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2 responses to “309”

1. 

   Eduard Gans (Additions)

   29. May 1833

   If one introduces representation, this implies that consent is not to occur immediately through everyone, but through deputies, for the single individual no longer competes now as an infinite person. Representation is grounded on trust; but trust is something other than my giving my vote as this particular individual. The majority of votes likewise runs counter to the principle that, in what is to obligate me, I ought to be present as this particular individual. One has trust in a person by regarding his insight as a guarantee that he will treat my affair as his own, according to his best knowledge and conscience. The principle of the single subjective will thus falls away, for trust is directed at a matter, at a person’s principles, his conduct, his actions, at his concrete character in general. What matters, therefore, is that whoever enters into an estates element should have a character, an insight, and a will that correspond to his task of being drawn into general affairs. For what is at stake is not that the individual comes to speak as an abstract single unit, but that his interests assert themselves in an assembly in which the universal is deliberated upon. That the deputy accomplish and further this is something for which the electors need a guarantee.

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2. 

   Karl Marx

   17. August 1843

   The deputies are supposed, first, not to be »mandataries who are committed or who convey instructions«, because »they are supposed to assert not the particular interest of a community, a corporation, against the universal, but essentially this [the universal] itself«. Hegel first constructed the representatives as representatives of the corporations etc., only then to bring in the other, political determination, that they are not to assert the particular interest of the corporation etc. He thereby sublates his own determination, for he separates them, in their essential determination as representatives, entirely from their corporate existence. He thereby also separates the corporation from itself as its actual content, for it is supposed to choose not from its own point of view but from the point of view of the state, i.e. it is supposed to choose in its non-existence as a corporation. In the material determination, then, he acknowledges what he perverted in the formal one: the abstraction of civil society from itself in its political act, and its political existence is nothing but this abstraction. Hegel gives as the reason that they are chosen precisely for the activity of »universal affairs«; but the corporations are not existences of universal affairs.

   2. The »deputation is supposed to have the sense« that »through trust such individuals are determined for it who understand these affairs better than those who depute them«, from which it is again supposed to follow that the deputies do not stand in the relation of »mandataries«.

   That they understand this »better«, and not merely »simply«, Hegel can only bring out by a sophism. This could only be concluded if those deputing had the choice either to deliberate and decide the universal affairs themselves, or to depute particular individuals for their execution; that is, precisely if deputation, representation, did not belong essentially to the character of the legislative power of civil society — which is precisely its peculiar essence, as just shown, in the state constructed by Hegel.

   This example is very characteristic of how Hegel half-intentionally gives up the matter within its own peculiarity, and substitutes for it, in its narrow shape, the opposite sense of this narrowness.

   Hegel gives the actual reason last. The deputies of civil society constitute themselves into an »assembly«, and this assembly is only then the actual political existence and will of civil society. The separation of the political state from civil society appears as the separation of the deputies from their principals. Society merely detaches from itself the elements for its political existence.

   The contradiction appears in two ways:

   1. Formally. The deputies of civil society are a society which does not stand in connection with those who deputed them through the form of »instruction«, of mandate. They are formally committed, but as soon as they are actual, they are no longer committed persons. They are supposed to be deputies and are not.

   2. Materially. With regard to interests. More on this later. Here the reverse holds. They are committed as representatives of universal affairs, but they actually represent particular affairs.

   It is characteristic that Hegel here designates trust as the substance of the deputation, as the substantial relation between those deputing and those deputed. Trust is a personal relation. On this the Addition goes on to say:

   »Representation is grounded in trust, but trust is something different from my giving my vote as this particular individual. The majority of votes is likewise contrary to the principle that, in what is to obligate me, I ought to be present as this particular individual. One has trust in a person insofar as one regards his insight as such that he will treat my affair as his own affair, according to his best knowledge and conscience.«

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