Commentary on Subjective Spirit, Chapter 27
Why It Was Added — Peperzak’s Reconstruction
Adriaan Peperzak has compared the three editions and shown what the insertion accomplishes.[1]
Without free spirit, the system branches immediately after subjective spirit: theoretical spirit leads to the absolute, practical spirit to the objective. Two strands running side by side.
And from this follows a difficulty Peperzak names outright: “The end of the theory of objective spirit is a dead end, from which humanity escapes only by a leap to absolute spirit.”
With free spirit, the series runs through:
Subjective spirit — theoretical and practical spirit — free spirit (concept) — objective spirit (determinate being) — absolute spirit (idea).
Free spirit is the concept, objective spirit its determinate being, absolute spirit its idea. This is the same triad as in logic — and it closes the gap the leap left behind.
Peperzak’s verdict: the insertion “gives the theory of subjective spirit a better conclusion than that of the first two versions. It brings the character of spirit as both theoretical and practical better to the fore.”
And the ambiguity that remains. The older scheme is not sublated: even in the 1830 version, objective spirit realizes practical spirit, while absolute spirit, as a knowledge, fulfills theoretical spirit. Both assignments hold side by side — the continuous series and the branching.
This confirms what has shown itself elsewhere: Hegel’s assignments are not unambiguous, and this is no oversight. Where several perspectives fit, he lets them stand. [KF] This corresponded exactly to the logic, where the Idea of the Good follows the Idea of the True. Only later was free spirit added as a third.
And it accomplishes something the first two cannot:
“The actual free will is the unity of theoretical and practical spirit; free will, which is for itself as free will, in that the formalism, the contingency and limitedness of the practical content up to now has sublated itself” (§ 481).
What gets sublated here is both at once. Theoretical spirit had content without efficacy — it knew without willing. Practical spirit had efficacy without content — it willed without itself determining the content. Free spirit is the will that has itself as its object.
And with this the philosophy of right stands at the threshold. Its § 4 begins exactly here: “The ground of right is the spiritual in general, and its nearer place and starting point is the will, which is free.” The two volumes collide at this point, and the sentence with which subjective spirit ends is the sentence with which objective spirit begins.
And the philosophy of right repeats the path. The short version there stands in Vom natürlichen zum freien Willen; it is no duplication by oversight but follows Hegel’s own double presentation. This is an architectural finding easily overlooked: it does not begin with abstract right, but with free will — and develops once more, in §§ 5 through 28, what practical spirit has already developed here.
§ 5 treats “the element of pure indeterminateness”; § 6 the “determining and positing of a determinateness as a content”; § 7 the unity of both. § 11 names the “immediate or natural will,” § 15 arbitrariness (Willkür) — “the free reflection abstracting from everything and the dependence on internally or externally given content” —, § 21 “self-determining universality.” Only § 34 begins with abstract right.
And Hegel says so himself, in the note to § 4. He refers there to the 1817 Encyclopedia and names exactly the stretch:
“I have set forth the essential features of this premise — that spirit is first intelligence, and that the determinations through which it proceeds in its development, from feeling through representing to thinking, are the path by which it produces itself as will, which, as practical spirit in general, is the nearest truth of intelligence — in my Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Heidelberg 1817) §§ 363–399, and hope to be able to give a further elaboration of this someday.”
That is the psychology of the first edition, in full. Hegel presupposes it as known in the philosophy of right and repeats it in condensed form — explicitly calling it a premise.
Noteworthy too is the closing remark: he hopes “to be able to give a further elaboration of this someday.” The philosophy of right appears in 1820; the elaboration came in the lectures and the later editions.
Why the doubling? Because the Encyclopedia does not need to justify the transition — it has it behind it. A book on right must begin somewhere, and it cannot begin with a result its readers do not know. So Hegel places the determinations of will in front.
For the reader this means: whoever opens the philosophy of right and wonders at the thirty paragraphs preceding property has before them the subjective spirit in condensed form. [KF]
Cf. Der Übergang.
Adriaan Peperzak, Hegels praktische Philosophie, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1991, pp. 90–106 (on the practical subjective spirit and the comparison of the three editions). ↩︎