257. The state is the realized ethical idea or ethical spirit. It is the will which manifests itself, makes itself clear and visible, substantiates itself. It is the will which thinks and knows itself, and carries out what it knows, and in so far as it knows. The state finds in ethical custom its direct and unreflected existence, and its indirect and reflected existence in the self-consciousness of the individual and in his knowledge and activity. Self-consciousness in the form of social disposition has its substantive freedom in the state, as the essence, purpose, and product of its activity.
Note.— The Penates are the inner and lower order of gods; the spirit of a nation, Athene, is the divinity which knows and wills itself. Piety is feeling, or ethical behaviour in the form of feeling; political virtue is the willing of the thought-out end, which exists absolutely.
258.—The state, which is the realized substantive will, having its reality in the particular selfconsciousness raised to the plane of the universal, is absolutely rational. This substantive unity is its own motive and absolute end. In this end freedom attains its highest right. This en4 has the highest right over the individual, whose highest duty in turn is to be a member of the state.
Note.— Were the state to be considered as exchangeable with the civic society, and were its decisive features to be regarded as the security and protection of property and personal freedom, the interest of the individual as such would be the ultimate purpose of the social union. It would then be at one’s option to be a member of the state.—But the state has a totally different relation to the individual. It is the objective spirit, and he has his truth, real existence, and ethical status only in being a member of it. Union, as such, is itself the true content and end, since the individual is intended to pass a universal life. His particular satisfactions, activities, and way of life have in this authenticated substantive principle their origin and result.
Rationality, viewed abstractly, consists in the thorough unity of universality and individuality. Taken concretely, and from the standpoint of the content, it is the unity of objective freedom with subjective freedom, of the general substantive will with the individual consciousness and the individual will seeking particular ends. From the standpoint of the form it consists in action determined by thought-out or universal laws and principles;—This idea is the absolutely eternal and necessary being of spirit.— The idea of the state is not concerned with the historical origin of either the state in general or of any particular state with its special rights and characters. Hence, it is indifferent whether the state arose out of the patriarchal condition, out of fear or confidence, or out of the corporation. It does not care whether the basis of state rights is declared to be in the divine, or in positive right, or contract, or custom. When we are dealing simply with the science of the state, these things are mere appearances, and belong to history. The causes or grounds of the authority of an actual state, in so far as they are required at all, must be derived from the forms of right, which have validity in the state.
Philosophic investigation deals with only the inner side of all this, the thought conception. To Rousseau is to be ascribed the merit of discovering and presenting a principle, which comes up to the standard of the thought, and is indeed thinking itself, not only in its form, such as would be a social impulse or divine authority, but in its very essence. This principle of Rousseau is will. But he conceives of the will only in the limited form of the individual will, as did also Fichte afterwards, and regards the universal will not as the absolutely reasonable will, but only as the common will, proceeding out of the individual will as conscious. Thus the union of individuals in a state becomes a contract, which is based upon caprice, opinion, and optional, explicit consent. Out of this view the understanding deduces consequences, which destroy the absolutely divine, and its absolute authority and majesty. Hence, when these abstractions attained to power, there was enacted the most tremendous spectacle which the human race has ever witnessed. All the usages and institutions of a great state were swept away. It was then proposed to begin over again, starting from the thought, and as the basis of the state to will only what was judged to be rational. But as the undertaking was begun with abstractions void of all ideas, it ended in scenes of tragic cruelty and horror.
As against the principle of the individual will we must bear in mind the fundamental conception that the objective will is in itself rational in its very conception, whether or not it be known by the individual or willed as an object of his good pleasure. We must also keep in mind that the opposite principle, the subjectivity of freedom, i.e., such knowing and willing as are retained in that principle, contains only one, and that a one-sided factor of the idea of the reasonable will. The will is reasonable only if it is so both in itself and when it is actualized.
The other contrary of the thought, which apprehends the state as an embodiment of reason, is the theory which takes such external appearances as the accidents of distress, need, protection, strength, and wealth, for the substance of the state, when they are mere elements of its historical development. Moreover, it is in unique and isolated individuals that the principle of knowledge is here said to be found, not however in their thought, but in the attributes of their merely empirical personalities, such as strength or weakness, wealth or poverty. The freak of disregarding is absolutely infinite and reasonable in the state and of banishing thought from the constitution of the state’s inner nature has never appeared so undisguisedly as in Mr. v. Haller ’s “Restauration der Staatswissenschaft.” In all genuine attempts to reach the real nature of the state, though the principles adduced be ever so one-sided and superficial, there is yet implied that rightly to conceive of the state is to attain to thoughts and universal characters. But in the book alluded to, the author not only consciously renounces both the rational content, which is the state, and the form of thought, but passionately inveighs against them. One of what he himself calls the far-reaching effects of his work is due to the circumstance that in his inquiry he knew how to fasten the whole into one piece without the help of thought. Hence, he says, are absent the confusion and disturbance, which arise when into a discussion of the contingent is foisted a suggestion about the substantive, and into a discussion of the empirical and external is injected a reminder of the universal and rational. Hence, when engaged with the inadequate and imperfect he is not continually reminding his readers of what is higher and infinite.—Yet even this method of inquiry has consequences. Since the fortuitous is taken as the essence of the state, and not the substantive, there results from the absence of thought an incoherence, which jogs on without looking back, and finds itself quite at home in the very opposite of what it had commended a moment before.[11]
Addition.— The state as a completed reality is the ethical whole and the actualization of freedom. It is the absolute purpose of reason that freedom should be actualized. The state is the spirit, which abides in the and there realizes itself consciously; while in nature it is realized only as the other of itself or the sleeping spirit. Only when it is present in consciousness, knowing itself as an existing object, is it the state. In thinking of freedom we must not take our departure from individuality or the individual’s self-consciousness, but from the essence of selfconsciousness. Let man be aware of it or not, this essence realizes itself as an independent power, in which particular persons are only phases. The state is the march of God in the world; its ground or cause is the power of reason realizing itself as will. When thinking of the idea of the state, we must not have in our mind any particular state, or particular institution, but must rather contemplate the idea, this actual God, by itself. Although a state may be declared to violate right principles and to be defective in various ways, it always contains the essential moments of its existence, if, that is to say, it belongs to the full formed states of our own time. But as it is more easy to detect short-comings than to grasp the positive meaning, one easily falls into the mistake of dwelling so much upon special aspects of the state as to overlook its inner organic being. The state is not a work of art. It is in the world, in the sphere of caprice, accident, and error. Evil behaviour can doubtless disfigure it in many ways, but the ugliest man, the criminal, the invalid, the cripple, are living men. The positive thing, the life, is present in spite of defects, and it is with this affirmative that we have here to deal.
259. (a) The idea of the state has direct actuality in the individual state. It, as a self-referring organism, is the constitution or internal stateorganization or polity.
(b) It passes over into a relation of the individual state to other states. This is its external organization or polity.
(c) As universal idea, or kind, or species, it has absolute authority over individual states. This is the spirit which gives itself reality in the process of world-history.
Addition.— The state as an actual thing is pre-eminently individual, and, what is more, particular. Individuality as distinguished from particularity is an element of the idea of the state itself, while particularity belongs to history. Any two states, as such, are independent of each other. Any relation between the two must be external. A third must therefore stand above and unite them. Now this third is the spirit, which gives itself reality in world-history, and constitutes itself absolute judge over states. Several states indeed might form an alliance and pass judgment upon others, or interstate relations may arise of the nature of the Holy Alliance. But these things are always relative and limited, as was the everlasting peace. The sole, absolute judge, which always avails against the particular, is the self-caused self-existing spirit, which presents itself as the universal and efficient leaven of world-history.