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286

The objective guarantee of the power of the crown — of the legal succession through the hereditary nature of the throne, etc. — lies in the fact that, just as this sphere has its own actuality distinct from the other moments determined by reason, so too the other moments have, for themselves, the specific rights and duties of their determination; each member, in preserving itself for itself, thereby also preserves the others in their distinctive character within the rational organism.

To have worked out the monarchical constitution as one of hereditary succession to the throne fixed by primogeniture — so that it has thereby been led back to the patriarchal principle from which it historically originated, but now in the higher determination of being the absolute apex of an organically developed state — is one of the later results of history, and is of the utmost importance for public freedom and a rational constitution, although, as remarked earlier, it is often the least understood, even where it is respected.

This is why the former merely feudal monarchies, as well as despotisms, show in history this alternation of rebellions, acts of violence by princes, internal wars, the downfall of princely individuals and dynasties, and the general internal and external devastation and destruction that results from it — because, in such a condition, the division of the business of state, its parts being made over to vassals, pashas, and the like, is only mechanical, not a difference of determination and form, but merely a difference of greater or lesser power.

Thus each part, in preserving itself, preserves and produces only itself, and does not at the same time produce the others along with it, and possesses within itself, complete for independent self-subsistence, all the moments required for this.

In the organic relation, in which members — not parts — stand related to one another, each preserves the others precisely by fulfilling its own particular sphere; for each, the preservation of the other members is, just as much as its own self-preservation, a substantial end and product.

The guarantees that are called for — whether for the stability of the succession, for the power of the crown in general, for justice, public freedom, and so on — are safeguards afforded by institutions.

The love of the people, character, oaths, force, and the like, may be regarded as subjective guarantees, but as soon as one speaks of a constitution, one is speaking only of objective guarantees — of institutions, i.e. of organically interlinked and mutually conditioning moments.

Thus public freedom in general and the hereditary nature of the throne are mutual guarantees of one another and stand in absolute connection, because public freedom is the rational constitution, and the hereditary nature of the power of the crown is, as has been shown, the moment that lies within its concept.

DE

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  1. Karl Marx Avatar
    Karl Marx

    Hegel does not see that with this third moment, the »universal in and for itself,« he blows the first two into the air, or vice versa. »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 — that is, it is not hereditary but fluid, a determination of the state that is distributed in turn 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. For the members to sustain one another they must be of equal birth, of one flesh and blood. But the hereditary monarch is not of equal birth — he is made of different stuff. Here the magic of nature confronts the prose of the rationalist will of the other members of the state. Moreover, members can sustain one another reciprocally only insofar as the whole organism is fluid and each member is sublated within this fluidity — so that none of them, as here the head of the state, is »unmoved,« »unalterable.« By this determination, then, Hegel abolishes »born sovereignty.«

    Second, irresponsibility [inviolability]. If the prince violates »the whole of the constitution,« the »laws,« his irresponsibility — because his constitutional existence — ceases; but it is precisely these laws, this constitution, that make him irresponsible. They therefore contradict themselves, and this single clause abolishes both law and constitution. The constitution of constitutional monarchy is irresponsibility.

    But if Hegel contents himself with the claim »that just as this sphere has its actuality set apart from the other moments determined by reason, so too 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 nothing more than a mass of particular spheres standing together in the nexus of an external necessity — and indeed only here does a monarch in the flesh belong. In a state in which every determination exists for itself, the sovereignty of the state, too, must be fixed as a particular individual.

    Summary of Hegel’s development of the princely power, or of the idea of the sovereignty of the state.

    § 279, Remark, 5, 367, it states:

    »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, as does the people of Great Britain; but the people of England or Scotland, of Ireland, or of Venice, Genoa, Ceylon, etc., is no longer a sovereign people, since they have ceased to have princes of their own or supreme governments of their own.«

    Popular sovereignty here is thus nationality; the sovereignty of the prince is nationality; or the principle of princedom is nationality, which by itself and exclusively constitutes the sovereignty of a people. A people whose sovereignty consists only in nationality has a monarch. The distinct nationality of peoples can be fixed and expressed in no better way than through distinct monarchs. The gulf that lies between one absolute individual and another lies between these nationalities.

    The Greeks (and Romans) were national because and insofar as they were the sovereign people. The Germanic peoples are sovereign because and insofar as they are national.

    »A so-called moral person,« it further states in the same remark, »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.«

    The moral person, society, family, etc. has personality only abstractly within it; whereas in the monarch, the person has the state within itself.

    In truth, it is only in the moral person, society, family, etc. that the abstract person first brings its personality to a true existence. But Hegel conceives society, family, etc. — the moral person in general — not as the realization of the real, empirical person, but as a real person which nevertheless has the moment of personality within it only abstractly. Hence for him, too, it is not the real person that arrives at the state, but rather the state that must first arrive at a real person. So instead of the state becoming the highest actuality of the person, the highest social actuality of the human being, a single empirical human being — the empirical person — is produced 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 biography of abstract substance, of the Idea, so that human activity, etc., must appear as the activity and result of another, and that Hegel wants to let the essence of the human being work for itself, as an imaginary singularity, rather than in its real, human existence) necessarily has the result that, uncritically, an empirical existence is taken as the real truth of the Idea; for the point is not to bring the empirical existence to its truth, but to bring the truth to an empirical existence — whereupon the nearest thing at hand is developed as a real moment of the Idea. (More on this necessary flipping 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 trivial that a human being has been born, and that this existence, posited through physical birth, becomes a social being, etc., up to and including 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 given birth to itself into empirical existence. In this way no content is gained; only the form of the old content is altered. It has received a philosophical form, a philosophical certificate.

    Another consequence of this mystical speculation is that a particular empirical existence, a single empirical existence distinguished from the others, is conceived as the existence of the Idea. It again makes 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, 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 always remains the essence of all these essences, but these essences also appear as his real universality, and hence also as the common element. If, on the other hand, family, civil society, state, etc. are determinations of the Idea, of substance as subject, then they must acquire an empirical actuality, and the mass of human beings in whom the idea of civil society develops is a citizen — the others, citizens of the state. Since it is really only a matter of an allegory, only a matter of attaching to some empirical existence the significance 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 life-moment of the Idea. The universal therefore appears everywhere as something determinate, particular, just as the singular nowhere arrives at its true universality.

    It therefore necessarily appears deepest, most speculative, when the most abstract determinations — those that have not yet matured to any true social realization at all, the natural bases of the state, such as birth (in the case of the prince) or private property (in primogeniture) — appear as the highest ideas, immediately become human.

    And this is self-evident. The true path is turned on its head. The simplest becomes the most involved, and the most involved becomes the simplest. What ought to be the starting point becomes the mystical result, and what ought to be the rational result becomes the mystical starting point.

    But if the prince is the abstract person who has the state within himself, this means nothing more than that the essence of the state is the abstract person, the private person. Only in its bloom 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 heredity 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 final, fixed distinction of one person from all others? The body. The highest function of the body is sexual activity. The highest constitutional act of the king is therefore his sexual activity, for through it he makes a king and continues his body. The body of his son is the reproduction of his own body, the creation of a royal body.

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