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2 responses to “280”

1. 

   Eduard Gans (Additions)

   29. May 1833

   When it is often maintained against the monarch that through him it depends on chance how things go in the state, since the monarch might be badly formed, since he may perhaps not be worthy to stand at its head, and that it is senseless that such a condition should exist as a rational one, then the presupposition here—that everything depends on the particularity of character—is precisely null. In a completed organization it is only a matter of the apex of formal decision, and for a monarch one needs only a human being who says “yes” and dots the i; for the apex ought to be such that the particularity of character is not what matters.1) Whatever the monarch has beyond this final decision is something that falls to particularity, on which nothing ought to depend. There can indeed be conditions in which this particularity alone comes forward, but in that case the state is not yet a fully developed one, or not a well-constructed one. In a well-ordered monarchy the objective side belongs to the law alone, to which the monarch has only to add the subjective “I will.”
   1) in the 2nd edition this passage reads: “In a completed organization of the state it is only a matter of the apex of formal decision, and of a natural firmness against passion. It is therefore wrongly demanded that the monarch possess objective qualities: he has only to say yes and to dot the i. For the apex ought to be such that the particularity of character is not what matters. This determination of the monarch is rational, for it accords with the concept; but because it is difficult to grasp, it often happens that the rationality of monarchy is not recognized. The monarchy must be firm within itself, and what the monarch … ”

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2. 

   Karl Marx

   7. May 1843

   We have already heard that subjectivity is subject, and the subject is necessarily an empirical individual, a One. We now learn that in the concept of immediate individuality lies the determination of naturalness, of corporeality. Hegel has proven nothing but what speaks for itself: that subjectivity exists only as a bodily individual, and, of course, natural birth belongs to the bodily individual.

   Hegel believes he has proven that state-subjectivity, sovereignty, the monarch, is »essentially« determined »as this individual, abstracted from all other content, and this individual, in an immediate natural manner, through natural birth, is determined to the dignity of monarch«. Sovereignty, the monarchical dignity, would thus be born. The body of the monarch would determine his dignity. At the highest point of the state, then, mere physis, rather than reason, would decide. Birth would determine the quality of the monarch just as it determines the quality of cattle.

   Hegel has proven that the monarch must be born, which no one doubts, but he has not proven that birth makes one a monarch.

   The birth of a human being into a monarch can no more be made into a metaphysical truth than the immaculate conception of the mother Mary. But just as the latter conception, this fact of consciousness, can be understood, so too can that empirical fact be understood, out of human illusion and out of circumstances.

   In the Remark, which we shall examine more closely, Hegel indulges in the pleasure of having demonstrated the irrational to be absolutely rational.

   »This transition from the concept of pure self-determination into the immediacy of being, and thus into naturalness, is of a purely speculative nature; its cognition therefore belongs to logical philosophy.«

   It is indeed purely speculative — not that a leap is made from pure self-determination, an abstraction, into pure naturalness (the contingency of birth), into the opposite extreme, car les extrêmes se touchent |for opposites attract|. The speculative element consists in this: that this is called a »transition of the concept«, and the complete contradiction is passed off as identity, the highest inconsistency as consistency.

   It may be regarded as a positive confession on Hegel’s part that, with the hereditary monarch, in place of self-determining reason there steps abstract natural determinacy — not as what it is, namely natural determinacy, but as the highest determination of the state; that this is the positive point at which monarchy can no longer save the appearance of being the organization of the rational will.

   »It is, moreover, on the whole the same (?) transition which is known as the nature of the will in general, and is the process of translating a content out of subjectivity (as a represented end) into existence […]. But the peculiar form of the idea and of the transition here considered is the immediate turning-over of the pure self-determination of the will (of the simple concept itself) into a this, a natural existence, without mediation through a particular content (an end in acting).«

   Hegel says that the turning-over of the sovereignty of the state (a self-determination of the will) into the body of the born monarch (into existence) is, on the whole, the same transition of content in general that the will undertakes in order to realize a thought-of end, translating it into existence. But Hegel says: on the whole. The peculiar distinction he indicates is so peculiar as to abolish all analogy and to put magic in the place of »the nature of the will in general«.

   First, the turning-over of the represented end into existence is here immediate, magical. Second, the subject here is: the pure self-determination of the will, the simple concept itself; it is the essence of the will that is determined as mystical subject; it is no actual, individual, conscious willing; it is the abstraction of the will that turns over into a natural existence, the pure idea that embodies itself as an individual.

   Third, just as the realization of willing into natural existence occurs here immediately, i.e. without the means that the will otherwise requires in order to objectify itself, so even a particular, i.e. determinate, end is lacking; there does not take place »mediation through a particular content, an end in acting« — of course not, for no acting subject is present, and the abstraction, the pure idea of the will, in order to act, must act mystically. An end that is not a particular one is no end, just as acting without an end is aimless, senseless acting. The whole comparison with the teleological act of the will thus, in the end, confesses itself to be a mystification. A contentless acting of the idea.

   The means is the absolute will and the word of the philosopher; the particular end is, again, the end of the philosophizing subject — to construct the hereditary monarch out of the pure idea. The realization of the end is Hegel’s simple assurance.

   »In the so-called ontological proof of the existence of God it is the same turning-over of« the absolute concept »into being« (the same mystification) »which has constituted the depth of the idea in modern times, but which in the most recent time has been declared« (rightly) »to be the incomprehensible.« »But since the conception of the monarch is regarded as something entirely left to ordinary« (i.e. the understanding’s) »consciousness, the understanding here all the more persists in its separation, and in the results flowing from it of its reasoning cleverness, and then denies that the moment of ultimate decision in the state is, in and for itself (i.e. in the concept of reason), bound up with immediate naturalness.«

   One denies that the ultimate decision is born, and Hegel asserts that the monarch is the born ultimate decision; but who has ever doubted that the ultimate decision in the state is tied to actual bodily individuals, hence »bound up with immediate naturalness«?

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