grundlinien.de

On the Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Right

[p. 484]

|484| ideality, a relative identity of the opposed determinacies, and this can therefore not be positively absolute but only formal. Through the identity into which the real is posited in the relationship of the relations, possession becomes property, and particularity in general, the living too, is at the same time determined as a universal, whereby the sphere of right is constituted.

As for the reflex of the absolute in this relation, it has already been determined above, according to its negative side, against the subsistence of the real and determinate, as a subduing; according to the positive side, for the subsistence of the real, indifference in this determinate material can express itself only as an external, formal equality, and the science that relates to this can aim only at determining partly the gradations of inequality, partly (so that this may be possible) the way in which a living or inner being in general is to be posited so objectively and externally that it be capable of that determination and calculation. To this superficial appearance the absolute reality of ethical life in this potency is restricted through the subsistence of the reality present in opposition. Not only does, for the sake of the fixed determinacy which includes an absolute opposition, the equating and the calculation of inequality have its limits and run up, like geometry, against incommensurability, but – because it [remains] wholly in determinacy and yet cannot abstract like geometry, but absolutely, since it is in living relations, always has before it whole bundles of such determinacies – also absolutely against endless contradictions. This contradicting of the determinacies is indeed remedied, and an end made to it, in the case of an intuition by fixing and holding fast to individual determinacies, whereby a decision can ensue, which is still always better than that none ensue; for since in the matter itself there is nothing absolute, it is properly the formal, that in general

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