Preface
Original German
Die unmittelbare Veranlassung zur Herausgabe dieses Grundrisses ist das Bedürfniß, meinen Zuhörern einen Leitfaden zu den Vorlesungen in die Hände zu geben, welche ich meinem Amte gemäß über die Philosophie des Rechts halte. Dieses Lehrbuch ist eine weitere, insbesondre mehr systematische Ausführung derselben Grundbegriffe, welche über diesen Theil der Philosophie in der von mir sonst für meine Vorlesungen bestimmten Encyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (Heidelberg 1817.) bereits enthalten sind.
Daß dieser Grundriß aber im Druck erscheinen sollte, hiemit auch vor das größere Publikum kommt, wurde die Veranlassung, die Anmerkungen, die zunächst in kurzer Erwähnung die verwandten oder abweichenden Vorstellungen, weitern Folgen und dergleichen andeuten sollten, was in den Vorlesungen seine gehörige Erläuterung erhalten würde, manchmal schon hier weiter auszuführen, um den abstractern Inhalt des Textes zuweilen zu verdeutlichen, und auf nahe liegende in dermaliger Zeit gäng und gäbe Vorstellungen eine ausgedehntere Rücksicht zu nehmen. So ist eine Anzahl weitläuftigerer Anmerkungen entstanden, als der Zweck und Styl eines Compendiums sonst mit sich bringt. Ein eigentliches Compendium jedoch hat den für fertig angesehenen Umkreis einer Wissenschaft zum Gegenstande, und das ihm eigenthümliche ist, vielleicht einen kleinen Zusatz hie und da ausgenommen, vornemlich die Zusammenstellung und Ordnung der wesentlichen Momente eines Inhalts, der längst eben so zugegeben und bekannt ist, als jene Form ihre längst ausgemachten Regeln und Manieren hat. Von einem philosophischen Grundriß erwartet man diesen Zuschnitt schon etwa darum nicht, weil man sich vorstellt, das, was die Philosophie vor sich bringe, sey ein so übernächtiges Werk, als das Gewebe der Penelope, das jeden Tag von Vorne angefangen werde.
Allerdings weicht dieser Grundriß zunächst von einem gewöhnlichen Compendium durch die Methode ab, die darin das Leitende ausmacht. Daß aber die philosophische Art des Fortschreitens von einer Materie zu einer andern und des wissenschaftlichen Beweisens, diese speculative Erkenntnißweise überhaupt, wesentlich sich von anderer Erkenntnißweise unterscheidet, wird hier vorausgesetzt. Die Einsicht in die Nothwendigkeit einer solchen Verschiedenheit kann es allein seyn, was die Philosophie aus dem schmählichen Verfall, in welchen sie in unsern Zeiten versunken ist, herauszureissen vermögen wird. Man hat wohl die Unzulänglichkeit der Formen und Regeln der vormaligen Logik, des Definirens, Eintheilens und Schließens, welche die Regeln der Verstandeserkenntniß enthalten, für die speculative Wissenschaft erkannt, oder mehr nur gefühlt als erkannt, und dann diese Regeln nur als Fesseln weggeworfen, um aus dem Herzen, der Phantasie, der zufälligen Anschauung willkührlich zu sprechen; und da denn doch auch Reflexion und Gedanken-Verhältnisse eintreten müssen, verfährt man bewußtlos in der verachteten Methode des ganz gewöhnlichen Folgerns und Räsonnements. — Die Natur des speculativen Wissens habe ich in meiner Wissenschaft der Logik, ausführlich entwickelt; in diesem Grundriß ist darum nur hie und da eine Erläuterung über Fortgang und Methode hinzugefügt worden. Bey der concreten und in sich so mannichfaltigen Beschaffenheit des Gegenstandes ist es zwar vernachläßigt worden, in allen und jeden Einzelnheiten die logische Fortleitung nachzuweisen und herauszuheben; theils konnte diß, bey vorausgesetzter Bekanntschaft mit der wissenschaftlichen Methode für überflüssig gehalten werden, theils wird aber es von selbst auffallen, daß das Ganze wie die Ausbildung seiner Glieder auf dem logischen Geiste beruht. Von dieser Seite möchte ich auch vornemlich, daß diese Abhandlung gefaßt und beurtheilt würde. Denn das, um was es in derselben zu thun ist, ist die Wissenschaft, und in der Wissenschaft ist der Inhalt wesentlich an die Form gebunden.
Man kann zwar von denen, die es am gründlichsten zu nehmen scheinen, hören, die Form sey etwas Aeußeres und für die Sache Gleichgültiges, es komme nur auf diese an; man kann weiter das Geschäft des Schriftstellers, insbesondere des philosophischen darein setzen, Wahrheiten zu entdecken, Wahrheiten zu sagen, Wahrheiten und richtige Begriffe zu verbreiten. Wenn man nun betrachtet, wie solches Geschäft wirklich betrieben zu werden pflegt, so sieht man einestheils denselben alten Kohl immer wieder aufkochen und nach allen Seiten hin ausgeben — ein Geschäft, das wohl auch sein Verdienst um die Bildung und Erweckung der Gemüther haben wird, wenn es gleich mehr als ein vielgeschäftiger Ueberfluß angesehen werden könnte — „denn sie haben Mosen und die Propheten, laß sie dieselbigen hören.“ Vornemlich hat man vielfältige Gelegenheit, sich über den Ton und die Prätension, die sich dabey zu erkennen gibt, zu verwundern, nemlich als ob es der Welt nur noch an diesen eifrigen Verbreitern von Wahrheiten gefehlt hätte, und als ob der aufgewärmte Kohl neue und unerhörte Wahrheiten brächte, und vornemlich immer „in jetziger Zeit“ hauptsächlich zu beherzigen wäre. Anderntheils aber sieht man, was von solchen Wahrheiten von der einen Seite her ausgegeben wird, durch eben dergleichen von andern Seiten her ausgespendete Wahrheiten verdrängt und weggeschwemmt werden. Was nun in diesem Gedränge von Wahrheiten weder Altes noch Neues, sondern Bleibendes sey, wie soll dieses aus diesen formlos hin und her gehenden Betrachtungen sich herausheben — wie anders sich unterscheiden und bewähren, als durch die Wissenschaft?
Ohnehin über Recht, Sittlichkeit, Staat ist die Wahrheit eben so sehr alt, als in den öffentlichen Gesetzen, der öffentlichen Moral und Religion offen dargelegt und bekannt. Was bedarf diese Wahrheit weiter, insofern der denkende Geist sie in dieser nächsten Weise zu besitzen nicht zufrieden ist, als sie auch zu begreifen, und dem schon an sich selbst vernünftigen Inhalt auch die vernünftige Form zu gewinnen, damit er für das freye Denken gerechtfertigt erscheine, welches nicht bey dem Gegebenen, es sey durch die äußere positive Autorität des Staats oder der Uebereinstimmung der Menschen, oder durch die Autorität des innern Gefühls und Herzens und das unmittelbar beystimmende Zeugniß des Geistes unterstützt, stehen bleibt, sondern von sich ausgeht und eben damit fodert, sich im Innersten mit der Wahrheit geeint zu wissen?
Das einfache Verhalten des unbefangenen Gemüthes ist, sich mit zutrauensvoller Ueberzeugung an die öffentlich bekannte Wahrheit zu halten, und auf diese feste Grundlage seine Handlungsweise und feste Stellung im Leben zu bauen. Gegen dieses einfache Verhalten thut sich etwa schon die vermeynte Schwierigkeit auf, wie aus den unendlich verschiedenen Meynungen sich das, was darin das allgemein Anerkannte und Gültige sey, unterscheiden und herausfinden lasse; und man kann diese Verlegenheit leicht für einen rechten und wahrhaften Ernst um die Sache nehmen. In der That sind aber die, welche sich auf diese Verlegenheit etwas zu Gute thun, in dem Falle, den Wald vor den Bäumen nicht zu sehen, und es ist nur die Verlegenheit und Schwierigkeit vorhanden, welche sie selbst veranstalten; ja diese ihre Verlegenheit und Schwierigkeit ist vielmehr der Beweis, daß sie etwas anderes als das allgemein Anerkannte und Geltende, als die Substanz des Rechten und Sittlichen wollen. Denn ist es darum wahrhaft, und nicht um die Eitelkeit und Besonderheit des Meynens und Seyns zu thun, so hielten sie sich an das substantielle Rechte, nemlich an die Gebote der Sittlichkeit und des Staats, und richteten ihr Leben darnach ein. — Die weitere Schwierigkeit aber kommt von der Seite, daß der Mensch denkt und im Denken seine Freyheit und den Grund der Sittlichkeit sucht. Dieses Recht, so hoch, so göttlich es ist, wird aber in Unrecht verkehrt, wenn nur diß für Denken gilt und das Denken nur dann sich frey weiß, insofern es vom Allgemein-Anerkannten und Gültigen abweiche und sich etwas Besonderes zu erfinden gewußt habe.
Am festesten konnte in unserer Zeit die Vorstellung, als ob die Freyheit des Denkens und des Geistes überhaupt sich nur durch die Abweichung, ja Feindschaft gegen das Oeffentlich-Anerkannte beweise, in Beziehung auf den Staat eingewurzelt, und hienach absonderlich eine Philosophie über den Staat wesentlich die Aufgabe zu haben scheinen, auch eine Theorie und eben eine neue und besondere zu erfinden und zu geben. Wenn man diese Vorstellung und das ihr gemäße Treiben sieht, so sollte man meynen, als ob noch kein Staat und Staatsverfassung in der Welt gewesen, noch gegenwärtig vorhanden sey, sondern als ob man jetzt — und diß Jetzt dauert immer fort — ganz von Vorne anzufangen, und die sittliche Welt nur auf ein solches jetziges Ausdenken und Ergründen und Begründen gewartet habe. Von der Natur gibt man zu, daß die Philosophie sie zu erkennen habe, wie sie ist, daß der Stein der Weisen irgendwo aber in der Natur selbst verborgen liege, daß sie in sich vernünftig sey und das Wissen diese in ihr gegenwärtige, wirkliche Vernunft, nicht die auf der Oberfläche sich zeigenden Gestaltungen und Zufälligkeiten, sondern ihre ewige Harmonie, aber als ihr immanentes Gesetz und Wesen zu erforschen und begreifend zu fassen habe. Die sittliche Welt dagegen, der Staat, sie, die Vernunft, wie sie sich im Elemente des Selbstbewußtseyns verwirklicht, soll nicht des Glücks genießen, daß es die Vernunft ist, welche in der That in diesem Elemente sich zur Kraft und Gewalt gebracht habe, darin behaupte und inwohne. Das geistige Universum soll vielmehr dem Zufall und der Willkühr preisgegeben, es soll Gottverlassen seyn, so daß nach diesem Atheismus der sittlichen Welt das Wahre sich außer ihr befinde, und zugleich, weil doch auch Vernunft darin seyn soll, das Wahre nur ein Problema sey. Hierin aber liege die Berechtigung, ja die Verpflichtung für jedes Denken, auch seinen Anlauf zu nehmen, doch nicht um den Stein der Weisen zu suchen, denn durch das Philosophiren unserer Zeit ist das Suchen erspart und Jeder gewiß, so wie er steht und geht, diesen Stein in seiner Gewalt zu haben. Nun geschieht es freylich, daß diejenigen, welche in dieser Wirklichkeit des Staats leben und ihr Wissen und Wollen darin befriedigt finden, — und deren sind Viele, ja mehr als es meynen und wissen, denn im Grunde sind es Alle, — daß also wenigstens diejenigen, welche mit Bewußtseyn ihre Befriedigung im Staate haben, jener Anläufe und Versicherungen lachen und sie für ein bald lustigeres oder ernsteres, ergötzliches oder gefährliches, leeres Spiel nehmen. Jenes unruhige Treiben der Reflexion und Eitelkeit, so wie die Aufnahme und Begegnung, welche sie erfährt, wäre nun eine Sache für sich, die sich auf ihre Weise in sich entwickelt; aber es ist die Philosophie überhaupt, welche sich durch jenes Getreibe in mannichfaltige Verachtung und Mißkredit gesetzt hat. Die schlimmste der Verachtungen ist diese, daß wie, gesagt jeder, wie er so steht und geht, über die Philosophie überhaupt Bescheid zu wissen und abzusprechen im Stande zu seyn überzeugt ist. Keiner andern Kunst und Wissenschaft wird diese letzte Verachtung bezeigt, zu meynen, daß man sie geradezu inne habe.
In der That, was wir von der Philosophie der neuern Zeit mit der größten Prätension über den Staat haben ausgehen sehen, berechtigte wohl jeden, der Lust hatte mitzusprechen, zu dieser Ueberzeugung, eben solches von sich aus geradezu machen zu können und damit sich den Beweis, im Besitz der Philosophie zu seyn, zu geben. Ohnehin hat die sich so nennende Philosophie es ausdrücklich ausgesprochen, daß das Wahre selbst nicht erkannt werden könne, sondern daß diß das Wahre sey, was jeder über die sittlichen Gegenstände, vornemlich über Staat, Regierung und Verfassung, sich aus seinem Herzen, Gemüth und Begeisterung aufsteigen lasse. Was ist darüber nicht alles der Jugend insbesondere, zum Munde geredet worden? Die Jugend hat es sich denn auch wohl gesagt seyn lassen. Den Seinen gibt Er's schlafend, — ist auf die Wissenschaft angewendet worden, und damit hat jeder Schlafende sich zu den Seinen gezählt; was er so im Schlafe der Begriffe bekommen, war denn freylich auch Waare darnach. — Ein Heerführer dieser Seichtigkeit, die sich Philosophiren nennt, Herr Fries,preface.1 hat sich nicht entblödet bey einer feyerlichen, berüchtigt gewordenen öffentlichen Gelegenheit in einer Rede, über den Gegenstand von Staat und Staatsverfassung die Vorstellung zu geben: „in dem Volke, in welchem ächter Gemeingeist herrsche, würde jedem Geschäft der öffentlichen Angelegenheiten das Leben von unten aus dem Volke kommen, würden jedem einzelnen Werke der Volksbildung und des volksthümlichen Dienstes, sich lebendige Gesellschaften weyhen, durch die heilige Kette der Freundschaft unverbrüchlich vereinigt,“ und dergleichen. — Diß ist der Hauptsinn der Seichtigkeit, die Wissenschaft statt auf die Entwicklung des Gedankens und Begriffs, vielmehr auf die unmittelbare Wahrnehmung und die zufällige Einbildung zu stellen, eben so die reiche Gegliederung des Sittlichen in sich, welche der Staat ist, die Architectonik seiner Vernünftigkeit, die durch die bestimmte Unterscheidung der Kreise des öffentlichen Lebens und ihrer Berechtigungen und durch die Strenge des Maßes, in dem sich jeder Pfeiler, Bogen und Strebung hält, die Stärke des Ganzen aus der Harmonie seiner Glieder hervorgehen macht, — diesen gebildeten Bau in den Brey des „Herzens, der Freundschaft und Begeisterung“ zusammenfließen zu lassen. Wie nach Epikur die Welt überhaupt, so ist freylich nicht, aber so sollte, die sittliche Welt nach solcher Vorstellung, der subjectiven Zufälligkeit des Meynens und der Willkühr übergeben werden. Mit dem einfachen Hausmittel, auf das Gefühl das zu stellen, was die und zwar mehrtausendjährige Arbeit der Vernunft und ihres Verstandes ist, ist freylich alle die Mühe der von dem denkenden Begriffe geleiteten Vernunfteinsicht und Erkenntniß erspart. Mephistopheles bey Göthe, — eine gute Autorität, — sagt darüber ungefähr, was ich auch sonst angeführt:
„Verachte nur Verstand und Wissenschaftdes Menschen allerhöchste Gaben —so hast dem Teufel dich ergebenund mußt zu Grunde gehn.“
Unmittelbar nahe liegt es, daß solche Ansicht sich auch die Gestalt der Frömmigkeit annimmt; denn mit was Allem hat dieses Getreibe sich nicht zu autorisiren versucht! Mit der Gottseligkeit und der Bibel aber hat es sich die höchste Berechtigung, die sittliche Ordnung und die Objectivität der Gesetze zu verachten, zu geben vermeynt. Denn wohl ist es auch die Frömmigkeit, welche die in der Welt zu einem organischen Reiche auseinander geschlagene Wahrheit zur einfachern Anschauung des Gefühls einwickelt. Aber sofern sie rechter Art ist, gibt sie die Form dieser Region auf, sobald sie aus dem Innern heraus in den Tag der Entfaltung und des geoffenbarten Reichthums der Idee eintritt, und bringt aus ihrem innern Gottesdienst die Verehrung gegen eine an und für sich seyende, über die subjective Form des Gefühls erhabene, Wahrheit und Gesetze mit.
Die besondere Form des übeln Gewissens, welche sich in der Art der Beredsamkeit, zu der sich jene Seichtigkeit aufspreitzt, kund thut, kann hiebey bemerklich gemacht werden; und zwar zunächst, daß sie da, wo sie am geistlosesten ist, am meisten vom Geiste spricht, wo sie am todtesten und ledernsten redet, das Wort Leben und ins Leben einführen, wo sie die größte Selbstsucht des leeren Hochmuths kund thut, am meisten das Wort Volk im Munde führt. Das eigenthümliche Wahrzeichen aber, das sie an der Stirne trägt, ist der Haß gegen das Gesetz. Daß Recht und Sittlichkeit, und die wirkliche Welt des Rechts und des Sittlichen sich durch den Gedanken erfaßt, durch Gedanken sich die Form der Vernünftigkeit, nemlich Allgemeinheit und Bestimmtheit gibt, diß, das Gesetz, ist es, was jenes sich das Belieben vorbehaltende Gefühl, jenes das Rechte in die subjective Ueberzeugung stellende Gewissen, mit Grund als das sich feindseligste ansieht. Die Form des Rechten als einer Pflicht und als eines Gesetzes wird von ihm als ein todter, kalter Buchstabe und als eine Fessel empfunden; denn es erkennt in ihm nicht sich selbst, sich in ihm somit nicht frey, weil das Gesetz die Vernunft der Sache ist, und diese dem Gefühle nicht verstattet, sich an der eigenen Particularität zu wärmen. Das Gesetz ist darum, wie im Laufe dieses Lehrbuchs irgendwo angemerkt worden, vornemlich das Schiboleth, an dem die falschen Brüder und Freunde des sogenannten Volkes sich abscheiden.
Indem nun die Rabulisterey der Willkühr sich des Nahmens der Philosophie bemächtigt und ein großes Publikum in die Meynung zu versetzen vermocht hat, als ob dergleichen Treiben Philosophie sey, so ist es fast gar zur Unehre geworden, über die Natur des Staats noch philosophisch zu sprechen; und es ist rechtlichen Männern nicht zu verargen, wenn sie in Ungeduld gerathen, sobald sie von philosophischer Wissenschaft des Staats reden hören. Noch weniger ist sich zu verwundern, wenn die Regierungen auf solches Philosophiren endlich die Aufmerksamkeit gerichtet haben, da ohnehin bey uns die Philosophie nicht wie etwa bey den Griechen, als eine private Kunst exercirt wird, sondern sie eine öffentliche, das Publikum berührende Existenz, vornemlich oder allein im Staatsdienste, hat. Wenn die Regierungen ihren diesem Fache gewidmeten Gelehrten das Zutrauen bewiesen haben, sich für die Ausbildung und den Gehalt der Philosophie auf sie gänzlich zu verlassen, — wäre es hie und da, wenn man will, nicht so sehr Zutrauen, als Gleichgültigkeit gegen die Wissenschaft selbst gewesen, und das Lehramt derselben nur traditionell beybehalten worden, (— wie man denn, soviel mir bekannt ist, in Frankreich die Lehrstühle der Metaphysik wenigstens, hat eingehen lassen) — so ist ihnen vielfältig jenes Zutrauen schlecht vergolten worden, oder wo man, im andern Fall, Gleichgültigkeit sehen wollte, so wäre der Erfolg, das Verkommen gründlicher Erkenntniß, als ein Büßen dieser Gleichgültigkeit anzusehen. Zunächst scheint wohl die Seichtigkeit etwa am allerverträglichsten, wenigstens mit äußerer Ordnung und Ruhe zu seyn, weil sie nicht dazu kommt, die Substanz der Sachen zu berühren, ja nur zu ahnden; sie würde somit zunächst wenigstens polizeylich nichts gegen sich haben, wenn nicht der Staat noch das Bedürfniß tieferer Bildung und Einsicht in sich schlösse und die Befriedigung desselben von der Wissenschaft foderte. Aber die Seichtigkeit führt von selbst in Rücksicht des Sittlichen, des Rechts und der Pflicht überhaupt, auf diejenigen Grundsätze, welche in dieser Sphäre das Seichte ausmachen, auf die Principien der Sophisten, die wir aus Plato so entschieden kennen lernen, — die Principien, welche das, was Recht ist, auf die subjectiven Zwecke und Meynungen, auf das subjective Gefühl und die particuläre Ueberzeugung stellen, — Principien, aus welchen die Zerstörung eben so der innern Sittlichkeit und des rechtschaffenen Gewissens, der Liebe und des Rechts unter den Privatpersonen, als die Zerstörung der öffentlichen Ordnung und der Staatsgesetze folgt. Die Bedeutung, welche dergleichen Erscheinungen für die Regierungen gewinnen müssen, wird sich nicht etwa durch den Titel abweisen lassen, der sich auf das geschenkte Zutrauen selbst und auf die Autorität eines Amtes stützte, um an den Staat zu fodern, daß er das, was die substantielle Quelle von den Thaten, die allgemeinen Grundsätze, verdirbt, und sogar dessen Trotz, als ob es sich so gehörte, gewähren und walten lassen solle. Wem Gott ein Amt gibt, dem gibt er auch Verstand, — ist ein alter Scherz, den man wohl in unsern Zeiten nicht gar für Ernst wird behaupten wollen.
In der Wichtigkeit der Art und Weise des Philosophirens, welche durch die Umstände bey den Regierungen aufgefrischt worden ist, läßt sich das Moment des Schutzes und Vorschubs nicht verkennen, dessen das Studium der Philosophie nach vielen andern Seiten hin bedürftig geworden zu seyn scheint. Denn liest man in so vielen Productionen aus dem Fache der positiven Wissenschaften, ingleichen der religiösen Erbaulichkeit und anderer unbestimmter Literatur, wie darin nicht nur die vorhin erwähnte Verachtung gegen die Philosophie bezeigt ist, daß solche, die zugleich beweisen, daß sie in der Gedankenbildung völlig zurück sind und Philosophie ihnen etwas ganz fremdes ist, doch sie als etwas bey sich Abgethanes behandeln, — sondern wie daselbst ausdrücklich gegen die Philosophie losgezogen und ihr Inhalt, die begreifende Erkenntniß Gottes und der physischen und geistigen Natur, die Erkenntniß der Wahrheit als für eine thörigte, ja sündhafte Anmaßung erklärt, wie die Vernunft, und wieder die Vernunft, und in unendlicher Wiederholung die Vernunft angeklagt, herabgesetzt und verdammt, — oder wie wenigstens zu erkennen gegeben wird, wie unbequem bey einem großen Theile des wissenschaftlich seyn sollenden Treibens die doch unabwendbaren Ansprüche des Begriffes fallen, — wenn man, sage ich, dergleichen Erscheinungen vor sich hat, so möchte man beynahe dem Gedanken Raum geben, daß von dieser Seite die Tradition nicht mehr ehrwürdig noch hinreichend wäre, dem philosophischen Studium die Toleranz und die öffentliche Existenz zu sichern.preface.2 — Die zu unserer Zeit gäng und gäben Declamationen und Anmaßungen gegen die Philosophie bieten das sonderbare Schauspiel dar, daß sie durch jene Seichtigkeit, zu der diese Wissenschaft degradirt worden ist, einerseits ihr Recht haben, und andererseits selbst in diesem Elemente wurzeln, gegen das sie undankbar gerichtet sind. Denn indem jenes sich so nennende Philosophiren die Erkenntniß der Wahrheit für einen thörichten Versuch erklärt hat, hat es, wie der Despotismus der Kaiser Roms Adel und Sclaven, Tugend und Laster, Ehre und Unehre, Kenntniß und Unwissenheit gleichgemacht hat, alle Gedanken und alle Stoffe nivellirt, — so daß die Begriffe des Wahren, die Gesetze des Sittlichen auch weiter nichts sind als Meynungen und subjective Ueberzeugungen, und die verbrecherischsten Grundsätze als Ueberzeugungen mit jenen Gesetzen in gleiche Würde gestellt sind, und daß ebenso jede noch so kahle und particuläre Objecte und noch so stroherne Materien in gleiche Würde gestellt sind mit dem, was das Interesse aller denkenden Menschen und die Bänder der sittlichen Welt ausmacht.
Es ist darum als ein Glück für die Wissenschaft zu achten, — in der That ist es, wie bemerkt, die Nothwendigkeit der Sache, — daß jenes Philosophiren, das sich als eine Schulweisheit in sich fortspinnen mochte, sich in näheres Verhältniß mit der Wirklichkeit gesetzt hat, in welcher es mit den Grundsätzen der Rechte und der Pflichten Ernst ist, und welche im Tage des Bewußtseyns derselben lebt, und daß es somit zum öffentlichen Bruche gekommen ist. Es ist eben diese Stellung der Philosophie zur Wirklichkeit, welche die Mißverständnisse betreffen, und ich kehre hiemit zu dem zurück, was ich vorhin bemerkt habe, daß die Philosophie, weil sie das Ergründen des Vernünftigen ist, eben damit das Erfassen des Gegenwärtigen und Wirklichen, nicht das Aufstellen eines Jenseitigen ist, das Gott weiß wo seyn sollte, — oder von dem man in der That wohl zu sagen weiß, wo es ist, nemlich in dem Irrthum eines einseitigen, leeren Raisonnirens. Im Verlaufe der folgenden Abhandlung habe ich bemerkt, daß selbst die platonische Republik, welche als das Sprichwort eines leeren Ideals gilt, wesentlich nichts aufgefaßt hat, als die Natur der griechischen Sittlichkeit, und daß dann im Bewußtseyn des in sie einbrechenden tiefern Princips, das an ihr unmittelbar nur als eine noch unbefriedigte Sehnsucht und damit nur als Verderben erscheinen konnte, Plato aus eben der Sehnsucht die Hülfe dagegen hat suchen müssen, aber sie, die aus der Höhe kommen mußte, zunächst nur in einer äußern besondern Form jener Sittlichkeit suchen konnte, durch welche er jenes Verderben zu gewältigen sich ausdachte, und wodurch er ihren tiefern Trieb, die freye unendliche Persönlichkeit, gerade am tiefsten verletzte. Dadurch aber hat er sich als der große Geist bewiesen, daß eben das Princip, um welches sich das Unterscheidende seiner Idee dreht, der Angel ist, um welche die bevorstehende Umwälzung der Welt sich gedreht hat.
Was vernünftig ist, das ist wirklich;und was wirklich ist, das ist vernünftig.
In dieser Ueberzeugung steht jedes unbefangene Bewußtseyn, wie die Philosophie, und hievon geht diese ebenso in Betrachtung des geistigen Universums aus, als des natürlichen. Wenn die Reflexion, das Gefühl oder welche Gestalt das subjective Bewußtseyn habe, die Gegenwart für ein Eitles ansieht, über sie hinaus ist und es besser weiß, so befindet es sich im Eiteln, und weil es Wirklichkeit nur in der Gegenwart hat, ist es so selbst nur Eitelkeit. Wenn umgekehrt die Idee für das gilt, was nur so eine Idee, eine Vorstellung in einem Meynen ist, so gewährt hingegen die Philosophie die Einsicht, daß nichts wirklich ist als die Idee. Darauf kommt es dann an, in dem Scheine des Zeitlichen und Vorübergehenden die Substanz, die immanent, und das Ewige, das gegenwärtig ist, zu erkennen. Denn das Vernünftige, was synonym ist mit der Idee, indem es in seiner Wirklichkeit zugleich in die äußere Existenz tritt, tritt in einem unendlichen Reichthum von Formen, Erscheinungen und Gestaltungen hervor, und umzieht seinen Kern mit der bunten Rinde, in welcher das Bewußtseyn zunächst haust, welche der Begriff erst durchdringt, um den innern Puls zu finden und ihn ebenso in den äußern Gestaltungen noch schlagend zu fühlen. Die unendlich mannichfaltigen Verhältnisse aber, die sich in dieser Aeußerlichkeit, durch das Scheinen des Wesens in sie, bilden, dieses unendliche Material und seine Regulirung, ist nicht Gegenstand der Philosophie. Sie mischte sich damit in Dinge, die sie nicht angehen; guten Rath darüber zu ertheilen, kann sie sich ersparen; Plato konnte es unterlassen, den Ammen anzuempfehlen, mit den Kindern nie stillezustehen, sie immer auf den Armen zu schaukeln, ebenso Fichte die Vervollkommnung der Paßpolizey bis dahin, wie man es nannte, zu construiren, daß von den Verdächtigen nicht nur das Signalement in den Paß gesetzt, sondern das Porträt darin gemahlt werden solle. In dergleichen Ausführungen ist von Philosophie keine Spur mehr zu sehen, und sie kann dergleichen Ultraweisheit um so mehr lassen, als sie über diese unendliche Menge von Gegenständen gerade am liberalsten sich zeigen soll. Damit wird die Wissenschaft auch von dem Hasse, den die Eitelkeit des Besserwissens auf eine Menge von Umständen und Institutionen wirft, — ein Haß, in welchem sich die Kleinlichkeit am meisten gefällt, weil sie nur dadurch zu einem Selbstgefühl kommt, — sich am entferntesten zeigen.
So soll denn diese Abhandlung, insofern sie die Staatswissenschaft enthält, nichts anders seyn, als der Versuch, den Staat als ein in sich Vernünftiges zu begreifen und darzustellen. Als philosophische Schrift muß sie am entferntesten davon seyn, einen Staat, wie er seyn soll, construiren zu sollen; die Belehrung, die in ihr liegen kann, kann nicht darauf gehen, den Staat zu belehren, wie er seyn soll, sondern vielmehr, wie er, das sittliche Universum, erkannt werden soll.
Ἰδοὺ Ῥόδος, ἰδοὺ καὶ τὸ πήδημα.Hic Rhodus, hic saltus.
Das was ist zu begreifen, ist die Aufgabe der Philosophie, denn das was ist, ist die Vernunft. Was das Individuum betrifft, so ist ohnehin jedes ein Sohn seiner Zeit; so ist auch die Philosophie, ihre Zeit in Gedanken erfaßt. Es ist eben so thöricht zu wähnen, irgend eine Philosophie gehe über ihre gegenwärtige Welt hinaus, als, ein Individuum überspringe seine Zeit, springe über Rhodus hinaus. Geht seine Theorie in der That drüber hinaus, baut es sich eine Welt, wie sie seyn soll, so existirt sie wohl, aber nur in seinem Meynen, — einem weichen Elemente, dem sich alles Beliebige einbilden läßt.
Mit weniger Veränderung würde jene Redensart lauten:
Hier ist die Rose, hier tanze.
Was zwischen der Vernunft als selbstbewußtem Geiste und der Vernunft als vorhandener Wirklichkeit liegt, was jene Vernunft von dieser scheidet und in ihr nicht die Befriedigung finden läßt, ist die Fessel irgend eines Abstractums, das nicht zum Begriffe befreyt ist. Die Vernunft als die Rose im Kreutze der Gegenwart zu erkennen und damit dieser sich zu erfreuen, diese vernünftige Einsicht ist die Versöhnung mit der Wirklichkeit, welche die Philosophie denen gewährt, an die einmal die innere Anfoderung ergangen ist, zu begreifen, und in dem, was substantiell ist, ebenso die subjective Freyheit zu erhalten, so wie mit der subjectiven Freyheit nicht in einem Besondern und Zufälligen, sondern in dem, was an und für sich ist, zu stehen.
Diß ist es auch, was den concretern Sinn dessen ausmacht, was oben abstracter als Einheit der Form und des Inhalts bezeichnet worden ist, denn die Form in ihrer concretesten Bedeutung ist die Vernunft als begreifendes Erkennen, und der Inhalt die Vernunft als das substantielle Wesen der sittlichen, wie der natürlichen Wirklichkeit; die bewußte Identität von beydem ist die philosophische Idee. — Es ist ein großer Eigensinn, der Eigensinn, der dem Menschen Ehre macht, nichts in der Gesinnung anerkennen zu wollen, was nicht durch den Gedanken gerechtfertigt ist, — und dieser Eigensinn ist das Charakteristische der neuern Zeit, ohnehin das eigenthümliche Princip des Protestantismus. Was Luther als Glauben im Gefühl und im Zeugniß des Geistes begonnen, es ist dasselbe, was der weiterhin gereifte Geist im Begriffe zu fassen, und so in der Gegenwart sich zu befreyen und dadurch in ihr sich zu finden bestrebt ist. Wie es ein berühmtes Wort geworden ist, daß eine halbe Philosophie von Gott abführe, — und es ist dieselbe Halbheit, die das Erkennen in eine Annäherung zur Wahrheit setzt, — die wahre Philosophie aber zu Gott führe, so ist es dasselbe mit dem Staate. So wie die Vernunft sich nicht mit der Annäherung, als welche weder kalt noch warm ist und darum ausgespien wird, eben so wenig begnügt sie sich mit der kalten Verzweiflung, die zugibt, daß es in dieser Zeitlichkeit wohl schlecht oder höchstens mittelmäßig zugehe, aber eben in ihr nichts besseres zu haben und nur darum Frieden mit der Wirklichkeit zu halten sey; es ist ein wärmerer Friede mit ihr, den die Erkenntniß verschafft.
Um noch über das Belehren, wie die Welt seyn soll, ein Wort zu sagen, so kommt dazu ohnehin die Philosophie immer zu spät. Als der Gedanke der Welt erscheint sie erst in der Zeit, nachdem die Wirklichkeit ihren Bildungsproceß vollendet und sich fertig gemacht hat. Diß, was der Begriff lehrt, zeigt nothwendig ebenso die Geschichte, daß erst in der Reife der Wirklichkeit das Ideale dem Realen gegenüber erscheint und jenes sich dieselbe Welt, in ihrer Substanz erfaßt, in Gestalt eines intellectuellen Reichs erbaut. Wenn die Philosophie ihr Grau in Grau mahlt, dann ist eine Gestalt des Lebens alt geworden, und mit Grau in Grau läßt sie sich nicht verjüngen, sondern nur erkennen; die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug.
Doch es ist Zeit dieses Vorwort zu schließen; als Vorwort kam ihm ohnehin nur zu, äußerlich und subjectiv von dem Standpunkt der Schrift, der es vorangeschickt ist, zu sprechen. Soll philosophisch von einem Inhalte gesprochen werden, so verträgt er nur eine wissenschaftliche, objective Behandlung, wie denn auch dem Verfasser Widerrede anderer Art als eine wissenschaftliche Abhandlung der Sache selbst, nur für ein subjectives Nachwort und beliebige Versicherung gelten und ihm gleichgültig seyn muß.
Berlin, den 25. Juni 1820.
preface.1. Von der Seichtigkeit seiner Wissenschaft habe ich sonst Zeugniß gegeben; s. Wissenschaft der Logik (Nürnberg 1812.) Einl. S. xvii.
preface.2. Dergleichen Ansichten fielen mir bey einem Briefe Joh. v. Müllers (Werke Theil VIII. S. 56.) ein, wo es vom Zustande Roms im Jahre 1803, als diese Stadt unter französischer Herrschaft stand, unter anderem heißt; „Befragt, wie es um die öffentlichen Lehranstalten stehe, antwortete ein Professor: On les tolère comme les bordels.“ — Die sogenannte Vernunftlehre, nemlich die Logik, kann man wohl sogar noch empfehlen hören, etwa mit der Ueberzeugung, daß man sich mit ihr als trockner und unfruchtbarer Wissenschaft entweder ohnehin nicht mehr beschäftige, oder wenn diß hin und wieder geschehe, man in ihr nur inhaltslose, also nichtsgebende und nichtsverderbende Formeln erhalte, daß somit die Empfehlung auf keinen Fall schaden, sowie nichts nützen werde.
Musean translation
Machine-assisted Musean translation made directly from Hegel's German in the Berlin Nicolai first edition, dated 1821. Complete preface, introduction and sections 1–360, including the author's remarks and notes; no later Gans additions.
The immediate occasion for publishing this outline is the need to place in my students’ hands a guide to the lectures I give, in fulfillment of my office, on the philosophy of right. This textbook develops further, and in particular more systematically, the same fundamental concepts concerning this part of philosophy that are already contained in my Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Heidelberg, 1817), otherwise intended for my lectures.
The fact that this outline was to appear in print, and thus come before the wider public, prompted me to expand, here and there, the remarks that were initially meant to indicate briefly related or divergent conceptions, further consequences, and the like—matters that would receive their proper explanation in the lectures. I have done so to clarify at times the more abstract content of the text and to take fuller account of familiar conceptions current in our day that bear upon it. The result is a number of remarks more extensive than the purpose and style of a compendium ordinarily entail. A compendium in the strict sense, however, takes as its subject the compass of a science regarded as complete; what is peculiar to it, apart perhaps from a small addition here and there, is chiefly the arrangement and ordering of the essential moments of a content long since accepted and familiar, just as this form has its long-established rules and manners. One does not expect this pattern from a philosophical outline, if only because one imagines that what philosophy produces grows stale overnight, like Penelope’s web, begun afresh every day.
This outline certainly differs from an ordinary compendium, first of all, in the method that governs it. But it is presupposed here that the philosophical manner of advancing from one subject to another and of providing scientific proof—this speculative manner of knowing in general—differs essentially from other ways of knowing. Insight into the necessity of such a difference alone can rescue philosophy from the shameful decline into which it has sunk in our time. The inadequacy, for speculative science, of the forms and rules of the former logic—of defining, dividing, and drawing conclusions, which contain the rules of cognition by the understanding—has indeed been recognized, or rather felt more than recognized. These rules have then simply been thrown off as fetters, so that people might speak at will from the heart, the imagination, and contingent intuition. Yet reflection and relations of thought must enter in all the same, and so they proceed unconsciously by the despised method of quite ordinary inference and ratiocination.—I have developed the nature of speculative knowing at length in my Science of Logic; in this outline, therefore, an explanation of the procedure and method has been added only here and there. Given the concrete character of the subject and its manifold internal diversity, the logical progression has admittedly not been demonstrated and brought out in each and every detail. In part, familiarity with the scientific method being presupposed, this could be considered superfluous; in part, however, it will be apparent of itself that the whole, as well as the development of its members, rests on the logical spirit. It is chiefly from this side that I would wish this treatise to be understood and judged. For what it concerns is science, and in science the content is essentially bound to the form.
We may indeed hear from those who seem to take things most thoroughly that form is something external and indifferent to the matter: only the matter counts. We may further locate the writer’s business, especially the philosophical writer’s, in discovering truths, speaking truths, and spreading truths and correct concepts. When we consider how this business is actually conducted, we see, on the one hand, the same old cabbage boiled up again and again and served on every side—a business that may well have its merit in educating and awakening minds, although it might rather be regarded as a busily superfluous activity—“for they have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” Above all, there is frequent occasion to marvel at the tone and pretension displayed, as though the world had lacked only these zealous disseminators of truths; as though reheated cabbage brought new and unheard-of truths, particularly deserving to be taken to heart “at the present time.” On the other hand, we see what one side issues as such truths displaced and swept away by similar truths dispensed from other sides. What in this throng of truths is neither old nor new, but enduring—how is it to emerge from these formless reflections that wander back and forth? How else is it to distinguish and vindicate itself than through science?
In any case, truth concerning right, ethical life, and the state is as old as its open exposition and recognition in public laws, public morality, and religion. What more does this truth need, insofar as the thinking spirit is not content to possess it in this immediate manner, than also to comprehend it, and to win for a content already rational in itself a rational form as well? It would then appear justified to free thinking, which does not stop at what is given, whether supported by the external, positive authority of the state or human agreement, or by the authority of inward feeling and the heart and the spirit’s immediately assenting testimony. Rather, free thinking proceeds from itself, and thereby demands to know itself united with truth in its innermost being.
The simple conduct of an unprejudiced mind is to hold with trusting conviction to publicly acknowledged truth and, on this firm foundation, to build its way of acting and its settled position in life. Against this simple conduct there already arises, perhaps, the supposed difficulty of distinguishing and discovering, among infinitely different opinions, what is universally recognized and valid in them; this perplexity can easily be taken for a right and genuine seriousness about the matter. Yet those who pride themselves on this perplexity are in fact unable to see the forest for the trees. The perplexity and difficulty exist only because they themselves contrive them; indeed, their perplexity and difficulty are rather proof that they want something other than what is universally recognized and accepted, other than the substance of right and ethical life. For if they truly cared about this, and not about the vanity and particularity of opinion and being, they would hold to substantial right—to the commands of ethical life and the state—and order their lives accordingly.—The further difficulty, however, arises because the human being thinks, and seeks freedom and the ground of ethical life in thinking. This right, however lofty and divine, is perverted into wrong when only a thinking that departs from what is universally recognized and valid, and has managed to invent something particular for itself, counts as thinking and knows itself to be free.
In our time, the notion that freedom of thought, and of spirit generally, proves itself only through departure from, indeed hostility toward, what is publicly recognized has become most firmly rooted in relation to the state. Accordingly, a philosophy of the state in particular seems to have as its essential task the invention and presentation of a theory, a new and peculiar theory at that. When one sees this notion and the activity that accords with it, one might suppose that no state or constitution had ever existed in the world, or existed now; that we must begin entirely afresh now—and this now goes on forever—and that the ethical world had merely been waiting for just such present-day thinking up, fathoming, and grounding. In the case of nature, it is conceded that philosophy must know it as it is: that the philosophers’ stone lies hidden somewhere within nature itself; that nature is rational in itself; and that knowledge must investigate and comprehend this actual reason present within it—not the configurations and contingencies that appear on the surface, but its eternal harmony, as its immanent law and essence. Yet the ethical world, the state—reason as it actualizes itself in the element of self-consciousness—is not to enjoy the good fortune that reason has in fact attained force and power within this element, maintains itself there, and dwells within it. The spiritual universe is instead to be abandoned to contingency and arbitrary choice; it is to be forsaken by God. According to this atheism of the ethical world, truth lies outside it; and at the same time, since reason is nevertheless supposed to be within it, truth is only a problem. Here, however, every thinking mind is said to have the warrant, indeed the obligation, to make its own attempt—not, though, to seek the philosophers’ stone, for the philosophizing of our time has spared us the search, and everyone is certain that, just as they stand, they have this stone in their possession. Now it admittedly happens that those who live within this actuality of the state and find their knowing and willing satisfied in it—and there are many of them, indeed more than think or know it, for at bottom they are everyone—that at least those who are conscious of their satisfaction in the state laugh at these attempts and assurances, and regard them as an empty game, now amusing, now serious, entertaining or dangerous. This restless activity of reflection and vanity, together with the reception and treatment it encounters, would be a matter on its own, developing in its own fashion. But through this commotion philosophy in general has brought itself into manifold contempt and discredit. The worst contempt is the conviction that everyone, just as they stand, knows enough about philosophy in general to pass judgment on it. No other art or science is shown this final contempt: the opinion that one possesses it outright.
Indeed, what we have seen the philosophy of recent times put forth concerning the state, with the greatest pretension, might well entitle everyone who wished to join the discussion to believe that they could produce just the same thing on their own, and thereby give themselves proof that they possessed philosophy. Besides, this self-styled philosophy has expressly declared that truth itself cannot be known: truth is instead what each person allows to rise from their heart, feeling, and enthusiasm concerning ethical matters, particularly the state, government, and constitution. What has not been said on this score, especially to flatter the young? The young have willingly listened. He gives to his own in sleep—this has been applied to science; and so every sleeper has counted themselves among his own. Whatever they received in this sleep of concepts was, of course, merchandise to match.—One commander of this shallowness that calls itself philosophizing, Mr. Fries,¹ did not shrink, on a solemn public occasion that has become notorious, from offering in a speech on the state and constitution the notion that “among a people in whom genuine communal spirit prevailed, life would come to every undertaking in public affairs from below, from the people; living associations would dedicate themselves to every individual work of popular education and service to the people, indissolubly united by the sacred chain of friendship,” and so forth.—The chief import of this shallowness is to base science not on the development of thought and concept, but rather on immediate perception and contingent imagining; likewise, to dissolve into the mush of “heart, friendship, and enthusiasm” the rich inward articulation of ethical life that is the state, the architecture of its rationality, which makes the strength of the whole emerge from the harmony of its members through the determinate distinction of the spheres of public life and their rights, and through the strict proportion within which every pillar, arch, and buttress holds its place—this elaborately formed structure. As the world in general is for Epicurus, so the ethical world admittedly is not; but according to such a notion it ought to be surrendered to the subjective contingency of opinion and arbitrary choice. The simple household remedy of basing on feeling what is the labor, indeed the labor of millennia, of reason and its understanding certainly spares all the trouble of rational insight and cognition guided by the thinking concept. Goethe’s Mephistopheles—a good authority—says approximately what I have quoted elsewhere:
“Go on, despise understanding and science,The highest gifts bestowed on humankind—Then you have given yourself to the devilAnd must go down to ruin.”
Such a view can readily take on the guise of piety as well; for what has this commotion not tried to enlist as its authority! In godliness and the Bible, however, it has supposed it could confer on itself the highest warrant to despise the ethical order and the objectivity of laws. Piety does indeed enfold, in the simpler intuition of feeling, the truth that is unfolded in the world into an organic realm. But insofar as it is of the right kind, it gives up the form of this region as soon as it steps out from within into the daylight of the Idea’s unfolding and revealed riches; and from its inward worship it brings reverence for a truth and laws that exist in and for themselves, raised above the subjective form of feeling.
Here we may note the particular form of bad conscience that reveals itself in the kind of eloquence to which this shallowness inflates itself. First of all, it speaks most of spirit where it is most spiritless; where its speech is deadest and most wooden, it introduces the word life, and bringing to life; where it displays the greatest selfishness of empty arrogance, it has the word people most often on its lips. But the distinctive sign it bears on its forehead is hatred of the law. That right and ethical life, and the actual world of right and ethical life, comprehend themselves through thought, and through thought give themselves the form of rationality—universality and determinacy—this, the law, is what that feeling which insists on doing as it pleases, that conscience which locates right in subjective conviction, has good reason to regard as its bitterest enemy. The form of right as a duty and a law is felt by it as a dead, cold letter, a fetter; for in the law it does not recognize itself, and thus does not recognize itself as free within it, because law is the reason of the matter, and this does not permit feeling to warm itself at its own particularity. The law, therefore, as has been remarked somewhere in the course of this textbook, is above all the shibboleth by which the false brothers and friends of the so-called people reveal themselves.
Now that the quibbling advocacy of arbitrary choice has seized the name of philosophy and managed to persuade a large public that such activity is philosophy, it has almost become a disgrace to speak philosophically about the nature of the state at all; honest men are not to be blamed if they grow impatient as soon as they hear talk of a philosophical science of the state. Still less is it surprising that governments have at last turned their attention to such philosophizing, since among us philosophy is not practiced as a private art, as it was among the Greeks, but has a public existence affecting the public, chiefly or solely in the service of the state. If governments have shown their confidence in scholars devoted to this field by relying entirely upon them for the cultivation and substance of philosophy—or if here and there, if one wishes, it was less confidence than indifference toward science itself, and its teaching office was retained only by tradition (as in France, so far as I know, at least the chairs of metaphysics have been allowed to lapse)—then in many cases that confidence has been ill repaid. Or, where one wishes to see indifference instead, the result, the decline of thorough knowledge, must be regarded as a penalty for that indifference. At first, shallowness may seem the most compatible of all with order and peace, at least outwardly, because it does not reach the substance of things, or even divine it. From the standpoint of the police, at least, there would initially be nothing against it, were it not that the state also contained the need for deeper cultivation and insight, and demanded its satisfaction from science. But in regard to ethical life, right, and duty generally, shallowness leads of itself to the principles that constitute shallowness in this sphere: the principles of the Sophists, whom we come to know so decisively from Plato—principles that base what is right on subjective ends and opinions, subjective feeling, and particular conviction; principles from which follows the destruction of inward ethical life and an upright conscience, of love and right among private persons, as well as the destruction of public order and the laws of the state. The significance such phenomena must acquire for governments cannot be dismissed by a claim founded on the very confidence that was granted and on the authority of an office, demanding that the state allow what corrupts the substantial source of actions—the universal principles—and even its defiance, to have free rein, as though this were its due. When God gives an office, he also gives understanding is an old joke that no one in our time is likely to wish to maintain in earnest.
In the importance that circumstances have revived for governments concerning the manner of philosophizing, we cannot fail to recognize a moment of protection and support, of which the study of philosophy seems to have become needy in many other respects. For in so many productions in the fields of the positive sciences, of religious edification, and of other indeterminate literature, we read not only expressions of the contempt for philosophy mentioned above—people who at the same time prove that they are wholly backward in the cultivation of thought, and that philosophy is utterly foreign to them, nevertheless treat it as something they have disposed of—but also explicit attacks on philosophy. Its content, the conceptual knowledge of God and of physical and spiritual nature, knowledge of truth, is declared a foolish, indeed sinful presumption; reason, and again reason, and in endless repetition reason is accused, disparaged, and condemned. Or at least it is indicated how inconvenient the nonetheless inescapable claims of the concept are to much of the activity that purports to be scientific. When, I say, such phenomena confront us, we might almost admit the thought that, from this side, tradition was no longer venerable or sufficient to secure toleration and a public existence for the study of philosophy.²—The declamations and presumptions against philosophy current in our time offer the strange spectacle that, on the one hand, they are justified by the shallowness to which this science has been degraded; and, on the other, they themselves are rooted in the very element against which they turn so ungratefully. For by declaring knowledge of truth a foolish attempt, this self-styled philosophizing has leveled all thoughts and all subject matters, just as the despotism of the Roman emperors made equal noble and slave, virtue and vice, honor and dishonor, knowledge and ignorance. Thus the concepts of truth and the laws of ethical life are nothing more than opinions and subjective convictions; the most criminal principles, as convictions, rank with those laws in equal dignity; and likewise every barren and particular object, every dry-as-straw subject matter, is accorded equal dignity with what constitutes the interest of all thinking people and the bonds of the ethical world.
It must therefore be considered a piece of good fortune for science—indeed, as remarked, it is the necessity of the matter—that this philosophizing, which wished to spin itself out within itself as a scholastic wisdom, has entered into a closer relation with actuality, where the principles of rights and duties are taken seriously, and which lives in the daylight of consciousness of them; and that it has consequently come to an open breach. It is precisely this position of philosophy toward actuality that the misunderstandings concern. I return here to what I remarked earlier: because philosophy is the fathoming of the rational, it is precisely thereby the comprehension of the present and the actual, not the construction of a beyond that is supposed to exist God knows where—or of which, rather, we can say very well where it is: in the error of one-sided, empty ratiocination. In the course of the following treatise I have remarked that even the Platonic Republic, which passes proverbially for an empty ideal, has essentially grasped nothing but the nature of Greek ethical life. Then, in its consciousness of the deeper principle breaking into that life—a principle that could appear immediately within it only as an as-yet unsatisfied longing, and thus only as corruption—Plato had to seek help against it from precisely that longing. Yet the help that had to come from on high he could at first seek only in an outward, particular form of that ethical life, through which he imagined he could master this corruption, and in doing so he most deeply injured its deeper impulse, free and infinite personality. Yet he proved himself the great spirit he was in this: the very principle around which the distinctive character of his Idea turns is the hinge around which the impending revolution of the world has turned.
What is rational is actual;and what is actual is rational.
Every unprejudiced consciousness, like philosophy, stands in this conviction, and from it philosophy proceeds in considering the spiritual universe as well as the natural one. When reflection, feeling, or whatever form subjective consciousness may take regards the present as something vain, stands beyond it, and knows better, it finds itself in vanity; and because it has actuality only in the present, it is itself mere vanity. Conversely, when the Idea is taken to mean what is merely an idea, a representation within an opinion, philosophy affords the insight that nothing is actual but the Idea. What matters, then, is to recognize in the semblance of the temporal and transient the substance that is immanent, and the eternal that is present. For the rational, which is synonymous with the Idea, enters in its actuality into outward existence as well, and emerges in an infinite wealth of forms, appearances, and configurations, surrounding its core with a colorful rind in which consciousness initially dwells. The concept first penetrates this rind to find the inner pulse, and to feel it still beating within the outward configurations. But the infinitely manifold relations that take shape in this externality through the appearance of essence within it—this infinite material and its regulation—are not the subject of philosophy. It would be meddling in things that do not concern it; it can spare itself the trouble of giving good advice about them. Plato could have refrained from recommending that nurses never stand still with children, but always rock them in their arms; Fichte likewise from constructing the perfection of passport policing to the point, as it was called, that not only a description but a painted portrait of a suspect should be entered in the passport. In elaborations of this kind no trace of philosophy remains, and it can all the more readily leave such excessive wisdom alone, since it ought to show itself most liberal toward this infinite multitude of objects. Science will thereby also show itself furthest removed from the hatred that the vanity of knowing better casts upon a multitude of circumstances and institutions—a hatred in which pettiness most delights, since only through it does pettiness attain a sense of itself.
Insofar as this treatise contains the science of the state, then, it is to be nothing other than the attempt to comprehend and present the state as something rational in itself. As a philosophical work, it must be as far as possible from constructing a state as it ought to be. The instruction it can contain cannot aim to teach the state how it ought to be, but rather how the state, the ethical universe, ought to be known.
Here is Rhodes, here also is the leap.Here is Rhodes, here is the leap.
To comprehend what is is the task of philosophy, for what is is reason. As for the individual, each is in any case a child of their time; so too philosophy is its own time comprehended in thought. It is just as foolish to imagine that any philosophy goes beyond its present world as that an individual leaps over their time, leaps beyond Rhodes. If their theory does in fact go beyond it, if they build themselves a world as it ought to be, that world certainly exists, but only in their opinion—a pliable element in which anything one likes can be imagined.
With little alteration, that saying would run:
Here is the rose; here dance.
What lies between reason as self-conscious spirit and reason as present actuality, what separates the former from the latter and prevents it from finding satisfaction there, is the fetter of some abstraction not liberated into the concept. To recognize reason as the rose in the cross of the present, and thus to delight in the present—this rational insight is reconciliation with actuality, which philosophy grants to those who have once received the inward demand to comprehend: both to preserve subjective freedom within what is substantial, and to stand with that subjective freedom not in something particular and contingent, but in what is in and for itself.
This also constitutes the more concrete sense of what was designated above more abstractly as the unity of form and content. For form in its most concrete meaning is reason as conceptual cognition; content is reason as the substantial essence of ethical as well as natural actuality. The conscious identity of the two is the philosophical Idea.—It is a great obstinacy, the obstinacy that does human beings honor, to refuse to acknowledge in conviction anything not justified by thought; and this obstinacy is characteristic of modern times, as well as the distinctive principle of Protestantism. What Luther began as faith in feeling and the witness of spirit is the same thing that the further-matured spirit strives to grasp in the concept, and thus to free itself in the present and thereby find itself there. As it has become a famous saying that half a philosophy leads away from God—and it is the same half measure that makes knowing an approximation to truth—but true philosophy leads to God, so it is with the state. Just as reason is not content with approximation, which is neither cold nor hot and is therefore spat out, so it is not content with the cold despair that admits that things in this temporal world go badly, or at best moderately well, but that nothing better is to be had here, and that only for this reason must we keep peace with actuality. The peace that knowledge brings with it is warmer than that.
To say one more word about teaching how the world ought to be: philosophy in any case always comes too late for that. As the thought of the world, it appears in time only after actuality has completed its formative process and made itself ready. What the concept teaches, history necessarily shows as well: only in the maturity of actuality does the ideal appear over against the real, and the former builds for itself this same world, grasped in its substance, in the shape of an intellectual realm. When philosophy paints its gray on gray, a form of life has grown old; gray on gray cannot rejuvenate it, but only know it. The owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the gathering dusk.
But it is time to close this foreword. As a foreword, its only task was in any case to speak externally and subjectively from the standpoint of the work it precedes. If a content is to be discussed philosophically, it admits only a scientific, objective treatment; and so the author must regard objections of any kind other than a scientific treatment of the matter itself merely as a subjective afterword and an arbitrary assurance, and must remain indifferent to them.
Berlin, June 25, 1820.
¹ I have testified elsewhere to the shallowness of his science; see Wissenschaft der Logik (Nürnberg 1812.) Einl. S. xvii.
² Such views occurred to me on reading a letter by Joh. v. Müller (Werke Theil VIII. S. 56.), where, concerning the condition of Rome in 1803, when the city was under French rule, it says among other things: “Asked how the public teaching institutions stood, a professor replied: They are tolerated like brothels.”—One may even still hear the so-called doctrine of reason, namely logic, recommended, perhaps with the conviction that people either no longer occupy themselves with it anyway, as a dry and unfruitful science, or, if they do so now and then, receive from it only formulas without content, thus yielding nothing and spoiling nothing; the recommendation, therefore, can in no case do harm, just as it will do no good.
Plain English translation
Independent machine-assisted Plain English translation made directly from the German first-edition source, not from the Musean edition or an existing English translation. Complete preface, introduction and sections 1–360 with the author's remarks and notes.
The immediate reason for publishing this outline is the need to give my students a guide for the lectures on the philosophy of right that I give as part of my official duties. This textbook develops the same basic concepts more fully, and especially more systematically, than the account of this part of philosophy already included in my Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Heidelberg, 1817), which was also intended for my lectures.
The decision to print this outline, and so bring it before the wider public as well, led me to expand the remarks here in some cases. These were originally meant only to mention related or differing views, further consequences, and similar matters briefly, leaving the lectures to explain them properly. I have expanded them partly to clarify the more abstract content of the text, and partly to give more attention to familiar ideas current today that closely concern it. This has produced several remarks longer than the purpose and style of a compendium would normally allow. A compendium in the strict sense deals with a field of knowledge regarded as complete. Apart from a small addition here or there, its distinctive task is mainly to gather and arrange the essential elements of a content that has long been accepted and known, just as that form of presentation has long had its established rules and methods. This kind of treatment is not expected of a philosophical outline, if only because people imagine that what philosophy produces is something that lasts only overnight, like Penelope's web, begun afresh every day.
This outline does differ from an ordinary compendium, first of all in the method that guides it. But I assume here that the philosophical way of moving from one subject to another and of proving things scientifically—this speculative way of knowing as a whole—is essentially different from other ways of knowing. Only insight into the necessity of this difference will be able to pull philosophy out of the shameful decline into which it has sunk in our time. People have recognized that the forms and rules of the old logic—definition, classification, and inference, which contain the rules for knowledge through the understanding—are inadequate for speculative science. Or rather, they have felt this more than recognized it. They have then simply thrown these rules away as fetters, to speak arbitrarily from the heart, the imagination, or whatever happens to strike them. Yet reflection and relations between thoughts must still enter into this. So, without knowing it, they proceed by the very method they despise: ordinary inference and argument.—I have developed the nature of speculative knowing in detail in my Science of Logic. That is why I have added explanations of the procedure and method only here and there in this outline. Given the concrete nature of the subject and its great internal variety, I have not demonstrated and brought out the logical progression in every single detail. In part, familiarity with the scientific method is assumed, so this could be considered unnecessary. In part, it will be evident on its own that both the whole and the development of its parts rest on the logical spirit. This, above all, is the aspect under which I would like this work to be understood and judged. For what it is concerned with is science, and in science the content is essentially tied to the form.
Admittedly, even people who seem to take the matter most seriously can be heard saying that form is something external and makes no difference to the subject itself: only the subject matters. Again, the writer's task, especially the philosophical writer's, can be described as discovering truths, stating truths, and spreading truths and correct concepts. But look at how this task is usually carried out. On one side, we see the same old cabbage reheated again and again and served up in every direction. Such work may well have its merits in educating and awakening people's minds, though it could also be seen as a great deal of unnecessary bustle—“for they have Moses and the prophets; let them listen to them.” Above all, there are many occasions to be astonished by the tone and pretensions displayed: as if these eager spreaders of truths were all the world had still been missing; as if their reheated cabbage offered new and unheard-of truths; and as if, above all, these truths always deserved special attention “at the present time.” On the other side, we see truths handed out from one direction displaced and swept away by just the same sort of truths distributed from other directions. Amid this crush of truths, what is neither old nor new, but lasting? How is that to emerge from these shapeless reflections that wander back and forth? How else can it be distinguished and established except through science?
In any case, the truth about right, ethical life, and the state is as old as its open statement and recognition in public laws, public morality, and religion. What more does this truth need, insofar as the thinking spirit is not satisfied to possess it in this immediate way? It needs to be comprehended as well. Its content, which is already rational in itself, needs to acquire a rational form too, so that it appears justified to free thought. Free thought does not stop at what is given, whether supported by the external, established authority of the state or human agreement, or by the authority of inner feeling and the heart and the spirit's immediately approving testimony. It starts from itself and, precisely for that reason, demands to know itself united with truth in its innermost being.
An open, unprejudiced mind takes the simple course of holding to publicly known truth with trusting conviction and building its conduct and firm position in life on that secure foundation. Against this simple conduct, a supposed difficulty may already be raised: how can we distinguish and discover what is universally recognized and valid among infinitely differing opinions? It is easy to mistake this perplexity for a real and genuine seriousness about the subject. In fact, people who pride themselves on this perplexity cannot see the forest for the trees. The perplexity and difficulty exist only because they create them. Indeed, their perplexity and difficulty are really evidence that they want something other than what is universally recognized and accepted, other than the substance of right and ethical life. If that were truly what mattered to them, rather than the vanity and particularity of their opinions and existence, they would keep to what is substantially right: the commands of ethical life and the state. They would arrange their lives accordingly.—But a further difficulty comes from the fact that human beings think and seek their freedom and the foundation of ethical life in thought. However high and divine this right is, it is turned into a wrong if only the following counts as thinking: that thought knows itself to be free only when it departs from what is universally recognized and valid, and has managed to invent something particular for itself.
In our time, the idea that freedom of thought and spirit in general proves itself only through disagreement with, or even hostility toward, what is publicly recognized has become most firmly rooted in relation to the state. Following this idea, a philosophy of the state in particular might seem to have the essential task of inventing and presenting a theory, specifically a new and distinctive one. Looking at this idea and the activity that follows it, one might think that no state or political constitution had ever existed in the world or existed now. One might think that we had to begin from scratch now—and this “now” goes on forever—and that the ethical world had only been waiting for this present-day thinking up, investigating, and grounding of it. As for nature, people admit that philosophy must know it as it is. They admit that the philosopher's stone lies somewhere within nature itself; that nature is rational within itself; and that knowledge must investigate and grasp in concepts the actual reason present in it—not the forms and accidents visible on its surface, but its eternal harmony, as its immanent law and essence. By contrast, the ethical world, the state—reason as it becomes real in the element of self-consciousness—is not supposed to enjoy the good fortune that reason has in fact gained force and power in this element, maintains itself there, and dwells within it. Instead, the spiritual universe is supposed to be abandoned to chance and arbitrary choice. It is supposed to be forsaken by God. According to this atheism of the ethical world, truth lies outside it; and yet, since reason is also supposed to be present within it, truth is supposed to be only a problem. This, however, is said to give every thinker the right, indeed the duty, to make an attempt of their own—not to look for the philosopher's stone, though. The philosophizing of our time has spared us the search, and everyone is certain of having the stone in hand, just as they stand. Now, admittedly, those who live within this actual reality of the state and find their knowing and willing satisfied in it laugh at these attempts and assurances. There are many such people, indeed more than think or know it, since at bottom they are everyone. So at least those who are consciously satisfied in the state regard these attempts as an empty game, by turns more playful or more serious, amusing or dangerous. This restless activity of reflection and vanity, along with the reception and treatment it meets, would be a matter of its own, developing internally in its own way. But this agitation has brought philosophy in general into widespread contempt and disrepute. The worst form of this contempt is the conviction, as already noted, that everyone, just as they stand, knows enough about philosophy as a whole to pass judgment on it. No other art or science is shown this final contempt: the belief that one possesses it outright.
Indeed, what we have seen recent philosophy put forward about the state with the greatest pretensions might well have justified anyone who wanted to join in the discussion in thinking that they could do just the same straight from their own resources, and thereby prove to themselves that they possessed philosophy.In any case, what calls itself philosophy has explicitly declared that truth itself cannot be known. Instead, it says, truth is whatever anyone allows to rise from their heart, feelings, and enthusiasm about ethical matters, especially the state, government, and constitution. What has not been said along these lines, especially to flatter young people? And young people have certainly been willing to hear it. He gives to his own in their sleep—this saying has been applied to science. So everyone asleep has counted themselves among his own. Of course, the concepts they received in their sleep were goods of a corresponding quality.—One of the commanders of this shallowness that calls itself philosophizing, Mr. Fries,¹ did not blush to present the following picture of the state and its constitution in a speech at a ceremonial public occasion that has become notorious: “In a people ruled by a genuine public spirit, life would come from below, from the people, into every undertaking in public affairs. Living associations would devote themselves to each individual work of popular education and service to the people, united indissolubly by the sacred chain of friendship,” and so on.—This is the basic meaning of shallowness: to base science on immediate perception and whatever happens to come into one's imagination, instead of on the development of thought and the concept. In the same way, it means melting the state's richly articulated ethical organization into the mush of “the heart, friendship, and enthusiasm.” This organized structure is the architecture of the state's rationality. Through definite distinctions between the spheres of public life and their rights, and through the strict proportions within which each pillar, arch, and buttress remains, it makes the strength of the whole emerge from the harmony of its parts. According to this picture, the ethical world is certainly not, but ought to be, handed over to the subjective accidents of opinion and arbitrary choice, like the world as a whole according to Epicurus. With the simple home remedy of basing on feeling what is the labor of reason and its understanding, a labor extending over thousands of years, all the effort of rational insight and knowledge guided by the thinking concept is certainly saved. Mephistopheles, in Goethe—a good authority—says roughly what I have quoted elsewhere too:
“Just despise understanding and science,Humanity's highest gifts—Then you have given yourself to the devilAnd must come to ruin.”
It is very natural for such an outlook to take on the appearance of piety as well. For what has this agitation not tried to enlist as its authority! With godliness and the Bible, however, it has imagined itself to acquire the highest warrant to despise the ethical order and the objectivity of laws. Piety does indeed wrap the truth, which has unfolded in the world into an organized realm, back into the simpler vision of feeling. But if it is of the right kind, it gives up the form of this sphere as soon as it steps out of inwardness into the daylight where the Idea unfolds and reveals its richness. From its inward worship, it brings reverence for truth and laws that exist in and for themselves, above the subjective form of feeling.
Here we can note the particular form of bad conscience displayed in the style of eloquence into which this shallowness inflates itself. First, where it is most devoid of spirit, it speaks most of spirit. Where its language is deadest and most wooden, it uses the words life and bring to life. Where it displays the greatest selfishness of empty conceit, it has the word people most often on its lips. But its distinctive identifying mark, worn on its forehead, is hatred of law. Right and ethical life, and the actual world of right and ethical life, grasp themselves through thought. Through thought, they give themselves the form of rationality, namely universality and definiteness. This—law—is what feeling that reserves the right to do as it pleases, and conscience that locates right in subjective conviction, rightly regard as their bitterest enemy. Such a conscience experiences right in the form of duty and law as a dead, cold letter and a fetter. For it does not recognize itself in law and so does not find itself free in it. Law is the reason of the matter, and this reason does not allow feeling to bask in its own particularity. That is why, as I have remarked somewhere in this textbook, law is above all the shibboleth by which the false brothers and friends of the so-called people reveal themselves.
Now that the quibbling of arbitrary choice has seized the name of philosophy and managed to persuade a broad public that this sort of activity is philosophy, it has almost become dishonorable to speak philosophically about the nature of the state at all. Honest men cannot be blamed if they grow impatient as soon as they hear talk of a philosophical science of the state. Still less is it surprising that governments have finally turned their attention to this kind of philosophizing. In our society, philosophy is not practiced as a private art, as it was, for example, among the Greeks. It has a public existence affecting the public, chiefly or exclusively in state service. Governments have trusted the scholars devoted to this field and relied on them entirely for philosophy's development and content. If one prefers, in some cases this may have been not so much trust as indifference toward the science itself, with its teaching positions retained only by tradition. After all, as far as I know, in France they have allowed at least the chairs of metaphysics to disappear. But then this trust has often been badly repaid. Or, if one prefers in the other case to see indifference, the result—the decay of thorough knowledge—would have to be seen as a penalty for that indifference. At first, shallowness may seem the most compatible thing of all, at least with outward order and peace. It never gets as far as touching, or even sensing, the substance of things. So, initially at least, the police would have nothing against it, were it not that the state also contains a need for deeper education and insight and demands that science satisfy that need. But in matters of ethical life, right, and duty in general, shallowness leads of itself to the principles that make up superficiality in this sphere: the principles of the Sophists, whom we come to know so clearly through Plato. These principles base what is right on subjective aims and opinions, on subjective feeling, and on particular conviction. From them follows the destruction of inward ethical life, honest conscience, love, and right between private individuals, as well as the destruction of public order and the laws of the state. The significance these developments must acquire for governments cannot be dismissed by an appeal to the very trust granted, or to the authority of an office. Such an appeal would demand that the state allow free rein to what corrupts the substantial source of actions—the universal principles—and even allow its defiance, as though this were proper. When God gives someone an office, he gives them understanding too—this is an old joke that surely no one will try to maintain in earnest in our time.
Circumstances have renewed governments' sense of the importance of the manner and method of philosophizing. There is no mistaking the element of protection and support in this, which the study of philosophy seems to have come to need from many other directions. Consider how many writings in the sciences that start from what is given, in religious edification, and in other vaguely defined literature show the contempt for philosophy already mentioned. Their authors prove at the same time that they are completely backward in the cultivation of thought and that philosophy is entirely foreign to them. Yet they treat it as something they have disposed of for themselves. And more than that, these writings expressly attack philosophy. They declare its content—conceptual knowledge of God and of physical and spiritual nature, knowledge of truth—a foolish, even sinful presumption. They accuse, belittle, and condemn reason, then reason again, and reason in endless repetition. Or they at least reveal how inconvenient they find the unavoidable demands of the concept in much of the activity that claims to be scientific. When, I say, one faces such developments, one might almost entertain the thought that, from this side, tradition was no longer respectable enough or sufficient to secure toleration and a public existence for the study of philosophy.²—The denunciations and pretensions directed against philosophy, so common in our time, present a strange spectacle. On the one hand, they are justified by the shallowness to which this science has been degraded. On the other, they themselves are rooted in this very element against which they ungratefully turn. For by declaring knowledge of truth a foolish attempt, this so-called philosophizing has leveled all thoughts and all subjects, just as the despotism of the Roman emperors made equal nobles and slaves, virtue and vice, honor and dishonor, knowledge and ignorance. The concepts of truth and the laws of ethical life are then nothing more than opinions and subjective convictions. The most criminal principles, as convictions, are given equal dignity with those laws. Likewise, even the most barren and particular objects and the most worthless material are given equal dignity with what concerns all thinking people and forms the bonds of the ethical world.
So it must be considered fortunate for science—though, as noted, it is in fact required by the matter itself—that this philosophizing, which might have gone on spinning itself out as an enclosed academic wisdom, has entered into a closer relationship with actual reality. In that reality, the principles of rights and duties are taken seriously, and life proceeds in the daylight of awareness of them. The result has been a public break. It is precisely this position of philosophy toward actual reality that the misunderstandings concern. And so I return to what I said earlier: because philosophy is the investigation of the rational, it is also the grasping of what is present and actual, not the setting up of some world beyond that is supposed to exist God knows where—or rather, whose location we know very well: in the error of one-sided, empty argument. In the work that follows, I have noted that even the Platonic Republic, proverbial as an empty ideal, essentially grasped nothing but the nature of Greek ethical life. A deeper principle was breaking into that ethical life. There it could appear immediately only as a longing still unsatisfied, and thus only as corruption. Conscious of this, Plato had to seek help against it from that very longing. But the help, which had to come from above, he could initially seek only in an external, particular form of that ethical life. Through this form, he imagined he could master the corruption. Yet in doing so he wounded its deeper drive—free, infinite personality—at its deepest point. Nevertheless, he proved himself a great spirit precisely because the principle on which the distinctive character of his Idea turns is the very pivot around which the approaching transformation of the world turned.
What is rational is actual;and what is actual is rational.
Every unprejudiced consciousness stands in this conviction, as philosophy does. Philosophy starts from it in considering both the spiritual and the natural universe. If reflection, feeling, or whatever form subjective consciousness takes regards the present as worthless, considers itself beyond it, and claims to know better, it is itself in the realm of vanity. Since it has actual reality only in the present, it is itself nothing but vanity. Conversely, if the Idea is taken to mean merely an idea, a representation held as an opinion, philosophy provides the insight that nothing is actual except the Idea. The task, then, is to recognize the immanent substance and the eternal that is present within the appearance of what is temporal and passing. For the rational, which means the same thing as the Idea, also enters into external existence in its actual reality. It comes forth in an infinite wealth of forms, appearances, and shapes. It surrounds its core with a colorful rind in which consciousness initially makes its home. The concept must first penetrate this rind to find the inner pulse and feel it still beating in the outward shapes as well. But the infinitely varied relationships that take shape in this externality, through essence shining into it—this infinite material and its regulation—are not philosophy's subject. Philosophy would be interfering in things that do not concern it. It can spare itself the trouble of giving good advice about them. Plato could have refrained from recommending that nurses never stand still with children but keep rocking them in their arms. Likewise, Fichte could have refrained from “constructing,” as it was called, the improvement of passport policing to the point of requiring that passports contain not just descriptions of suspects but painted portraits of them. In elaborations of this sort, no trace of philosophy remains. Philosophy can leave such superior wisdom alone all the more because it should show itself most liberal precisely toward this infinite multitude of subjects. In this way, science will also show itself furthest removed from the hatred that the vanity of knowing better directs at so many circumstances and institutions. Pettiness takes its greatest pleasure in this hatred because only through it does it gain a sense of itself.
So this work, insofar as it contains political science, is intended to be nothing more than an attempt to comprehend and present the state as rational within itself. As a philosophical work, it must be as far as possible from trying to construct a state as it ought to be. Whatever instruction it can provide cannot aim to teach the state how it ought to be. Rather, it teaches how the state, the ethical universe, ought to be known.
Here is Rhodes; here too is the jump.
Here is Rhodes; here is the jump.
To comprehend what is is philosophy's task, because what is is reason. As for the individual, everyone is in any case a child of their time. So philosophy too is its own time grasped in thoughts. It is just as foolish to imagine that any philosophy goes beyond its present world as that an individual jumps over their time, jumps beyond Rhodes. If their theory really does go beyond it and builds a world as it ought to be, that world certainly exists, but only in their opinion—a pliable element in which anything one likes can be imagined.
With a small change, that saying would read:
Here is the rose; dance here.
What lies between reason as self-conscious spirit and reason as existing actual reality, what separates the former from the latter and prevents it from finding satisfaction there, is the fetter of some abstraction that has not been freed into the concept. To recognize reason as the rose in the cross of the present, and so take pleasure in the present—this rational insight is reconciliation with actual reality. Philosophy grants this to those who have once felt the inner demand to comprehend: to preserve subjective freedom in what is substantial, while standing with that freedom not in something particular and accidental, but in what is in and for itself.
This also gives the more concrete meaning of what was described above, more abstractly, as the unity of form and content. For form, in its most concrete meaning, is reason as conceptual knowing, and content is reason as the substantial essence of ethical as well as natural actual reality. The conscious identity of the two is the philosophical Idea.—It is a great stubborn resolve, one that does human beings credit, to refuse to acknowledge anything in one's convictions that has not been justified by thought. This stubborn resolve is characteristic of the modern age, and is in any case the distinctive principle of Protestantism. What Luther began as faith in feeling and in the testimony of the spirit is the same thing that the spirit, grown more mature, strives to grasp in the concept, and thus to free itself in the present and find itself there. A famous saying has it that half a philosophy leads away from God, but true philosophy leads to God. It is this same half-heartedness that reduces knowing to an approach toward truth. The same applies to the state. Reason is not satisfied with an approach, which is neither cold nor hot and is therefore spat out. Nor is it any more satisfied with a cold despair that admits things go badly, or at best only moderately well, in this temporal world, but says that nothing better is available here, and that we must make peace with actual reality only for that reason. Knowledge brings a warmer peace with it.
To say one more word about teaching how the world ought to be: philosophy in any case always comes too late for that. As the thought of the world, it appears in time only after actual reality has completed its formative process and made itself ready. What the concept teaches, history necessarily shows as well: only when actual reality has matured does the ideal appear opposite the real and build for itself this same world, grasped in its substance, in the shape of an intellectual realm. When philosophy paints its gray on gray, a form of life has grown old. Gray on gray cannot make it young again, but can only make it known. The owl of Minerva begins its flight only as dusk falls.
But it is time to close this preface. As a preface, it could in any case only speak externally and subjectively about the standpoint of the work it precedes. If a content is to be discussed philosophically, it allows only scientific, objective treatment. Likewise, any objection other than a scientific treatment of the matter itself must count for the author only as a subjective afterword and an arbitrary assertion, and must leave him indifferent.
Berlin, June 25, 1820.
¹ I have testified elsewhere to the shallowness of his science; see Wissenschaft der Logik (Nürnberg 1812.) Einl. S. xvii.
² Thoughts like these occurred to me in connection with a letter by Joh. v. Müller (Werke Theil VIII. S. 56.). Discussing Rome in 1803, when the city was under French rule, it says, among other things: “Asked how things stood with the public educational establishments, a professor answered: They are tolerated like brothels.”—One can even still hear the so-called doctrine of reason, namely logic, recommended, perhaps in the conviction that people no longer bother with it anyway, as a dry and unproductive science. Or if they do occasionally study it, they gain only formulas without content, which therefore give nothing and spoil nothing. In either case, the recommendation will do no harm, just as it will do no good.
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Preface is part of Elements of the Philosophy of Right by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is section 1 of 362 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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