The third moment of the power of the crown concerns the universal in and for itself, which, from a subjective point of view, consists in the conscience of the monarch, and, from an objective point of view, in the whole of the constitution and the laws; the power of the crown accordingly presupposes the other moments, just as each of these presupposes it.
|239| § 286. »The objective guarantee of the princely power, of rightful succession according to the hereditary nature of the throne etc., lies in this: that, just as this sphere has an actuality separated, by reason, from the other moments, so too do the others have, for themselves, the peculiar rights and duties of their determination; each member, in preserving itself, thereby preserves, within the rational organism, the others in their peculiarity.«
Hegel does not see that, with this third moment, the »universal in and for itself«, he blows the first two into the air, or conversely. »The princely power thus presupposes the other moments just as each of these presupposes it.« If this positing is taken not mystically but really, then the princely power is posited not by birth but by the other moments, hence not hereditary but fluid, i.e. a determination of the state that is distributed, alternately, among individuals of the state according to the organism of the other moments. In a rational organism the head cannot be of iron and the body of flesh. In order for the limbs to preserve themselves, they must be of like kind, of one flesh and blood. But the hereditary monarch is not of like kind; he is of other stuff. Here, against the prose of the rationalist will of the other members of the state, stands the magic of nature. Moreover, members can preserve one another mutually only insofar as the whole organism is fluid and each of them is sublated within this fluidity, so that none of them — as here the head of the state — is »unmoved«, »inalterable«. By this determination, then, Hegel abolishes »born sovereignty«.
Secondly, irresponsibility. If the prince violates »the whole of the constitution«, »the laws«, his irresponsibility ceases, because his constitutional existence ceases; but it is precisely these laws, this constitution, that make him irresponsible. They thus contradict themselves, and this one clause abolishes both law and constitution. The constitution of constitutional monarchy is irresponsibility.
But if Hegel contents himself with this, »that, just as this sphere has an actuality separated, by reason, from the other moments, so too do the others have, for themselves, the peculiar rights and duties of their determination«, then he would have to call the constitution of the Middle Ages an organization; for then he has merely a mass of particular spheres standing together in the connection of an external necessity, and indeed only here does a bodily monarch fit in. In a state in which every determination exists for itself, the sovereignty of the state, too, must be fixed as a particular individual.
|240| Résumé of Hegel’s development of the princely power, or of the idea of the sovereignty of the state.
§ 279, Remark, p. 367, says:
»Popular sovereignty can be spoken of in the sense that a people in general is, externally, something self-subsistent and constitutes its own state, as the people of Great Britain; but the people of England or Scotland, of Ireland, or of Venice, Genoa, Ceylon etc., are no longer a sovereign people, since they have ceased to have their own princes or supreme governments.«
Popular sovereignty, here, is thus nationality; the sovereignty of the prince is nationality; or, the principle of princehood is nationality, which, for itself and exclusively, constitutes the sovereignty of a people. A people whose sovereignty consists only in nationality has a monarch. The differing nationality of peoples can be fixed and expressed in no better way than through differing monarchs. The gulf that lies between one absolute individual and another is the gulf between these nationalities.
The Greeks (and Romans) were national because and insofar as they were the sovereign people. The Germans are sovereign because and insofar as they are national.
»A so-called moral person«, the same Remark further says, »society, community, family, however concrete it is in itself, has personality only as a moment, abstractly within it; it has not therein arrived at the truth of its existence, but the state is precisely this totality in which the moments of the concept attain actuality according to their own peculiar truth.«
The moral person, society, family etc., has personality only abstractly within it; the monarch, by contrast, has the state within his person.
In truth, it is only in the moral person, in society, family etc. that the abstract person has first brought its personality to a true existence. But Hegel grasps society, family etc. — the moral person in general — not as the realization, the objectification, of the actual, empirical person, but as an actual person which, however, has the moment of personality only abstractly within it. Hence with him, too, it is not the actual person that arrives at the state, but rather the state that must first arrive at an actual person. Instead, therefore, of the state being the highest actuality of the person, the highest social actuality of the human being, a single empirical human being, an empirical person, is brought forth as the highest actuality of the state. This inversion of the subjective into the objective and of the objective into the subjective (which stems from the fact that Hegel wants to write the life-history of abstract substance |241|*, of the idea, so that human activity etc. must appear as the activity and result of another; that Hegel wants to let the essence of man operate for itself, as an imaginary singularity, instead of in his actual, human existence) necessarily has the result that, uncritically, an empirical existence is taken as the actual truth of the idea; for it is not a matter of bringing empirical existence to its truth, but of bringing truth to an empirical existence, and then the nearest-at-hand is developed as a real moment of the idea. (More on this necessary turning-over of empirical fact into speculation and of speculation into empirical fact later.)
In this way, too, the impression of the mystical and the profound is produced. It is very vulgar that a human being has been born, and that this existence, posited through physical birth, becomes a social being etc., up to a citizen of the state; the human being becomes, through his birth, everything that he becomes. But it is very profound, it is striking, that the idea of the state is immediately born — that in the birth of the prince it has, itself, given birth to itself into empirical existence. In this way no content has been gained; only the form of the old content has been altered. It has received a philosophical form, a philosophical attestation.
Another consequence of this mystical speculation is that a particular empirical existence, a single empirical existence, distinguished from the others, is grasped as the existence of the idea. It again produces a deeply mystical impression to see a particular empirical existence posited by the idea, and thus to encounter, at every stage, an incarnation of God.
If, for example, in the development of family, civil society, the state etc., these social modes of existence of the human being were regarded as the realization, the objectification, of his essence, then family etc. would appear as qualities inherent in a subject. The human being would always remain the essence of all these essences, but these essences would also appear as his actual universality, hence also as the common element. If, on the other hand, family, civil society, the state etc., are determinations of the idea, of substance as subject, then they must receive an empirical actuality, and the mass of human beings in which the idea of civil society develops is citizens, the other citizens of the state. Since it is really only a matter of allegory, only of attaching to some empirical existence the meaning of the realized idea, it is understood that these vessels have fulfilled their determination as soon as they have become a determinate incorporation of a moment of life of the idea. The universal therefore appears everywhere |242| as something determinate, particular, just as the individual nowhere arrives at its true universality.
It appears, therefore, necessarily most profound, most speculative, when the most abstract determinations, not yet at all ripened into any true social realization — the natural bases of the state, such as birth (in the case of the prince) or private property (in the law of primogeniture) — appear as the highest ideas, immediately become human.
And it is self-evident. The true path is stood on its head. The simplest is the most involved, and the most involved the simplest. What ought to have been the starting point becomes the mystical result, and what ought to have been the rational result becomes the mystical starting point.
But if the prince is the abstract person who has the state within himself, this means, in general, nothing other than that the essence of the state is the abstract, the private person. Only at its blossoming does it speak out its secret. The prince is the sole private person in whom the relation of the private person in general to the state is realized.
The hereditariness of the prince follows from his concept. He is supposed to be the person specifically distinguished from the whole species, from all other persons. What, then, is the ultimate fixed distinction of one person from all others? The body. The highest function of the body is the sexual act. The highest constitutional act of the king is therefore his sexual act, for through it he makes a king and perpetuates his body. The body of his son is the reproduction of his own body, the creation of a royal body.
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