{"id":904570,"date":"2026-09-19T12:05:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T10:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grundlinien.de\/notes\/textual-note\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T13:21:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T11:21:59","slug":"textual-note","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/grundlinien.de\/en\/notes\/textual-note\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Text of this Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This page is about the wording: which edition the text follows, against what it has been checked, and what has been changed in it. It describes the German text of this edition.<\/strong> The English version is a translation of that text, and the last section says what that means for anyone quoting it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Textual basis<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The text was transcribed from the Suhrkamp Werkausgabe<\/em> (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts<\/em>, Werke vol. 7, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel). That edition descends from the Freundesvereinsausgabe<\/em> of 1833, prepared by Eduard Gans after Hegel’s death \u2014 not from the first edition, and it alters the wording in many places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The authority here is therefore not that edition but the first printing of 1820.<\/strong> The whole of the paragraph text and the Preface have been checked against it; where the Werkausgabe departs from it for no discernible reason, the reading of the first printing stands. The critical reproduction of the first printing in Gesammelte Werke<\/em> vol. 14,1 (ed. Klaus Grotsch and Elisabeth Weisser-Lohmann, Felix Meiner Verlag 2009) served as the tool for this. Nothing belonging to that edition itself \u2014 its apparatus of variants, its editorial report, its introduction \u2014 has been taken over or reproduced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the date: the first edition appeared in October 1820<\/strong>, in time for the Michaelmas fair; the title page, however, bears the year 1821, which is why the work is usually cited under that year. Hegel dated his Preface 25 June 1820.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The indented passages are Hegel’s own Remarks, printed with the text in 1820; the superscript figures lead to his own footnotes. Everything else on a paragraph page \u2014 Additions<\/em>, Notes<\/em>, lecture transcripts, commentary \u2014 is not Hegel’s printed text. The Additions<\/em> are Gans’s, the Notes<\/em> come from Hegel’s own annotated copy; both are taken from the Werkausgabe and have not yet been checked against their own sources<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What has been checked<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The comparison was made word by word, by machine and then inspected at each place. Checked so far: the text and Remarks of all 360 paragraphs<\/strong>, Hegel’s seven own footnotes<\/strong> in \u00a7\u00a7 140, 258 and 270, the Preface<\/strong>, and the sentence and paragraph divisions<\/strong>. After correction the agreement with the first printing stands at 96 to 97 per cent at the level of individual words; the remaining difference is almost entirely spelling and inflection, deliberately modernised here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A second comparison was run against the Werkausgabe itself, to catch transcription errors of our own. It found none.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interventions in the wording<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The wording was altered at 72 places<\/strong> where the Werkausgabe departs from the first printing. Every single one is listed, with its old and new reading, in the register of interventions<\/a> (in German). The heaviest:<\/p>\n\n\n\n