Category: Paragraph

II. Sovereignty in Relation to Foreign States Sovereignty in the internal sphere (§ 278) is this ideality insofar as the moments of spirit and of its actuality, the state, are developed in their necessity and subsist as members of it. But spirit, as in freedom an infinitely negative relation to itself, is just as essentially…

Individuality, as exclusive being-for-itself, appears as a relation to other states, each of which is independent in relation to the others. Since it is in this independence that the being-for-itself of actual spirit has its existence, independence is the first freedom and the highest honor of a people. Those who speak of the wishes of…

In existence, this negative relation of the state to itself thus appears as a relation of one state to another, and as if the negative were something external. The existence of this negative relation accordingly takes the form of an occurrence and an entanglement with contingent events coming from outside. But it is the state’s…

This determination, whereby the interest and the right of individuals are posited as a vanishing moment, is at the same time the positive [aspect] of their individuality — an individuality which is not contingent and mutable, but which is in and for itself. This relation, and the recognition of it, is accordingly their substantial duty…

Courage is in itself a formal virtue, because it is the highest abstraction of freedom from all particular purposes, possessions, enjoyment, and life, yet [effects] this negation in an externally actual way; and because the renunciation, as accomplishment, is not in itself of a spiritual nature — its inner disposition may be this or that…

The content of courage as a disposition lies in the true, absolute ultimate end, the sovereignty of the state; the actuality of this ultimate end, as the work of courage, has as its means the surrender of personal actuality. This shape therefore contains the harshness of the highest oppositions: renunciation itself, yet as the existence…

B. External Constitutional Law External constitutional law proceeds from the relation between independent states; what is in and for itself [valid] within this relation therefore takes the form of an ought, because its being actual rests upon distinct sovereign wills.

A people, as a state, is spirit in its substantial rationality and immediate actuality, and is therefore the absolute power on earth; each state is accordingly, in relation to others, in sovereign independence. To be such for the other, that is, to be recognized by it, is its first, absolute entitlement. But this entitlement is…

The immediate actuality in which states stand toward one another particularizes itself into manifold relations, whose determination proceeds from the independent arbitrary will of both parties and thus has the formal nature of treaties in general. The subject matter of these treaties is, however, of infinitely less variety than in civil society, in which individuals…

The principle of international law, as the universal right that is supposed to hold in and for itself between states, as distinct from the particular content of positive treaties, is that treaties, as that on which the obligations of states toward one another rest, are to be kept. But because the relation between them has…

The dispute between states can therefore, in so far as their particular wills can reach no agreement, be decided only by war. But which injuries — of a kind that can easily arise in great numbers within a state’s far-reaching sphere and its manifold relations through its members — are to count as a determinate…

Moreover, the state, as something spiritual, cannot in general stop short at merely taking account of the actuality of the injury; rather, the representation of such an injury as a danger threatening from another state — with its rise and fall in greater or lesser probabilities, conjectures as to intentions, and so forth — is…

Since, in their relation of independence, states stand over against one another as particular wills, and the validity of treaties rests precisely on this, while the particular will of the whole is, with regard to its content, its welfare in general, this welfare is the supreme law governing its conduct towards others — all the…