Ustav Njemačke
Constitution of Germany

Summary/Abstract: Hegel submits the Constitution of the German Empire at the turn of the 18th century to a thorough critical analysis, pointing out at the beginning of the text that Germany is no longer a state. The German Constitution cannot be the foundation for German state unity because it is a conglomerate of private rights, a sanctioned separation of parts (estates) from the whole that they had secured for themselves during the preceding centuries. Such a situation was conditioned by the deficient constitutional development of Germany. Unlike most European nations, the Germans had not built a state, i.e. were neither capable of nor ready to sacrifice their particularities to the whole and discover freedom in the common free subjection to a single supreme political authority. For the most part, the text analyses particular aspects of the German Constitution – the armed forces, finance, legislation, position of the estates – and provides a comparison of the emergence and rise of the state in Germany and the rest of Europe that confirms Hegel’s initial judgment that Germany cannot be considered a state. It is in these analyses that his idea of the state from the writings on the Constitution crystallizes. Inspired by Machiavelli – the genuinely political mind of “the highest and noblest sentiments” – to whom he dedicates almost an entire chapter – Hegel above all wants to see the foundation of a single body political as opposed to all existing systems of particular rights and privileges. The state is thus above all power through which a multitude actually (and not just in intention and words) defends the totality of its property. But this is only its first determination. The wider meaning of the state includes governance through general laws – which only makes a country a state – then at least minimal central financial authority, the separation of church and state, but also the participation of the people in the legislative procedure through political representation. In addition to that, a well organized state is one that limits itself to the essential functions, leaving the citizens their living freedom in everything else, for this freedom is inherently sacred. Finally, since “the concept of necessity and insight into its nature are much too weak to have an effect on action itself”, they must be justified by force; therefore, at the end of the text Hegel calls upon the conqueror, the modern Theseus, to unite the scattered mass of nations and mutually isolated estates into a state.

• Details
• Contents