Chapter 34 (c) Legal status

Ⅰ.personal effectiveness The universal unity regressed from the living and immediate unity of individuality and ethical substance is a spiritless, lifeless community which is no longer the self-consciousness of the individuals. Rather, the individual is valid in it, and is each a subject (Selbstwesen) and substance (with self) according to their being-for-itself. The universal has been broken up into an infinite number of individual atoms, and this dead spirit is now an equality [principle] in which all atomic individuals are equal, like each individual, each counted as an individual ( Person). ①——What is called the hidden law of God in the ethical world has in fact become reality out of its immanence; in the ethical world, the individual person is only valid when he is the universal blood of the family Yes, it is realistic.The individual man in that case is an egoless, dead spirit; but now he has escaped his unreality and has become actual.Because the ethical substance is only the real (objective) spirit, the individual man regresses into a certainty of himself; he is the ethical substance because he is a positive universal, but he So reality lies in the fact that he is a negative universal self (Selbst). — We have seen before that the forces and forms of the ethical world vanish in the mere necessity of an empty fate.It is now seen that this power of the ethical world, as a substance, is returning to its own singleness.But the return to the absolute essence of itself, the inevitability of that empty fate mentioned above, is nothing but the self-conscious I (Ich).

① These individuals split from the unity of ethical entities are not only independent entities and individual atoms, but as legal persons, they also have legitimacy and universality; they are both numerous and single.The dialectical logical forms of individual one and many are mutually seen in Hegel's "Logic", Business Edition, Volume 1, Chapter 3.This kind of legal society was first seen in the Roman Empire in history. You can refer to Hegel's "Philosophy of History", triptych edition, three parts, three chapters and one chapter. - translator Henceforth this I is recognized as a being in itself and for itself; this recognition is its substance; but its substance is abstract universality, because its content is this inviolable Self, not self dissolved in substance.

Thus, out of the life of the ethical entity arises the personal personality; the personality is the reality of consciousness and has a quasi-independence.If this independence is divorced from reality, it becomes an unrealistic thought about independence. The self-awareness of Stoicism that appeared in ancient times is such a thought; the unrealistic independent thought of Stoicism arises From the direct existence of self-awareness as master and slave, personality arises from the direct spirit of dominance and obedience universally possessed by all people.In Stoicism, the self-existence that is only in the abstract is now the real world.Stoicism is nothing but the consciousness which gives an abstract form to the fundamental principle of the legal state, that is, spiritless independence; Thought about independence; it is absolutely for-itself, because it does not unite its essence with any particular being, but, on the contrary, wants to abandon all particular existence and place its essence in the unity of pure thought .Likewise, personal law is neither united with a richer or more powerful specific being of the individual in general, nor with a universal living spirit, but with the pure oneness of the abstract reality of the spirit, or alternatively In other words, it is combined with the oneness of general self-consciousness.

Ⅱ.personal contingency But just as the abstract independence of Stoicism was realized and expressed, so now this latter independence, the individual personality, will repeat the movement of the former form.Stoic consciousness has been transformed into skeptical confusion, into a negating phrasing, out of one contingency of being and thinking, and lost in another contingency; Absolute independence eliminates these accidents, but also creates them again and again, and in fact itself is precisely a contradiction formed by the independence and non-independence of consciousness. —In the same way, the independence of the individual at the stage of jurisprudence is rather the same general confusion and mutual annihilation.For what is recognized as the absolute essence is that self-consciousness as the individual's pure and empty one.Contrary to this empty universality, the form of the [ethical] substance has in it a full content, and this full content is now completely free and disorganized; That spirit has disintegrated, it no longer exists. —Then this empty oneness of the individual is, in its reality, a contingent particular being, a motion or action without essence, which has no continual existence.Thus, like skepticism, the form of legal right (ForBmalismus) has no specific content of its own in its conception, it is a complex ready-made, or property, which it encounters, like Add to it an abstract universality that enables it to be called property, as does skepticism, and that's all.But if reality thus determined in skepticism was generally called semblance, and therefore had only a negative value, it has a positive value in right of law.The reason why the former has only negative value is because the real thing here refers to the self as thinking, as the universal thing in itself, but the reason why the latter has positive value is because here the real thing is a kind of obtained The actual validity of recognition is "my" (Mein) expressed in categories. — Both are the same abstract universal. The specific content of "my" or the stipulation of "my" is not contained in this empty form, whether it is external possessions or inner wealth or poverty in spirit or quality. Each has nothing to do with the form.The content obviously belongs to a particular force which is different from the universal of form, accidental and arbitrary. —Consciousness of right, therefore, at the moment when it is itself recognized as valid, recognizes instead its own loss of reality, its utter absence of essence, and, calling an individual an individual, actually The above is an expression of contempt.

Ⅲ.abstract individual; master of the world The free force of content defines itself as follows: the infinite number of individual atoms [or atomic individuals] are dispersed on the one hand, and at the same time they are assembled by virtue of their dispersed nature into a single body which is different from them and has nothing. The single point of the spirit; this single point, on the one hand, is as purely individual reality as the inviolable personality of the individual atom, but on the other hand, contrary to the empty individuality of the individual atom, it means that it is all content, and thus is the real essence of all individual atoms, and is the universal force and absolute reality, as opposed to the absolute, but actually non-essential reality that individual atoms think they have.The master of the world thus feels himself to be the absolute individual who contains all existence within himself at the same time, unaware of any other spiritual being higher than himself.He is an individual like everyone else, but he is a solitary individual, opposed to all; and all the individuals opposed to him constitute the effective universality of this individual; for the single individual Man, in his proper sense, is real only insofar as he is the universal multitude embodying [all] individualities; apart from this multitude, the solitary self is in fact an unreal, powerless self. —At the same time, the solitary individual, as consciousness, is aware of the content opposed to the universal personality mentioned above.However, this content he is aware of, freed from its negative force, becomes a mass of chaotic spiritual forces, which, freed from fetters and become basic essences (independent individuals), destroy each other with impunity and madness; The impotent self-awareness of the human body has become a boundary that does not work by itself, and has become a field for them to harass and kill.Thus, the Master of the World, conscious of himself as the sum (Inbegriff) of all these actual forces, becomes a gigantic ego-consciousness which regards himself as the actual God; Any restraint, so his own behavior and self-enjoyment is an equally gigantic absurd indulgence. ①The world-master has a positive awareness of what kind of power he is, and he is now positively aware that he is the universal reality in the destructive violence he employs against his egoistic subjects opposed to him. power.Because, his power is not a kind of spiritual harmony, as if the individuals under his control can regard him as their own self-consciousness. continuity, keeping their discontinuity [or independence] from each other absolutely without interference; thus there exists only the a negative relationship.As a continuity between individuals, the Master of the World is the content and essence of their formalism, but for them he is an alien content and hostile essence, since this essence, so to speak, supersedes the very essence that is theirs. that content-free being-for-itself;—and, as the continuity of their individuality or personality, he destroys precisely their individuality or personality.However, since the content of alienation has become a valid standard for them, and the reason why this content of alienation is valid for them is because it is their reality, then the personality and legal person in terms of legal power should rather realize their own The insubstantiality of self-knowledge is insubstantial.On the other hand, the destructive power on this insubstantial base is conscious of its own supreme power; but this self [subject], which is conscious of its supreme power, is purely destructive and therefore only active. It is something other than itself, so rather, it is the abandonment of its own self-consciousness.

① Refers to the supreme power of the Roman emperor.The above-quoted "Philosophy of History" says on page 560: "In the entire known world, any will is assumed to be subordinate to the will of the Roman emperor." ——Translator. This is how self-consciousness as the absolute essence becomes reality.But consciousness, having been driven back into itself from this reality, thinks of its non-essence as an object of thought; we have seen before that the pure thinking of Stoicism Through skepticism, finally achieves its own truth in distress consciousness, that is, recognizes distress consciousness as its own and for-itself existence.If at that time this knowledge appeared only as a partial view of consciousness seen by a consciousness, then we see the reality of this partial view now appearing.The truth of this reality shows that the universal validity and objective validity of self-consciousness is the reality alienated from self-consciousness.The universal objective validity is the universal reality of the ego, but this universal reality is just as directly its own opposite; the universal reality of the ego is the loss of the ego's essence. —The reality of the ego, which had not yet appeared in the ethical world, has now been acquired by the return of the ego to the individual; what was once single or unified in the ethical world now appears in a differentiated and developed form , but development, that is, alienation.