Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 1 (of 3)Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 1 (of 3)
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy -- History
hence not brought into harmony with the common end of the State. This
abrogation of the rights of subjectivity, which, expressed in his own
way, is also found in Plato’s Republic, was carried very far with the
Lacedæmonians. But the universal is living spirit only in so far as the
individual consciousness finds itself as such within it; the universal
is not constituted of the immediate life and being of the individual,
the mere substance, but formed of conscious life. As individuality
which separates itself from the universal is powerless and falls to
the ground, the one-sided universal, the morality of individuality
cannot stand firm. The Lacedæmonian spirit, which had not taken into
account the freedom of consciousness, and whose universal had isolated
itself therefrom, had hence to see it break forth in opposition to the
universal; and though the first to come forward as the liberators of
Greece from its tyranny were the Spartans, whom even Athens thanks for
the expulsion of the descendants of Pisistratus, their relationship
to their confederates soon passes into that of common, mean, tyranny.
Within the State it likewise ends in a harsh aristocracy, just as the
fixed equilibrium of property (each family retaining its inheritance,
and through forbidding the possession of money, or trade and commerce,
preventing the possibility of inequality in riches) passes into an
avarice which, as opposed to this universal, is brutal and mean. This
essential moment of particularity, not being taken into the State,
and hence not made legal and moral (moral first of all), comes forth
as vice. In a rational organization all the elements of the Idea are
present; if the liver were isolated as bile it would become not more,
and not less active, but becoming antagonistic, it would isolate itself
from the corporate economy of the body. Solon, on the contrary, gave to
the Athenians not only equality of laws and unity of spirit in their
constitution (which was a purer democracy than in Sparta), but although
each citizen had his substantial consciousness in unity with the laws
of the State, he also gave free play to the individual mind, so that
each might do as he would, and might find expression for himself.
Solon entrusted the executive to the people, not to the Ephors, and
this became self-government after the displacement of the tyrants,
and thus in truth a free people arose; the individual had the whole
within himself, as he had his consciousness and action in the whole.
Thus we see in this principle the formation of free consciousness
and the freedom of individuality in its greatness. The principle of
subjective freedom appears at first, however, still in unison with the
universal principle of Greek morality as established by law, and even
with mythology; and thus in its promulgation, because the genius of its
conceptions could develop freely, it brought about these masterpieces
in the beautiful plastic arts, and the immortal works of poetry and
history.
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