The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
(_αα_) We find this pre-eminently where the ethical notion, that is,
justice and rational freedom, have already won for themselves and
maintain a fixed position in the social _order_ regulated by _law_,
so that, even in the external world, it appears as a positive and
necessary power, which is quite independent of the individuality and
subjectivity of specific temperament and characters. This is the
case in the life of the _State_, where that life is manifested in a
form adequate to the true notion of citizenship. For obviously it is
not every chance association of human beings, any more than every
patriarchal community, that will fulfil the requisites of State-life.
In the true State laws, customs, and rights, in so far as they
constitute the determinations of freedom applicable to all, are of
paramount force even in this _universal_ and abstract relation, and
are not conditioned in their applicability by the chance requirements
of any individual's idiosyncracy. As the consciousness of society has
issued for itself commands and laws in a mode of statement of general
application, in the same way these are externally valid as such
universal fiat, which proceeds in the path of order thereby indicated,
armed with powers of restraint and compulsion against any individual
who may attempt to assert his caprice in an injurious opposition to
such regulations.
(_ββ_) Such a condition at once assumes a dividing line between the
universal ordinances of the regulative understanding and the immediate
life, connoting by this latter term the unity in which all that is
substantive and essential in morals and the conduct of justice only
finds a form for its existence in the experience of _individuals_,
their ethical feeling and opinion, that is to say, and thereby alone
is exercised. In the civilized State right and justice, even religion
and science, or, at any rate, provident interest in religious and
scientific education, are subject to _public_ control, which directs
and co-ordinates the same.