[7th Paragraph]
With the state, this error is rooted most firmly. Many believe: whoever thinks freely must oppose the existing order. And a philosophy of the state must invent a new theory of its own. People act as if there had never been a state. As if one had to start entirely from the beginning now, and this “now” lasts forever.
A comparison makes this clear. About nature, everyone admits: it has its own laws. We must study it as it is. Reason lies within nature itself.
With the state, this is not supposed to hold. Chance is supposed to rule the world of right and ethical life. Hegel harshly calls this an “atheism of the ethical world.” It is as if God and reason had forsaken this world. And since reason supposedly is not in it, everyone thinks he already carries the philosopher’s stone with him.
There is one difference from nature, of course. The laws of nature simply hold, whether we know them or not. But people made the laws of right. So a person can ask: are they really right? He carries a standard within himself. That is exactly why he must learn to recognize right thoroughly.
By the way, most people are glad to live in the state and are content. Strictly speaking, all of them are. They laugh at these world-improvers. Sadly, the mockery falls back on philosophy as a whole. The worst contempt is this: everyone thinks he can have his say on philosophy without having learned it. No one thinks this way about any other field. Everyone has fingers and can buy brushes and paints. But that does not make him a painter. It is the same with thinking.
In short: to understand the state, one must seek the reason within it, as in nature. One must not think one has to invent it first.
Hegel’s text: Preface, paragraph 7 →