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.

The concrete person who, as a particular person, as a totality of needs and a mixture of natural necessity and arbitrariness, is his own end, is one principle of civil society. But this particular person stands essentially in relation [Beziehung] to other similar particulars, and their relation is such that each asserts itself and gains satisfaction through the others, and thus at the same time through the exclusive mediation of the form of universality, which is the second principle.

Addition (H,G). Civil society is the [stage of] difference [Differenz] which intervenes between the family and the state, even if its full development [Ausbildung] occurs later than that of the state; for as difference, it presupposes the state, which it must have before it as a self-sufficient entity in order to subsist [bestehen] itself. Besides, the creation of civil society belongs to the modern world, which for the first time allows all determinations of the Idea to attain their rights. If the state is represented as a unity of different persons, as a unity which is merely a community [of interests], this applies only to the determination of civil society. Many modern exponents of constitutional law have been unable to offer any view of the state but this. In civil society, each individual is his own end, and all else means nothing to him.

The immediate occasion for me to publish this oudine is the need to provide my audience with an introduction to the lectures on the Philosophy of Right which I deliver in the course of my official duties. This textbook is a more extensive, and in particular a more systematic, exposition of the same basic concepts which, in relation to this part of philosophy, are already contained in a previous work designed to accompany my lectures, namely my Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Heidelberg, 1817).

The fact that this outline was due to appear in print and thus to come before a wider public gave me the opportunity to amplify in it some of those Remarks whose primary purpose was to comment briefly on ideas [Vorstellungen] akin to or divergent from my own, on further consequences of my argument, and on other such matters as would be properly elucidated in the lectures themselves. I have amplified them here so as to clarify on occasion the more abstract contents of the text and to take fuller account of related ideas [Vorstellungen] which are current at the present time. As a result, some of these Remarks have become more extensive than the aim and style of a compendium would normally lead one to expect.

The good is the Idea, as the unity of the concept of the will and the particular will, in which abstract right, welfare, the subjectivity of knowing, and the contingency of external existence [Dasein], as self-sufficient for themselves, are superseded; but they are at the same time essentially contained and preserved within it. – [The good is] realized freedom, the absolute and ultimate end of the world.

Addition (H). Every stage is in fact the Idea, but the earlier stages contain it only in more abstract form. For example, even the ‘I’ as personality is already the Idea, but in its most abstract shape. The good is therefore the Idea as further determined, the unity of the concept of the will and the particular will. It does not belong to abstract right, but has a complete content whose import encompasses both right and welfare.

Within this idea, welfare has no validity for itself as the existence [Dasein] of the individual and particular will, but only as universal welfare and essentially as universal in itself, i.e. in accordance with freedom; welfare is not a good without right. Similarly, right is not the good without welfare (fiat iustitia should not have pereat mundus as its consequence). Thus, since the good must necessarily be actualized through the particular will, and since it is at the same time the latter's substance, it has an absolute right as distinct from the abstract right of property and the particular ends of welfare.

Hegel was born on 27 August 1770 in Stuttgart, in the south German state of Wiirttemberg, son of a middle-class civil servant. His professional career, pursued entirely outside his home state, did not begin until he was over thirty, and was interrupted between 1806 and 1816. His eventual rise to prominence was meteoric: Hegel was offered a professorship at the University of Heidelberg in 1816, followed by an appointment two years later to the prestigious chair in philosophy at the University of Berlin which had had Fichte as its only previous occupant. Hegel occupied this position until his death from cholera on 14 November 1831. The influence of his philosophy began to decline even before his death, but its impact on Prussian academic life was perpetuated through the activity of some of his students, especially Johannes Schulze, who was Privy Councillor in charge of education from 1823 until the 1840s.

Hegel's first lectures on right, ethics and the state were delivered in 1817, during his first autumn at Heidelberg. As his text he used the paragraphs on ‘objective spirit’ from his newly published Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1816) (EH §§ 400–452). His second series of lectures came a year later in Berlin. He soon formed the intention of expanding his treatment of this part of the system in a longer text, which probably existed in draft well before his third series of lectures on right and the state were delivered in 1819–1820.

In contract, right in itself is present as something posited, and its inner universality is present as a common factor in the arbitrariness and particular wills of those concerned. This appearance of right, in which right itself and its essential existence [Dasein], the particular will, coincide immediately – i.e. in a contingent manner – goes on, in the case of wrong, to become a semblance – an opposition between right in itself and the particular will as that in which right becomes a particular right. But the truth of this semblance is that it is null and void, and that right re-establishes itself by negating this negation of itself. Through this process of mediation whereby right returns to itself from its negation, it determines itself as actual and valid, whereas it was at first only in itself and something immediate.

Addition (H). Right in itself, the universal will, is essentially determined by the particular will, and thus stands in relation [Beziehung] to something inessential. This is the relationship [Verhältnis] of the essence to its appearance. Even if the appearance is in conformity with the essence, it is not in conformity with it from another point of view, for appearance is the stage of contingency, or essence in relation [Beziehung] to the inessential. But in the case of wrong, appearance goes on to become a semblance. A semblance is existence inappropriate to the essence, the empty detachment and positedness of the essence, so that in both [semblance and essence], their distinctness is [mere] difference.

The moral point of view is the point of view of the will in so far as the latter is infinite not only in itself but also for itself (see § 104). This reflection of the will into itself and its identity for itself, as opposed to its being-in-itself and immediacy and the determinacies which develop within the latter, determine the person as a subject.

Since subjectivity now constitutes the determinacy of the concept and is distinct from the concept as such (i.e. from the will which has being in itself), and more precisely since the will of the subject, as the individual [des Einzelnen] who has being for himself, at the same time exists (i.e. still has immediacy in it), it follows that subjectivity constitutes the existence [Dasein] of the concept. – A higher ground has thereby been determined for freedom; the Idea's aspect of existence [Existenz], its real moment, is now the subjectivity of the will. Only in the will as subjective will can freedom, or the will which has being in itself be actual.

Ethical life is the Idea of freedom as the living good which has its knowledge and volition in self-consciousness, and its actuality through self-conscious action. Similarly, it is in ethical being that self-consciousness has its motivating end and a foundation which has being in and for itself. Ethical life is accordingly the concept of freedom which has become the existing [vorhandenen] world and the nature of self-consciousness.

Since this unity of the concept of the will with its existence [Dasein], i.e. with the particular will, is knowledge, consciousness of the difference between these moments of the Idea is present, but in such a way that each of these moments has become for itself the totality of the Idea and has the latter as its foundation and content.

The objective sphere of ethics, which takes the place of the abstract good, is substance made concrete by subjectivity as infinite form. It therefore posits distinctions within itself which are thus determined by the concept. These distinctions give the ethical a fixed content which is necessary for itself, and whose existence [Bestehen] is exalted above subjective opinions and preferences: they are laws and institutions which have being in and for themselves.

The person must give himself an external sphere of freedom in order to have being as Idea. The person is the infinite will, the will which has being in and for itself, in this first and as yet wholly abstract determination. Consequently, this sphere distinct from the will, which may constitute the sphere of its freedom, is likewise determined as immediately different and separable from it.

Addition (H). The rational aspect of property is to be found not in the satisfaction of needs but in the superseding of mere subjectivity of personality. Not until he has property does the person exist as reason. Even if this first reality of my freedom is in an external thing [Sache] and is thus a poor kind of reality, the abstract personality in its very immediacy can have no other existence [Dasein] than in the determination of immediacy.

What is immediately different from the free spirit is, for the latter and in itself, the external in general – a thing [Sache], something unfree, impersonal, and without rights.

The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea – the ethical spirit as substantial will, manifest and clear to itself, which thinks and knows itself and implements what it knows in so far as it knows it. It has its immediate existence [Existenz] in custom and its mediate existence in the self-consciousness of the individual [des Einzelnen], in the individual's knowledge and activity, just as self-consciousness, by virtue of its disposition, has its substantial freedom in the state as its essence, its end, and the product of its activity.

The state is the actuality of the substantial will, an actuality which it possesses in the particular self-consciousness when this has been raised to its universality; as such, it is the rational in and for itself. This substantial unity is an absolute and unmoved end in itself, and in it, freedom enters into its highest right, just as this ultimate end possesses the highest right in relation to individuals [die Einzelnen], whose highest duty is to be members of the state.