[p. 252]
|252| conduct in accordance with right is also moral, inasmuch as it has respect for right as its motive.
§ 34
The disposition is the subjective side of the moral action or its form. There is as yet no content in it, which, like the actual acting, is equally essential.
Explanation. With conduct in accordance with right the moral conduct is essentially also to be connected. But it can also be the case that the disposition of right is not connected with the conduct in accordance with right, indeed even that an immoral disposition is present in it. The action in accordance with right, inasmuch as it is done out of respect for the law, is at the same time also moral. Acting in accordance with right – and at the same time with the moral disposition – is absolutely to be pursued first, and only then can moral acting as such enter, in which there is no command of right (no obligation of right). Human beings like to act merely morally or nobly and often prefer to give away rather than to fulfil their obligations of right. For in the noble action they give themselves the consciousness of their particular perfection, whereas in acting in accordance with right they exercise what is perfectly universal, which is the same for them as for all.
Everything actual contains two sides, the true concept and the reality of this concept; e.g. the concept of the state is the securing and the actualization of right. To the reality there now belongs the particular arrangement of the constitution, the relation of the individual powers, and so on. To the actual human being there belongs also, and indeed according to his practical side, the concept and the reality of the concept. To the former belongs pure personality or abstract freedom, to the latter the particular determination of existence and existence itself. There is indeed more contained in the latter than in the concept, but at the same time it must be in accordance with the concept
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