Coercion has, of this — that it destroys itself in its own concept — the real display in this: that coercion is superseded by coercion; it is, therefore, not merely conditionally rightful but necessary — namely, as a second coercion, which is the superseding of a first coercion.

The violation of a contract through non-performance of what was stipulated, or of legal duties toward the family or the state, through act or omission, is, to that extent, a first coercion, or at least violence, insofar as I withhold or deprive another of a property that is his, or of a performance owed to him. — Pedagogical coercion, or coercion exercised against wildness and crudeness, appears indeed as a first coercion, not following upon an antecedent first coercion. But the merely natural will is in itself violence against the in-itself existing Idea of freedom, which must be taken under protection against such an uncultivated will and brought to validity within it. Either an ethical determinate being is already posited in family or state, against which that naturalness is an act of violence, or only a state of nature — a condition of violence in general — is present, in which case the Idea grounds, against this, a right of heroes.