Right is something sacred in general, solely because it is the existence of the absolute concept, of self-conscious freedom. – The formalism of right, however (and further of duty), arises from the difference in the development of the concept of freedom. As against a more formal, i.e. more abstract and therefore more restricted right, the sphere and stage of spirit in which it has brought the further moments contained in its Idea to determinacy and actuality has, as the more concrete, the richer in itself and the more truly universal, thereby also a higher right.

Each stage in the development of the Idea of freedom has its own peculiar right, because it is the existence of freedom in one of its own determinations. When one speaks of the opposition of morality and ethical life to right, only the first, formal right of abstract personality is meant by “right” there. Morality, ethical life, and the interest of the state are each a peculiar right, because each of these forms is a determination and existence of freedom. They can come into collision only in so far as they stand on the same footing of being rights; were the moral standpoint of spirit not likewise a right – freedom in one of its forms – it could not possibly come into collision with the right of personality, or with any other right, because such a right contains within itself the concept of freedom, the highest determination of spirit, against which anything else is without substance. But the collision at the same time contains this further moment, that it is restricted and consequently also subordinated one to the other; only the right of the world spirit is unrestrictedly absolute.