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322

Individuality, as exclusive being-for-itself, appears as a relation to other states, each of which is independent in relation to the others. Since it is in this independence that the being-for-itself of actual spirit has its existence, independence is the first freedom and the highest honor of a people.

Those who speak of the wishes of a totality which constitutes a more or less independent state and has its own center — of wishes to lose this center and its independence in order to form a whole with another — know little of the nature of a totality and of the sense of self which a people has in its independence. — The first power in which states appear historically is therefore this independence as such, even where it is wholly abstract and has as yet no further inner development; it belongs to this original appearance, accordingly, that an individual stands at its head — patriarch, tribal chief, and so forth.

DE ES

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  1. Hegel (Encyclopedia 1817) Avatar
    Hegel (Encyclopedia 1817)

    Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1817), §§ 442, 443:

    § 442. The ethical spirit is itself 1) an individual, having its actuality in a particular, determinate people. As such an existence, its totality produces immediate naturalness – geographical and climatic determinacy; above all, it is also at a particular stage of development of its spiritual life, and only in this does it comprehend, apprehend, and constitute itself.

    § 443. 2) As such a single individual, it is exclusive toward other such individuals. In their relation to one another, arbitrariness and contingency obtain, because the universal — for the sake of the autonomous self-sufficiency of these persons, who are in themselves a real totality and have no further need — ought merely to be, and is not actual.

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