[p. 359]
|359| This principle of freedom in its mechanical constitution comprehends itself as organisation of the courts of justice, and is an analysis of the dispute, and of its decision.
In the civil administration of justice only determinacy as such is absolutely negated in the dispute, and the living performance, labour, the personal, can become determinacy.
In criminal justice, however, not determinacy but individuality, the indifference of the whole, livingness, personality. That negation in civil right is a merely ideal one; that in criminal right a real one; for the negation which is directed at a totality is for that reason real; I am in possession of the property of another, without robbery or theft, but because I assert it as mine, and in a rightful manner, I recognise the capacity of the other for possession; but force, theft are against this recognising; they are coercive, are directed at the whole; they sublate freedom, and the reality of being-universal, of being-recognised; if crime did not deny recognising, it could just as well leave what it accomplishes to others, to the universal.
Civil justice is therefore directed merely at determinacy; criminal justice must, besides determinacy, also sublate the negation of universality, and the universality posited in its place, opposition against opposition; this sublating is punishment, and it is determined precisely according to the determinacy in which universality has been sublated.
I. civil II. criminal III. war; here universality and singularity are one, and the essence is this totality; in I. the essence is universality, in II. singularity, III. identity; the people becomes the criminal who is in II and sacrifices the possession of I.; takes the side of the negative of I. and II.; to the first estate belongs III. –
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