Hegel's Philosophy of MindHegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
As the most obvious categories of the notion are those of _universality_
and _individuality_ and their relationship that of _subsumption_ of
individual under universal, it has come about that in the state the
legislative and executive power have been so distinguished as to make the
former exist apart as the absolute superior, and to subdivide the latter
again into administrative (government) power and judicial power, according
as the laws are applied to public or private affairs. The _division_ of
these powers has been treated as _the_ condition of political equilibrium,
meaning by division their _independence_ one of another in
existence,—subject always however to the above-mentioned subsumption of
the powers of the individual under the power of the general. The theory of
such “division” unmistakably implies the elements of the notion, but so
combined by “understanding” as to result in an absurd collocation, instead
of the self-redintegration of the living spirit. The one essential canon
to make liberty deep and real is to give every business belonging to the
general interests of the state a separate organisation wherever they are
essentially distinct. Such real division must be: for liberty is only deep
when it is differentiated in all its fullness and these differences
manifested in existence. But to make the business of legislation an
independent power—to make it the first power, with the further proviso
that all citizens shall have part therein, and the government be merely
executive and dependent, presupposes ignorance that the true idea, and
therefore the living and spiritual actuality, is the self-redintegrating
notion, in other words, the subjectivity which contains in it universality
as only one of its moments. (A mistake still greater, if it goes with the
fancy that the constitution and the fundamental laws were still one day to
make,—in a state of society, which includes an already existing
development of differences.) Individuality is the first and supreme
principle _which_ makes itself fall through the state’s organisation. Only
through the government, and by its embracing in itself the particular
businesses (including the abstract legislative business, which taken apart
is also particular), is the state _one_. These, as always, are the terms
on which the different elements essentially and alone truly stand towards
each other in the logic of “reason,” as opposed to the external footing
they stand on in ’understanding,’ which never gets beyond subsuming the
individual and particular under the universal. What disorganises the unity
of logical reason, equally disorganises actuality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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