Category: Introduction

Introduction The philosophical science of right has as its object the of , the concept of right and its actualization. Philosophy has to do with ideas and therefore not with what are usually called mere concepts; on the contrary, it points out their one-sidedness and untruth, as well as the fact that the concept (not…

The science of right is a part of philosophy. It has, therefore, to develop the Idea—which is the reason of an object—out of the Concept, or, what is the same thing, to watch its own, immanent development of the matter itself. As a part, it has a determinate starting point, which is the result and…

Right is positive in general: a) through the form of having validity within a state; this legal authority is the principle for the knowledge of right, the subject of positive jurisprudence. b) In terms of content, this right receives a positive element α) through the particular national character of a people, the stage of its…

The ground of right is the realm of spirit in general; its more precise location and point of departure is the will, which is free, so that freedom constitutes its substance and determination, and the system of right is the realm of actualized freedom, the world of spirit produced from within itself as a second…

The will contains α) the element of pure indeterminacy or of the pure reflection of the ego into itself, in which every limitation, every content immediately present by nature, needs, desires, and drives, or given and determined by any means whatsoever, is dissolved; the boundless infinity of absolute abstraction or universality, the pure thinking of…

β) Likewise, the I is the transition from undifferentiated indeterminacy to differentiation, determining, and the positing of a determinacy as a content and object. — Whether this content is further given by nature or produced from the concept of spirit, through this positing of itself as something determinate, the I enters into existence in general;…

γ) The will is the unity of these two moments; — particularity reflected into itself and thereby brought back to universality; — individuality; the self-determination of the I, at once to posit itself as the negative of itself, namely as determinate and limited, and yet to remain with itself, i.e., in its identity with itself…

The further determination of particularization (β. § 6) constitutes the difference between the forms of the will: a) insofar as the determinacy is the formal opposition of the subjective and objective as an external, immediate existence, this is the formal will as self-consciousness, which finds an external world before it and, as the individuality returning…

b) Insofar as the determinations of the will are the will’s own—its particularization reflected into itself in general—they are . This content, as content of the will, is its purpose according to the form specified in a)—partly an internal or subjective purpose in representational willing, partly a purpose actualized and carried out through the mediation…

This content, or the distinct determination of the will, is in the first instance immediate. Thus the will is free only in itself, or for us, or it is the will in general in its concept. Only when the will has itself as its object is it for itself what it is in itself. According…