grundlinien.de

259

The Idea of the state:

  • a) has immediate actuality and is the individual state as an organism relating itself to itself — constitution, or internal constitutional law;
  • b) passes over into the relation of the individual state to other states — external constitutional law;
  • c) is the universal Idea as genus and as absolute power in relation to individual states — the spirit that gives itself its actuality in the process of world history.

DE

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One response to “259”

  1. Eduard Gans (Additions) Avatar
    Eduard Gans (Additions)

    The state as actual is essentially an individual state, and, going further, also a particular state. Individuality is to be distinguished from particularity: it is a moment of the idea of the state itself, whereas particularity belongs to history. The states as such are independent of one another, and their relation can therefore only be an external one, so that there must be a third, connecting term above them. This third is now the spirit that gives itself actuality in world history and constitutes the absolute judge over them. Several states may indeed, as a league, form as it were a tribunal over others, and unions of states may occur, as for instance the Holy Alliance, but these are always only relative and limited, like perpetual peace. The sole absolute judge, who asserts himself always and against the particular, is the spirit that is in and for itself, which presents itself in world history as the universal and as the genus at work.

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