[p. 451]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Manuscripts from Hegel\u2019s Frankfurt and Jena years (1800\u20131802), not published in his lifetime; the title is the editors\u2019. The edition prints four pieces: A<\/strong> the early drafts of an introduction, B<\/strong> the executed essay on the constitution, C<\/strong> parallel passages and D<\/strong> fragments. Translated from the German text of the Werke (vol. 1, \u201cFr\u00fche Schriften\u201d). Headings in square brackets are the editors\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Print version (PDF):<\/strong> for printing and taking along<\/a> \u2013 each page of the PDF holds exactly one page of the printed edition, with a wide margin for one\u2019s own notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The figures between vertical bars, e.g. |93|<\/span>, mark the beginning of a page of the printed edition, so that a passage can be found again in one\u2019s own copy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the notes, \u201cEditors:<\/em>\u201d introduces a note by the editors of the German edition and \u201cHegel\u2019s footnote.\u201d one of Hegel\u2019s own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cross-reference:<\/em> Hegel\u2019s first great text on the state, twenty years before the Groundlines<\/em>: the Empire is no longer a state, because it lacks a common power. The concept of the state he wins here returns in \u00a7 257<\/a> ff.; on sovereignty \u00a7 278<\/a>, on the estates element \u00a7 301<\/a> ff., on the relation of states \u00a7 321<\/a> ff. and \u00a7 330<\/a> ff. At each section the corresponding place is noted as a cross-reference. The German text<\/a> is on the German side of this edition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Page by page:<\/strong> Each web page holds exactly one page of the printed edition. Web page 1 is p. 451, web page 2 is p. 452, and so on; the web page for a printed page thus has the number \u201cprinted page minus 450\u201d. The page number stands at the top of each web page in square brackets. The first and the last page are printed only in part, because the text there begins or ends in the middle of a page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Find a page:<\/strong> (1800-1802)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n [First Drafts of an Introduction to the Essay on the Constitution]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n [Preface]1)<\/a><\/sup><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 1)<\/a> Editors:<\/em> This first draft for the essay on the constitution (Sch\u00fcler no. 88) originated in early 1799 in Frankfurt (text in Dokumente zu Hegels Entwicklung<\/em>, ed. Hoffmeister, pp. 282-88) and was heavily revised in Jena in spring 1801 (Ms. vol. 13, leaves 7-10 – Kimmerle no. 3 – Lasson pp. 137 f. and 3-13). The revised text is reproduced here – in places a compromise between the readings of Lasson and Hoffmeister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (1799\/1801)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Was the political result of the ruinous war which the German Empire had to wage with France to be no other for Germany than that some of its fairest lands, some millions of its children, should be torn from it, that, as compensation for the princes thereby losing out, their ecclesiastical fellow-estates should be annihilated, and that a heavy burden of debt should prolong the misery of the war even into the peace?<\/p>\n\n\n\n So many German patriots asked themselves at the time of the Congress of Rastatt. It did indeed follow from the whole course of that assembly that alterations in the condition and constitution of Germany were, or were to become, its subject; why the condition is so closely connected with the constitution that [Germany] was bound to be subjected to a thoroughgoing political relegation will become clearer afterwards. Since then the misery of those German lands that are at war with France has become so great that exhaustion demands nothing but rest at any price for the moment, without<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 452]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |452|<\/span> foresight for the future; with pain Germany had to see that [the hope of] stopping up the source of the evils, of an essential improvement of the defects of the German constitution of the state, [vanished].2)<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n 2)<\/a> Editors:<\/em> The text of this paragraph can only be inferred. In the first version it read: 3)<\/a><\/sup>Apart from the despotisms, i.e. the states without a constitution, no country, as a whole, as a state, has a more wretched constitution than the German Empire; this has become a fairly general conviction; and the war, ended by the continuing peace negotiations, has given everyone the liveliest feeling of it, or rather it has now become clearer that Germany is no longer a state at all. Lecture-room statisticians, whose official duty it was to classify the constitutions of states and to bring them into the classes of monarchy, aristocracy etc. laid down by Aristotle, never knew how to get along with the German Empire; Voltaire called its constitution outright an anarchy; this is the best name, if Germany is regarded as a state; but now even this name no longer holds, because one can no longer regard Germany as a state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3)<\/a> In the margin:<\/em> Germany no longer a state<\/p>\n\n\n\n The edifice of the German constitution of the state is the work of past centuries; it is not borne by the life<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 453]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |453|<\/span> of the present time; the whole fate of more than one century is stamped upon its forms, and the justice and force, bravery and cowardice, the honour, the blood, the need and the well-being of long-vanished times, of long-decayed generations dwell in them; the life and the forces, whose development and activity are the pride of the present living generation, have no share in them, no interest in it and no nourishment from them; the edifice with its pillars, its flourishes stands isolated from the spirit of the time in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4)<\/a><\/sup>There has come down to us the legend of German freedom, of the time, such as few countries had, when in Germany the individual, unbowed by a universal, without subjection to a state, stood for himself and had his honour and his fate resting on himself, in his own sense and character shattered his strength against the world or shaped it for his enjoyment – when there was as yet no state, when the individual belonged to the whole through character and custom and religion, but in his enterprise and deed was not restricted by the whole, but, without fear and without doubt of himself, was bounded by his own sense; indeed this condition, in which not laws but customs bound a multitude into a people, equal interest, not a universal command, presented the people as a state, was called German freedom.5)<\/a><\/sup> The circles of power which each created for himself according to character and chance, the possession he won for himself, these changeable things, the passing time gradually fixed, and as exclusive property wholly separated individuals from one another, concepts became that in which they were united, and makeshift laws began to rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4)<\/a> In the margin:<\/em> German freedom<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5)<\/a> In the margin:<\/em> German public law is private law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As cowardly and feeble as it is to call the sons of that condition abominable, unhappy and stupid, [and] to believe ourselves<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 454]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |454|<\/span> infinitely more humane, happier and cleverer, so childish and silly would it be to long back to such a condition – as if it alone were nature – and not to know how to esteem the condition in which laws rule as necessary – and as a condition of freedom. – The firm subsistence which those possessions gradually obtained brought forth a multitude of rights which, without unity, without principle, could form more a collection than a system, and whose inconsistencies and confused manifoldness required the highest acuity to rescue them as far as possible against their contradictions and here and there to bring unity into them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus an edifice of the state has arisen, whose individual parts, every princely house, every estate, every city, every guild, everything that possesses rights with regard to the state, have acquired these for themselves, have received nothing allotted from the universal, from the state as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The state always had merely to confirm what was wrested from its power; the political power and right of the individual, as state official and citizen of the state, is not a share calculated according to an organisation of the whole; the duties of the individual or of his office are likewise not demanded in relation to it; rather, in Germany the individual member of the body politic owes his power in the state, as well as his rights and duties, personally to his family, his estate or his guild; and the estate, guild etc. has them from the accident of former times. The principles of the system of German public law are therefore not [to be derived] from the unity of a concept of public law, such as the concept of a monarchy, aristocracy, democracy etc. is, but are narratives of actualities, for possession was earlier than law, and it did not spring from laws, but what had been won by oneself was made into legal right. According to its original ground of right, German public law is therefore<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 455]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |455|<\/span> really a private law, and the political rights [are] a legal possession, a property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the private man A has inherited, bought, received as a gift the house a, a private man B a garden b etc., so a member of an estate or an office A possesses as property 6 peasants, B 600 peasants; as the private man C possesses a small shop, much cornfield, also vineyards, so the estate C or the office C possesses the high and low jurisdiction over 5 houses, the right to tithes over 100 villages, the position D has a piece of the power of taxation over 2000 citizens and a [right] to have a say in war and peace of all Germany, another [has] a piece of the power of taxation over a million people and nothing at all to say about the war and peace of all Germany. Executive, legislative, judicial, ecclesiastical, administrative power are mingled, divided and combined in the most lawless manner and mixed and separated in the most unequal proportions, just as manifold as the property of the citizens as private persons; and the ground of right of both is the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What state, then, should seem better organised than that in which every right to a share in public power6)<\/a><\/sup> has been determined most exactly, every circumstance relating to it has been the subject of the most protracted discussions? in which the solicitude for this political property has extended, with the most punctilious scrupulousness, to each and every thing, to the seemingly greatest trifles, e.g. order in sitting, walking and the like, titulature, with an infinite, admirable exactitude for the preservation of every right?7)<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n 6)<\/a> In the margin:<\/em> [as it] is determined exactly, piece by piece, with regard to its extent, in the treaties etc., so too peace treaties of the Imperial Diet, house treaties, electoral capitulations, mandates of the imperial courts etc. have exactly determined the political property of every estate and place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7)<\/a> In the margin:<\/em> Powers which according to the essence of a state stand under the direction of a centre, must be united in a supreme power (monarch and estates), military power, relations to foreign powers, the part of the finances that relates to this etc. – all this stands under no supreme power in law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 456]<\/p>\n\n\n\n The share in public power which the individual has acquired for himself is thereby withdrawn from the power of the universal. To this power of the universal, to the monarch (emperor) and the assembly of estates (Imperial Diet), the necessary character, sovereignty, has thereby been left in a most feeble measure.8)<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n 8)<\/a> In the margin:<\/em> From this side the German Empire is, like the realm of nature, inexhaustible in the great and unfathomable in the small, and it is this side which fills the initiated into the knowledge of the infinite detail of the rights with that admiration, that astonishment before the venerableness of the German body politic. To the extent that each part not only has a share in the whole, but has also isolated itself, set itself outside the power of the state, to that extent is this independence assured to it as a right; and daily the parts strive to withdraw out of dependence on the whole, and far more, even beyond the limit that is sanctioned. The rights of separation from the whole which the individual estates have won for themselves are sacred, inviolable rights, on whose preservation the whole so-called edifice of the state rests, and the German edifice of the state means nothing other than the sum of the rights withdrawn from the state, rights which are preserved with the greatest conscientiousness and the most timid solicitude, and this justice is the principle, the soul of the constitution. Every judgement that from the concept and essence of a state …<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 457]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [Introduction]9)<\/a><\/sup><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 9)<\/a> Editors:<\/em> Ms. vol. 13, leaves 1-4 – Sch\u00fcler no. 91 (Frankfurt 1799\/1800) – Lasson pp. 138-141<\/p>\n\n\n\n (1799\/1800)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The ever-growing contradiction between the unknown which men unconsciously seek and the life that is offered and permitted to them and that they made their own, the longing of those for life who have worked nature up into the Idea within themselves, contain the striving towards mutual approach. The need of the former to gain a consciousness of what holds them captive and of the unknown which they demand meets the need of the latter to pass over out of their Idea into life. The latter cannot live alone, and man is always alone, even if he has presented his nature to himself, has made this presentation his companion and enjoys himself in it; he must also find what is presented as something living. The condition of the man, whom the time has driven into an inner world, can, if he wants to maintain himself in this, be only a perpetual death or, if nature drives him to life, only a striving to sublate the negative of the existing world, in order to find and enjoy himself in it, in order to be able to live. His suffering is bound up with consciousness of the limits on account of which he scorns life as it would be permitted him, he wills his suffering; whereas the suffering of man without reflection on his fate is without will, because he honours the negative, takes the limits only in the form of their rightful and power-holding existence as unconquerable and his determinacies and their contradictions as absolute, and sacrifices himself and others to them, even when they injure his drives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 458]<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sublation of what is negative with regard to nature, positive with regard to the will, is not effected by force, neither by that which one does to one’s fate oneself, nor by that which it experiences from outside; in both cases fate remains what it is, the determinacy, – the limit is not separated from life by force; alien force is particular against particular, the robbery of a property, a new suffering; the enthusiasm of one who is bound is a moment fearful to himself, in which he loses himself, finds his consciousness again only in the forgotten, not dead, determinacies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The feeling of the contradiction of nature with the existing life is the need that it be removed; and it will be removed when the existing life has lost its power and all its dignity, when it has become pure negative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All phenomena of this time show that satisfaction is no longer found in the old life; it was a confinement to an orderly dominion over one’s property, a contemplating and enjoying of one’s wholly subservient small world and then also a self-annihilation and elevation in the thought of heaven reconciling this confinement. In part the distress of the time has attacked that property, in part its gifts in luxury have sublated the confinement, and in both cases have made man the master and his power over actuality the highest. Under this arid life of the understanding there has grown, on one side, the bad conscience of making his property, things, into the absolute, and with that, on the other, the suffering of men; and no better life has this time breathed. Its urge nourishes itself on the deeds of great characters of individual men, on the movements of whole peoples, on the presentation of nature and of fate by poets; through metaphysics the limitations receive their limits and their necessity in the context of the whole. The limited life as power<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 459]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |459|<\/span> can be attacked with hostile power by something better only when this too has become a power and has force to fear. As particular against particular, nature in its actual life is the sole attack or refutation of the worse life, and such a refutation cannot be the object of an intentional activity. But the limited can be attacked through its own truth that lies in it, and brought into contradiction with this; it does not found its dominion on the force of particulars against particulars, but on universality; this truth, the right which it vindicates for itself, must be taken from it and given to that part of life which is demanded. This dignity of a universality, of a right, is what makes the demand of the suffering of the drives that come into contradiction with the existing life, clothed with that honour, so timid and as going against conscience. To the positive of what exists, which is a negation of nature, its truth, that right ought to be, is left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the German Empire the universality that holds power, as the source of all right, has vanished, because it has isolated itself, made itself into a particular. Universality is therefore only still present as thought, no longer as actuality. On what public opinion, more brightly or more darkly, through loss of confidence has decided, little is needed to make a clearer consciousness more universal. And all existing rights nevertheless have their ground solely in this connection with the whole, which, because it has long since ceased to be, has let them all become particular ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Either, then, one can proceed from the truth which even what exists admits; in that case the partial concepts contained in that of the whole state are grasped as universal in thought, and their universality or particularity in actuality [is] placed beside them; if such a partial unity [shows itself] to be a particular one,<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 460]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |460|<\/span> the contradiction between what it wants to be and what alone is demanded for it, and what it is, strikes the eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or …10)<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n 10)<\/a> Editors:<\/em> Rosenkranz (Hegels Leben<\/em>, Berlin 1844, pp. 236 f.) reports on an – presumably lost – introduction to the essay on the constitution that differs from the texts reproduced here: [p. 461]<\/p>\n\n\n\n [The Constitution of Germany]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Germany is no longer a state. The older teachers of public law, who in treating German public law had the idea of a science hovering before them and who therefore set out to fix a concept of the German constitution, could not agree on this concept, until the more recent ones gave up the attempt to find it, and no longer treat public law as a science but as a description of what exists empirically, without adapting itself to a rational idea, and believe they can give the German state nothing more than the name of an empire or of a body politic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no longer any dispute as to under what concept the German constitution falls. What can no longer be comprehended no longer is. If Germany were to be a state, this condition of the dissolution of the state could not be called otherwise than, with a foreign scholar of public law, anarchy, if the parts had not again constituted themselves as states, to which not so much a still-existing bond as rather the memory of a former one still<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 462]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |462|<\/span> leaves a semblance of union, just as fallen fruits are recognised as having still belonged to their tree by the fact that [they] lie beneath its crown; but [neither] the place beneath it nor its shadow, which touches them, saves them from rot and from the power of the elements to which they now belong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The health of a state reveals itself in general not so much in the calm of peace as in the movement of war; the former is the condition of enjoyment and of activity in separation, the government a wise domestic paternalism that demands only the ordinary of the governed; in war, however, is shown the strength of the connection of all with the whole, how much of them the state has set itself up to be able to demand, and how much avails what they may do for it out of their own drive and heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus in the war with the French republic Germany has experienced in itself that it is no longer a state, and has become aware of its political condition both in the war itself and in the peace which ended this war and whose palpable results are: the loss of some of the fairest German lands, of some millions of its inhabitants, a burden of debt on the southern half heavier than on the northern, which prolongs the misery of the war far into the peace, and that, besides those who have come under the dominion of the conquerors and at the same time of foreign laws and customs, many states will still lose what is their highest good, – to be states of their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what the inner causes, the spirit of these results may be, how they are only its external and necessary appearances – to such a reflection the peace is suited, just as this reflection is in itself worthy of everyone who does not surrender himself to what happens, but cognises the event and its necessity and through such cognition distinguishes himself from those who, for the sake of their vanity,<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 463]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |463|<\/span> see only arbitrary will and chance, through which they persuade themselves that they would have conducted everything that has happened more cleverly and more fortunately; such a cognition is of importance for most only because they [can plume themselves] on it and on the judging of individual things with understanding that follows from it, not in order to learn from experience how to act better in a future case. For of those who in these great events act in such a way that they could direct them, there are very few; the others, however, have to serve the events with understanding and insight into their necessity. From the experience of the mistakes, however, which are the outbreak of inner weakness and imprudence, those who committed them do not so much learn – rather these only strengthen their habit of committing them – as the others, who get to know them and through this insight put themselves in a position to draw benefit from them, – who, if they are capable at all of doing this [and] are in the external situation for it, possess through both an insight which the thought of a private man can dispense with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The thoughts which this essay contains can, in their public utterance, have no other purpose or effect than to promote the understanding of what is, and with it the calmer view as well as a bearing of it moderated in actual contact and in words. For it is not what is that makes us impetuous and suffering, but that it is not as it ought to be; but if we recognise that it is as it must be, i.e. not according to arbitrary will and chance, then we also recognise that it ought to be so. But it is difficult for men in general to raise themselves to the habit of seeking to recognise and think necessity. For between the events and the free apprehension of them they interpose a multitude of concepts and purposes and demand that what happens should conform to these. And when [it] is without doubt mostly otherwise, they pride themselves on their concepts,<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 464]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |464|<\/span> as if necessity ruled in these, but in what happens only chance, because their concepts are as limited as their view of things, which they apprehend only as individual events, not as a system of them governed by one spirit; and whether they otherwise suffer through them or merely find them contradicting their concepts, they find in the fact that they maintain their concepts the right to blame bitterly what has happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Above all, the passing of time has probably afflicted the Germans with this vice. In eternal contradiction between what they demand and what does not happen according to their demand, they appear not merely censorious but, when they speak merely of their concepts, untruthful and dishonest, because they place necessity in their concepts of right and of duties, but nothing happens according to this necessity and they themselves are so accustomed to this, partly that their words always contradict their deeds, partly that they seek to make of the events something quite other than they actually are, and to twist the explanation of them according to certain concepts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But whoever wished to get to know what is wont to happen in Germany according to the concepts of what ought to happen, namely according to the laws of the state, would err in the highest degree. For the dissolution of the state is recognised chiefly by this, that everything goes otherwise than the laws. Equally he would err if the form11)<\/a><\/sup> which is taken from these laws appeared to him in truth the ground and cause of them. For precisely on account of their concepts the Germans appear so dishonest, to confess nothing as it is, nor to give it out for no more and no less than really lies in the force of the matter. They remain faithful to their concepts, to right and to the laws, but the events are not wont to agree with them, and so the side that has the advantage<\/p>\n\n\n\n 11)<\/a> Editors:<\/em> The word is barely legible. Rosenkranz (Hegels Leben<\/em>, p. 241): \u201cFarbe\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 465]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |465|<\/span> in it strives, through words, with the force of concepts, to adapt the two to each other. The concept, however, which includes the rest, is that Germany is still now in general a state, because it was formerly a state and the forms from which the animating element of them has fled are still present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The organisation of this body, which is called the German constitution of the state, had been formed in a quite different life than that which afterwards and now dwells in it; the justice and force, the wisdom and the bravery of bygone times, the honour and the blood, the well-being and the need of long-decayed generations and of customs and relations that perished with them, is expressed in the forms of this body. The course of time, however, and of the culture developing in it, has cut off the fate of that time and the life of the present from each other. The edifice in which that fate dwelt is no longer borne by the fate of the present generation and stands, without share and necessity for its interest and its activity, isolated from the spirit of the world. If these laws have lost their old life, the present vitality has not known how to grasp itself in laws; each has gone its own way, has established itself for itself, and the whole [has] fallen apart, the state is no more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This form of German public law is deeply grounded in that by which the Germans have made themselves most famous, namely in their drive for freedom. It is this drive that, after all the other European peoples had submitted to the dominion of a common state, did not let the Germans become a people submitting to a common public power. The obstinacy of the German character has not let itself be overcome to the point that the individual parts would have sacrificed their particularities<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 466]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |466|<\/span> to society, all united themselves in a universal and found freedom in common free submission to a supreme public power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The wholly peculiar principle of German public law stands in inseparable connection with the condition of Europe in which the nations took part in the supreme power not mediately through laws but immediately. The supreme state power was among the European peoples a universal power in which each had a kind of free and personal share, and this free, personal share, dependent on arbitrary will, the Germans did not want to transform into the free share, independent of arbitrary will, which consists in the universality and force of laws, but have built their latest condition wholly upon the foundation of that condition of arbitrary will that was not contrary to law but lawless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The later condition proceeds immediately from that condition in which the nation, without being a state, constituted a people. In this time of the old German freedom the individual stood for himself in his life and action; he had his honour and his fate resting not on connection with an estate but on himself. In his own sense and strength he shattered himself against the world or shaped it for his enjoyment. He belonged to the whole through custom, religion, an invisible living spirit and a few great interests. Otherwise – in his enterprise and deed – he let himself not be restricted by the whole, but bounded himself without fear and doubt only [by] himself; but what lay within his circle was so much and so wholly He himself that one could not even call it his property, but for what belonged to him in his circle, what we would call a part, and in which we would therefore also stake only a part of ourselves, he staked body and life and soul and salvation. The division and calculation on which our<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 467]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |467|<\/span> condition of laws rests, [so] that for a stolen cow it is not worth the trouble to gamble one’s head, nor to set oneself openly with one’s individuality against a tenfold and infinitely superior power (like that [of the] state), he did not know, but was completely and wholly in what was his. (To the French entier<\/em> is \u201cwhole\u201d and \u201cwilful\u201d.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Out of this self-willed doing, which alone was called freedom, there formed circles of power over others according to chance and character, without regard to a universal and with little restriction from what is called public power; for this was, as against individuals, almost wholly non-existent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Time, as it went on, fixed these circles of power. The parts of the universal state power became a manifoldness of exclusive property, independent of the state itself and distributed according to no rule or principle. This manifold property forms not a system of rights but a collection without principle, whose inconsistencies and confusion required the highest acuity in order, upon occurring collision, to rescue them as far as possible against their contradictions, or rather required need and superior force in order to come to terms with one another; but above all, with regard to the whole, required the most special divine providence in order to maintain it barely.12)<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n 12)<\/a> Deleted in the manuscript:<\/em> German public law is therefore a collection of private rights; every individual part of the state, every princely house, every estate, every city, guild etc., everything that has rights in relation to the state, has acquired these for itself; the state had at first no other function in this than to confirm that its power had been wrested from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The political powers and rights are not state offices calculated according to an organisation of the whole, the services and duties of the individual are not determined according to the need of the whole, but every single member of the political hierarchy, every princely house, every<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 468]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |468|<\/span> estate, every city, guild etc., everything that has rights or duties in relation to the state, has acquired them for itself, and the state, in such a curtailment of its power, has no other function than to confirm that its power was wrested from it, so that, when the state loses all power and yet the possession of individuals rests on the power of the state, the possession of those must necessarily be very unstable who have no other support than the state power, which equals zero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The principles of German public law are therefore not to be derived from the concept of a state [in general] or the concept of a determinate constitution, a monarchy etc., and German public law is not a science according to principles but an urbarium of the most various rights of public law acquired in the manner of private law. Legislative, judicial, ecclesiastical, military power are, in the most lawless manner and in the most dissimilar portions, mingled, divided and combined, just as manifold as the property of private persons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through recesses of the Imperial Diet, peace treaties, electoral capitulations, house treaties, decisions of the imperial courts etc. the political property of each member of the German body politic is determined most carefully. The solicitude for it [has] extended with the most punctilious religiousness to each and every thing, and years of effort have been expended on seemingly insignificant things, e.g. titulature, order in walking and sitting, colour of certain furniture etc. From this side of the most exact determination of every circumstance relating to right, however trifling, the best organisation must be ascribed to the German state. The German Empire is an empire, as the realm of nature is [in] its productions, unfathomable in the great and inexhaustible in the small, and it is this side which fills the initiated into the infinite details of the rights with that astonishment before the venerableness of the German body politic and with<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 469]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |469|<\/span> that admiration for this system of the most thoroughly carried-out justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This justice, to maintain every part in its separation from the state, and the necessary claims of the state on its individual member stand in the most complete contradiction. The state requires a universal centre, a monarch and estates, in which the various powers, relations to foreign powers, military power, finances relating to these, etc. would be united, a centre which, for the direction, would also have the necessary power to assert itself and its decisions and to keep the individual parts in dependence on itself. Through right, on the other hand, nearly complete, or rather complete, independence is assured to the individual estates. If there are sides of independence that are not expressly and solemnly determined in electoral capitulations, recesses of the Imperial Diet etc., [then] they are sanctioned to them by practice, – a more important and more thoroughgoing ground of right than all the rest. The German edifice of the state is nothing other than the sum of the rights which the individual parts have withdrawn from the whole, and this justice, which watches carefully that no power remain to the state, is the essence of the constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let the unfortunate provinces, which perish in the helplessness of the state to which they belong, accuse its political condition, let the head of the Empire and the patriotic estates first hard pressed call upon the rest in vain for common cooperation, let Germany be plundered and insulted, – the scholar of public law will know how to show that all this is entirely in accord with the rights and the practice and that all misfortunes are trifles compared with the upholding of this justice. If the unfortunate manner in which the war has been conducted lies in the conduct of individual estates, of whom one furnished no contingent, very many<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 470]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |470|<\/span> instead of soldiers furnished only now levied recruits, another paid no Roman months, a third withdrew his contingent at the time of the highest need, many concluded peace treaties and neutrality agreements, the great majority, each in his own way, annihilated the defence of Germany, then public law proves that the estates had the right to such conduct, the right to bring the whole into the greatest danger, harm and misfortune, and because they are rights, the individuals and the totality must guard and protect most strictly such rights of being ruined. For this edifice of right of the German state there is therefore perhaps no more fitting inscription than this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fiat iustitia, pereat Germania!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is a trait in the German character, if not a rational one, yet in a way a noble one, that right in general, let its ground and its consequences be constituted as they may, is to him something so sacred. If Germany as a separate, independent state, as all appearances suggest, and the German nation as a people altogether perishes, it will still afford a pleasing sight to see, among the destroying spirits, awe of right foremost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such a view would be afforded by the political condition and the public law of Germany if Germany were to be regarded as a state; its political condition would have to be considered a legal anarchy, its public law a system of right against the state. But everything agrees that Germany is no longer to be regarded as a united whole of a state, but as a multitude of independent and, in essence, sovereign states. But, it is said, Germany is an Empire, a body politic, it stands under a common head of the Empire, stands in the imperial union. These expressions, as legal titles, cannot by any means be infringed upon; but a consideration in which concepts are at issue<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 471]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |471|<\/span> has nothing to do with those titles, but from the determination of concepts it can become clear what significance those titles may have. To be sure, such expressions [as] \u201cEmpire, head of the Empire\u201d are often taken for concepts, and they must be the makeshift in time of need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The teacher of public law who can no longer call Germany a state, because otherwise he would have to admit several consequences that follow from the concept of a state and which he must not admit, helps himself, because Germany is yet again not to count as a non-state, by giving the title \u201cEmpire\u201d as a concept, – or, since Germany is neither a democracy nor an aristocracy but in essence ought to be a monarchy and yet the emperor is again not to be regarded as monarch, one helps oneself with the title \u201chead of the Empire\u201d which he bears, even in a system in which not titles but determinate concepts are supposed to rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through the quite general concept \u201chead of the Empire\u201d the emperor is thrown into one category with the former Doge of Venice and the Turkish Sultan. Both of these are likewise heads of the state, but the former the most restricted head of an aristocracy, the latter the most unrestricted of a despotism. And because the concept of a head fits the most various extent of supreme public power, it is wholly indeterminate and for that very reason has no value at all; it gives itself out as having expressed something and has at bottom expressed nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the scientific and historical [field] such meaningless expressions are to be avoided, even if the German character otherwise needs them in actual life as expedients. For given the obstinacy of the German nature in insisting absolutely on its will, or given divided and irreconcilable interests of states, if there is there in civil life, here in politics, for other reasons of some importance, nevertheless at the same time<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 472]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |472|<\/span> a union is also to take place, there is no better means than to find a general expression that satisfies both [parties] and yet leaves both parties to their will, whereby the difference continues to exist as before or, if one party really must give way, the admission of yielding is at least avoided by that general expression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If for centuries the Germans have put themselves off with such general expressions, a semblance of union in which in deed no part has given up the least of its claims to separateness, then reflection on this, especially if it is to be scientific, must hold fast to concepts and, in the judgement whether a country constitutes a state, not knock about with general expressions but take into consideration the extent of the power that is left to what is to be called a state; and since on closer view it turns out that what is named in general public law are rights against the state, the question would be whether, notwithstanding this, a power still [accrues] to the state through which it is really a state. And on closer view of what is required for this, in comparison with the condition of Germany with regard to a state power, it will be shown that Germany can properly no longer be called a state. We go through the various principal powers which must be found in a state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cross-reference:<\/em> The core of the text. Worked out in the Groundlines<\/em> in \u00a7 257<\/a> ff.; on sovereignty within \u00a7 278<\/a>, on the relation of states \u00a7 321<\/a> ff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A multitude of men can call itself a state only if it is united for the common defence of the whole of its property. It goes without saying here, actually, but it is necessary to note,<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 473]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |473|<\/span> that this union does not merely have the intention of defending itself, but that it, let the power and the success be what they may, defends itself through actual defence. For no one will be able to deny that Germany is united for its common defence according to laws and words; but we cannot here distinguish between laws and words on the one hand and deed and actuality on the other [side], nor say that Germany, though not in deed and actuality, yet according to laws and words defends itself in common. For property and its defence by a union of the state are things that relate wholly and entirely to reality, and what has only their ideality is anything but a state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Plans and theories lay claim to reality insofar as they are practicable<\/em>, but their value is the same whether they are in actuality or not; a theory of the state, on the other hand, is called state and constitution only insofar as it is actual. If Germany pretended to be a state and constitution, although the forms of these are without life, their theory without actuality, it would be uttering an untruth; if, however, it really promised common defence in words, one would have to ascribe to it the frailty of age, which, although it can no longer, still has a will, or dishonesty, which does not keep what it has promised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a multitude to form a state it is necessary that it form a common defence and public power. The manner, however, in which the particular effects and sides of the union that flow from this are present, or the particular constitution, is a matter of indifference for the multitude’s forming a power. What belongs to this particular manner and way can be present in a highly manifold way, and in a determinate state itself a complete lack of rule and unevenness may prevail in this respect, and we must in our consideration separate the two<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 474]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |474|<\/span> from each other: what is necessary for a multitude to be a state and a common power, and what is only a particular modification of this power and belongs not to the sphere of the necessary but, for the concept, to the sphere of the more or less better, and for actuality to the sphere of chance and arbitrary will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This distinction has a very important side for the tranquillity of states, the security of governments and the freedom of peoples. For if the universal public power demands of the individual only what is necessary for it, and restricts the arrangements for this necessary to be rendered to it to that, then in other respects it can grant the living freedom and the own will of the citizens and leave it a great latitude, just as the public power, which is concentrated in the government as a necessary centre, is the less looked at askance by the individuals who are on the periphery on account of what it demands as necessary and whose indispensability for the whole each can see, and does not run the danger that, if the necessary and the more arbitrary [are] subjected to the centre of the public power with the same strictness with which it is demanded by the government, the citizens likewise confuse the two with each other and, when they grow equally impatient with the one as with the other, bring the state into danger from the side of its necessity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To that part of the actuality of a state which belongs to chance must be reckoned the manner in which the entire public power exists in a supreme point of union. Whether the holder of power is one or several, whether this one or the several are born to this majesty or elected, is a matter of indifference to the one thing necessary, that a multitude constitute a state; just as indifferent as, among the individuals subject to the universal public power, uniformity or<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 475]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |475|<\/span> non-uniformity of civil rights. Of the inequality of nature, of talents and of energy of soul – an inequality which produces a still more powerful difference than the inequality of civil relations – there is in any case no question. That a state should count among its subjects serfs, burghers, free noblemen and princes who in turn have subjects, and that the relations of these particular estates themselves as particular political members in turn exist not purely but in infinite modifications, hinders a multitude just as little from forming a public power as that the particular geographical members constitute provinces of various relations to the internal public law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With regard to actual civil laws and the administration of justice, neither would equality of laws and of legal procedure make Europe into a state, any more than equality of weights, measures and money, nor does their diversity sublate the unity of a state. If it did not already lie in the concept of the state that the closer determinations of the legal relations concerning the property of individuals against individuals do not touch it as public power, which has to determine only the relation of property to itself, the example of almost all European states could teach us, among which the most powerful of the true states have altogether non-uniform laws. France before the revolution had such a manifoldness of laws that, besides Roman law, which applied in many provinces, Burgundian, Breton etc. prevailed in others and almost every province, indeed almost every city, had a particular customary law, and a French writer said with truth that whoever travelled through France changed laws as often as post-horses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No less does the circumstance lie outside the concept of the state, by what particular power or according to what proportion of share of the various estates or<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 476]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |476|<\/span> of the citizens of the state in general the laws are given, likewise the character of the courts, whether in the various instances of the administration of justice, in relation to the members, it is an inherited one, or proceeding from the supreme power, or conferred by the citizens according to their free confidence, or by the courts themselves, what extent the district of a particular court has and whether it has been determined by chance, whether a common supreme instance exists for the whole state etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Equally independent of the state, and equally non-uniform, can the form of administration in general [be], then the institutions of the magistrates, the rights of the cities and estates etc. All these circumstances are only relatively important for the state, and for its true essence the form of their organisation is a matter of indifference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The inequality of the levies of the various classes according to their material value, but still more the inequality of the ideal side, namely of the rights and duties herein and of their origin, is to be found in all European states. Just as little as the inequality of contributions to the expenditure of the state, arising from the inequality of wealth, hinders the state at all \u2014 the modern states, rather, rest upon it \u2014 just as little does it affect the state that the various estates of the nobility, the clergy, the burghers and the peasantry contribute unequally, and have in the diversity of the estates, quite apart from everything that is called privilege, the ground for contributing in different proportions, because the proportion cannot be determined according to the essential side of that of which a part is given up, namely not according to the side of labour, which cannot be calculated and is in itself unequal, but only according to the side of the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other contingencies \u2014 whether the various geographical parts of a state are burdened differently, what transformations and subordinate systems the levies pass through, whether on one and the very same field a<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 477]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |477|<\/span> city has the land tax, a private person the ground rent, an abbey the tithes, the nobleman the right of the chase, the commune the right of pasturage, and so on, and the various estates and bodies of every kind form particular relations with regard to levies \u2014 all such contingencies remain outside the concept of public power, for which, as the centre, only the determinate quantity is necessary, while the heterogeneous manner of the inflow, with regard to its origin, is a matter of indifference; just as, in general, the whole relation of the levy may lie outside of it [sc. the state] and the state nevertheless be very powerful, if either, as in the old feudal constitution, [the vassal] in cases of need provides by personal services at the same time for everything that he requires in the service he renders to the state, and for the rest the state has in domains the source of its revenues \u2014 or, as it may also be conceived, that in the latter way expenses could be defrayed altogether, where the state would not even as a monetary power, which it must be in more recent times, be a centre of levies, but [that] which it takes in as a levy would, according to the actual relation of most levies, stand on an equal footing of particular right with others who, in relation to the state, are private persons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In our times there may be among the members just as loose a connection, or none at all, with regard to customs, culture and language; and the identity of these, this former pillar of the union of a people, is now to be counted among the contingencies, the character of which does not prevent a multitude from constituting a public power. Rome or Athens, and also any modern small state, could not subsist if the many languages that are current in the Russian Empire were spoken within its circuit, nor, likewise, if the customs among its citizens were as different as they are in that empire, or as they and culture already are in every capital of a great country. The diversity of language and of dialects,<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 478]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |478|<\/span> the latter of which makes the separation at the same time still more irritated than complete unintelligibility, the diversity of customs and of culture in the separated estates, which makes human beings recognisable to one another almost only by outward shape \u2014 such heterogeneous and at the same time most powerful elements, just as in the grown-great Roman Empire the preponderant weight of force, so in the modern states the spirit and art of state organisations is able to overpower and hold together, so that inequality of culture and of customs becomes a necessary product as well as a necessary condition of the subsistence of the modern states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That in religion, in that in which the innermost being of human beings expresses itself and in which, even if all other external and scattered things can be a matter of indifference, they nevertheless recognise themselves as in a fixed centre and only thereby would be able, despite the inequality [and] mutability of the remaining relations and conditions, to have trust in one another and to be sure of one another \u2014 that in this there should be identity at least, has likewise been found dispensable in more recent states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even in the chillier Europe the unity of religion was formerly always the fundamental condition of a state. People knew of nothing else, and without this first being-one found no other being-one or trust possible. At times this bond became itself so energetic that it repeatedly transformed peoples otherwise strangers and in national enmity suddenly into one<\/em> state, which, not merely as a holy commune of Christendom, nor as a coalition uniting their interests and, for the sake of these, their activity, but as one<\/em> worldly power, as a state, conquered at the same time the fatherland of its eternal and temporal life in the war over the Orient as one<\/em> people and army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as little as before and afterwards, in the division into peoples, the equality of religions prevented wars and bound them into<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n [p. 479]<\/p>\n\n\n\n |479|<\/span> one<\/em> state, just as little does, in our times, the inequality of religion tear a state apart. Public power, as pure public law, has known how to separate itself from the religious power and its right, to obtain for itself subsistence enough, and so to arrange itself that it [the state] has no need of the church, and the church is again set in the condition of separation from it which it had in its origin from the Roman state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
451<\/a> \u00b7 452<\/a> \u00b7 453<\/a> \u00b7 454<\/a> \u00b7 455<\/a> \u00b7 456<\/a> \u00b7 457<\/a> \u00b7 458<\/a> \u00b7 459<\/a> \u00b7 460<\/a>
461<\/a> \u00b7 462<\/a> \u00b7 463<\/a> \u00b7 464<\/a> \u00b7 465<\/a> \u00b7 466<\/a> \u00b7 467<\/a> \u00b7 468<\/a> \u00b7 469<\/a> \u00b7 470<\/a>
471<\/a> \u00b7 472<\/a> \u00b7 473<\/a> \u00b7 474<\/a> \u00b7 475<\/a> \u00b7 476<\/a> \u00b7 477<\/a> \u00b7 478<\/a> \u00b7 479<\/a> \u00b7 480<\/a>
481<\/a> \u00b7 482<\/a> \u00b7 483<\/a> \u00b7 484<\/a> \u00b7 485<\/a> \u00b7 486<\/a> \u00b7 487<\/a> \u00b7 488<\/a> \u00b7 489<\/a> \u00b7 490<\/a>
491<\/a> \u00b7 492<\/a> \u00b7 493<\/a> \u00b7 494<\/a> \u00b7 495<\/a> \u00b7 496<\/a> \u00b7 497<\/a> \u00b7 498<\/a> \u00b7 499<\/a> \u00b7 500<\/a>
501<\/a> \u00b7 502<\/a> \u00b7 503<\/a> \u00b7 504<\/a> \u00b7 505<\/a> \u00b7 506<\/a> \u00b7 507<\/a> \u00b7 508<\/a> \u00b7 509<\/a> \u00b7 510<\/a>
511<\/a> \u00b7 512<\/a> \u00b7 513<\/a> \u00b7 514<\/a> \u00b7 515<\/a> \u00b7 516<\/a> \u00b7 517<\/a> \u00b7 518<\/a> \u00b7 519<\/a> \u00b7 520<\/a>
521<\/a> \u00b7 522<\/a> \u00b7 523<\/a> \u00b7 524<\/a> \u00b7 525<\/a> \u00b7 526<\/a> \u00b7 527<\/a> \u00b7 528<\/a> \u00b7 529<\/a> \u00b7 530<\/a>
531<\/a> \u00b7 532<\/a> \u00b7 533<\/a> \u00b7 534<\/a> \u00b7 535<\/a> \u00b7 536<\/a> \u00b7 537<\/a> \u00b7 538<\/a> \u00b7 539<\/a> \u00b7 540<\/a>
541<\/a> \u00b7 542<\/a> \u00b7 543<\/a> \u00b7 544<\/a> \u00b7 545<\/a> \u00b7 546<\/a> \u00b7 547<\/a> \u00b7 548<\/a> \u00b7 549<\/a> \u00b7 550<\/a>
551<\/a> \u00b7 552<\/a> \u00b7 553<\/a> \u00b7 554<\/a> \u00b7 555<\/a> \u00b7 556<\/a> \u00b7 557<\/a> \u00b7 558<\/a> \u00b7 559<\/a> \u00b7 560<\/a>
561<\/a> \u00b7 562<\/a> \u00b7 563<\/a> \u00b7 564<\/a> \u00b7 565<\/a> \u00b7 566<\/a> \u00b7 567<\/a> \u00b7 568<\/a> \u00b7 569<\/a> \u00b7 570<\/a>
571<\/a> \u00b7 572<\/a> \u00b7 573<\/a> \u00b7 574<\/a> \u00b7 575<\/a> \u00b7 576<\/a> \u00b7 577<\/a> \u00b7 578<\/a> \u00b7 579<\/a> \u00b7 580<\/a>
581<\/a> \u00b7 582<\/a> \u00b7 583<\/a> \u00b7 584<\/a> \u00b7 585<\/a> \u00b7 586<\/a> \u00b7 587<\/a> \u00b7 588<\/a> \u00b7 589<\/a> \u00b7 590<\/a>
591<\/a> \u00b7 592<\/a> \u00b7 593<\/a> \u00b7 594<\/a> \u00b7 595<\/a> \u00b7 596<\/a> \u00b7 597<\/a> \u00b7 598<\/a> \u00b7 599<\/a> \u00b7 600<\/a>
601<\/a> \u00b7 602<\/a> \u00b7 603<\/a> \u00b7 604<\/a> \u00b7 605<\/a> \u00b7 606<\/a> \u00b7 607<\/a> \u00b7 608<\/a> \u00b7 609<\/a> \u00b7 610<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nContents<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
A<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
1.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo many German patriots asked themselves, and the sad certainty of seeing that no higher purposes are conceived or pursued has filled them with pain and has almost entirely torn from them the hope [of] stopping up the source of all evil, [of] an essential improvement of the defects of the constitution of the state.\u201d
The next paragraph was deleted – presumably already at the time of the writing in 1799:
\u201cThe following pages are the voice of a mind that unwillingly takes leave of its hope of seeing the German state raised up out of its insignificance, and that, before the final parting from its hopes, wished once more to recall vividly its ever weaker wishes and once more to enjoy in image its weak faith in their fulfilment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This endeavour to make public power a private property means nothing other than to dissolve the state, to annihilate the state as a power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n2.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn his essay Hegel asked whether the downfall of the German Empire must be ascribed to a lack of bravery<\/em>, of personal courage<\/em>. This view, he answered himself, is refuted by history, which on the contrary gloriously confirms the martial prowess of individuals<\/em> everywhere, even in the army of the Empire. Consequently the misfortune must be laid to the charge of the dismemberment of Germany and of the bad leadership of the soldiers.
He asked further whether that downfall had perhaps sprung from a national bankruptcy<\/em>. This, he held, was just as little the case, for with all the bad management of the individual states Germany does not yet know all those important problems which in other states arise from a national debt<\/em>, whose treatment occupies the most distinguished minds and in which even small errors could bring the most terrible consequences in their train.
Finally he asked whether perhaps lack of ethical life<\/em>, of culture<\/em>, of religiosity<\/em> could be the cause of the weakness. This, he replied, could least of all be said. Not in the individuals<\/em>, then, in the mechanism of the whole must the corruption lie<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nB<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
[Introduction]<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
I. The Concept of the State<\/h4>\n\n\n\n