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The Grammar of Logical Concepts

A short school of Hegel’s logic, written as a reading aid to the Philosophy of Right — to be read once, valid for all 360 paragraphs. It does not explain the individual words; the Glossary does that. It explains the movement in which the words do their work.

Contents

What it is all for

Hegel does not teach us which institutions of right and society are the right ones today. Anyone who reads the Philosophy of Right for its results — monarch, estates, corporation — is reading the answers Hegel gave to his own world and mistaking the shell for the kernel. He named this limit himself, in the Preface, in the most famous passage of the book:

As for the individual, everyone is a son of his time anyway; so also philosophy is its time grasped in thoughts.

Preface

What one learns from Hegel is something different and greater: to grasp one’s own present in thought — and with particular means that can be learned. These means are the concepts of logic. They are not scholarly ballast standing between the reader and the matter at hand, but the tool itself. Anyone who knows what it means for a determination to be posited, what distinguishes a moment from a part, and why a contradiction is not a mistake but a driving force, can use this to see through relations of which Hegel knew nothing.

In this sense this edition is a practice ground: three hundred and sixty paragraphs on which one can watch the tool at work. The present page explains the tool; the commentary “The Logical Development” beneath each paragraph (so far on the German pages only) shows it at work; the Glossary supplies the supporting passages. Taken together they are meant to be more than a reading aid to an old book — they are meant to be a short school of Hegel’s logic.

Why this text looks the way it does

Hegel does not write the Philosophy of Right in the language of jurisprudence but in that of his own logic. Anyone who opens § 7 reads in the first sentence: unity, moments, reflected into itself, universality, brought back, particularity, singularity, self-determination, the negative of itself, posit, with itself, identity with itself, determination, relation of negativity to itself, ideal, possibility, concept, substantiality — more than twenty technical terms in a single sentence. This is neither a fault of style nor clumsiness. Hegel introduced these expressions in the Science of Logic (1812–1816) and in the Encyclopaedia, and here he presupposes them as known, just as a mathematician presupposes the signs of his notation. He says so, too: the philosophy of right has “the speculative mode of cognition as its presupposition” (§ 2).

Two things follow from this. First: it does not help much to look these words up one at a time. “Brought back” (zurückgeführt) has no meaning that one could recite — it names a step in a movement. The sentence is understood only when one sees the movement, not when one knows twenty definitions.

Second, and this is the good news: the expressions form a closed and finite set. A count across the entire work — Hegel’s own text, without the later Additions — yields about thirty families that recur again and again. Once you have them together, you can read on fluently from then on. The effort is made once; the return holds for three hundred and sixty paragraphs.

This page is therefore ordered not alphabetically but by connection. Anyone looking for a single term is better served by the Glossary; from there, references and supporting quotations lead back into the text. Wherever Hegel expressly cites a passage of his logic, this edition has a footnote that converts his 1817 numbering into the familiar numbering of the 3rd edition of 1830 — the Encyclopaedia paragraphs cited below are throughout those of the 3rd edition.

The one movement that carries everything

Almost every paragraph carries out the same basic figure, only with changing material:

Something is at first in a particular way. If one takes it on its own and pushes it to the extreme, it turns into its opposite or proves to be empty. The truth is neither of the two, but the whole in which both are sublated as moments.

Hegel himself described this figure, namely as the three sides that all logical thinking has (Encyclopaedia §§ 79–82): the side of the understanding (das Verständige) holds a determination fast and marks it off from others; the dialectical side is its turning into its opposite, which does not come from outside but from the determination itself; the speculative side grasps both in their unity. These are not three methods to choose from but three sides of one matter — and they are the blueprint of most paragraphs.

Hegel formulated these three sides himself in the Encyclopaedia, in three sentences worth remembering:

Thinking as understanding stops short at fixed determinacy and at its distinctness from other determinacies; such a limited abstraction counts for it as subsisting and being on its own.

Encyclopaedia, 3rd ed., § 80

The dialectical moment is the own self-sublating of such finite determinations and their passing over into their opposites.

Encyclopaedia, 3rd ed., § 81

The speculative or positively rational grasps the unity of the determinations in their opposition, the affirmative that is contained in their dissolution and their passing over.

Encyclopaedia, 3rd ed., § 82

Two words carry the weight here. “Own self-sublating” (eigenes Sichaufheben) — the reversal is not brought about from outside; we do not refute, but watch a determination fail to hold up by itself. And “the affirmative that is contained in their dissolution” — at the end there is a gain, not a field of rubble. Hegel expressly adds that the result of dialectic is “in truth not empty, abstract nothingness, but the negation of certain determinations, which for that very reason are contained in the result” (§ 82). Whoever holds on to this has grasped the difference between Hegel’s dialectic and mere scepticism.

The decisive point, without which the whole figure looks arbitrary, is determinate negation. When a determination fails by itself, what remains is not nothing but something quite determinate: precisely what the failed determination lacked. Hegel, in the Introduction to the Science of Logic:

Since what results, the negation, is determinate negation, it has a content. It is a new concept, but the higher, richer concept compared with the preceding one; for it has become richer by that concept’s negation or opposite, and so contains it, but also more than it, and is the unity of it and its opposite.

Science of Logic I, Introduction — in the Glossary under Determinate Negation

Everything else hangs on this. That is why the order of the paragraphs is not an arrangement that could just as well be laid out differently, but is itself already an argument — Hegel says expressly in the Remark to § 33 that the division is not a scheme applied from outside.

Two examples in which the figure can be seen for the first time. Contract presupposes two independent persons who come to an agreement; precisely on this it fails as an explanation of marriage (§ 75) and of the state (§ 258), for both are precisely that in which this independence is already sublated — so contract cannot ground them, because it presupposes that independence. And conscience is the highest form of inwardness and, precisely for that reason, taken wholly on its own, turns into arbitrary will and evil (§ 139, § 140) — not because conscientiousness is bad, but because a standard that lies only in me no longer makes any distinction between what I hold to be right and what is right.

Whoever asks, when reading a difficult paragraph, What is being taken on its own here, and on what does it fail? has usually already found the move.

The course of the logic in brief

Anyone who wants to read the Philosophy of Right need not have worked through the Science of Logic — but should know how it is built. For the order of the philosophy of right is the same.

The Logic has three parts: the doctrine of being (Sein), the doctrine of essence (Wesen), the doctrine of the concept (Begriff). What distinguishes them is not their object but the kind of movement. In being, the determinations pass over into one another (übergehen): something becomes something else and has vanished. In essence they shine into one another (scheinen): each determination has its opposite not outside itself but in itself — cause and effect, inner and outer, essence and appearance can only be thought in pairs. In the concept, finally, there is neither passing over nor shining, but development: what is distinguished remains with itself while it distinguishes itself.

This is not an interpretation; it is what Hegel says in the three places where he opens the parts:

Being is the concept only in itself; its determinations are determinations that simply are, in their distinction others to one another, and their further determination (the form of the dialectical) is a passing over into another.

Encyclopaedia, 3rd ed., § 84

Essence is thus being as shining within itself.

Encyclopaedia, 3rd ed., § 112

The progression of the concept is no longer passing over, nor shining into another, but development, since what is distinguished is immediately posited at the same time as identical with one another and with the whole, and the determinacy is as a free being of the whole concept.

Encyclopaedia, 3rd ed., § 161

The three words can be used as test questions. Does a determination here pass over into another and then vanish? Then we are in the logic of being. Does a determination shine in its opposite, so that neither can be thought without the other? Then we are in the logic of essence. Or does what is distinguished remain with itself while it distinguishes itself? Then we are in the concept — and then the thought is complete.

Part one: the doctrine of being

The beginning is pure being — wholly indeterminate and therefore indistinguishable from nothing; the truth of both is becoming. The first result is existence (Dasein): being with a determinacy, that is, with a limit. From there the way leads via something and other, limit and restriction (Schranke) to finitude, and from there to the infinite — first to the bad infinity that merely goes on and on, then to the true infinity, which is with itself in its other. There follow being-for-itself, quantity (number, degree, ratio) and measure, in which quality and quantity come together (Encyclopaedia §§ 84–111).

What of this is at work in the Philosophy of Right: the principle “That a determinate being should in general be the determinate being of the free will – this is right” (§ 29) is a proposition of the logic of being — right is freedom that has a limit and thereby a shape. The empty universality of § 5 is the indeterminate being of the will; the restriction in § 6 is its existence. And civil society is the place of bad infinity: the multiplication of needs has no measure within itself (§ 185, § 195).

Part two: the doctrine of essence

Here thinking no longer asks what something is, but what stands behind it — and finds that what stands behind is nothing other than the relationship itself. The stages: semblance (Schein) and reflection; the determinations of reflection, identity, difference, opposition, contradiction, ground; then existence (Existenz), appearance, relationship (whole and parts, force and its expression, inner and outer); finally actuality with possibility, contingency and necessity, and the relationships of substance, causality and reciprocity (Encyclopaedia §§ 112–159).

This is the logical groundwork of the middle part of the philosophy of right. Morality is the sphere of the will reflected into itself (§ 105, § 106); civil society is expressly called “the world of appearance of the ethical”, and for this Hegel refers to the doctrine of semblance and of appearance (§ 181); the family is substance, its members are accidents (§ 163); the difference between the old forms of constitution is a mere difference of number, because it belongs to a relationship in which one and the same thing appears as a mutual opposition of independent existences (§ 273).

Part three: the doctrine of the concept

The concept has three moments — universality, particularity, singularity — which do not stand side by side; each can be grasped only together with the others. There follow the judgement as the original division of the concept and the syllogism, in which what was separated comes together again through a middle; after that objectivity, and finally the Idea — life, cognition, the absolute Idea (Encyclopaedia §§ 160–244).

The concept is the utterly concrete … The moments of the concept therefore cannot be separated; the determinations of reflection are supposed to be grasped and to hold each on its own, separated from the opposite one; but since in the concept their identity is posited, each of its moments can be grasped immediately only from and with the others.

Encyclopaedia, 3rd ed., § 164

This sentence is the key to § 7, and at the same time to Hegel’s concept of the state: a universal that one obtains by leaving out the differences is a universal of the understanding; the universal of the concept is one that brings forth its differences and remains in them. That is why the state is neither the sum of its citizens nor what they have in common (§ 258, § 260). And that is why Hegel can develop wrong as a series of forms of judgement (§ 85, § 88, § 95) and describe the estates as the mediating middle of a syllogism (§ 302).

Why this is the structure of the book

The connection is clearest in § 33, where Hegel divides the work. The three words with which he opens the three parts are exactly the three kinds of movement of the logic:

According to the sequence of stages in the development of the Idea of the will that is free in and for itself, the will is A. immediate … the sphere of abstract or formal right; B. the will reflected out of its external determinate being into itself … the sphere of morality; C. the unity and truth of these two abstract moments … ethical life.

§ 33

Immediate is the category of the logic of being, reflected into itself that of the logic of essence, unity and truth of the two that of the concept. Abstract right, morality and ethical life are therefore not three topics that Hegel deals with one after another, but three logical stages. Once you have seen this, you no longer read the transitional paragraphs (§ 104, § 141) as assertions but as inferences.

The operators one by one

Each section first says what the expression means, then where Hegel introduced it, and finally what work it does in the Philosophy of Right.

Universality — particularity — singularity (Allgemeinheit — Besonderheit — Einzelnheit)

The most important triad of the whole work, introduced in §§ 5–7 and presupposed everywhere thereafter. For it Hegel himself refers to the logic of the concept (Encyclopaedia §§ 163–165).

Universality (Allgemeinheit) is the capacity to look away from everything determinate. I can abstract from every content, every wish, every tie — even from my own life. Taken on its own, Hegel calls this “the freedom of emptiness”; turning towards actuality, it becomes “the fanaticism of the destruction of every existing social order” (§ 5, Remark — Hegel has in mind the Terror of 1793).

Particularity (Besonderheit) is the opposite step: committing oneself to this content, setting a restriction. Taken on its own, this too is nothing — mere being driven by changing drives, none of which says which one is to count (§ 6, § 17).

Singularity (Einzelnheit) is not a third thing beside the other two, but both in one: restricting oneself and in doing so remaining with oneself, because the restriction is one’s own and can be taken back. That is Hegel’s concept of freedom (§ 7). Two warnings on this. “Singularity” (Einzelnheit) here does not mean the isolated single thing of ordinary representation, but this structure. And “universal” (allgemein) in Hegel mostly does not mean what many things have in common — that would be the abstract universal, obtained by leaving out the differences — but the whole that realises itself in its differences and in doing so first brings them forth: concrete universality (§ 24, Remark).

On the spelling: Hegel consistently writes Einzelnheit — in the first edition of the Philosophy of Right just as in the Science of Logic and in all three editions of the Encyclopaedia. The widely used edition of the collected works (Werkausgabe) turned it into Einzelheit; this edition follows the first edition. The word is the same — but the unfamiliar form is a useful warning sign, for an Einzelheit in today’s German sense, that is, a detail, is never meant.

The triad recurs in every part of the work: the person in abstract right is universal and therefore abstract (§ 35); civil society is the realm of particularity set loose (§ 182, § 185); the state is the place where particularity and universality no longer exclude each other (§ 260). Anyone looking for the arc of the book will find it here.

In itself — for itself — in and for itself (an sich — für sich — an und für sich)

In itself (an sich) means: in substance, according to its concept, but not yet known and not yet realised. The slave is free “in itself” — this is no whitewashing, but the proposition from which it follows that slavery is a wrong (§ 57). For itself (für sich) means: known, willed, explicitly posited. In and for itself (an und für sich) means both together; this is Hegel’s term for completed actuality — the state is rational “in and for itself” (§ 258), that is: it is not rational only because individuals consent to it, nor is it rational without them.

Hegel sets the three against one another in a single sentence that contains the method of the whole book:

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.

§ 10 — in the Glossary under In Itself, For Itself, In and For Itself

As a reading aid: wherever “in itself” appears, something has not yet been made good; the paragraph that makes it good comes later. And in the Remark to § 10 Hegel expressly warns against stopping at mere being-in-itself — freedom then becomes a mere “capacity”, that is, a possibility that never has to be made good.

Immediate — mediated (unmittelbar — vermittelt)

Immediate (unmittelbar) means: without presupposition, simply found, not yet having passed through anything else. In Hegel this is never praise but the mark of a beginning that does not yet know anything. Mediated (vermittelt) means: having passed through something else and thereby being determined.

In substance this is an opposition that does not exist at all — Hegel says in the Introduction to the Science of Logic that there is nothing “in heaven or in nature or in spirit” that does not contain immediacy just as much as mediation (Glossary). For the philosophy of right this means: custom, which seems self-evident, is the most mediated thing in the world, and the state, which confronts the citizen as a power he simply finds before him, is in truth the result of all the preceding stages.

Almost every section begins with an immediate shape and ends with a mediated one. The family is immediate ethical life (§ 158), civil society the world of nothing but mediations (§ 182), the state the regained unity that retains mediation within itself (§ 256, § 257).

Moment (Moment)

Not a point in time and not a part. A moment is a distinguishable side of a whole which cannot subsist on its own and remains preserved in the whole. The word is borrowed from mechanics (the moment of a force) and means: something that is what it is only in working together with other things.

Hegel defines it at the place where he explains sublating: something is sublated only insofar “as it has entered into unity with its opposite; in this more precise determination, as something reflected, it may fittingly be called a moment” (Science of Logic I). So when Hegel says that universality and particularity are “moments” of the will (§ 7), this means: they can be distinguished but not separated — there is no will that would be merely the one. And when the members of the family are called “accidents” of the ethical substance (§ 163), or the estates “moments” of the state (§ 302), the same relation is meant, and never a belittlement.

Positing — presupposing (setzen — voraussetzen)

Positing (setzen) means: bringing forth, and in such a way that what is brought forth remains recognisable as one’s own. The will “posits” a restriction for itself — that is why the restriction does not bind it, for the will knows it as its own (§ 7). The concept “posits” its differences instead of finding them before it.

Presupposing (voraussetzen) means: taking something as already present that in truth is only supposed to emerge as a result. The charge that something is “presupposed” is therefore always an objection in Hegel — and one of the sharpest. It strikes the contract theory of the state (§ 75, § 258), the state of nature (§ 93, § 187) and every explanation that mixes the result in with the presuppositions. In the logic of essence the two are one: reflection presupposes what it posits (Encyclopaedia §§ 112 ff.).

Sublating (aufheben) — two meanings, not three

The most famous word, and the site of a widespread inaccuracy. Almost every account says that aufheben (to sublate) has three meanings in Hegel: to negate, to preserve and to raise to a higher level. At both of the authoritative passages Hegel himself expressly names two — in the Science of Logic (the Remark “The expression ‘to sublate’”, Der Ausdruck: Aufheben) and in the Encyclopaedia (§ 96): to keep, to preserve (aufbewahren, erhalten) and at the same time to make cease, to put an end to (aufhören lassen, ein Ende machen). The “raising up” (Emporheben) does occur in the same Remark, but as what the Latin tollere precisely does not achieve; it is the poorer determination against which Hegel shows the superiority of the German word.

Hegel does not deny that something richer and also higher emerges from a sublation — he says so expressly, but of the result of negation, not of the word. The gain in height is a consequence of the matter, not a meaning of the word. How what is sublated continues to exist, he states without any “higher”: it has become a moment. Treated in detail, with all supporting passages, in the Glossary under Sublation.

In the philosophy of right the movement can be followed throughout: wrong is sublated in punishment (§ 99), abstract right in morality (§ 104, § 141), both in ethical life (§ 141). Each time, what came earlier is neither gone nor still there unchanged. Wherever “sublate” (aufheben) appears, mere abolition is never meant — and this matters in practice: Hegel does not abolish abstract right when he sublates it; property and contract remain valid in ethical life, only no longer as the last word.

Negation, negativity, contradiction (Negation, Negativität, Widerspruch)

In Hegel, negativity is not a lack but what moves things. “The I determines itself insofar as it is the relation of negativity to itself” (§ 7) — meaning: I am not this or that content, I can detach myself from any of them, and precisely therein lies my ability to commit myself to one.

Contradiction is therefore not the sign of an error in thinking but the point at which the matter drives onward (Encyclopaedia §§ 119 f.). Where Hegel points out a contradiction, he does not say “someone has thought badly here”, but “here the determination does not keep what it promises”. Wrong is such a case: the criminal wants to posit a right as a single individual, and in doing so appeals to the very right he violates (§ 95, § 97, § 100). That is why Hegel can call punishment the criminal’s own right — not revenge and not deterrence.

Reflection, reflected into itself (Reflexion, in sich reflektiert)

Reflection (Reflexion) is a turning back upon oneself, not pondering (Nachdenken). Something is reflected into itself when it has its determinacy not as an alien restriction but as its own, one that it can know and take back. This is the decisive expression in § 7 and the reason why freedom can be spoken of there: particularity is “reflected into itself and thereby brought back to universality”.

To be distinguished from this is reflection into another: being determined only by the relation to something else. That is the structure of civil society as a whole, where everyone attains his end only by way of others (§ 182, § 183) — and that is why Hegel also calls it a “system of needs” and not a community. The logic of essence in the Encyclopaedia (§§ 112–122) develops both forms; the philosophy of right shows them in action.

Determinacy — determining (Bestimmtheit — bestimmen)

Determinacy (Bestimmtheit) is that by which something is this and not that. It is therefore always at the same time a limit: every determinacy is a negation and says as much about what the thing is not as about what it is. To determine (bestimmen) means to posit this limit; to determine oneself (sich bestimmen) means to posit it for oneself — and throughout the book that is the activity of the will.

At first determinacy is merely a restriction. The I is “the transition from undifferentiated indeterminacy to differentiation, determining, and the positing of a determinacy as a content and object” (§ 6) — and is thus no longer the empty, free I, but this determinate one. That is why § 6 is the uncomfortable paragraph of the Introduction: freedom seems to be lost in every determinacy.

In Hegel, Bestimmtheit (determinacy) and Bestimmung (determination) are not one word in two forms, but two stages. What the difference consists in is set out in the next section.

Determination (Bestimmung)

Determination (Bestimmung) is determinacy insofar as it belongs to the something as its own: as what it is according to its concept and that by which it holds its own against the other. In the Logic Hegel contrasts it with constitution (Beschaffenheit) — the same determinacy seen from the side on which it is external and changeable, exposed to the other (Science of Logic, Doctrine of Being: “Determination, Constitution and Limit”).

Hence it is no play on words that in German “Bestimmung” also means vocation (Berufung): the determination of a thing is what it is in itself and ought to be in it. It is in this sense that Hegel calls the concept of freedom “the highest determination of spirit” (§ 30), and in this sense that the will in § 7 stands “in this determination to join together only with itself”.

The step from determinacy to determination is the movement of the Introduction. In § 6 the I has a determinacy and is thereby restricted. In § 7 it “knows it as its own and as ideal, as a mere possibility by which it is not bound, but in which it only exists because it posits itself therein” — it recognises the limit as its own, not as alien. The limit is thereby no longer mere determinacy but its determination, and freedom consists not in spite of determinacy but in it.

Two further uses are common and must be kept apart from this. “The determinations of the concept” — meaning the moments universality, particularity, singularity; so in § 31, where the concept develops itself out of itself and is “only an immanent progression and production of its determinations”. And determination as definition — so in § 29 on “the Kantian … definition” (Bestimmung) of right; here the word simply means definition and nothing more.

Existence (Dasein)

Existence (Dasein) is determinate being: being that has a limit and thereby a shape (Encyclopaedia §§ 89 ff.). Not empty being and not a mere thought, but what occurs in the world and can be distinguished — in the course of the logic, the first result after being, nothing and becoming.

The sentence that carries the whole philosophy of right uses exactly this word (Dasein): “That a determinate being should in general be the determinate being of the free will – this is right” (§ 29). Right is therefore neither an ought nor a feeling, but freedom that has taken on a shape in the world — property, contract, law, institution. Whoever has this one expression has the basic idea of the book.

This holds throughout the work: property is “the first existence of freedom” (§ 45), the body is “immediate existence” (§ 48), and crime violates “the existence of freedom in its concrete sense” (§ 95). When Hegel asks about existence, he never asks whether something can be thought, but whether it stands in the world.

Identity and difference (Identität und Unterschied)

For the ordinary understanding the two exclude each other. In Hegel, identity is always the identity of something differentiated: “to remain … in its identity with itself and its universality” means precisely not to remain indeterminate (§ 7). Empty identity — A = A — he expressly calls unproductive (Encyclopaedia §§ 115–117).

For the philosophy of right this is more than a logical subtlety. The equality of persons in abstract right is such an empty identity: all are persons, nothing more (§ 36). It is true, and it is poor. Hegel’s objection to egalitarianism and to the state of estates (Ständestaat) alike turns on this point both times: whoever sees only identity loses the differences, and whoever sees only the differences loses the connection (§ 49, § 200).

Concept — Idea — actuality (Begriff — Idee — Wirklichkeit)

In Hegel the concept (Begriff) is not the representation we form of a thing, but what drives the thing itself, its inner determination (Encyclopaedia § 160). That is why a thing can fail to correspond to its concept — a bad state is a state, but it is not what a state is. This is exactly the standard with which the Philosophy of Right works, and it is something other than an ideal applied from outside.

The Idea (Idee) is the concept together with its realisation (Encyclopaedia § 213). That is the subject matter of the whole book, as the very first sentence of § 1 already says: “The philosophical science of right has as its object the idea of right …” Not the concept alone and not the actual conditions of right alone, but both in their relation to each other.

Actuality (Wirklichkeit) is narrower than “everything there is” (Encyclopaedia § 142). Only what the concept itself has brought forth is actual; the rest is contingent existence, “idle existence”. Only in this way is the famous sentence of the Preface to be read — it does not claim that everything that exists is rational; Hegel himself later defended himself against this misunderstanding (see Actuality and Rationality in the Glossary).

Substance and accidents (Substanz und Akzidenzen)

Substance is what carries, and it does not stand independently alongside its determinations but exists only in them; the accidents are not additions but the way in which substance is there at all (Encyclopaedia §§ 150 ff., expressly cited by Hegel in § 163).

The family is substance, its members are its accidents (§ 163) — not because they are unimportant, but because their relation to one another is not that of contracting parties. “Ethical substance” is Hegel’s term for the customs and institutions in which individuals always already stand before they make any decision (§ 144, § 146, § 156). Whoever reads this relation as subordination misses it: the substance is nothing apart from its accidents.

Semblance — appearance — actuality (Schein — Erscheinung — Wirklichkeit)

A sequence of stages. Semblance (Schein) is a mere shining without a footing of its own; appearance (Erscheinung) is the shape in which an essence actually comes forth, but still separated from it; actuality (Wirklichkeit) is the unity of the two.

Hegel calls civil society “the world of appearance of the ethical” (§ 181) and for this expressly refers to the doctrine of semblance and of appearance (Encyclopaedia §§ 112 ff. and §§ 131 ff.). That means: the ethical is present in it, but dispersed, external and not yet transparent to itself. This is neither reproach nor praise — it is an indication of place.

Form and content (Form und Inhalt)

Form is not what is external as opposed to a content, but the way in which the content articulates itself (Encyclopaedia §§ 133 f.). When Hegel says “merely formal”, he means: the way is there, the content is still missing. Formal right (§ 36), the formal freedom of arbitrary will (§ 15), formal conscientiousness (§ 137) — everywhere the same diagnosis, and everywhere a paragraph follows that supplies the content.

Contingency and necessity (Zufälligkeit und Notwendigkeit)

Contingent (zufällig) is what could also be otherwise without the concept deciding it (Encyclopaedia §§ 145 ff.). Hegel does not explain contingency away but assigns it a place: at many points right has to fix something where the matter itself prescribes nothing — in the measure of punishment, in time limits, in measures and figures (§ 214). That a decision is made here rather than a proof given is no deficiency of the philosophy of right but a feature of right.

Conversely: when Hegel says “necessary”, he does not mean that things had to turn out this way, but that it follows from the concept. The transition from the family to civil society (§ 181) is necessary in this sense, and yet it is no historical forecast.

Abstract — concrete (abstrakt — konkret)

Here the reversal of ordinary usage matters. In Hegel, abstract means: poor, torn out, one-sided. Concrete means: rich in determinations, what has grown together. The clause “and all that is true is concrete” (§ 7, Remark) is therefore no empty phrase: for Hegel the true is never the simple, but always the whole with its differences.

The title of the first part is to be read in the same way: abstract right is not right in general, but the poor right of the mere person, detached from its context (§ 34, § 35).

Finite — infinite (endlich — unendlich)

Finite is what has its limit in something else. Infinite in the bad sense is mere continuation without end — always one more need, one more contract, one more law (Encyclopaedia §§ 93–95). Hegel calls this bad infinity and finds it everywhere in civil society: the multiplication of needs has no measure within itself (§ 185, § 195). Truly infinite, by contrast, is what is with itself in its other — and that again is the concept of freedom (§ 22, § 23).

Ideal — real (ideell — reell)

A pair of concepts that describes what happens in a sublation: what is sublated is not gone, it has become ideal (ideell) — present, but no longer independent. In § 7 the I knows its determinacy “as its own and as ideal, as a mere possibility by which it is not bound”. And the sovereignty of the state consists in the particular powers being “ideal” within it, that is, in their not subsisting on their own (§ 276, § 278). More in the Glossary under Ideality and Reality.

Judgement and syllogism (Urteil und Schluss) — the middle

Two expressions from the logic of the concept that do more work in the Philosophy of Right than one would expect. The judgement (Urteil) is the original division (ursprüngliche Teilung) of the concept into its moments (Encyclopaedia §§ 166 ff.; Hegel cites the passage in § 24 and § 88). That is why wrong can be developed as a series of forms of judgement: the civil legal dispute as a negative judgement, fraud as an infinite judgement (§ 85, § 88, § 95).

The syllogism (Schluss) is the figure in which two sides are held together by a middle (Encyclopaedia §§ 181 ff.). This is the architecture of Hegel’s state: the estates are the mediating middle between government and people (§ 302, § 304), the corporation the middle between the individual and universality (§ 251, § 255). Wherever Hegel says “middle” (Mitte), this figure is always meant, and never mediocrity.

Transition and development (Übergang und Entwicklung)

The transition (Übergang) is the point at which a shape breaks down on its own inadequacy and drives forth the next one. The transitional paragraphs — for instance § 33, § 104, § 141, § 181, § 256 — are the most difficult and at the same time the most important: whoever understands them has the structure of the book. Hegel stresses that the division of the work is not a scheme applied from outside, but is itself already the first step of the matter (§ 33, Remark).

Development (Entwicklung) accordingly means not growth in time, but the coming forth of what was already there in substance. That is why the order of the paragraphs is not a chronology: the family comes before civil society, although both exist at the same time.

One paragraph worked through: § 7

Finally, the test case. § 7 is considered one of the hardest sentences in the book; with the expressions introduced so far it can be taken apart piece by piece. Hegel writes:

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 and its universality, and in this determination to join together only with itself.

§ 7

“these two moments” — meaning universality from § 5 (being able to abstract from everything) and particularity from § 6 (committing oneself to something). “Moments” means: neither of the two occurs on its own.

“particularity reflected into itself” — the commitment that does not come from outside. I have not stumbled into this content; in it I have related myself to myself.

“and thereby brought back to universality” — and therefore the commitment does not cancel the ability to abstract. I am committed and nevertheless keep what enables me to abstract. “Brought back” (zurückgeführt) names exactly this step and nothing else.

“individuality” (Einzelnheit) — the name for the result. Not a third thing alongside universality and particularity, but both in one.

“to posit itself as the negative of itself” — to limit oneself. “Negative” here means: determinate, and determinate means: not everything else. And “posit” means: I bring forth the limit myself; it does not befall me.

“and yet to remain with itself” — the limit does not separate me from myself. That is Hegel’s standing formula for freedom: being with oneself in the other (§ 7, § 23, § 24).

“knows it as its own and as ideal, as a mere possibility by which it is not bound” — the second sentence of the paragraph draws the consequence: because I have posited the limit, I can take it back. The resolution binds, but it does not turn to stone.

And then the comparison with which Hegel closes the paragraph: this freedom constitutes the concept of the will, “its gravity, just as gravity constitutes the substantiality of a body”. Freedom, then, is not a property that the will might just as well lack, but what makes it a will at all — just as a body without gravity would not be a body.

How to read with them

Four moves that almost always help:

First, pay attention to Hegel’s italics. What he emphasises is as a rule exactly the operator that matters in that paragraph — a count across the whole text confirms this: the expressions most often set in italics are in itself (an sich), existence (Dasein), universality (Allgemeinheit), particularity (Besonderheit), for itself (für sich), form (Form), content (Inhalt), actuality (Wirklichkeit).

Second, look for the connection. Hardly any paragraph stands on its own; almost every one is the answer to a difficulty in the one before. Where a sentence remains unintelligible, the question is usually not “what does this mean?” but “where did the previous step fail?”.

Third, distinguish the Remark from the matter itself. The paragraph itself is the matter; the Remark is Hegel’s engagement with other views; the Additions come from students’ lecture notes and were added only after Hegel’s death. Anyone looking for the course of the development should first read the paragraphs alone.

Fourth, ask of every operator what it is doing here, not what it means in general. The same term does different things in different places; only the context decides. That is why this page is laid out as a grammar and not as a dictionary.

Where to read on

The Glossary of Hegel’s Key Concepts treats the individual concepts in detail, with the supporting passages quoted in full. In addition, for every paragraph of this edition there is a short explanation of the step it takes, under the heading “The Logical Development” (so far on the German pages only).

For those who want to read the passages in the Logic themselves: Hegel’s own references in the Philosophy of Right point to the Heidelberg Encyclopaedia of 1817, whose numbering differs from that of the familiar 3rd edition (1830). In this edition a footnote giving the number in the 3rd edition is attached at every such place — for example at § 7, § 24, § 88, § 161, § 163, § 181 and § 273. For the Science of Logic the relevant sections are the Remark “The expression ‘to sublate’” and the Introduction to the first volume, as well as the logic of the concept in the second.

DE