Outlines of the Philosophy of Right by Hegel G. W. F

Author:Hegel, G. W. F.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, UK
Published: 2008-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

SUB-SECTION 2

CIVIL SOCIETY

182. The concrete person, who as a particular person is his own end, is, as a totality of needs and a mixture of caprice and natural necessity, one principle of civil society. But the particular person is essentially so related to other particular persons that each asserts himself and finds satisfaction by means of the others, and at the same time simply by means of the form of universality, the second principle here.

Addition: Civil society is the [stage of] difference which intervenes between the family and the state, even if its formation follows later in time than that of the state, because, as [the stage of] difference, it presupposes the state; to subsist itself, it must have the state before it as something self-subsistent. Moreover, the creation of civil society is the achievement of the modern world which has for the first time given all determinations of the Idea their due. If the state is represented as a unity of different persons, as a unity which is only a community, then what is really meant is only civil society. Many modern constitutional theorists have been able to attain no other view of the state but this. In civil society each individual is his own end, everything else is nothing to him. But except in contact with others he cannot attain the whole compass of his ends, and therefore these others are means to the end of the particular individual. A particular end, however, assumes the form of universality through this relation to other people, and it is attained in the simultaneous attainment of the welfare of others. Since particularity is inevitably conditioned by universality, the whole sphere of civil society is the territory of mediation where there is free play for every idiosyncrasy, every talent, every accident of birth and fortune, and where waves of every passion gush forth, regulated only by reason shining through them. Particularity, restricted by universality, is the only standard whereby each particular individual promotes his welfare.

183. In the course of the actual attainment of selfish ends—an attainment conditioned in this way by universality—there is formed a system of complete interdependence, wherein the livelihood, welfare, and rightful existence [rechtliches Dasein] of one individual are interwoven with the livelihood, welfare, and rights of all. On this system, individual welfare, etc., depend, and only in this connected system are they actualized and secured. This system may initially be regarded as the external state, the state based on need, the state as the understanding envisages it.

184. The Idea in this its stage of division grants to each of its moments a distinctive existence; to particularity it gives the right to develop and launch forth in all directions; and to universality the right to prove itself not only the ground and necessary form of particularity, but also the power over it and its final end. It is the system of ethical life, split into its extremes and lost, which constitutes the Idea’s abstract moment, its moment of reality.

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