Kommentar zum subjektiven Geist, Chapter 24
Why Practical Spirit Points Ahead to Morality
The themes of this section return in objective spirit, and not by accident: purpose, intention, welfare, the good — the articulation of morality in the philosophy of right — deal with the same subject matter as practical spirit: the will of the individual.
The reason lies in the design of objective spirit. Abstract right sets the frame for the coexistence of different wills — property, contract, wrong — and abstracts from the inner side in doing so. Ethical life treats the will as it is organized in institutions — family, civil society, state. Between the two stands morality, and it has exactly the object of psychology: the individual will, as it relates to what it wills.
The difference is position. Practical spirit develops how will arrives at a content in general — from mere sensation through impulses to choice. Morality presupposes this and asks how the willed relates to what happens: What have I intended, meant, and what has become of it?
The philosophy of right volume develops the transition out of wrong: in crime, an individual will stands against the universal one, and by the punishment sublating this opposition, the will is posited as being for itself (§§ 104–105). This is a different derivation than here — there from the violation of right, here from the failure of happiness.
Both lead to the same place, and this is no defect but the interlacing Hegel means: the same subject matter is reached from two sides — from the subjective spirit as the formation of will, from the objective as its position between right and ethical life. [KF]
Cf. [[hegel-recht]] (optional), Part IV.