[6th Paragraph]
Many people simply keep to what is generally held to be right. They build their lives on it. Hegel has nothing against that. He calls it the simple attitude of the naive mind.
Now an objection comes up: there are so many opinions. How can anyone know what is really valid? That sounds deeply serious. Hegel sees it differently. Whoever talks like this cannot see the forest for the trees. He has made the difficulty himself. For someone who truly cares about the matter keeps to the commands of ethical life and the state. And he lives by them. But whoever nurses the difficulty really wants something else: something of his own, something particular.
But man thinks. And in thinking he seeks his freedom and the basis of what is good. That is a high right, indeed a divine one. But it turns into wrong when one believes free thought means only departing from the universal and inventing something particular.
Hegel’s text: Preface, paragraph 6 →