GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THE IDEALIST THEORY OF THE Sf ATE 587
at one and the same time a mind or self-consciousness,
because it is a spirit, and a thing or external existence,
because it is a visible system of habit and conduct. By it
our relations to one another are controlled; and since our
relations flow from our position or station in the com*
munity or rather, since the sum of the relations in which
we stand constitutes our position or station we may .say
that it controls our position or station."
Social Righteousness .is both within and without. It is
without, because it is the spirit of a society precipitated
in custom, opinion, belief and law. It is within, because
it is also present in our hearts prompting us to respond,
and by responding to contribute to the spirit of society.
When, therefore, we cheerfully perform our functions and
loyally observe the duties appropriate to our station in
society, we are recognizing and obeying a moral law
which has a more real, because a more concrete, 1
authority
than either the purely subjective prescriptions of the
Kantian goodwill, or the purely objective injunctions and
prohibitions of the law of the State. Now this concrete
moral authority which is instinct in the notion of Social
Righteousness cannot be a mere floating sanction unlocalized
and unanchored. Lake Rousseau's General Will,
it must belong to, it must be vested in, something; and
this something which is at once the fount and the repository
of Social Righteousness is, for Hegel, the State.
(2) The Being and Personality of the State
The State, then, is a "something"; it has a being, a
will which may be likened to Rousseau's General Will, and a
morality which is Social Righteousness. The actual expression
or body of the State is the laws and institutions of a society;
its inward being or soul is in the common consciousness of
its citizens. And this common consciousness is the State's
consciousness. I mean that it is not merely a conscious-
l
See my Gmdt to Philosophy, Chapter XV, pp. 421-432, for an
to the word
account of the technical significance which Hegel gives
"concrete".