Category: Paragraph

201

The infinitely manifold means, and their movement, likewise infinitely interlacing, in the mutual production and exchange [of goods], gather themselves together, through the universality inherent in their content, and differentiate themselves into general masses, so that the whole context forms itself into particular systems of needs, of their means and labours, of the kinds and…
202

The estates determine themselves, according to the concept, as the substantial or immediate estate, the reflecting or formal estate, and, then, as the universal estate.
203

a) The substantial estate has its resources in the natural products of a soil that it works — a soil capable of being exclusive private property, and requiring not merely indeterminate use, but an objective formation. Against the tying of labour and acquisition to particular fixed periods of nature, and the dependence of the yield…
204

b) The estate of trade has, as its business, the formation of the natural product, and, for the means of its subsistence, is dependent on its own labour, on reflection and the understanding, as well as, essentially, on mediation with the needs and the labour of others. What it brings forth and enjoys, it has…
205

c) The universal estate has, as its business, the universal interests of the social condition; it must therefore be exempted from direct labour for needs, either through private means, or through being indemnified by the state, which claims its activity, so that its private interest finds its satisfaction in its labour for the universal.
206

The estate, as particularity that has become objective, thus divides itself, on the one hand, according to the concept, into its universal differences. On the other hand, however, natural disposition, birth, and circumstances have their influence on which particular estate the individual belongs to; but the final and essential determination lies in subjective opinion and…
207

The individual gives itself actuality only in that it enters into existence in general, and thus into determinate particularity, thereby exclusively restricting itself to one of the particular spheres of need. The ethical disposition, within this system, is therefore rectitude and the honour of one’s estate: to make oneself, and indeed by one’s own determination,…
208

The principle of this system of needs has, as the particularity peculiar to knowing and willing, the universality that is in and for itself — the universality of freedom — only abstractly within it, and thus as the right of property, which, however, is here no longer merely in itself, but is, in its valid…
209

B. The Administration of Justice The relative [character] of the reciprocal relation of needs and of labour for them has, at first, its reflection into itself in infinite personality in general — in abstract right. But it is this sphere of the relative, as culture, itself, which gives to right its existence: to be universally…
210

The objective actuality of right consists, in part, in being present for consciousness, in being known in general, and, in part, in having the power of actuality and being valid, and thus also in being known as universally valid.
211

a. Right as Law What is right in itself is, in its objective existence, posited — that is, determined for consciousness through thought, and made known as that which is right and valid: the law; and right, through this determination, is positive right in general. To posit something as universal — that is, to bring…
212

In this identity of being-in-itself and being-posited, only what is law has binding force as right. Since being-posited constitutes the side of existence in which the contingency of self-will and of other particularity can also enter, what is law can, in its content, still be different from what is right in itself. In positive right,…
213

Right, in that it enters into existence, at first, in the form of being-posited, also enters, according to its content, as application, into relation with the matter of the relationships and kinds of property and of contracts, which multiply and become entangled into the infinite within civil society; further, with the ethical relationships resting on…
214

Besides application to the particular, the being-posited of right also includes within it applicability to the individual case. Thereby it enters into the sphere of the quantitative that is undetermined by the concept (the quantitative for itself, or as the determination of value in the exchange of one qualitative thing for another qualitative thing). The…
215

b. The Existence of Law Being bound by the law includes within it, on the side of the right of self-consciousness (§ 132, with the Remark), the necessity that the laws be made generally known. To hang the laws up so high, as Dionysius the Tyrant did, that no citizen could read them — or…
216

For a public code of laws, simple, universal determinations are to be demanded, on the one hand; on the other, the nature of finite material leads to an endless further determination. The compass of the laws should, on the one hand, be a finished, closed whole; on the other, it is the ongoing need for…
217

Just as, in civil society, right in itself becomes law, so too the previously immediate and abstract existence of my individual right passes over into the significance of being recognized, as an existence within the existing universal will and knowing. Acquisitions and transactions concerning property must therefore be undertaken and furnished with the form that…
218

Since property and personality have legal recognition and validity in civil society, crime is no longer merely the violation of a subjectively infinite [right], but of the universal thing, which has an existence firm and strong in itself. There thus enters in the point of view of the danger that the act poses to society,…
219

c. The Court Right, having entered into existence in the form of law, is for itself; it stands, self-subsistent, over against the particular willing and opining about right, and has to assert itself as universal. This cognition and actualization of right in the particular case, without the subjective feeling of particular interest, falls to a…
220

The right against crime in the form of revenge (§ 102) is right only in itself, not in the form of rightfulness — that is, not just in its existence. In place of the violated party there steps forward the violated universal, which has its own peculiar actuality in the court, and takes over the…