Natural Law by Hegel G. W. F.; Knox T. M.; Acton H. B

Author:Hegel, G. W. F.; Knox, T. M.; Acton, H. B.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 1975-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

* In the Introduction to his Naturrecht [Introduction §1, fn. 2], Fichte makes much of the simplicity of insight into the reason for this latter incommensurability: “Curved is in fact just not straight.” The superficiality of this reason is obvious at once, and it is also refuted immediately by the former incommensurability (diagonal and side of the square) because both of these are straight lines, and also by the square of the parabola. As for the help sought in the same context from “healthy common sense” against the mathematical infinite, that “a many-angled figure with an infinite number of sides cannot be measured simply because it is a many-angled figure with an infinite number of sides,” (a) the very same resource would have to be available against the infinite progression in which the absolute Idea is supposed to be realized, and (b) by this means there is no settling whether the chief thing at issue, positive infinity (which is identity, not an infinite multitude), is to be granted. And this is as good as saying that nothing is settled either concerning commensurability or incommensurability.

* [Elsewhere Hegel identifies the “absolute concept” with both “infinity” and “reason.” His continual complaint about Kant is that he sharply distinguishes opposites (e.g., finite and infinite) but never succeeds in synthesizing them. The meaning of this perplexing sentence may be that an earlier medieval opposition (e.g., between God and man) became intensified into other oppositions (e.g., between attraction and repulsion, freedom and necessity) until Kant made this opposition clear to itself in the categories of the Understanding, and it is now cancelled in the true synthesis of opposites which infinity is.]

* [Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, Part I, §3].

* [Probably a reference to Fichte: System der Sittenlehre, e.g., §18.]

* [Both quotations are from K.d.r.V., A 58.]

† [K.d.p.V., Book I, ch. 1, §7.]

* [The quotations are from Kant: K.d.p.V., Book 1, ch. 1 §4, Remark.]

* [See Hegel: Philosophy of Right §140, and notes ad. loc. in Eng. tr. by T. M. Knox.]

* [Fichte, Grundlage des Naturrechts, § 14]

* [Ibid.]

* [Fichte, Grundlage des Naturrechts, §16.]

* [Potenz. This word, adopted from the vocabulary of mathematics by Schelling, means “power.” “Stage” is used to translate it here, becasue it is clear later that agriculture, etc., are Potenzen within a system of law; i.e., not merely “sphere” but stages also.]

* [That is, direct moral perception grasps justice as a whole; it supersedes determinate traditional rights, and restores social harmony.]

† Politicus, 294.

* [As the ideal, the Absolute transcends what really exists; it judges it and is hostile or negative in its attitude towards it. But in so far as the Absolute is embodied in the real world it is subordinate to it, and its attitude has to be one of positive acceptance.]

* [Politics, 1255b, 35–37.]

† [Republic, 473.]

* Politicus, 308–9.

† Politics, 1254a-b.

* [Ed. J. B. Bury, (London, 1925), 1:56–57.]

* Republic, 425c–426e.

† Ibid., 405a-b.

* [The reference is to the play of Aeschylus, The Eumenides.]

* [Politicus, 302a.]

* [Klopstock: Messiah, ii. 370–387. Pöggeler’s note.]

* [Lasson suggests Timaeus 30b, but Pöggeler is surely right in referring to Phaedrus, 246d.

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