12.3.1Diremption of particularity from the universal in civil society and their mediation

It will have become apparent that Ernst Jünger’s Der Arbeiter, although written as a kind of pamphlet in a highly particular historical conjuncture in Germany coinciding with the collapse of the Weimar Republic, can also be read more abstractly — and thus philosophically — as a totalitarian reply to the liberal conception of government and state fathered by Hobbes and Locke. The totalitarian response abstractly and bluntly negates the particularity of the bourgeois individual, the individual member of civil society, and posits instead a total, organic unity of will based on obedience and subordination of the individual. Hegel’s treatment of the liberal conception of state in his Rechtsphilosophie, by contrast, is not so brutally one-dimensional, but indeed sophisticated. Indeed, as could be expected, the Hegelian conception of state is achieved through an Aufheben — a suspension, preservation and elevation, or a waiving, saving and raising — of the individual freedoms of civil society so dear to liberal thinking in which particular interests, at least initially, are given rein to unfold. Particular interests of the individual are not abstractly negated as in Jünger’s Arbeiter, but instead the diremption of particularity from the universal is mediated, and assertedly resolved and reconciled in the state, which brings particular interests back to the universality of reason. In Hegel’s usage, reason is a synonym for the idea as, in this context, the correspondence between the concept of freedom and social objectivity, i.e. “objektiver Geist”. As we shall see, while Hegel does have a genuine and tenable critique of liberal thinking on the state, we shall also see that his Aufhebung of individual freedom amounts ultimately to its suppression by a paternalistic state.

The linch-pin or “the one principle of civil society” as it is thought through in Hegel’s Basic Outlines of the Philosophy of Right244 is the “concrete person who as a particular person is the aim and purpose, as a totality of needs and a mixture of natural necessity and arbitrary will” (Die konkrete Person, welche sich als besonderer Zweck ist, als ein Ganzes von Bedürfnissen und eine Vermischung von Naturnotwendigkeit und Willkür, ist das eine Prinzip der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, RPh.§ 182). This “one principle of civil society” is complemented by another, however, because the particular person is “essentially in relation to other such particular persons, so that each can only make its claim and be satisfied mediated through the other and at the same time, if at all, through the form of universality, the other principle” (wesentlich in Bezeihung auf andere solche Besonderheit, so daß jede durch die andere und zugleich schlechthin nur als durch die Form der Allgemeinheit, das andere Prinzip, vermittelt sich geltend macht und befriedigt, § 182).

Civil society, according to Hegel, is constituted basically and essentially by the satisfaction of the needs245 of particular individuals who are mediated with each other by the exchange metabolism of the market-place. The system of needs and their satisfaction forms a complex, multifaceted, organic whole based on a division of labour within which each particular person pursues his or her own self-interest, but only mediated through the satisfaction of others’ needs and whims. In this sense, particularity is always already tied back to and mediated through something universal or general, namely, the totality of social needs.246 In the “satisfaction of its [particularity’s] needs, its contingent, arbitrary will and subjective whim” (Befriedigung ihrer Bedürfnisse, zufälliger Willkür und subjektiven Beliebens, § 185), the particular individual has to take part in the universal whole of a market economy, through which it is again “restricted by the power of the universal” (von der Macht der Allgemeinheit beschränkt, § 185) where the universal in this instance is thought as a whole economy. Hegel therefore describes civil society as “the system of ethical life lost in its extremes” (das System der in ihre Extreme verlorenen Sittlichkeit, § 184), albeit that it is nonetheless abstractly in conformity with the idea of freedom and albeit that the metabolism of civil society itself, willy-nilly and unconsciously, constitutes a mediation of the extremes named, particularity and universality.

In ascribing “contingent, arbitrary will and subjective whim” to particularity, Hegel does not give it its due. Individual freedom is not merely the individual’s freedom to capriciously do what it likes with its private property within its own private sphere or to pursue only its own enjoyment. This is only the caricature of individual freedom as individualistic arbitrariness as formulated, in particular, in so-called critiques of ‘consumerist society’. In a more literal sense, the freedom of particularity means the freedom to find one’s part in the universal totality, one’s niche in the organic whole. Moreover, individual freedom in its exercise, its ἐνέργεια, does not imply selfish, solipsistic retreat, but is itself sociating; it is in the first place the mundane freedom of economic mutually estimative exchange with others in which individual freedom is reciprocally exercised between and among free individuals, thus intertwining them in an interplay of powers with its resulting interdependency and even inter-responsibility. The freedom to exchange is the freedom to earn a livelihood by hiring out your own abilities, whatever they may be, and also to acquire and enjoy the services of others, the exchange of finished goods being indirectly also the exchange of human abilities. Such ongoing exchange is not merely a matter of caprice, but of leading and responsibly shaping your individual life as shared with your loved ones.

A people affirms (individual, liberal) freedom by practically living within the usages of free interplay and by affirming them also in consciousness, i.e. in the mind. This amounts to living an ethos of fairness and civility in interchanges with one another, which is the obligation that goes along with the rights of individual freedom. Such an ethos goes beyond the formal, abstract, universal respect of the other as person (which in itself is not to be underestimated), counteracting particularity’s merely rude self-interestedness in civil society and constituting something resembling a liberal We as a valued way of sharing the movement of life beneficially with one another (cf. Chapter 11.7). Civility includes the courtesy and politeness that makes interchanges in civil society fine and beautiful rather than ugly and mean, and such an ethos must be practised and cultivated in a people over centuries to become the life-blood of interplay with one another, i.e. in Hegelian language, a Gestalt of objective spirited mind.

These individual freedoms played out in civil society are also the obverse sides of individual responsibilities to earn a living and to stand as somewho in the social world. Personhood is the formal, abstract universal status or mask of the individual as somewho — the formal ‘face’ or εἶδος of human being — that is guaranteed by law. Such responsibility for oneself also contributes an element of pride and self-esteem to the ethos of civil society, for in earning your own livelihood, you have come to a stand and achieved an independence within interdependence.

With regard to the state as a universal instance as conceived in liberal political theory, Hegel remarks that:

Wenn der Staat vorgestellt wird als eine Einheit verschiedener Personen, als eine Einheit, die nur Gemeinsamkeit ist, so ist damit nur die Bestimmung der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft gemeint. Viele der neueren Staatsrechtslehrer haben es zu keiner anderen Ansicht vom Staate bringen können. In der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft ist jeder sich Zweck, alles andere ist ihm nichts. Aber ohne Beziehung auf andere kann er den Umfang seiner Zwecke nicht erreichen; diese anderen sind daher Mittel zum Zweck des Besonderen. Aber der besondere Zweck gibt sich durch die Beziehung auf andere die Form der Allgemeinheit und befriedigt sich, indem er zugleich das Wohl des anderen mit befriedigt. Indem die Besonderheit an die Bedingung der Allgemeinheit gebunden ist, ist das Ganze der Boden der Vermittlung, wo alle Einzelheiten, alle Anlagen, alle Zufälligkeiten der Geburt und des Glücks sich frei machen, wo die Wellen aller Leidenschaften ausströmen, die nur durch die hin-einscheinende Vernunft regiert werden. Die Besonderheit, beschränkt durch die Allgemeinheit, ist allein das Maß, wodurch jede Besonderheit ihr Wohl befördert. (RPh. § 182 Add.)

When the state is imagined as a unity of various persons, as a unity which is only commonality, only the determination of civil society is intended. Many of the more recent teachers of the right of state have not been able to get any further than this view of the state. In civil society, each individual is aim and purpose for itself; everything else is nothing to it. But without a relation to others, the individual cannot attain the full extent of its aims; these others are therefore a means to particular ends. But the particular end, through its relation to others, gives itself the form of universality and is satisfied by at the same time satisfying the other’s well-being. Through particularity being tied to the condition of universality, the whole is the ground of mediation where all singularities, all abilities, all the contingencies of birth and fortune are set free, where the waves of all passions stream out and are only governed by reason shining in. Particularity, restricted by universality, is the sole measure through which each particularity furthers its own well-being. (RPh. § 182 Add.)

Hegel does not want to allow that a conception of universality based on shared or common needs and arbitrary whims is adequate for a concept of state, and with this he rejects the liberal conception of state, which he calls “the outer state, the state of understanding and need” (den äußeren Staat, — Not- und Verstandesstaat, § 183). The universal in civil society, however, is the form (look) of free intercourse and interplay in which the particular individuals acknowledge each other as free persons and through which they pursue their particular purposes. Such a universal as a form (of freedom as mutually estimating interplay) is already a Gestalt of the beingness of beings and insofar an actual-reality in conformity with speculative-ontological reason, hence already exceeding a finite understanding of the state as merely a “unity which is only commonality”, i.e. as merely a pragmatic means for securing the mutual satisfaction of particular ends. The kind of state that affirms and secures the universal, market-place nexus for the satisfaction of needs, is accessible to understanding but is already implicitly or unknowingly in conformity with reason, because precisely such a (liberal, minimal) state is a realization of the concept of freedom as sociating interplay, and the members of civil society pursuing their particular self-interests also affirm such a ‘look’ of freedom, thus consciously affirming preontologically something infinite or ontological, beyond mere understanding.

But Hegel aims at thinking the state as an explicitly self-aware agent of the universal, positing through will its universal aims that are above particular self-interest, thereby elevating understanding to conscious, self-aware reason. At the same time, he concedes that the state as a “higher power” (höhere Macht, § 261) “against the spheres of private right and private well-being, of the family and civil society” (gegen die Sphären des Privatrechts und Privatwohls, der Familie und der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, § 261) must not simply suppress the particularity of self-interests but, on the contrary, that the state “has its strength in the unity of its universal final purpose and the particular interests of individuals” (hat seine Stärke in der Einheit seines allgemeinen Endzwecks und des besonderen Interesses der Individuen, § 261). The moment of particularity in the concept of freedom must remain in play if the latter is to be actually realized, i.e. actually presence, in a society.

The customary usages making up an historical way of life and protected by the rule of law are, and must be, in conformity with the interplay of individual freedom if talk of freedom is to have any genuine sense. Hegel allows for this insofar as he concedes particularity its right. Insofar, Hegel is a liberal, albeit that he argues from a socio-ontological concept of freedom, rather than from some notion or other of social contract proceeding from pre-sociated individuals. In conceding particularity its right, he admits that a core freedom is the free power interplay that comes about through each member of society exercising its abstract rights as person. Through laws, regulations and the judicature, the state as “higher power” has the task of ensuring the fairness of the interplay in pursuit of self-interest. This interplay must be flanked by the state’s providing infrastructure of all kinds, including educational infrastructure to develop each particular individual’s potentials. The remaining moment of the concept of freedom, viz. singularity, remains conspicuous by its absence in Hegel’s dialectic of civil society (and also, and even, in his treatment of the family, which is posited as the first pillar of ethical social life). The moment of the singularity of freedom will occupy us further below.

Reason for Hegel is “the substantial essence of both ethical and natural reality; the conscious identity of both is the philosophical idea” (das substantielle Wesen der sittlichen wie der natürlichen Wirklichkeit; die bewußte Identität von beidem ist die philosophische Idee; RPh. Vorrede W7:27) from which it follows that Hegelian reason is speculative insight (ἰδεῖν) into the ‘looks’ (εἶδος) of being as they show themselves presencing for the thinking mind. Being here is now thought in an Heideggerian way and is not such an impoverished concept as it is, strictly speaking, in Hegel’s ontology as the immediacy of total indeterminacy. (Note that the “conscious identity” is related to the “philosophical idea”, and, according to Hegel himself, it is necessary for neither the members of society nor the rulers to have philosophical insight; see the last subsection of section 12.3 below). A first step in raising understanding beyond particularity to universality (but hardly the universality of reason as speculative insight, ontological knowing), according to Hegel, is the education or cultivation (Bildung, § 187) which civil society’s developed system of the totality of needs itself demands of the particular individuals. They are compelled to develop their understanding of ontic interconnections to perform the work required by the overall economy, thus gaining insight into their interdependence and overcoming the subjectivity of mere whim and individual interest. Hegel therefore calls education a “smoothing of particularity” (Glättung der Besonderheit, § 187 Add.) through which particularity becomes aware that it is part of the universal whole.

12.3.2The police and civic corporation as supplements to the interplay of civil society

Whereas i) the system of needs forms the basis of civil society, this is not sufficient to determine its full concept, which, according to Hegel, has two further moments: ii) “the actuality of the universal moment of freedom included therein, the protection of property by the judicature” (Die Wirklichkeit des darin enthaltenen Allgemeinen der Freiheit, der Schutz des Eigentums durch die Rechtspflege, § 188) and iii) “caring for the contingency remaining in these systems and taking care of particular interest as something in common through the police and civic corporation” (Die Vorsorge gegen die in jenen Systemen zurückbleibende Zufälligkeit und die Besorgung des besonderen Interesses als eines Gemeinsamen, durch die Polizei und Korporation, § 188).

The universal connection of a market economy — a katallaxy — through which particular needs and whims can be satisfied is based on the freedom of private property (which is “unendlich”, “infinite” because in conformity with reason as “divine” insight into the ontological concept) which accordingly has to be realized, administered and secured by a state administration of justice. For Hegel, such administration of justice is still part of the outer state, whose justification and necessity can be comprehended and affirmed by understanding. The actuality — the perfect presence or ἐντελέχεια — of the abstract rights of property requires concrete, universal existence in laws under which particular cases in their endless empirical diversity are subsumed by the courts. Such administration of justice by the judiciary guarantees the formal, “infinite”, free framework of civil society, its rules of power play for the pursuit of particular self-interest mediated by the universal connection of a market economy.

But, as Hegel notes, “for [abstract] right as such, well-being is something extrinsic” (dem Rechte als solchem ist das Wohl ein Äußerliches, § 229 Add.) being as it is dependent upon the ongoing outcome of interplay. This deficiency, he says, has to be ameliorated by the institutions securing society, “the police and civic corporation” which in Hegel’s time were understood differently from how they are today. The police as “the securing power of the universal” (die sichernde Macht des Allgemeinen, § 231) comprises firstly the prevention and punishment of crime which violates the universal connection of civil society and its particular exercise as well as preventing particular acts of the exercise of property rights and private freedom which “infinitely” infringe the universal interplay of powers (in its ontological, not merely pre-ontologically understood dignity). Secondly, the police qua civil administration has to supervise and provide for businesses and organizations serving the community as a whole with daily needs. Thirdly, the police has to regulate the markets in the general interest and also provide what today we would call infrastructure such as “to take care of street lighting, bridge construction, taxation of daily needs as well as health” (für Straßenbeleuchtung, Brückenbau, Taxation der täglichen Bedürfnisse sowie für die Gesundheit Sorge zu tragen, § 236 Add.).

The further functions of the police concern the well-being of the individual who is exposed to the contingent vicissitudes of the economy and thus take on the problem of poverty. The market economy and therefore also the striving of individual members of civil society to earn their living in it in the pursuit of self-interest, being an interplay of powers, are of their essence contingent. The provision of education gives each individual a chance to establish itself in the economy as a player and earn a living. The rationale of providing for the poor who have slipped into distress is to prevent the emergence of a mob which has lost a “sensibility for law, lawfulness and honour” (zum Verluste des Gefühls des Rechts, der Rechtlichkeit und der Ehre, § 244), thus endangering civil society. The contradiction inherent in providing for the poor, however, as has been shown in Chapter 6.5, is that “the subsistence of the needy would be secured without being mediated by labour, which would go against the principle of civil society and the feeling of its individuals for their own independence/self-reliance and honour” (würde die Subsistenz der Bedürftigen gesichert, ohne durch die Arbeit vermittelt zu sein, was gegen das Prinzip der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft und des Gefühls ihrer Individuen von ihrer Selbständigkeit und Ehre wäre, § 245).

Nevertheless, and paradoxically, Hegel concedes “particular well-being as a right (das besondere Wohl als Recht, § 230, § 255) to be concretely realized by the police and especially the civic corporation. The particular individual as a member of a civic corporation is to have the “securing” of its “subsistence” (Sicherung der Subsistenz, § 230), which makes the individual dependent upon the corporation and therefore also obliged to accept its rules, i.e. in return for its material well-being, the individual is obliged to acknowledge the corporation as an instance with power over it. The same applies if the securing of individual welfare is transferred to a ‘state apparatus’, for the welfare recipient becomes dependent upon the welfare agency. A possible resolution of this contradiction between dependency and self-reliance lies in coupling an individual right to well-being with “the obligation of the individual to earn its livelihood” (die Verpflichtung des Einzelnen, seinen Erwerb zu schaffen, § 255 Add.). Then an individual member of society cannot claim its right to welfare support without at the same time demonstrably fulfilling its obligation to strive to be a self-reliant individual. Such a demonstration inevitably entails cumbersome and tedious subjection to the state welfare agencies’ regulations which are themselves the rules of play of a lop-sided estimative power interplay between the particular individual and the welfare bureaucracy is played (or fought) out.

There is an essential contradiction in civil society between the security and insecurity of existence in the sense that the strivings to pursue and realize self-interest — as an interplay or groundless game of powers — are essentially uncertain, whereas civil society is the site where individuals are supposed to achieve their material well-being and thus attain and enjoy material security. The incentive to action in the market economy is particular self-interest that is essentially exposed to the risk and uncertainty of the sociating movement itself. If this incentive is lacking, the metabolism of civil society is impaired. Hegel recognizes the uncertainty of modern economic life in contrasting “family life”, whose principle is “the earth, firm ground and soil”, with “industry” whose “vitalizing, natural element is the sea” (Prinzip des Familienlebens die Erde, fester Grund und Boden, [...] Industrie das [...] belebende natürliche Element das Meer, § 247). The “craving to acquire” (Sucht des Erwerbs) drives industry to expose itself to the “danger” of the oceans “and mixes the fixation to the clod of earth and the limited circles of civil life, its enjoyments and desires, with the element of fluidity, danger and downfall” (und versetzt das Festwerden an der Erdscholle und den begrenzten Kreisen des bürgerlichen Lebens, seine Genüsse und Begierden, mit dem Elemente der Flüssigkeit, der Gefahr und des Untergangs, § 247). This “craving to acquire” drives civil society to reach beyond itself, to educate itself to develop its potentialy, and expose itself to the dangers of foreign lands and climes with their power interplays, “in which intercourse the greatest means of education is to be found and at the same time trade finds its world-historical significance” (in welchem Verkehr sich zugleich das größte Bildungsmittel und der Handel seine welthistorische Bedeutung findet, § 247).247

The (civic) corporation is an institution in civil society which raises the particularity of self-interest beyond itself to the general and universal, without however negating it. At first, “the self-seeking purpose directed at particular interest” (der auf sein Besonderes gerichtete, selbstsüchtige Zweck, § 251) is bundled together in the “co-operative” (Genossenschaft, § 251) or the “corporation” (Korporation, § 251) to become a universal purpose, albeit that “its [the corporation’s, ME] universal purpose has [...] no greater extent than that inherent in the trade, in the characteristic business and interest” (deren allgemeiner Zweck [...] keinen weiteren Umfang hat, als der im Gewerbe, dem eigentümlichen Geschäfte und Interesse, liegt, § 251).

Today what Hegel calls a corporation would resemble a professional guild or industry association or even a labour union which also fulfils welfare functions for its members who are exposed to “particular contingencies” (die besonderen Zufälligkeiten, § 252) as well as providing education for them “as a second family” (als zweite Familie, § 252). By banding the members of civil society together, the corporation achieves a “securing of subsistence, a firm assetbase [a kind of reified value as social power ME]” (Sicherung der Subsistenz, ein festes Vermögen, § 253) thus liberating the individual “from its own opinion and contingency, from danger to itself and others, recognizing and securing it and at the same time elevating it to conscious activity for a common purpose” (von der eigenen Meinung und Zufälligkeit, der eigenen Gefahr wie der Gefahr für andere, befreit, anerkannt, gesichert und zugleich zur bewußten Tätigkeit für einen gemeinsamen Zweck erhoben wird, § 254). Here there is a communitarian resonance. In guiding particularity a few steps beyond itself toward the universal by banding it together in common interests, the corporation signals the “return”, after ethical life having been lost in the extremes (§ 184), of “the ethical element as something immanent into civil society” (so kehrt das Sittliche als ein Immanentes in die bürgerliche Gesellschaft zurück, § 249), thus quelling the excesses of self-interested, arbitrary particularity.

12.3.3A problematic transition from civil society to the state – ‘Infinite’, singular affirmation of the concept of freedom through an ethos of free and fair interplay – The chimæra of a final resolution of the power play

The corporation therefore also forms a transition to the state, whose aim is consciously universal: “The purpose of the corporation as restricted and finite has its truth [...] in the universal purpose in and for itself and its absolute actual-reality; the sphere of civil society therefore passes into the state” (Der Zweck der Korporation als beschränkter und endlicher hat seine Wahrheit [...] in dem an und für sich allgemeinen Zwecke und dessen absoluter Wirklichkeit; die Sphäre der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft geht daher in den Staat über. § 256). This state is now to be more than the merely “outer state” (§ 183). Since commonality of interests is not the same as the universal, as Hegel underscores, it is not easy to see how the corporation as an institution of civil society could form a transition to the state, which must surely be a critical issue in a philosophy of right. Hegel criticizes his predecessors such as Rousseau and Fichte, who, situated within the liberal tradition emanating from Locke, conceive the state as based on a collectivity of individual wills, thus overlooking the speculative-ontological aether of their togetherness. Hegel agrees that the state is the realization of free will, but he claims that this will is “substantial”, “universal” will based on “reason” and as such a realization of spirited mind (Geist) with its speculative, ontological insight into the ‘looks’ of being, here, the look of freedom. From the theological side of Hegel’s version of ontotheology, the state is said to owe its existence to “God walking in the world” (es ist der Gang Gottes in der Welt, daß der Staat ist, § 258 Add.) and “its ground is the power of reason realizing itself as will” (sein Grund ist die Gewalt der sich als Wille verwirklichenden Vernunft, § 258 Add.). He argues:

Wenn der Staat mit der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft verwechselt und seine Bestimmung in die Sicherheit und den Schutz des Eigentums und der persönlichen Freiheit gesetzt wird, so ist das Interesse der Einzelnen als solcher der letzte Zweck, zu welchem sie vereinigt sind, und es folgt hieraus ebenso, daß es etwas Beliebiges ist, Mitglied des Staates zu sein. [...] Gegen das Prinzip des einzelnen Willens ist an den Grundbegriff zu erinnern, daß der objektive Wille das an sich in seinem Begriffe Vernünftige ist, ob es von Einzelnen erkannt und von ihrem Belieben gewollt werde oder nicht, — daß das Entgegengesetzte, die Subjektivität der Freiheit, das Wissen und Wollen, das in jenem Prinzip allein festgehalten ist, nur das eine, darum einseitige Moment der Idee des vernünftigen Willens enthält... (§ 258 Anmerkung)

If the state is confused with civil society and its definition is posited in securing and protecting property and personal freedom, then the interests of individuals as such is the final purpose for which they are united, and it also follows from this that it is something arbitrary to be member of the state. The state, however, has a completely different relationship to the individual; in being objective thinking-spirit, the individual too only has objectivity, truth and ethical life in being a member of the state. [...] Against the principle of the individual will, the fundamental concept must be recalled that the objective will is what is reasonable in itself according to its concept, whether it is recognized by individuals and willed by their arbitrary will or not, that the opposed element, the subjectivity of freedom, the knowledge and willing which alone is held onto in this principle, contains only the one, and therefore one-sided moment of the idea of the reason-imbued will... (§ 258 Note)

First of all it should be noted that, although in the passage Hegel speaks of the “interests of the individuals as such” and “the principle of the individual will”, this cannot be taken to mean that now he has brought singularity (Einzelheit) into speculative-dialectical play, because individual self-interest in civil society has already been determined as civil society’s principle of particularity (§ 182), and not as a principle of singularity, which would call for another path of thinking.248 Furthermore, to conceive the state as based on a “contract” of individuals makes “their caprice, opinion and arbitrary, express consent into the foundation” (Vertrag, der somit ihre Willkür, Meinung und beliebige, ausdrückliche Einwilligung zur Grundlage hat, § 258 Note) which destroys “the divine existing in and for itself and its absolute authority and majesty” (das an und für sich seiende Göttliche und dessen absolute Autorität und Majestät, § 258 Note). In other words, a state based on a so-called social contract as expression of a general will would not correspond to the concept of freedom itself as an absolute universal that — “infinitely” and in its Gestalt as a unifying, majestic instance — always already exceeds and encompasses the merely self-seeking or opining individual, existing, i.e. presencing in the world, as it does absolutely in and for itself. Hegel formulates this also in a moral way in claiming that it is the “highest duty” (höchste Pflicht, § 258) of individuals “to be members of the state” (Mitglieder des Staates zu sein, § 258) and nothing “arbitrary” (etwas Beliebiges, § 258 Note) dependent upon individual will, and it must be conceded that his insight is in accordance with “reason” insofar as human being is essentially sociated, shared, customary being and in this sense ethical or sittlich. But this shared ethical life in mutually estimating, fair power interplay with one another is essentially fathomless, uncertain in a way that cannot be ascribed to individual caprice or arbitrariness. This is something other than a divinely universal conceived as absolutely unrelated to this free interplay.

The standpoint of civil society based on the pursuit of individual self-interest and, at most, common interests, along with the insight of understanding into the necessity of the outer state for protecting and securing civil society and its metabolism, according to Hegel, thus has to make a great leap to the divine, to absolute, substantial spirited mind if the individual is to gain insight into the true ground of the state. But insofar as the individual members of civil society affirm not just the pursuit of their self-interests and insofar also the state as a means to that pursuit, but also the forms of freedom, i.e. the ‘looks’ of the mutally estimating power interplay, which enable such pursuit as a way of life, as well as having customary-ethical dignity in and for themselves, they are already affirming something universal and “infinite” in Hegel’s sense of ontology, if not in his sense of ontotheology. Such affirmation must not be confused with the arbitrariness of entering into a contract or not, or with the calculating, pro-and-con understanding that sees the necessity of the state to protect the individual freedom and enjoyment of private property.

The universal is latent and effective in civil society itself as “objective will” to a degree that Hegel does not want to concede. Hegel is right to point out the fallacy in a contract theory of state, because the particular individuals of civil society always already share a world through power interplay in that world; it cannot be a question of whether a ‘free particular individual’ wills arbitrarily to belong to civil society or not. The issue is rather to conceive the state as necessary for the realization of freedom understood as the power interplay of civil society, which goes hand in hand with the members of civil society affirming themselves as players in the mutually estimating power interplay within the abstract form of freedom as person.

Civil society is dirempted into the two moments of the “idea of the state itself” (die Idee des Staates selbst, § 256 Note); it “splits” into “the particularity of need and enjoyment reflected into itself and the universality of abstract right” (zur in sich reflektierten Besonderheit des Bedürfnisses und Genusses und zur abstrakten rechtlichen Allgemeinheit entzweit, § 255). This split is to be overcome in “[t]he state [...] as the actual-reality of the ethical idea” ([d]er Staat [...] als die Wirklichkeit der sittlichen Idee, § 257), “the actual-reality of substantial will” as “absolute, unmoving end in itself in which freedom comes to its highest right” (Wirklichkeit des substantiellen Willens, absoluter unbewegter Selbstzweck, in welchem die Freiheit zu ihrem höchsten Recht kommt, § 258), and that in the shape of an “independent power” (selbständige Gewalt, § 258 Add.), the word “Gewalt” suggesting that the state has, in particular, the option of exercising physical violence. The “absolute, unmoving end in itself” is an echo of the “unmoved mover”, the god in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Such a realization of the “ethical idea” in the god-like state, however, does not resolve the diremption in civil society between particular interests and abstractly universal personhood, but only shifts it to a split between civil society and the state which, as actually-real “will” and an “independent power”, subjugates civil society to itself, leaving the individual members of civil society only the option of a mediation with the universal by knowing themselves as “merely moments” (nur Momente, § 258 Add.) of this “independent power” in the standing presence of its “absolute, unmoving end in itself”.

The individual members of civil society thus have only the option of identifying with the state as the realization of their own freedom in submitting to its independent, occasionally violent power which it can exercise over its citizens in the name of substantially realized freedom and in accordance with its consciously posited universal will. But this is no adequate resolution of the contradiction between self-interested particularity and the universality of freedom because the member of society is then only cleaved by the contradiction between being, on the one hand, a self-seeking individual and, on the other, a citizen of the state which, in turn, remains aloof from civil society as the embodiment of the quasi-divine, absolute “substantial will” of freedom.

An alternative resolution to the contradiction of the diremption of civil society is the actual-reality of a practised ethos of civil society according to which the individual members have gained insight and identified themselves (their selves) with the universal forms of freedom upon which the sociating power interplay of civil society essentially depends. Such a practised ethos as a usage or habituated “second nature” (RPh. § 151) is also an actual realization, i.e. a presencing in the shared historical 3D-time-clearing, of the universal moment of the concept of freedom, or rather, and in truth, only in this way can the concept of freedom “step into actual reality” (tritt in Wirklichkeit, LII W6:299) in its moment of singularity (Einzelheit) which mediates between the moment of particularity understood as the freedom to pursue one’s own self-interest, and the merely abstractly-universal moment of freedom in personhood. Such an ethos is that of fair play in the — albeit forever fathomlessly uncertain — interplay, discussed in Chapter 11.7, that constitutes the real, living, free metabolism and pith of civil society. Insofar, the “substantial will” of freedom is realized in the will, i.e. presences in the mind, of each singular individual, thus making each individual genuinely singular in the Hegelian sense of the term, singularity (Einzelheit), as a moment of realization of the concept, in the present context, the concept of freedom, through which the concept “posits itself as something real” (sich als Reales [...] setzt, W6:403).

Hegel himself obfuscates this possibility of mediating the contradiction inherent in the concept of freedom when he asserts, “With freedom one must not proceed from singularity/individuality, from the singular/individual self-consciousness, but only from the essence of self-consciousness, for a person may know it or not, this essence realizes itself as an independent power” (Bei der Freiheit muß man nicht von der Einzelheit, vom einzelnen Selbstbewußtsein ausgehen, sondern nur vom Wesen des Selbstbewußtseins, denn der Mensch mag es wissen oder nicht, dies Wesen realisiert sich als selbständige Gewalt, § 258 Add.), i.e. as the state. Hegel abuses the ambiguity inherent in the terms, “Einzelheit” and “einzeln”, meaning both ‘singular(ity)’ and ‘individual(ity)’, and this ambiguity runs throughout the Rechtsphilosophie. One could say that ‘at first and for the most part’, the individual is not singular in the sense that it does not correspond to the concept of freedom as the moment of singularity of this concept through which it “steps into actual reality”, but the individual does correspond to the concept of freedom and therefore embodies a unity of particularity and universality, becoming truly free as a singular individual, insofar as it knows and practises the ethics of — forever uncertain, unpredictable, unmasterable — fair play in its interplay with other members of society.

Freedom is thus singularized in the individual who identifies with the universal ethos of fair interplay.249 As Hegel would have it, however, the singularization of the concept of freedom, where it becomes reality, would occur only with the state as real, institutionalized, objective will, which paves the way for thinking the singularity of freedom in its realization in the world as the monarch (cf. § § 275, 279f) and consequently in the individual citizen’s identification with the state’s, or the monarch’s universal will as an empowered anchor for power over sociating live-movement. But even on this point Hegel seems to vacillate. Consider the following passage:

Die Vernünftigkeit besteht, abstrakt betrachtet, überhaupt in der sich durchdringenden Einheit der Allgemeinheit und der Einzelheit und hier konkret dem Inhalte nach in der Einheit der objektiven Freiheit, d.i. des allgemeinen substantiellen Willens und der subjektiven Freiheit als des individuellen Wissens und seines besondere Zwecke suchenden Willens — und deswegen der Form nach in einem nach gedachten, d.h. allgemeinen Gesetzen und Grundsätzen sich bestimmenden Handeln. — Diese Idee ist das an und für sich ewige und notwendige Sein des Geistes. (§ 258 Note)

Viewed abstractly, conformity with reason consists above all in the interpenetrating unity of universality and singularity and here, according to the concrete content, in the unity of objective freedom, i.e. of the universal, substantial will, and subjective freedom as individual knowing and its [this knowing’s, ME] will pursuing particular purposes — and therefore, in its form, in an action that determines itself according to thought, i.e. universal laws and principles. — This idea is the being of spirited mind that is, in and for itself, eternal and necessary. (§ 258 Note)

Hegel has already uncovered that the particular individual, “in pursuit of its particular purposes” is nolens volens led back and tied back to the universal as an organic social totality through the interdependency of the members of civil society (RPh. § 189). Moreover, the individual as a free person is always already tied to and obliged to acknowledge and respect something infinite and far exceeding itself, namely, the abstract-universal, socio-ontological status of free personhood of all members of civil society. Now he wants to insist that the universal connection cannot assert itself only unknowingly and implicitly through the interdependent actions of free, contract-making persons, but must assert itself knowingly and explicitly in the conscious actions of individuals who act in accordance with “thought, i.e. universal laws and principles” thus constituting a unity, no longer of universality and particularity, as one would expect from the earlier formulation of the diremption of civil society into its extremes, but of “universality and singularity”, albeit that this singularity is characterized as “individual knowing and its [this knowing’s, ME] will pursuing particular purposes”. The universal moment of the concept of freedom is no longer singularized in the “substantial will” of the state as an “independent power”, but in the knowing individual itself!

The interconnections between reason, the idea and being are explicit in this passage. Reason and the idea are synonymous, and “being” is here a synonym for reality, i.e. realized presence. The idea of freedom consists now in the reality of the individual member of society “pursuing particular purposes” knowingly acting according to “thought, i.e. universal laws and principles”. Such “thought, i.e. universal laws” cannot be merely the positive laws posited by the state as the real agent of the universal, for such laws cannot be thought as universal by the individual. To attain the “unity of universality and singularity”, the singular individual must now know the universal. It is no longer sufficient that the interplay of civil society itself — in which the members of civil society “pursuing particular purposes” are willy-nilly entwined and which has always already exceeded the individual and its “arbitrary will” to enter or not to enter a social contract — prevail as the universal, free game “behind the backs” of the players in civil society. Rather, now this universal, groundless power interplay itself must be knowingly affirmed as the “objective freedom” in which the individuals are partaking, and this affirmation takes place through the individuals’ determining their actions according to the “universal laws and principles” of such free interplay which are nothing other than the rules of fair play. Singularity thus affirms the riskiness of freedom itself.

If there is to be a “unity of objective freedom, i.e. of the universal, substantial will, and subjective freedom as individual knowing and its [this knowing’s, ME] will pursuing particular purposes” at all, this unity must exist in the first place in the singular individual’s fair play, i.e. in “action that determines itself according to thought, i.e. universal laws and principles”. The interplay of civil society knowingly affirmed by its singular, individual members thus attains, as the ethos of fair play, the socio-ontological dignity of “eternal and necessary” “objective freedom”, and the state only accords with this “objective freedom” by adjudicating and judiciously steering the interplay and securing the forms of freedom of this interplay. The positive law posited by the state is in accord with freedom only insofar as it is in conformity with the deeper-lying “universal laws and principles” of free and fair social interplay realized in real individuals as players in the interplay. But then it is hard to regard the state as owing its existence to anything so lofty as “God walking in the world” (§ 258 Add.), as Hegel formulates in the addition to the very same paragraph, that is, unless God is understood simply as the ‘fair god’250 of free interplay, i.e. as a definite historical constellation of being whose pith is individual freedom.

Furthermore, although he dialectically unfolds the state as the substantial realization of the concept of freedom in the world, Hegel immediately concedes that this “actual-reality” can be and is already tarnished and corrupted, standing as it does “in the world and thus in the sphere of arbitrary will, contingency and error.” (in der Welt, somit in der Sphäre der Willkür, des Zufalls und des Irrtums § 258 Add.) “With the idea of the state, one must not have particular states in view, nor particular institutions, but rather, one must view for itself the idea, this actually-real god.” (Bei der Idee des Staats muß man nicht besondere Staaten vor Augen haben, nicht besondere Institutionen, man muß vielmehr die Idee, diesen wirklichen Gott, für sich betrachten. § 258 Add.) But the idea, as a look of the beingness of beings seen by the speculating mind, is invariably overlooked, “because it is [...] easier to uncover defects than to grasp the affirmative element” ([w]eil es [...] leichter ist, Mängel aufzufinden, als das Affirmative zu begreifen, § 258 Add.).

Indeed, Hegel insists on the paradoxical standpoint that the state is the “actual reality of the ethical idea” (Wirklichkeit der sittlichen Idee, § 257), regardless of any shabby, contingent, corrupted, empirical reality of the state standing in the “sphere of arbitrary will, contingency and error” (§ 258 Add.). This sounds very much like the state ought to correspond to the universal, the concept of freedom, but, in the finite human world, it does not and cannot. The real state in the world is therefore untrue in Hegel’s sense. And yet Hegel is often extremely scathing and sarcastic about those who insist on an ought, “especially in the political domain” (vornehmlich auch im politischen Felde, EnzI § 6 Note). He accuses their mere understanding “proud of its Ought, as if the world had waited on it to find out how it ought to be but is not” (auf das Sollen [...] eitel ist, als ob die Welt auf ihn gewartet hätte, um zu erfahren, wie sie sein solle, aber nicht sei, Enz. § 6 Note). But here Hegel himself seems to be reduced to the position of saying that the state ought to correspond to its concept as absolute, divine, effectively productive power and substantial end in itself, which is knowable through reason but in human reality does not live up to its concept.

Does Hegel’s scathing mockery of moralists redound here on his own head? Is it merely an irony that the state ought to be the concrete realization of the infinite idea of freedom but in fact is subject to the finiteness of the world including the limited understanding and power struggles of mere politicians and also to the vanity and vainglory of monarchs, presidents and other individual heads of states? Is the realization of freedom in the world the sociating power interplay itself that, because it can never be effectively mastered, can be both fair and unfair? Where Hegel quips that if reality does not correspond to its concept, then all the worse for reality, do we not have to retort in this case that the concept of the state as embodiment of the universal is a mere dream of reason, bereft of adhesion with the finite, mortal human world which even misrecognizes the nature of freedom itself? Is it not more appropriate and truer to philosophical reason with its ontological insight to concede the everlasting, unbridgeable gulf between the concept of freedom and its realization in a finite human world, inevitably and essentially riven by strife and constantly in the motion of power play? Or is it something about the very socio-ontological concept of freedom itself that prevents social reality from ever being imbued by reason as Hegel envisages it so that it is, in truth, not a matter of a shortfall of reality measured against the yardstick of the concept, but of thinking through the concept of freedom itself differently from Hegel? Let us examine these not merely rhetorical questions more closely.

Hegel’s speculative dialectic seeks in the transition to the state as a “higher power” a reconciliation of the diremption between the moments of particularity and universality in civil society, i.e. their unity in singularity, and this in accord with the concept of freedom. The concept of freedom here is nothing other than a look of being, an ontological structure as a facet of an historical constellation of being’s truth as a cast of the beingness of beings. Could it be that this concept or ontological structure itself is irremediably torn? If that were the case, then any attempt to heal the rip to attain a standing presence would be essentially, i.e. in the concept itself, Sisyphean, and not merely a result of the “infinite” concept becoming sullied by having to be realized finitely “in the sphere of arbitrary will, contingency and error”. And this is indeed the socio-ontological truth of the matter: Freedom, of its inner nature, its essence, is individualized, with each individual human being acting in the world as an origin of its own powers and according to its own perspectival understanding of the world in any given situation into which it has been cast. It is not merely that human beings do not act according to their “reason”, i.e. irrationally under the control of their ‘emotions’ or limited self-interests, nor that human beings fail to act according to a unified, universal concept of freedom, but that all understanding of the world in its truth is essentially splintered into countless individual perspectives (cf. Chapter 10.7), even when the individual is not acting according to (the particularity of) self-interest, and that the concept of freedom itself requires its self-splintering into individual perspectives and corresponding individual moves in an interplay. Each individual human being is and remains essentially a free power centre in sociating interplay, no matter how ‘universal’ and un-self-interested its intentions are, acting even “according to thought, i.e. universal laws and principles” (§ 258 Note).

The power interplay among human beings can never be raised irrevocably to an harmonious, resolved unity in which all power has been defused or oriented in a unified direction. Nor can there be an irrevocable, final submission to a universal will of state without perverting the very concept of freedom, which can never ‘close together’ its universal moment of a state as a “higher power” with its moment of singularity, which resides inevitably in a multitude of individual human beings sociating via fathomless power interplay. In the present context we will take singularity of freedom to mean the free human individual who wills the universality of laws and principles governing ethical life, i.e. of a shared freedom, and thus corresponds to the universal moment of the concept of freedom not through willed submission to a higher, “unmoving” power, but by living an ethos. This is in line with Hegel’s ontological determination of the concept in his Logik. According to the paraphrase of the Logik in the Enzyklopädie, “[...] each of its [the concept’s ME] moments can only be grasped immediately out of and with the others” ([...] kann jedes seiner [des Begriffs ME] Momente unmittelbar nur aus und mit den anderen gefaßt werden, EnzI§ 164) so that, in particular, “[t]he singular-individual is the same as the actual-real, only that the former has come forth from the concept and is thus universal [...]” ([d]as Einzelne ist dasselbe, was das Wirkliche ist, nur daß jenes aus dem Begriffe hervorgegangen, somit als Allgemeines [...] ist, Enz. § 163 Note). Applied to the concept of freedom, this implies that the free human individual as the singularity of freedom has to be thought first of all in unity with the moment of the universality of freedom, and not yet as having succumbed to the diremption of the concept of freedom into its extremes of singularity as the private individual, on the one hand, and universality as the state thought as a superior, aloof power embodying the universality of freedom, on the other.

Even if the state as a “higher power” achieves a “unity of its universal final purpose and the particular interests of individuals” (§ 261), such a unity is only ever a balancing out of particular interests (in a compromise) which can never encompass the singularity of human freedom, but at most suppress it by demanding unquestioning obedience and submission to the state’s posited laws, which indeed, today, a state demands in the name of democracy. Even when there is (ethical) concord in a society with regard to the “universal laws and principles” of active interplay that are in accord with freedom, there remain ongoing, ever new, contentious differences among singular, reason-imbued individuals over the interpretation of these laws and principles in any given situation, and therefore also a power interplay over which interpretation is to prevail.

Even if there were a shared ethos of fair interplay (which would amount to the realization of the concept of a liberal society in an ethos of social living itself), not only would the interplay itself remain a power play of particular interests, but there would also be an ongoing power play over the concrete interpretation of fairness in particular game-situations of interplay coming about unforeseeably and unexpectedly in countless new combinations. The very ethos of free and fair interplay includes strife and conflict, and the individual player’s ethical duty is in the first place to this ethos, and only in the second place to the state as the powerful instance through which the interplay is mediated and adjudicated.

As we shall see below in Chapter 13, the power interplay over the interpretation of the universal as concretely shared, sociating freedom extends beyond civil society into the state itself, so that it can never be thought as the universal instance that is above the fray but, on the contrary, as a focal centre of the power interplay itself in which, among other things, conflicting conceptions of the universal good are fought out alongside compromise outcomes of struggles among particular self-interests. This means, in particular, that the free individual is only partially secured in its freedom by the liberal-democratic state which secures individual rights. Because the multiple individuality of freedom in its singularity never finally closes together in the conclusion of a free, democratic, universal, state will, the free individual, who consciously and responsibly wills a singular conception of universal freedom, and does not seek merely its own idiosyncratic advantage under a camouflage of high-minded universal sentiments, can exist as free only ‘unclosed’ in the interstices of the power interplay into which state power does not reach, that is, in a certain sense, an-archically.

12.3.4The inner constitution of the state and the singularity that remains plural – The endlessly contentious issue of taxation – Never-ending controversy over concrete conceptions of the universal good – The two-way power-mediation between civil society and state - The media and freedom of speech

Although it ought to be the embodiment of the universal, the state remains permeated by the particularity of finite human beings wielding power in endless, mutually estimating power plays, whether they are seeking their own advantage or not, and insofar the state itself is never entirely ‘above’ civil society. No matter whether it be a monarch, a president, a minister, a head of a civil service department, a party leader or some other influential politician, it is individual human beings who wield political power, and that never absolutely but always relatively in power interplays with other players. No matter how the bearers of political power ‘should’ be imbued with the aim of the universal well-being of a people or with upholding through law and venerable institutions the forms of freedom lived out in the ethical practices of society, there are always abuses and questionable stretchings of political power: “bad conduct can disfigure it [the state] in many respects” (übles Benehmen kann ihn [den Staat] nach vielen Seiten defigurieren, § 258 Add.). Such “bad behaviour” on the part of agents of the state high or low would be accordingly merely an instance of reality not living up to its concept, which would not impinge on the state as the universal instance of freedom. Hegel even provides for “[t]he securing of the state and the governed against abuse of power on the part of the authorities and its officials” ([d]ie Sicherung des Staats und der Regierten gegen den Mißbrauch der Gewalt von seiten der Behörden und ihrer Beamten, § 295), thus already implicitly conceding the necessity of a division of powers within the state.

However, it is not merely a matter of those wielding political power in some office of state inevitably acting badly and thus failing to live up to an Ought, but of the ‘good’, well-intentioned, contentious, never-ending power play over (the interpretation of) the universal of freedom itself and within the state as the concrete universal with its various, particular organs. Whether this power play corresponds to its concept or not depends upon whether it is fair or not within the constitutional rules of play, but the power play itself as sociating movement is an essential moment of the state as free, arising not merely from the disparity of various, particular self-interests that distort the universal nature of the state in its sublime superiority in the direction of mere self-interest, but from the singularity of freedom itself in individuals which defies the unification of such singularity in the person of a single, sovereign head of state.

Paradoxically, the singularity of freedom, despite all attempts to unify it in a single subject, remains plural, and such plurality of the singularity of freedom cannot be attributed merely to the capriciousness and arbitrariness of individual will, but belongs essentially to the concept of freedom itself, just as has been shown in an earlier chapter (Chapter 10.6) that truth itself splinters into individual perspectives. The singularity of freedom, as already mentioned, is to be understood in the present context as that individual will that wills (its correspondence with) the universality of the concept of freedom, thus willing its own elevation above the plane of mere, particular self-interest. Such an individual is the citizen rather than the private individual playing the power play for gain in civil society or withdrawn into the enjoyment of its own private sphere and without a concern for the universal matters of politics.

Hegel, however, grants the state an ontological dignity and majesty of existence in itself, conceding even that the liberty and property rights of individuals, the life-blood of civil society, may be sacrificed to the state’s higher, universal purpose. The state is thus accorded its own, autonomous raison d’être, and the foundation of the state that was supposed to reside, in the first place, in guaranteeing the infinite dignity of personhood is not merely aufgehoben, but relativized, diluted, negated and sacrificed to a self-positing, higher instance. This is nowhere more apparent than with the endlessly contentious issue of taxation as a major way in which personhood is relativized and diluted through an incursion into private property rights in the name of the universal good. Taxation exercised the minds of many of the early moral and political philosophers of the modern age as a major topic, and that for good reason, for it is indeed civil society that produces the wealth that enables the state to exercise real power. Today, by contrast, taxation as a crucial socio-ontological phenomenon has entirely disappeared from the philosophical agenda, being regarded as a subject for taxation specialists within the social science of economics. It nonetheless still deserves philosophical attention as one of the principal hinges between civil society and the state and as a major sore point between the state and its subjects that has many times become a running sore of rebellion, uprising and even revolution.

On the one hand, the levying of taxation is necessary and legitimate insofar as the necessity of the state as a real institution is granted in accordance with the concept of freedom itself. The state must have disposal over a part of social wealth and income to function as a state; the members of civil society must contribute something of (the fruits of the exercise of) their abilities to the state in its universal status. Because the state is the universal instance standing above civil society, the contribution to its upkeep must also be universal, and this universal Vermögen (asset, capability, potential) is money as the universal reified value which, on the one hand, allows the state to “buy what it needs” (kauft der Staat, was er braucht, § 299 Add.) and, on the other, leaves the individual free to make its contribution to the state as “mediated through its arbitrary will” (durch seine Willkür vermittelt, § 299). “What is to be contributed, however, can only be determined in a just way by being reduced to money as the existing universal value of things and services” (Das zu Leistende aber kann nur, indem es auf Geld, als den existierenden allgemeinen Wert der Dinge und der Leistungen, reduziert wird, auf eine gerechte Weise [...] bestimmt werden, § 299)

Hence, the existence of universal value reified quantitatively in money enables both an individual equality and therefore justice understood as fairness (the individual taxpayer only has to contribute so-and-so many dollars laid down quantitatively in a fair way that requires transparency and simple principles rather than arbitrary positing) and individual freedom (the individual can exercise its abilities any way it wants to earn the money income of which a part is siphoned off as taxes). This is the favourable side of the abstract universality of reified value in correspondence with the abstract universality of personal freedom and the concrete universality of the state: individual freedom and reified universality are essentially linked, enabling a contribution to the state’s universal task to be made without the suppression of individual freedom.

On the other hand, however, there is the unfavourable side of the state’s power to raise taxes. There is no intrinsic measure to a level of just taxation or principled criteria for the kinds of levies, duties, tariffs, excise duties, sales taxes, value-added taxes, stamp duties, fees, etc. etc. that the state can impose arbitrarily through its formally legitimate procedures for passing taxation legislation, which is a part of the state’s administrative legislation, as opposed to the legislation applicable to the power interplay in civil society itself. Taxation legislation has no inner principle, but is posited arbitrarily by the state’s formally proclaimed will which justifies specific taxation measures on an ad hoc basis, employing supposed ‘arguments’ that seem pertinent at the time. Such arguments ought to formulate the state’s will to do the universal good for society and the nation as a whole, but they often smack of political calculation (e.g. pandering to sectoral interests of the electorate, raising taxes only after being reelected, etc.) and of sovereign caprice, especially in the state’s assessment, via its taxation officials and intricate, arcane bureaucratic regulations, of a given citizen’s tax burden.

The more the state appropriates universal tasks of substance to its own agency, the more taxation it needs, and such universal tasks (such as health, education, old age care, defence, culture, environmental protection, etc. etc.) depend crucially upon a concrete conception of universal well-being that the state posits of its own will through the government of the day. The more the state arrogates universal tasks to itself, including tasks that could be fulfilled indirectly through the self-interest-driven interplay of civil society, the more it must make incursions into the private lives and private property rights of its citizens. This contradiction, which at core is that between self-esteeming self-reliance and being cared for, between the freedom of sociating moves and movement, and subjugation to a higher power, is never finally resolved but, at least in democratic societies, remains a perpetual point of political tension in the constitutionally sanctioned forms of political struggle (election campaigns, parliamentary debate, public controversy in the media of public opinion, etc.) over concrete conceptions of universal well-being.

In democratic societies, it may just be possible for civil society to claw back some of the purportedly universal tasks and universal value (taxes) that the state has arrogated to itself, or there may a broad social consensus that certain tasks must be undertaken by (a part of) the state, or there may be a clamouring on the part of the people to be relieved of the risks of the interplay in civil society in the name of ‘solidarity’, but this all depends not only on the nature of the task as part of the public weal, but also on the consciousness of the populace at large, i.e. on constantly wavering public opinion and whether it tends toward wanting to care for itself or toward wanting to be cared for. Caring for the people is also a way in which the state exercises and consolidates its rule over the people. The members of society who come to enjoy the state’s welfare benefits are exposed to the state’s definition of caring-for as laid down in a labyrinth of regulations and as administered by its bureaucracy (cf. Chapter 6.5).

Apart from the never-ending controversy and conflict over conceptions of the universal good as part of the concrete, living movement of the realization of the concept of freedom, which in turn has oscillating effects on taxation levels, there is the inherent tendency of state power to augment itself insofar as it meets no resistance, thus encroaching on the free interplay of civil society. The politician embodies a will to political power (that remains always contested in political power plays), and, since an accretion of power is invariably preferred by any holder of political power as compared to a diminution, the politician — who also enjoys his or her own reflection in the mirror of wielding political power, quite apart from whether any abuse of political power is involved in such self-enjoyment — is the agency through which the state augments its own power, thus assuming more and more paternalistic characteristics. The tendency for political power to augment goes hand in hand with the tendency to increase taxation as the universal, real, reified means of financing such political power and rule. The tax burden imposed upon civil society tends to rise ‘naturally’, ‘of itself’, in a scarcely perceptible creep unless counteracted by a decisive counter-movement and opposition from civil society that comes to forceful expression in democratic debate. Such a debate is held in tension by the contradiction between self-estimative self-reliance and the desire to be securely and comfortably cared for by the state.