The Doctrine of Right, Duties and Religion for the Lower Class

[p. 267]

§ 58

The state does not rest on an express contract of one with all and of all with one, or of the individual and the government with one another, and the general will of the whole is not the expressed will of individuals, but is the absolutely universal will, which is binding for individuals in and for itself.

IV. Duties towards Others

Cross-reference: Compare the commandment of right in § 36: “Be a person and respect the others as persons.”

§ 59

The duties towards others are first the duties of right, which must be bound up with the disposition to do right for right’s sake. The remaining ones of these duties are grounded on the disposition to hold others equal to oneself not only as an abstract person but also in their particularity, to regard their weal and woe as one’s own and to prove this by active help.

§ 60

This moral manner of thinking and acting goes beyond right. But uprightness, the observance of the strict duties towards others, is the first duty, which must lie at the ground. There can be noble and magnanimous actions which are without uprightness. They then have their ground in self-love and in the consciousness of having done something special, whereas what uprightness demands is a duty valid for all, not arbitrary.

§ 61

Among the particular duties towards others, truthfulness in speaking and acting is the first. It consists in the equality of what is, and of what one is conscious of, with that which one utters and shows towards others. – Untruthfulness is the inequality and contradiction of consciousness and of how one is there