Lectures on the Philosophy of World History by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Author:Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

d. [Its reality]

The points hitherto discussed have concerned the abstract moments which occur within the concept of the state. But it is the constitution which puts this concept into execution and adopts measures to ensure that all that happens within the state is in accord with its nature. [Some may consider it] superfluous for a nation to have a constitution, [and argue that the form of the state] is self-evident. But this simply means that the absence of a constitution is itself regarded as a kind of constitution, just as a sphere is regarded as a shape.

If the principle of the individual will is taken as the sole determination of political freedom, and it is accepted that all individuals should consent to everything that is done by and for the state, there is, strictly speaking, no constitution. The only institution required would be a central body with no will of its own, which took note of what appeared to be the needs of the state and made its opinion known; and then a mechanism would have to be set up to call the individuals together, to register their votes, and to perform the arithmetical operation of counting and comparing the number of votes in favour of the different propositions, at which point the decision would already have been taken.

The state itself is an abstraction which has its purely universal reality in the citizens who belong to it; but it does have reality, and its purely universal existence must take on a determinate form in the will and activity of individuals.38 The need arises for some kind of government and political administration; it becomes necessary to single out and separate from the rest those who are heavily occupied with political affairs, who take political decisions and determine how they are to be put into practice, and who issue instructions to those citizens who have to implement them. For example, even if it is the nation as a whole which decides upon war in a democratic state, a general still has to be placed at the head of the army in order to conduct the war. The state as an abstraction only acquires life and reality through the constitution; but as it does so, a difference arises between those who command and those who obey, those who rule and those who are ruled. Yet obedience seems incompatible with freedom, and those who command would seem to be doing the opposite of what is required by 39 the very basis of the state, the concept of freedom. But if, as is often maintained, the distinction between commanding and obeying is necessary because the state could not function without it – and this would indeed appear to be no more than a form of compulsion, an external necessity which actually conflicts with freedom in the abstract sense – the constitution should be so organised that the minimum of obedience is required of the citizens and the minimum of arbitrariness is permitted to those who

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