in general, whether drives or inclinations pass over into determinations — here as determinations of the Idea, of the rational —
Third moment, resolving, actuality — here is self-conscious spirit, § 29 (see following p. [81 f.]).
— it is required, this unity of the subjective end and its realization — but the rational is independent of this as an opposition of consciousness —
— formal here — In the determinations of reason there will occur even the opposition of the subject and the concept — of the self-consciousness of the subjective will as against its concept —

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By: Hegel (Simple)

By: Hegel (Notes)