Hegel's Philosophy of Mind

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The phrase “Law of Nature,” or Natural Right[154], in use for the philosophy of law involves the ambiguity that it may mean either right as something existing ready-formed in nature, or right as governed by the nature of things, i.e. by the notion. The former used to be the common meaning, accompanied with the fiction of a state of nature, in which the law of nature should hold sway; whereas the social and political state rather required and implied a restriction of liberty and a sacrifice of natural rights. The real fact is that the whole law and its every article are based on free personality alone,—on self-determination or autonomy, which is the very contrary of determination by nature. The law of nature—strictly so called—is for that reason the predominance of the strong and the reign of force, and a state of nature a state of violence and wrong, of which nothing truer can be said than that one ought to depart from it. The social state, on the other hand, is the condition in which alone right has its actuality: what is to be restricted and sacrificed is just the wilfulness and violence of the state of nature.

Sub-Section B. The Morality Of Conscience[155].

§ 503. The free individual, who, in mere law, counts only as a person, is now characterised as a subject, a will reflected into itself so that, be its affection what it may, it is distinguished (as existing in it) as its own from the existence of freedom in an external thing. Because the affection of the will is thus inwardised, the will is at the same time made a particular, and there arise further particularisations of it and relations of these to one another. This affection is partly the essential and implicit will, the reason of the will, the essential basis of law and moral life: partly it is the existent volition, which is before us and throws itself into actual deeds, and thus comes into relationship with the former. The subjective will is morally free, so far as these features are its inward institution, its own, and willed by it. Its utterance in deed with this freedom is an action, in the externality of which it only admits as its own, and allows to be imputed to it, so much as it has consciously willed.

This subjective or “moral” freedom is what a European especially calls freedom. In virtue of the right thereto a man must possess a personal knowledge of the distinction between good and evil in general: ethical and [pg 114] religious principles shall not merely lay their claim on him as external laws and precepts of authority to be obeyed, but have their assent, recognition, or even justification in his heart, sentiment, conscience, intelligence, &c. The subjectivity of the will in itself is its supreme aim and absolutely essential to it.

The “moral” must be taken in the wider sense in which it does not signify the morally good merely. In French le moral is opposed to le physique, and means the mental or intellectual in general. But here the moral signifies volitional mode, so far as it is in the interior of the will in general; it thus includes purpose and intention,—and also moral wickedness.

a. Purpose[156].

§ 504. So far as the action comes into immediate touch with existence, my part in it is to this extent formal, that external existence is also independent of the agent. This externality can pervert his action and bring to light something else than lay in it. Now, though any alteration as such, which is set on foot by the subject's action, is its deed[157], still the subject does not for that reason recognise it as its action[158], but only admits as its own that existence in the deed which lay in its knowledge and will, which was its purpose. Only for that does it hold itself responsible.

b. Intention and Welfare[159].

§ 505. As regards its empirically concrete content (1) the action has a variety of particular aspects and connexions. In point of form, the agent must have known and willed the action in its essential feature, embracing these individual points. This is the right of [pg 115] intention. While purpose affects only the immediate fact of existence, intention regards the underlying essence and aim thereof. (2) The agent has no less the right to see that the particularity of content in the action, in point of its matter, is not something external to him, but is a particularity of his own,—that it contains his needs, interests, and aims. These aims, when similarly comprehended in a single aim, as in happiness (§ [479]), constitute his well-being. This is the right to well-being. Happiness (good fortune) is distinguished from well-being only in this, that happiness implies no more than some sort of immediate existence, whereas well-being regards it as also justified as regards morality.