grundlinien.de

On the Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Right

[p. 461]

|461| of their objects, but that it is clear that, since in it one abstracts from all content of cognition and truth concerns precisely this content, it is entirely impossible and absurd to ask for a mark of the truth of this content of cognitions, inasmuch as the mark is at the same time not to concern the content of cognitions, he thereby pronounces precisely the judgement on the principle of duty and right that is set up by practical reason. For it is the absolute abstraction from all matter of the will; through a content a heteronomy of arbitrary will is posited. Now, however, it is precisely the interest to know what right and duty then are; the question is asked after the content of the ethical law, and all that matters is this content; but the essence of the pure will and of pure practical reason is that all content is abstracted from, and so it is in itself contradictory to seek, in this absolute practical reason, an ethical legislation, since it would have to have a content, while its essence consists in having no content.

In order, then, for this formalism to be able to pronounce a law, it is necessary that some matter, a determinacy, be posited which makes up the content of the law, and the form which is added to this determinacy is unity or universality; that a maxim of your will must at the same time count as the principle of a universal legislation – this basic law of pure practical reason expresses that some determinacy, which makes up the content of the maxim of the particular will, be posited as concept, as universal. But every determinacy is capable of being taken up into the form of the concept and posited as a quality, and there is nothing at all that could not be made in this way into an ethical law. Every determinacy, however, is in itself a particular and not a universal; the opposite determinacy stands over against it, and it is only determinacy

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

DE

Comments

One response to “On the Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Right”

  1. Cross-reference Avatar
    Cross-reference

    Cross-reference:
    The following passages of this essay anticipate ideas that Hegel later developed at greater length in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Each link leads directly to the exact passage within this essay:

    p. 427 f. (part 2, 1802) – “The state of nature, and the majesty and divinity of the whole of the condition of right …” → § 258 (on the relation between the state of nature, contract theory, and the state’s ethical substantiality)
    p. 437 (part 2, 1802) – “If the determinacy of property in general is posited, then the tautological proposition …” → § 135 (on the critique of the empty formalism of the Kantian doctrine of duty (the example of property))
    p. 439 (part 2, 1802) – “A maxim that, on this principle, is immoral because it contradicts itself, is, precisely …” → § 135 (on the critique of the empty formalism of the Kantian doctrine of duty (the example of helping the poor))
    p. 449 (part 2, 1802) – “In this its determination, then, punishment is something in itself, truly infinite and …” → § 99 (on the theory of punishment: punishment as a work of freedom, against the mere idea of coercion or deterrence)
    p. 458 (part 2, 1802) – “They received laws and commanders from the will of their monarch, and the descendants of …” → § 357 (on the Roman Empire as the disintegration of ethical life into private personhood and abstract universality)
    p. 459 (part 2, 1802) – “It is this nothing other than the performance of tragedy within the ethical, which the …” → § 324 (on the ethical moment of sacrifice and the transience of the finite (compare the motif of war))
    p. 464 (part 2, 1802) – “But that which we have set on one side under the outer form of the first estate is the …” → § 325 (on the estate of valor of its own, and the free, violent death as the highest abstraction of freedom)
    p. 469 (part 3, 1803) – “There must also be a reflex of the same in his empirical consciousness, and such a reflex …” → § 204 (on the second estate (possession, property, bourgeois/formal ethical life))
    p. 469 f. (part 3, 1803) – “Those properties, however, that are truly ethical, in that in them the particular or …” → § 150 (on virtue as ethical energy become individual (the examples of Epaminondas, Hannibal, Caesar))
    p. 470 (part 3, 1803) – “It must also present itself in the form of universality and of cognition, as a system of …” → § 274 (on the relation between legislation and the living customs of a people)
    p. 471 (part 3, 1803) – “We remark in advance, in general, that philosophy, through the universality of the …” → § 3 (on the boundary between philosophical and positive (historical) legal science)

Leave a Reply