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

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59s POLITICS<br />

since the freedom which man obtains in and through die<br />

St<strong>at</strong>e is a real and concrete freedom and, as such, opposed<br />

to the abstract and unreal freedom which he enjoys as an<br />

isol<strong>at</strong>ed individual, the burglar is acting freely when he<br />

is being marched to the police-st<strong>at</strong>ion.<br />

Familiar applic<strong>at</strong>ions of this doctrine in the Contem-<br />

porary world are afforded in the totalitarian St<strong>at</strong>es which<br />

take obnoxious persons into protective custody "for their<br />

own good", and forcibly "heal" the "diseased minds"<br />

of communists, democr<strong>at</strong>s and pacifists in concentr<strong>at</strong>ion<br />

camps through the ministr<strong>at</strong>ions of officers who claim<br />

to represent the victims' own will to be healed.<br />

(4) Th<strong>at</strong> the St<strong>at</strong>e is Exempt from Morality<br />

Although the Hegelian St<strong>at</strong>e has a moral end, it is not itself<br />

bound by moral laws. Not only is it exempt from the rules<br />

of morality in its dealings with its own citizens, but it is not<br />

possible for it to act non-morally in its transactions with other<br />

St<strong>at</strong>es. This conclusion is reached by the following steps.<br />

The St<strong>at</strong>e, as we have seen, contains and comprises within<br />

itself the social morality of all its citizens. Just as the<br />

personalities of all the individuals in the St<strong>at</strong>e are transcended<br />

by and merged in the personality of the St<strong>at</strong>e,<br />

so the moral rel<strong>at</strong>ions which each citizen has to each<br />

other citizen are merged in and transcended by the social<br />

morality which is vested in the St<strong>at</strong>e. This social morality,<br />

Hegel's Social Righteousness, is both something which<br />

transcends and something which is immanent in the moral<br />

rel<strong>at</strong>ions of citizens. It transcends them in the sense th<strong>at</strong><br />

it is not itself any single moral rel<strong>at</strong>ion or the sum of<br />

them, but is more than their sum; it is immanent in them<br />

in the sense th<strong>at</strong> it informs and pervades them, as a man's<br />

moral character informs and pervades all his acts. 11 follows<br />

th<strong>at</strong> the St<strong>at</strong>e can no more be bound by moral rel<strong>at</strong>ions<br />

to its own members than a body can be conceived to be<br />

bound by rel<strong>at</strong>ions to its own parts. Th<strong>at</strong> there is a right<br />

rel<strong>at</strong>ion in which die organs of a body can stand to the<br />

whole of which they form part, would be generally agreed.

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