The violation, as affecting only external existence or possession, is an evil, a damage to some mode of property or estate; the sublation of the violation, as of a damaging, is civil satisfaction as compensation, insofar as such can take place at all.
|96| In this aspect of satisfaction, the universal character of the damage, as value, must already take the place of the qualitative, specific character of the damage, insofar as the damaging is a destruction and, in general, irreparable.
[zu § 97/98] α) § 97. Is [an] abstract universal concept; what follows is the concrete representation and demonstration of the same –
[A] will that wills something null – its object, content, purpose.
The violation is to be annulled; where does it exist? –
β) § 98. First, [the] nullity of the damage done – no rightful evil – something external made null, for my need. To make this making-null null again – that is compensation for damages, that I am again in my previous condition, [my] property –
Among peoples where for manslaughter only a payment in money was made, as among the ancient Germans – if that money had only this meaning – not a crime – right as such not violated – atonement, that the peace [had been] broken –
Insofar as it is fixed at a definite sum, [it is] lawlessness – right [is] absolute, infinite.
γ) Here two kinds of will – αα) in itself, ββ) subjective.
[Continuation after § 99]
§ 98: Compensation
A crime often causes damage. Someone breaks a neighbor’s window. Or he sprays paint on someone else’s house wall. Something of mine now lies in pieces.
What must happen?
The wrongdoer must make good the damage. That is one side of making amends. It balances out what the property lost. We call this civil satisfaction.
And if no one can replace what he destroyed?
An old vase from grandmother’s estate exists only once. Then the value takes the place of the thing. The wrongdoer pays what the vase was worth. The thing itself does not come back. But its value comes back.
But that is only one side. Compensation concerns property. Yet the crime has violated more than a piece of property. The next step deals with this.
Summary: The wrongdoer must make good the damage to property. Where the thing is gone for good, he pays its value. But this does not yet cancel the crime itself.
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