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On the Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Right

[p. 518]

|518| and in the extensiveness in which it loses itself takes itself for a totality that is in itself, unconditioned and absolute. The inner negativity of this potency, also according to its content, which is the existing finite, has already been determined above, and the reflected shine of indifference that is possible in it can the less be taken for something absolute, – just as little as the system of acquisition and possession itself, the wealth of a people, and in this system again a single potency, be it agriculture or manufactures and factories or trade, can be made unconditioned.

But a single potency becomes positive still more when it and its principle forget their conditionedness so much that they reach over into others and subject them. As the principle of mechanics has forced its way into chemistry and natural science, and that of chemistry again quite particularly into the latter, so in the philosophy of the ethical this has been the case at various times with various principles. But in modern times, in the inner economy of natural right, this external justice, the infinity reflected in the existing finite and therefore formal, which constitutes the principle of civil right, has acquired a particular sovereignty over the right of the state and the right of nations. The form of such a subordinate relation as the contract has forced its way into the absolute majesty of the ethical totality, and, e.g., for monarchy the absolute universality of the centre and the being-one of the particular in it has been conceived, now according to the contract of authorisation as a relation of a supreme official of the state to the abstraction of the state, now according to the relation of the ordinary contract in general as a matter of two determinate parties, each of which needs the other, as a relation of reciprocal performance, and through such relations, which are wholly in the finite, the Idea and absolute majesty have been immediately annihilated; just as it is also

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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)

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