Nicholas of Cusa, in Latin Nicolaus Cusanus, was born in 1401 at Kues on the banks of the Moselle river between Trier and Koblenz. His father was a moderately well-to-do boatman and vineyard owner who served on juries and lent money to the local nobility. There is no proof that Nicholas studied with the Brothers of the Common Life in Deventer, Holland, as many of his earlier biographers assert, although he was influenced by the devotio moderna that they represented, and a scholarship, the Bursa Cusana, named after him, was established in the seventeenth century at Deventer. Following a year's stay at the University of Heidelberg in 1416, he pursued higher education in canon law at the University of Padua from 1417 until 1423. After receiving a doctorate in canon law (doctor decretorum) he returned to Germany and enrolled at the University of Cologne in early 1425. He seems to have studied philosophy and theology at Cologne and he practiced and probably also taught canon law. (In 1428 he turned down an offer of a professorship in canon law at the University of Louvain.) In 1427 and 1429–30, Cusanus travelled to Rome as the secretary of the Archbishop of Trier and established contacts with the Italian humanists who were interested in his reports of having discovered lost classical manuscripts in German monastic and cathedral libraries.

Some years ago, the late Ewart Lewis observed that it was likely to be a long time before the “average professor of political theory will turn to his well-underlined copy of Nicholas of Cusa's De concordantia catholica with the same facility with which he turned to Aristotle's Politics.” This first complete translation of the Concordantia into English is an effort to make this major work of political and eccelesiological theory available to contemporary scholars. Before its publication the only English translation was a sometimes inaccurate excerpt containing the sections dealing with the theory of consent and Nicholas' proposals for a system of representative councils in the medieval empire. The lack of a definitive Latin text, the length of the work, and the considerable linguistic problems arising from Cusanus' awkward style and defective knowledge of Latin have long deterred scholars from undertaking the formidable task of translation.

The problem of establishing the Latin text has been resolved, thanks to the work of dedicated German scholars. In 1928, Professor Gerhard Kallen agreed to prepare a critical Latin edition under the auspices of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. Books I and II were published in 1939 but the publication of Book III was delayed by World War II and it only appeared in 1959.

PREFACE

268. If anyone should care to trace out from the beginning the foundations that are both necessary and useful for our purpose, he should look to the principles on which they are based – those of Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, and all the other philosophers who have written about well-ordered political, economic, and monarchic regimes. Natural laws precede all human considerations and provide the principles for them all. First, nature intends every kind of animal to preserve its physical existence and its life, to avoid what would be harmful and to secure what is necessary to it, as Cicero concludes in the first book, third [fourth] chapter of De officiis. For the first requirement of essence is that it exist. Therefore for any essence to exist, it possesses inborn faculties designed for this purpose – instinct, appetite, and reason. Hence it happens in different ways in nature that various means are implanted by natural instinct for the purpose of existence and self preservation. On this basis Aristotle concludes in the last chapter of the seventh book of the Politics that every art and discipline exists to supply what nature lacks.

269. But from the beginning men have been endowed with reason which distinguishes them from animals. They know because of the exercise of their reason that association and sharing are most useful – indeed necessary for their self-preservation and to achieve the purpose of human existence.

THE CHURCH IS A CONCORDANCE OF ALL RATIONAL SPIRITS UNITED IN SWEET HARMONY WITH CHRIST, THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE, WHO IS THE SPOUSE OF THE CHURCH

4. Since anyone endowed with the slightest intelligence can draw the proper conclusions if he knows the basic principles, I will begin with a few words concerning the underlying divine harmony in the church. Concordance is the principle by which the Catholic Church is in harmony as one and many – in one Lord and many subjects. Flowing from the one King of Peace with infinite concordance, a sweet spiritual harmony of agreement emanates in successive degrees to all its members who are subordinated and united to him. Thus one God is all things in all things. From the beginning we have been predestined for that marvelous harmonious peace belonging to the adopted sons of God through Jesus Christ who came down from heaven to bring all things to fulfillment.

5. The Apostle [Paul] writing to the Ephesians demonstrates this when he says at the beginning that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and they shall be two in one flesh. This is a sacrament [which symbolizes the union] of Christ and the church.

PREFACE

1. The matters being debated by this holy Council of Basel – which might easily be considered novel by those who when doubts arise rely unquestioningly on modern writers – demand that we make known some of the learning of the ancient authors, long neglected by those who are experiencing our current difficulties, and that we demonstrate the superior qualities of our more enlightened forebears. The discord that has arisen has produced this work by the action of heaven, overcoming our natural disposition and lack of preparation or previous notice.

2. Who, I ask, would not have been surprised, a few years ago, at the events which we have now seen that have demonstrated the great power of the universal councils – so long dormant, to the detriment of the public good and the orthodox faith? But we see that the past is being sought once more by those who pursue all the liberal and mechanical arts. As if the wheel had come full circle, we eagerly return to the weighty opinions of those authors. We see that all are delighted at the eloquence and style of ancient letters. This is especially true of the Italians who, not satisfied with the literary excellence that is appropriate to their nature as Latins, devote great effort, following in the footsteps of their ancestors, to the writings of the Greeks.

A SYNOD IS A MEETING OF BISHOPS AND PRIESTS WHO STRIVE TO COME TO AGREEMENT AS ONE. THOSE THAT DISAGREE DO NOT CONSTITUTE A COUNCIL. COUNCILS ARE OF VARIOUS RANKS FROM THE PARTICULAR TO THE UNIVERSAL, AND THE TERM, UNIVERSAL COUNCIL, HAS VARIOUS MEANINGS. THE CHAPTER EXPLAINS THE GRADATIONS FROM THE LOWEST SYNOD UP TO THE HIGHEST.

69. My intention is briefly to examine and compare the various synods to determine their authority, and from this to resolve certain doubts. First of all, a synod properly speaking is a gathering of bishops and priests. It is called a synod from syn which means “at the same time” and hodos or “way” because all travel in one way towards the same end. Synod is a Greek word. It is translated as an “assembly” [coetus] see D. 15 [c. 1] Canones para. Synodus, and is called in Latin concilium [council]. Isidore tells us why it is called a council in D. 15 [c. 1] Canones Concilii, and its distinctive characteristic is concord. As is said there, those who disagree among themselves do not form a council. There are different kinds of synods since they take place on different levels from the local to the universal through various intermediate grades. According to Bartholomew of Brescia, who follows Huguccio in the interpretation of D. 16 c. 1, a council or synod is universal if it is composed of the pope or his legate together with all the bishops.

This translation is based on the text of the first edition of the Rechtsphilosophie (1820), as reproduced in Volume VII of Hegel's Werke, edited by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel and published by the Suhrkamp Verlag (Frankfurt am Main, 1970). I have compared the text throughout with the variorum edition of the work in Volume II of Karl-Heinz Ilting's edition of Hegel's Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie 1818–1831 (referred to as VPR II, see key to abbreviations, p. xlviii), whose readings I have at times adopted in preference to those of the Suhrkamp edition; in all such cases, and on those occasions when I have encountered errors in the Suhrkamp text, I have supplied explanatory footnotes.

To the main numbered paragraphs of his text, Hegel frequently adds elucidatory comments, often of considerable length, which he describes as Anmerkungen – a term which I have translated (both in the singular and in the plural) as ‘Remarks’. These Remarks are indented throughout the translated text, as they are in the German original, to distinguish them from the main text of the numbered paragraphs to which they are appended. Many of these paragraphs are further augmented by ‘Additions’ (Zusätze) consisting of additional material from lectures on the Rechtsphilosophie delivered by Hegel after the first edition of the work had appeared. These Additions are not indented, but printed in smaller type and prefixed in each case by the word ‘Addition’ in order to distinguish them from Hegel's basic text and Remarks.

That [kind of] property of which the aspect of existence [Dasein] or externality is no longer merely a thing [Sache] but contains the moment of a will (and hence the will of another person) comes into being through contract. This is the process in which the following contradiction is represented and mediated: I am and remain an owner of property, having being for myself and excluding the will of another, only in so far as, in identifying my will with that of another, I cease to be an owner of property.

It is not only possible for me to dispose of an item of property as an external thing [Sache] (see § 65) – 1 am also compelled by the concept to dispose of it as property in order that my will, as existent, may become objective [gegenständlich] to me. But according to this moment, my will, as externalized, is at the same time another will. Hence this moment, in which this necessity of the concept is real, is the unity of different wills, which therefore relinquish their difference and distinctiveness. Yet it is also implicit (at this stage) in this identity of different wills that each of them is and remains a will distinctive for itself and not identical with the other.

The external existence [Dasein] of an action is a varied set of connections which may be regarded as infinitely divided into individual units [Einzelheiten], and the action itself can be thought of as having touched only one of these units in the first instance. But the truth of the individual [des Einzelnen] is the universal, and the determinate character of the action for itself is not an isolated content confined to one external unit, but a universal content containing within itself all its various connections. The purpose, as emanating from a thinking agent, contains not just the individual unit, but essentially that universal aspect already referred to – the intention.