Hegel’s philosophy of right, which treats not only law in today’s ordinary sense, falls within the part of the system called „objective spirit“ in Hegel’s system of the unfolding of the „concept“. It is followed by the part „absolute spirit“, in which art, religion and philosophy/science are developed. Preceding it are the parts „Logic“ („the thoughts of God before creation“), „philosophy of nature“ and — from the part „philosophy of spirit“ — „subjective spirit“.
Within „subjective spirit“, „anthropology“, „phenomenology“ or „consciousness“, and „spirit“ are developed conceptually. Within the part „spirit“ of „subjective spirit“, „theoretical spirit“, „practical spirit“ and „free spirit“ are unfolded. „Free spirit“ is the structure that contains all preceding stages, „sublated“, as a new unity — in particular theoretical and practical spirit, that is, intelligence and will.
The following, closing sections of „subjective spirit“ are also given in abbreviated form in the Introduction to the Groundlines of the Philosophy of Right.
Encyclopaedia § 468: „Intelligence, which as theoretical appropriates the immediate determinacy to itself, is, after completed taking possession, now in its property; through the last negation of immediacy it is posited in itself that the content is determined for it by itself. Thinking, as the free concept, is now free also in respect of its content. Intelligence, knowing itself as that which determines the content, which is as much its own as it is determined as being, is will.“
Encyclopaedia § 469: „Spirit as will knows itself as resolving upon itself within itself and as fulfilling itself out of itself. This fulfilled being-for-itself or singularity constitutes the side of existence or reality of the Idea of spirit; as will, spirit steps into actuality; as knowing, it is in the ground of the universality of the concept. – As giving itself its content, the will is with itself, free in general; this is its determinate concept. – Its finitude consists in its formalism, that its being fulfilled through itself is the abstract determinacy, its own in general, not identified with developed reason. The determination of the will that is in itself is to bring freedom into existence in the formal will, and hence the purpose of the latter is to fulfil itself with its concept, that is, to make freedom its determinacy, its content and purpose, as well as its determinate being. This concept, freedom, is essentially only as thinking; the way of the will to make itself into objective spirit is to raise itself to a thinking will — to give itself the content which it can have only as thinking itself.“
Encyclopaedia § 475: „The subject is the activity of satisfying the drives, of formal rationality, namely the translation from the subjectivity of the content, which so far is purpose, into objectivity, in which it closes together with itself. That, in so far as the content of the drive is distinguished as a matter from this its activity, the matter which has come about contains the moment of subjective singularity and its activity — this is interest. Nothing therefore comes about without interest.“
Encyclopaedia § 476: „The will, as thinking and free in itself, distinguishes itself from the particularity of the drives and places itself, as the simple subjectivity of thinking, above their manifold content; thus it is reflecting will.“
Encyclopaedia § 477: „A particularity of drive of this kind is in this way no longer immediate, but first its own, in that the will closes together with it and thereby gives itself determinate singularity and actuality. It is at the standpoint of choosing between inclinations, and is arbitrary will.“
Encyclopaedia § 480: „Happiness is the merely represented, abstract universality of the content, which merely ought to be. But the truth of the particular determinacy, which as much is as it is sublated, and of abstract singularity, arbitrary will, which in happiness as much gives itself a purpose as it does not, is the universal determinacy of the will in its own self, that is, its self-determining itself, freedom. Arbitrary will is in this way the will only as pure subjectivity, which is pure and concrete at once in that it has for its content and purpose only that infinite determinacy, freedom itself. In this truth of its self-determination, in which concept and object are identical, the will is actually free will.“
Encyclopaedia § 481: „The actually free will is the unity of theoretical and practical spirit; free will, which is for itself as free will, in that the formalism, the contingency and limitedness of the previous practical content has sublated itself. Through the sublating of the mediation contained therein, it is the immediate singularity posited by itself, which however is equally purified into the universal determination, freedom itself. This universal determination the will has as its object and purpose, in that it thinks itself, knows this its concept, is will as free intelligence.“
Encyclopaedia § 482: „Spirit, which knows itself as free and wills itself as this its object, that is, has its essence for its determination and purpose, is at first in general the rational will, or in itself the Idea, and therefore only the concept of absolute spirit. As abstract Idea it again exists only in the immediate will; it is the side of the determinate being of reason, the singular will as knowledge of that its determination, which constitutes its content and purpose and of which it is only the formal activity. The Idea thus appears only in the will, which is a finite one but is the activity of developing it and of positing its unfolding content as determinate being, which as the determinate being of the Idea is actuality — objective spirit.
Of no Idea is it so universally known that it is indeterminate, ambiguous and capable of the greatest misunderstandings — and therefore actually subject to them — as of the Idea of freedom, and none is current with so little consciousness. Since free spirit is actual spirit, misunderstandings about it are of the most enormous practical consequence, as nothing else is, once individuals and peoples have grasped the abstract concept of freedom that is for itself in their representation, since this has that indomitable strength precisely because it is spirit’s own essence, and indeed as its actuality itself. Whole parts of the world, Africa and the Orient, have never had this Idea and do not have it yet; the Greeks and Romans, Plato and Aristotle, and the Stoics too did not have it; on the contrary, they knew only that a human being is actually free through birth (as an Athenian, Spartan and so forth citizen) or through strength of character, through cultivation, through philosophy (the wise man is free even as a slave and in chains). This Idea came into the world through Christianity, according to which the individual as such has an infinite value, in that it is the object and purpose of God’s love, destined to have its absolute relation to God as spirit, to have this spirit dwelling within it, that is, that the human being is in himself destined to the highest freedom. If in religion as such a human being knows his relation to absolute spirit as his essence, then he further has the divine spirit present as also entering into the sphere of worldly existence, as the substance of the state, the family and so forth. These relations are formed by that spirit and constituted in accordance with it, just as through such existence the disposition of ethical life comes to dwell in the individual, who is then, in this sphere of particular existence, of present feeling and willing, actually free.
If the knowledge of the Idea — that is, of human beings’ knowledge that their essence, purpose and object is freedom — is speculative, then this Idea itself as such is the actuality of human beings: not that they have it on that account, but that they are it. Christianity has made it into their actuality in its adherents — for example, not to be a slave; were they made slaves, were the decision about their property placed in someone’s pleasure and not in laws and courts, they would find the substance of their existence violated. This willing of freedom is no longer a drive demanding its satisfaction, but character — spiritual consciousness become a being without drive. – But this freedom, which has the content and purpose of freedom, is itself at first only concept, principle of spirit and heart, and destined to develop itself into objectivity, into legal, ethical and religious as well as scientific actuality.“