XVI - The Realized State

Summary

PR explores what flows from the notion of rational will concerning human affairs. It goes beyond a simple political theory. It turns out to englobe also what Hegel calls civil society, and the family. But also it discusses the dimension of morality and private rights.

Hegel intends to proceed from the most abstract to the most concrete. He will end with a picture of the state, because this is the highest embodiment of Sittlichkeit, which is implicit in the notion that man is the vehicle of rational will.

But we start off with the notion of private rights. Man is a bearer of private rights because he is essentially a vehicle of rational will. As such he commands respect. Man is a bodily existence who has to have commerce with the external world in order to live; he has to appropriate things and use them. But this fact becomes a value because man is the essential vehicle of the realization of reason or spirit, which is the same thing as saying that man is endowed with will. Hence man's appropriation is to be seen as in fulfilment of the ontologically grounded purpose. It is something infinitely worthy of respect. Thus the de facto process of appropriation becomes the de jure right to property. Man is a bearer of rights because as a will he is worthy of respect. An attack on his external bodily existence or his property is thus a crime, an attack against the very purpose underlying reality as a whole, including my own existence.