Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
δδ. Finally, the fourth virtue is justice, which was what Plato began
by considering. This, as right-doing, is to be found in the state
when each individual does only one kind of work for the state, that
work for which by the original constitution of his nature he is best
fitted; so that in this way each man is not a jack-of-all-trades, but
all have their special work, young and old, women and children, bond
and free, handicraftsmen, rulers and subjects. The first remark we make
on this is, that Plato here places justice on a level with the other
moments, and it thus appears as one of the four determinations. But
he now retracts this statement and makes it justice which first gives
to wisdom, courage and temperance the power to exist at all, and when
they have once come into existence, the power to continue. This is the
reason of his also saying that justice will be met with independently,
if only the other virtues spoken of are forthcoming.[68] To express it
more definitely, the Notion of justice is the foundation, the Idea of
the whole, which falls into organic divisions, so that every part is
only, as it were, a moment in the whole, and the whole exists through
it. Thus the classes or qualities spoken of are nothing else than the
moments of this whole. Justice is only the general and all-pervading
quality; but at the same time it implies the independence of every
part, to which the state gives liberty of action.
In the second place, it is clear from what he says, that Plato did not
understand by justice the rights of property, the meaning which the
term commonly bears in jurisprudence, but rather this, that the mind
in its totality makes for itself a law as evidence of the existence of
its freedom. In a highly abstract sense my personality, my altogether
abstract freedom, is present in property. To explain what comes under
this science of law, Plato considers on the whole superfluous (De
Republica, IV. p. 425 Steph.; p. 176 Bekk.). To be sure we find him
giving laws concerning property, police regulations, &c., “But,” he
says, “to impose laws about such matters on men of noble character does
not repay the trouble.” In truth, how can we expect to find divine laws
in what contains contingencies alone? Even in the Laws he considers
ethics chiefly, though he gives a certain amount of attention to the
rights of property. But as justice, according to Plato, is really
the entire being, which presents itself to the individual in such a
way that each man learns to do the work he is born to do as well as
it can be done, and does it, it is only as determined individuality
that man reaches what is law for him; only thus does he belong to the
universal spirit of the state, coming in it to the universal of himself
as a “this.” While law is a universal with a definite content, and
thus a formal universal only, the content in this case is the whole
determined individuality, not this or that thing which is mine by the