1

THE YOUNG HEGEL. WRITINGS AND

SKETCHES
Translation, introduction and notes by José María Ripalda

FUND OF ECONOMIC CULTURE.

Spain, 2014.

TEXT SELECTION
INDEX:
- Text 1: Introduction. José María Ripalda. P. 4 to 39
- Text 2: Concept of positivity. P. 40 to 160.
- Text 3: Sketches and notes on positive religion.
P. 161 to 183
- Text 4: Jesus and his destiny. P. 184 to 268.
- Text 5: The positivity of the Christian religion (New
beginning). P. 269 to 282.
 2

In memory of Alberto Llanos, Zoltan Szankay, Santiago González Noriega, who

under military dictatorships and despicable democracies found encouragement in
the luminous rebellion of the young Hegel
 3

SUMMARY

Introduction

I. Tübingen/Bern (1792-1794)
II. Bern (1795)
III. Bern (1795-1796)
IV. Between Bern and Frankfurt (1796-1797)
V. Frankfurt (1797-1800)
VI. Frankfurt (1798-1800)

Appendix
Indices
 4

TEXT 1:
[P. xi – xxxviii]
INTRODUCTION

YO.
What Hegel wrote in his first 30 years of life - until 1800 therefore - has
been the subject of several translations into Spanish. Very well known is Alfredo
Llanos and Rainer Estrada's The Spirit of Christianity and its Destiny (Buenos
Aires: Kairós, 1970) with a vibrant and erudite Introduction by Llanos. A similar
mood animated a few years later the most extensive translation of all, which
Zoltan Szankay left finished , but without being able to finish outlining with an
introduction and his notes; once contextualized with some minor writings and
the introduction, which I myself wrote, it was published in the
Economic Culture Fund in 1978 under the title Writings of Youth . IIn fact this Comment [JR1]: although the numbering of
the notes in the Introduction is correlative,
I am in favor of putting - as in the rest of
translation was limited to little more than two major titles: “The positivity of the book - the notes at the foot of the page
and also numbering per page
the Christian religion” and “The spirit of Christianity.” The previous texts were
missing, among them the History of Jesus , which had just been carefully
translated and introduced by Santiago González Noriega (Madrid: Taurus, 1975).
On the other hand, what still counted as works – including a completely artificial
title (“People's Religion and Christianity”) for the first fragments – is currently
seen as a series of less coherent manuscripts, which until now have largely
continued without translate into Spanish. II Meanwhile the preparation of the 2nd
volume of the critical edition about to be published, III Not only has it altered the
established chronology, but it has made it necessary to introduce new texts and
remake other, very complex ones, reestablishing their various versions.
In general , rather than finished texts - as is the case of the "History of
Jesus" - , it is a series of "pensées " and sketches, although not merely
occasional, but in line with a fairly defined program of tasks. and readings,

I
1
Szankay, whose trace was lost in Chile with the Pinochet coup, was unfindable,
until, years later , I ran into him at the Pädagogische Hochschule in Oldenburg. He
died in September 2010, leaving an indelible memory among those of us who knew
him .
II One of these manuscripts – No. 6 of this edition – was competently translated with
Introduction and notes under its classic name (“Fragment of Tübingen”) by Mª
Carmen Paredes in the Revista de Filosofía (Complutense University), vol. VII (1994),
no. 11, ps. 139-176.
III GWF Hegel. Gesammelte Werke . Hamburg: Meiner, 1968-. Volume 1 was published
in 1989. For volume 2 the scheduled date is 20 14. T he paginations of both volumes
marginally accompany the text of this translation. In the notes the critical edition is
cited as HGW , followed by volume and page.
 5

which over the years he himself changes blindly. Seen „at face value ‟ it may
seem like a coherent development; but this coherence is not immanently
deducible, since it comes from an outside that is partly an inside, that is, from a
historical process that dominates Hegel, because he is immersed and forms part
of it directly, before being able to close an arc. always partial reflective. There
is hardly a philosophy that has responded so closely to the drift of its time; and
this correspondence also applies to the history of its reception, “contaminated”
IV
like few others by its political context. It is precisely this type of reflective,
personal texts, of more or less elaborate reactions to readings and events, of
unfinished projects, of materials saved for later writing, that are selected for
this translation. In this mosaic the pretension of literary and theoretical
compactness sought by the first editor, Hermann Nohl, is dissolved with a more
demanding philology.V of these sometimes wisps of text.
Currently, after the 3rd volume of the Gesammelten Werke was published
in 1991 with the reading extracts that Hegel, following a habit of the time, used
to do in detail, all the material we have about the young Hegel has been
systematized, which of all In any case, it has reached us incomplete. As for
schoolwork, whether from school or university, whether from study such as the
long extract of psychology written in Bern, or the studies - partially preserved -
of astronomy, geometry, mechanics and optics already from school, constitute
together with the reading extracts, a voluminous material that is rather up to
the researcher to study in its original version. I consider its complete translation
into Spanish to be of little editorial convenience and little research

IV Domenico Losurdo dedicated a series of works to this aspect in the 80s that are
only now beginning to be translated into Spanish and on which I base myself in this
regard. Three of them (and part of a 4th ) are found together in the German
translation (by E. Brielmayer) Hegel und das deutsche Erbe . Köln: Pahl-Rugenstein,
1989. I find chapter especially interesting. “III. Hegels Wirkung im 19. Jahrhundert”
by Christoph Helferich, GWF Hegel . Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979. 96-150.
V Hegels theologische Jugendschriften. 1 Tübingen, 1907; repr. photom. Frankfurt:
Minerva, 1966. The Bismarck era had marked the lowest point or, if you like, the
maximum rejection of Hegel, when neither the liberal conception of the Prussian
State that Hegel defended, nor his praise of Protestant radicalism nor his sympathy
for the French Revolution, was tolerable. (Cf. Domenico Losurdo, op. cit , ps. 450-
454.) The task that Diltheyan historicism undertook at the turn of the century
consisted precisely of recovering for Wilhelmine glory a Hegel without continuity with
the Berlin Hegel or political danger. This encouraged pre-systematic Hegel to be
fattened by providing it with a “work”, as Hermann Nohl, then a young disciple of
Dilthey, did.
 6
VI
effectiveness.

Excursion 1: The question of authorship

The attribution of authorship to Hegel encounters in many of his youthful

texts greater limits than those attributable to finished and signed works. It has
even generated real academic storms in the case of the Manifesto/Program of
1796/97. To put it briefly, the ideas of this manifesto correspond in its beginning
rather to Schelling, in its end to Hölderlin; but Schelling's ideas are collected in
neighboring texts of Hegel ( v. g. infra, no. 29), and Hölderlin's ideas appear
throughout the phase of his most intimate rapport with Hegel ( nos. 28 to 39) and
even after. So those who defend the authorship of Hegel or Schelling or Hölderlin
would be compatible, even without having to admit joint literary authorship. On
the other hand, the undisputed Hegelian authorship of notes 29 to 39 is in no
case complete or exclusive. All of these Hegel manuscripts copy, rework,
criticize other people's texts, irregularly grafting their own reflections, which do
not have to be exclusive either, mixing various texts and with them their own
ideas. VII A fine intuitive suspicion on the part of Otto Pöggeler, supported by
distrust of the established chronology of Hegel's manuscripts, was enough for the
dispute to be revived in 1967. VIII without reaching an agreement so far. What can
be deduced from all this lengthy discussion is its banality. The researchers were
not to be below the breadth of interests of the young Hegel himself. More
important than philologically compartmentalized enclosures is to pursue crossed
traces, constellations, a broad historical framework that certainly exceeds even
the philosophical discipline; and this all the more so since the majority of Hegel's
youthful texts are above all a seismograph and lack public pretension. In the
specific case of the Manifesto/Program of 1796/97, its discoverer Franz
Rosenzweig gave it the risky name in 1917 of “First systematic program of
German Idealism”. Risky, because it may be claiming too much from the text,
and risky above all because it focused – in my opinion exaggeratedly – the debate
on hypothetical individual authorships. Surely Rosenzweig intended something
like establishing a brilliant founding moment of idealist speculation. This
interpretative orientation more typical of the „Frühromantik ‟ has continued to
operate for decades as a hidden substratum under the philological task of the

VI The presence of some excerpts and studies was justified to give more context to
the chronologically partial translation of the 1978 Writings of Youth ; but it does not
correspond to the criteria of this publication. This is also the case of the “Geometric
Studies” of 1800. On the other hand, the outlines of The Constitution of Germany
(1798-1801) were published in 1998 in volume 5 of the critical edition; its greatest
and most decisive part already comes from the Jena years; It makes sense, therefore,
to publish them all together in that context better than in the years of his first
sketches in Frankfurt. Cf. editor Kurt Meist's comments in HGW 5. 554 s.
VII Rosenkranz even designated as “studies” Hegelian fragments of indisputable
originality and importance at least in part, especially the first of them (26.1), whose
quotes recur again and again in the writings of the end of Bern and Frankfurt.
VIII Otto Pöggeler, “Der Verfasser des ältesten Systemprogramms des deutschen
Idealismus”, repr. in: Ch. Jamme, H. Schneider (eds.), Mythologie der Vernunft .
Hegels >ältestes Systemprogramm< des deutschen Idealismus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1984. 126-143.
 7

German academy.
With regard more specifically to Hegel's own school works, it even seems
problematic to me to include them among his “works.” Rather, I consider them -
against the criteria of critical edition- as documents and I would have counted
them among the materials of volume 3. IX However, the “Appendix” at the end of
this translation presents as a documentary some examples of homework
assignments signed by Hegel when he was still at school (the “Gymnasium illustre
” in Stuttgart), as well as an occasional poem.

The present translation is concerned, therefore, with following quasi-

criminalistically this plot of notes, sketches, fragments, essays - rarely finished
or preserved in their entirety -, which trace a kind of irregular and discontinuous
march, even dispersed, often as direct reaction to readings. The amazing thing is
that, once what could be considered the climax of this progression, it is abruptly
interrupted and the attempt is apparently abandoned. This moment is
dramatically marked in the letter to Schelling on Christmas 1800 (collected here,
like other letters at decisive moments of the young Hegel). The enigma of this
„coupure ‟ is something that has often been skipped with poles that are too long.
We will still have to do throughout this Introduction.
A critical edition is essential for philological research; On the other hand,
translations, by definition, cannot be critical („traduttore, traditore ‟ ). And
when these are not compact published works, but rather unfinished, incomplete
texts that have not even been definitively fixed, the critical edition itself may
become very unusable for reading. It may even become essential to implicitly
build a user edition („Studienausgabe ‟ ) in the original language to transfer to
another language, to another culture in a more assimilable way contents that can
enrich it, but that come from another linguistic and cultural field. It is a delicate
task that this translation, in the absence of a „Studienausgabe ‟ , has had to
address. In this sense, and only in this sense -although I have also resorted
directly to the manuscripts-, the present translation also includes an editing
task. In the format that I have chosen, I do not completely follow the order of
presentation of the critical edition, for example the division between texts of
direct tradition and indirect transmission, although I always indicate it in a note.
IX Karl Rosenkranz, Hegels Leben - 1 1844; repr. photom. Darmstat: Wiss. Buchges.
1977 (with postface by Otto Pöggeler) - calls them “Urkunden”. Johannes Hofmeister
speaks of “Dokumente” in the title of his reasoned compilation Dokumente zu Hegels
Entwicklung . Stuttgart, 1936. Certainly this would not prevent, from focusing on the
titles printed during Hegel's lifetime, also considering the other manuscript remains
as “documents” or, on the contrary, from trying to convert them into “works” (as
Nohl did).
 8

In general I reduce the bibliographic and historical annotation in the

notes; But I have tried to make space for a free and respectful reading. It is not
about burdening yourself with the details of the sources, that is what critical
editing is for and Google for historical references; More difficult is the issue of
the underlying topic, in which the critical edition is limited with a certain
hieraticism to verifying the text and literal quotations. X In any case – as far as a
translation or a user edition is concerned – loading up with too much knowledge
at the output can easily get in the way of the real work of “reading”. My option
in this case has been to leave clues for possible further study.

II
Tübingen

X We will have to return to this topic. Simply verifying the quotes from Nathan the
Wise obviously v. g. that some professor - for example of Hegel - could use Nathan to
bring his students closer to extreme theses of the „Aufklärung ‟ or even to Spinozism.
As I indicate at the end of this Introduction, the quote from Pascal at the end of
Faith and Knowledge places this text as a solemn resolution of the Dispute of
Pantheism, but does not demonstrate, however, that Hegel has read it. The
“neologists” are not directly cited by Hegel and yet they belong to the topic he used
(vg p. 86).
 9

When Hegel entered the university in 1788, the training he received from
the "Illustrious Gymnasium " in Stuttgart was exceptional in the double sense of
being reserved for a few and of a quality that seems almost implausible to us. XI In
addition to the intensive study of classical Greco-Latin Antiquity - of course
Homer, Sophocles and Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Epictetus, Tacitus and
Cicero, etc., studied, read in the original and sometimes translated, including
even re versified - Hegel read the most current intellectual magazines, which
constituted the incipient publicity of the German Enlightenment (the 'Aufklärung
' ). This was something very different from the image we usually have of her.
Apart from its basic version, Wolffian scholasticism, the starting point of the
“popular philosophers”, along with the emergence of interest in science, we
must take into account the capture and extension of the “Lumières ” from the
Berlin of Frederick II. ,XIIXIII the Anglophile influence from the Hannover of the
British royal house – although represented for the young Hegel above all by the
Silesian Christian Garve, popularizer of Scottish moral philosophy and translator
of Adam Smith –, the sentimental Enlightenment, whose supreme exponent was
Klopstock of the Odes , and the „Sturm und Drang ‟ , approached early to the 13th

schoolboy Hegel by his most beloved teacher, Löffler ( cf. infra , Appendix).
Much more homogeneous was the social space in which this variety of
trends moved, the richness of which can only be outlined. It was a small group of
officials - like Hegel's father - and Protestant pastors, a group freer than it
seems, given the unavoidable demand for them by the thousand and one German
despots, among whom they circulated with relative independence. Even some
writers, like Klopstock, were beginning to be able to live off their literary
production, following Hume's precedent. The university study of theology itself –
11 the most common, which included philosophy – was the only free career with

XII dedicated the monograph The Divided Nation to the study of this training at
the Gymnasium , as well as at the Tübingen University Stift. Roots of a bourgeois
thinker, GWF Hegel. Madrid: Culture Fund, 1978.
XII This helps to understand Hegel's love for the Prussian State, as the center of
enlightened rationality since Frederick II, and therefore a possible peaceful
realization of the ideals of the "Revolution. " In this sense, the legend of Hegel, the
apologist for Prussian authoritarianism, was an interested distortion of Rudolf Haym (
Hegel und seine Zeit . 1857) at the precise moment when Haym gave up his
progressivism after the failure of the revolution of '48, to take refuge together with
the German bourgeoisie in the monarch and the Prussian army against the threat of
the ascending proletariat.
XIII This succinct enumeration cannot but be merely indicative. Cf. The Divided
Nation, chap. IV. 1.
 1
0
no subsequent burdens, unlike, for example, medicine, which Shiller was forced
to practice in the service of the Duke of Württemberg. It did not imply the
obligation to serve as a pastor, nor – unlike Catholicism – was it considered
exclusive to an ecclesiastical establishment, but apart from it there was no other
outlet than teaching and eventually administration. On the other hand, unlike
Catholic countries – and especially a counter-reformist power like Spain –
theology was not subject to dogma and monitored by the Holy Inquisition. This
meant that, upon contact with the Enlightenment, theology in Protestant
Germany generated an enormous variety of conceptual and vital impulses,
without which the entire German Idealism would have been impossible. In this
sense we must also understand Hegel's insistence on Protestantism as the true
German revolution, and his understanding of a possible and desired national
revolution as a continuation of that first one.
The five years of Tübingen have barely left any traces of writing and in this
sense they are for the historian a kind of dark tunnel, and they must have also
had something of that for Hegel in a decadent and almost monastic boarding
school. Hegel even tried to switch to law, but his father wouldn't let him.
Certainly, once he left school and the family environment, the testimonies
collected by Rosenkranz about Hegel's university life trace a very sociable and
friendly personality profile, which - contrary to the legend of a supposed
"autumn character" - will be maintained. until his last days in Berlin. But it is
above all a fundamental event in his life that occurs in this hidden period: the
„Révolution ‟ . It is not something strange that has occurred without precedent,
the „Sturm und Drang ‟ sensed it in its literary forms under repression. But the
qualitative change occurs in Enlightenment terms – which Hegel will preferably
use – such as the unprecedented fact that for the first time a people began to
“walk on their heads.” All the
 1
1
That Hegel writes after this event will have its imposition, XIV also determining the
theological approach, which Dilthey and Nohl insisted on. Both actually frozen a
decisive key to understanding the critical transformation that the Enlightenment
approach underwent throughout the attempts of the young Hegel. The section
“Absolute freedom and terror” in chapter VI of the Phenomenology of the Spirit
includes in that title for now Hegel's definitive criticism of the French Revolution,
which Hegel always assumed and defended for what it meant, but not without
more so for what it was: you cannot cut heads like you cut a cabbage, Hegel says
there, the Terror is unacceptable; The adjective “absolute” that accompanies
freedom, in this case means abstract, “absolute evil” and not the speculative
absolute, “good”, which responds to what is actually real. The conceptual
problem of the revolution is thus that of the Enlightenment, that of dissatisfaction
with it and its consequences. Of course, this must be taken into account before
starting to read the first sketches that Hegel writes in his own name, no matter
how “theological” they may be.

An example: when the name “nation” or the adjective “national” appears in

No. 1 of our collection of texts by the young Hegel, they must be read from the
perspective of contamination with the “Nation ” of the French Revolution.
Likewise, the “and” that unites the Greeks and Romans of Antiquity is that of
Rousseau's civility that the revolutionary sentiment made its own, a civility that
would inspire Hegelian civility ('Sittlichkeit ' ) and that since the 1930s was to
constitute the preferred objective. of the political denunciation against Hegel as
a pro-revolutionary Frenchman. Furthermore, against stubborn legends, it must be
said that Hegel was a distinguished nationalist, in the sense of demanding a
Constitution and democracy to found a German nation, but not in the populist,
Teutonic, romantic sense that flourished in the anti-war of liberation. Napoleonic.
It was this nationalism that gave Hegel his extreme validity for all progressives –
XV
including Marx – in the 20 years that preceded the revolution of 1848.
XIV Although there is no direct trace of this event in the Tübingen sketches,
Rosenkranz in his biography ( op. cit. , ps. 32 ff.) has left enough data to deduce
Hegel's enthusiasm and his participation in a political club, in which the banned press
was read.
15

XV Hegel did not represent a vague romantic nationalism, but an enlightened and
realistic nationalism (cf. JMR, The limits of dialectics . Madrid: Trotta, 2005, ps. 199-
211). The America that freed itself from a despotic crown does not need it explained.
 1
2
As for the invocation of the original Protestant freedom, it represents –
against Protestantism converted into an “objective” religion – freedom (not, by
the way, the objective Anglo-Saxon “liberties”). As can be seen from the nuance
and the writing, this invocation has an extremely human and sensitive character.
The young Hegel projects this humanity in Antiquity as an image of happy totality
in the face of modern rupture : classical Greece and Judaism, destiny, feeling,
beautiful fantasy, freedom are terms that indicate lines of force in evolution until
they crystallize in the years immediately after Jena (1801-1806) which will
constitute the great speculative, and of course political, theme of his mature
years. A friendship, that of Hölderlin, was going to powerfully drive Hegel from
his university years, especially in the two decisive years between 1796 and 1798.
Formally, this first text in our collection is an excellent example of the way
in which the autonomous thought of the young Hegel begins to take shape based
on his readings and his training. It is a set of brief notes on two pages, which then
crystallize into longer fragments, including essays (such as No. 6), but without
leaving the fragmentarity or harboring pretensions of publication. Hegel, unlike
Schelling – who would say years later (in the corresponding passage from his Berlin
classes on the History of Philosophy) that he had done his training in public –
carried out his training in secret. The numbering of this translation, or of the
critical edition itself, simply follows the manuscripts. In these years Hegel
normally wrote on pages with which he formed 4º booklets (therefore 8 pages);
when writing requires two folios, he often folds one inside the other; When he
requires more, he usually numbers them (sometimes things get complicated,
because he superimposes several numbers or takes advantage of a gap in a sheet
of paper he has at hand to write something different that occurred to him at
another time). In any case and in general terms, the fact that something is
written on the same page or series of pages does not simply imply that it
constitutes a text, a title, nor does it guarantee a single date for its writing; Nor
does chronological order always guarantee a progression, the temporality of Hegel
himself does not always seem to coincide with that of his texts. Hegel often goes

Its political breath continues to breathe the living consciousness of the betrayed
revolution; and it was more against despotism than against Spain itself that he
rebelled. (Cf. Norberto Galasso, “The May Revolution”, in Diaporías, no. 10 ( Buenos
Aires, 2011), ps. 13-30.)
 1
3
back, picking up enlightened themes and figures – such as positivity or Abraham or
Nimrod – that seem to have been surpassed, changing registers and lacking
systematic guidance.
No. 6 itself, which is usually the most commented on in this first series, is
not only a “fragment” because it is unfinished, but it itself is fragmentary. Even
the approach does not achieve homogeneity; The "Aufklärung " , which aims to
provide the guiding thread of an attempt at a systematic treatise, itself offers too
many lines, the antithesis public religion - private religion, more directly political,
is added to that of subjective religion - objective religion, heart - understanding ,
life - doctrine, the sentimental Enlightenment also claims its part and it is the
evocation of classical Greece that ends up illustrating how “the spirit of a people,
its history, religion, degree of political freedom cannot be considered in
isolation.” A name, Lessing, and a quote from his Nathan the Wise ( infra , p. 99),
already read in his school years, point in this closing of his university years to an
almost hidden clue: the “Pantheism Dispute.” (1785), of which there is hardly any
immediate trace in Hegel's sketches of 1793/94 (apart from a mention of Spinoza
XVI
and Hume). Once again the topic goes beyond the literal quotes and frames
them: the decisive decade of Spinozism is that of the 70s and 80s of the 18th
century, from Goethe's poem Prometheus (1774) to Herder's dialogues on God
(1787). It is, in the words of Hermann Timm, XVII of nothing less than a religious
„Sturm und Drang ‟ . Nathan was the reference to that dispute, which could only
be encrypted in the form of a drama, since Lessing had been prohibited in 1778
from continuing to publish on religious topics.
It is known by Rosenkranz (p. 40) the deep impression produced on Tubingue
students by the revelation of Lessing's Spinozist pantheism by Jacobi (in 1789
Jacobi's complete correspondence with Mendelssohn had just been published).
What emerges in Lessing's name is not only radical dissatisfaction with a miserable
Enlightenment and Protestantism, but an imposing will to escape from them,
which Schelling would be the first to systematize with maximum radicalism, while
Kant had chosen - precisely in discussion with Jacobi- for enlightened rationalism.

XVI Walls ( op. cit., p. 141) points out in his brief Introduction signs of a direct
influence by Jacobi.
XVII
17
Gott und die Freiheit . Studien zur Religionsphilosophie der Goethezeit. Band 1:
“Die Spinozarenaissance”. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1974, p. 332.
 1
4
But it is also a specific German enlightenment that after the devastating Thirty
Years' War had saved in its mystics or in isolated figures of great significance such
as Christian Thomasius certain Enlightenment/Protestant traits; these reappear in
the young Hegel in the form of a topic –v. g. life, love against submission,
imposition - and take on special relevance for Goethe and Hegel of 1800 as the
XVIII
“spiritual bond” and the vitalist interpretation of nature.

Bern
In outline no. In the following texts, the criticism of established religion is
of "in crescendo " ferocity. The style is becoming more consistent, harder and
brighter. And in the outline of No. 15, Bern's characteristic notion makes its
energetic appearance: positivity. Protestantism emphasized freedom of
examination, which – as was certainly the case with Hegel – gave it special affinity
with the Enlightenment and even allowed us to see in it not only the end of
“minority”, but even the beginning of the culmination of Humanity a la Joaquin di
XIX
Fiore. On the other hand, Luther was convinced of the fallen nature of
Humanity, so only faith, given by God, and not works, made salvation accessible
to him; In this sense, Kantian access to God in the mode of ethics was
incompatible with Protestantism. This insoluble aporia contained an outstanding
epochal content, to which 20 theologians such as Semler, Spalding, Jerusalem,
etc., called the “neologists”, dedicated their forces.

On the other hand, Gottlob Storr, a prestigious theologian and almost the only
professor of Hegel in the last three years of Tübingen, defended the
“supranaturalist” orthodoxy in the face of Kant's phenomenal push, using Kant
himself „ad hominem ‟ . In very brief terms: if reason is incapable of transcending
experience, what it has to do is remain silent on religious issues and recognize
that the only way to access God has to come from him supernaturally. In revealed

XVIII Cf. Ernst Bloch, Natural Law and Human Dignity . Madrid: Dykinson, 2011 (reed.
from the trans. F. González Vicén), chap. 26 “Christian Thomasius, a German
intellectual without poverty”, espte. its sections “Eggshells” and the following.
XIX
19
The Essay on a Critique of All Revelation – whose quote heads Hegel's first note –
establishes three ages of the world. 1st the sensible, whose God is sensibly imagined,
2nd the conceptual, with a provident and judging God, 3rd, the one that is the telos of
history, the realization of an eternal religion of reason. Fichte's impact was immense.
Nohl ( op. cit. , p. 402) drew attention to the repeated citations of this work in
number 6.
 1
5
knowledge, God directly provides us with an essential “positive” supplement of
theoretical and practical knowledge.XX XXI
Neither Hegel nor his friends could take
him seriously, Schelling's letter to Hegel on Twelfth Night 1795 is expressive
enough. For a few years Hegel will be obsessed with “positivity”, always in the
negative sense directly opposite to that of Storr: the imposed. Even at the end of
the century Hegel will continue trying to unravel the real content and limits of
that rebellion against the imposition of the transcendent.
Precisely in the letter with which Hegel responds to the just-cited letter
from Schelling (January 1795), he tells him that he is “devoted above all to
Kantian philosophy.” The three friends are studying her, as shown by their
XXII
exchange of letters, which at this moment is at its maximum intensity. In
Hölderlin and Schelling the context of this Kant is expressly Spinozist. As for
Hegel, that winter he is gathering materials on Psychology (cf. the postscript of
Hegel's letter to Schelling that same Christmas) and by an extract from the
already “old” notes from Flatt's classes (1790) on psychology, in which some
Kantian passages are interspersed, we have a sample of that “ dedication” to Kant
XXIII
. The manuscript gives an image of intense and even tense study: there is a lot

XX The pair of concepts public religion – private religion, dominant in No. 6, comes
from Jacob Semler. Testimony of Hegel's sensitivity to the problems of the
“neologists” are not only the sketches, but also his correspondence, such as, a few
years later, the letter to Schelling of January 1795 (paragraph 5). Vine. the erudite
and clear article by Mario Jorge de Almeida, “Historical Introduction.” In: J. Rivera,
O. Cube (eds.), The controversy over atheism in Fichte and his time . Madrid:
Dykinson, 2009, ps. 18 ff.
XXI
21
The “repeater” Carl Immanuel Diez, a friend of Hegel's group, responded to Storr
that then God could not intervene from transcendence in the phenomenal world
either. Diez even formed a group to study Kant, which included all of Hegel's friends,
except him; It is not only that he continued to prefer Rousseau (Rosenkranz, p. 28),
but surely – especially after the competent philosophy classes by the anti-Kantian and
also “supranaturalist” Flatt – he considered Kant an abstruse culmination of
comparative Enlightenment moralism. with Lessing. Nor does the style of the Tübingen
sketches match Kant's deductive concentration. Nohl (p. 402) has found in number 6 a
possible quote from Religion within the limits of mere reason ( 1 1793); In any case,
Storr and Diez's reference was Kant's Critiques . A mention of Hegel in a letter to
Schelling (Christmas Eve 1794) awaits “another response” to Storr. Terry Pinkard (
Hegel . A biography. Translated c. García-Trevijano. Madrid: Acento, 2000, ps. 68-73),
following Dieter Henrich, has insisted on the importance of Diez in drawing the picture
of Tübingen theology; but at least Diez's polemic with Storr has left no perceptible
mark on Hegel's sketches.
XXII
Gonzalo Portales has commented on this correspondence: Hegels frühe Idee der
Philosophy. Zum Verhältnis von Politik, Religion, Geschichte und Philosophie in seinen
Manuskripten von 1785 bis 1800. Stuttgart: Frommann, 1994. 78-86.
XXIII
 1
6
of abbreviation, the free third on the side of the page is not regularly respected,
the style is dry, reproductive. For its part, the notes in No. 18 (spring 1795) have
changed narrative with respect to previous issues; it now concentrates on notions,
seeks Kantian coherence, and probes in the direction of Schelling's speculation.
The “History of Jesus” presents that same narrative, precise, delimited, dry, that
had even been preceded, according to Rosenkranz (p. 51) from a synopsis of the
gospel material.
Here he intervenes once again, as in the Renaissance Lorenzo Valla, XXIV the
occasional figure of a revolutionary philology. In the second half of the German
18th century, the manuscripts of the professor of oriental languages in Hamburg,
Hermann Samuel Reimarus, which he never wanted to publish, circulated
anonymously among select people. Reimarus was a well-off “popular philosopher”
and highly respected in society. . . , but with a theoretical double life. And its
hidden theme attacked the very foundations of Christianity: the Jesus of the
Church and the apostles was a falsification that had little to do with the failed
political prophet that he had been in real history. Lessing gradually published
“Fragments” of the secret texts between the years 1774 and 1778 with the
resulting scandal and controversy, which ultimately degenerated for Lessing into a
ban on publishing on theology. It is in this context that “Stories” of the real Jesus
began to be published in contrast to the Jesus of the gospels and the Church, the
first being that of J. J. Heß, along with that of the youth of Jesus by A. F.
Büsching, in 1773. The “Jesus stories” thus become a genre of Aufklärung, to
which Hegel's text also belongs. Only once romanticism began to settle in 19th
century European society did the title “Life of Jesus” clearly predominate,
XXV
reflecting the softened legacy of Reimarus.

Vine. HGW 1. 167-191, along with information about the copy of those classes –
which Hegel must have obtained from a friend – and about the breadth of these
studies in HGW 1. 483-487. Kant's three Critiques are cited (the first and second of
them included the aforementioned controversy of Ten with Storr). Judging by the last
preserved paragraph of Hölderlin's letter to Hegel on January 26, 1795, Hölderlin is
interested in the 3rd Critique. For his part, Hegel, both in the letter to Schelling and
in the notes from the following spring (no. 18), expresses an interest that is not
theoretical but "of more general utility", that is, he approaches Kant "from the pure
point of view." of human interest” (no. 18). Schelling, apparently enthusiastically
following Fichte, represents in this same note a radicalized Spinozism in the I, which
profoundly alters „ab initio ‟ the Fichtean I.
XXIV Cf. The limits of dialectics , ps. 16s.
XXV
25
Even so, “Jesus Stories” continue to be produced, such as those of the moderate
 1
7
Thus, Hegel's “History of Jesus” collects that enlightened legacy in doctrine
and style. Eliminate miracles, the resurrection and the divinity of Jesus (except
that of reason); but for the rest it takes – and will continue to take – the gospels
as a historical document. The style is lapidary, the beginning and the end are
classic with their blunt simplicity. I suspect an underground vibration that comes
from the „sv Kai TAV ‟ that Hölderlin had dedicated to him in Tübingen
(Rosenkranz, p. 40); Schelling's Spinozism is already taking systematic form and
Hegel even attempts an approach to his theoretical position in a note in No. 18.
But the pure ethical religion of Jesus has remained isolated from contemporary
reality in a past without continuity with current religion. “The concept of
positivity” (no. 22) confronts this religion of Jesus with “Christian positivity” and
no. 23 – as if elevating Reimarus' conspiracy theory to a spontaneous historical
degradation – is applied to explain the historical and conceptual step of the
religion from Jesus to Christianity, as well as the current structure of the Church
and its relationship with the State. Hegel's political sense leads him directly to
issues of “more general utility” (no. 18) and speculation does not progress. It is
the Kantian explanation that assumes the direction of a historical reconstruction
of Christianity. Later the explanation will be renewed again and again, leaving
Kant behind, to culminate in 1800 in the last of the essays on “Jesus and his
destiny.”
Perhaps Hegel was not very satisfied with the plausibilities that allowed him
to explain Jesus' transition to Christianity. And the attempt to explain the ethical
figure of Jesus involves tones that Kantianism could not accommodate. In an
excerpt (winter 1795/1796) from Mossheim's Institutiones historiae ecclesiasticae
, Hegel – who quotes him explicitly and implicitly in the main manuscript of “The
Positivity of the Christian Religion” – writes: “every perfect man is Christ by
nature.” . This extension of the divinity of Jesus to all humans, at once
enlightened and anti-enlightened, but in any case expressed in enlightened terms,
corresponds to the matrix of speculative idealism, which Schelling was already
beginning. The fact is that then the unfinished sketch No. 24 brings, as if with a
clarion call, a sudden change of content compared to the Kantianism of the 1795
texts; but the style is definitely contaminated by the rigorous Kantian vigor. It

pastors Karl Hase (1872) or Theodor Keim (1867-1872). The latter, a native of
Stuttgart like Hegel and a student in Tübingen like him, no longer had Kant as a
reference at this university, but rather . . . Hegel.
 1
8
seems to me to be one of the most brilliantly written Hegelian texts – even as
successful as that of the Frankfurt essays on Jesus – and the beginning is as if it
recovered certain declamatory resonances from the long Tübingen manuscript
(no. 6). Historical facts emerge from Kant's guidance and, without abandoning
him, develop their own rationality instead of receiving it from a previous theory.
The illustrated description – and the critique of the Enlightenment itself –
suddenly takes on a tone of conceptual consequence and unusual energy. And it is
that, yes
Hegel repeatedly incorporates quotes from the enlightened Lessing, in this way he
is alluding to the Spinozism of the „Pantheismusstreit ‟ .XXVI
The “Fragments of Historical Studies,” as Rosenkranz calls them, who
assigned them to the Berne years (p. 60), they fit well here due to theme and
style. The critical edition has followed Hoffmeister, who attributed them without
argument to Frankfurt, perhaps because Rosenkranz had placed them in the
documentary appendix of his biography behind chronologically later theological
extracts, or because they are also cited late in Frankfurt. But the indications
given by reading the texts themselves speak for a writing that is rather
simultaneous with “The positivity of the Christian religion.” Furthermore, among
the readings that, according to Rosenkranz, Hegel did in Berne, the passionate
study (and translation) of Thucydides matches fragments 3 and 4, the reading of
Gibbon with 7, that of Hume's History of England with 17 , that of Schiller's
historical works with the 18; “There are great synoptic tables, in which [Hegel]
carefully arranged in chronological order the history of the ecclesial State on the
left, on the right that of the German Empire, and in the center between both
extremes the history of the various Italian States” ( cf. . fragment 14). An excerpt
from Forster dated Berne, which has been preserved, shares the initial theme of
XXVII
fragment 15, in addition to the fact that Forster inspired note nº 20.

XXVI “It is not easy to specify what theological studies Hegel did in Berne, since hardly
any names appear in his papers. The only thing that can be cited are the
Memorabilien - a theological journal edited by Paulus -, the works of Mosheim, the
comments of Hugo Grotius, here and there the names of Kant and Fichte, the
Tractatus theologico-politicus of Spinoza, the novels of Marivaux – which he claimed
had dealt a death blow in France to monastic asceticism and its „against nature ‟ -,
travel books by Forster and others, as well as the Allgemeine Jenaer
Literaturzeitung .” (Rosenkranz, p. 48) “Already towards the end of the Swiss period,
extracts from the master Eckart and Taulero, copied from magazines, are found
among Hegel's papers.” (Rosenkranz, p. 86 f.)
XXVII The brief reference that Rosenkranz has left about Hegel's reading of Forster
 1
9
He is also guided by an illustrated polygraph as Hegel undertakes a vacation
trip with other tutors in August 1796, // without this preventing him from
recording reflections that escape that framework. That same month he wrote a
draft letter to Hölderlin, boiling with a Sturm und Drang that in the next two
years was going to get richer and take on critical accents of destabilization. The
night of Eleusis invoked by Hegel is also still an enlightened slogan; but the
romantics of the Jena circle will go through it with overflowing emotional
subjectivity. It has been assumed that the supposed main work of the young
Hegel, “The Spirit of Christianity,” came next in a great leap. This is what Werner
Hamacher's meritorious edition still believed, XXVIII who brought out of the shadows
the small texts that link Berne with Frankfurt; Now, by including them in the
supposed great work, also with an inadequate order and dating - which I myself
assumed in the edition of Hegel's Writings of Youth (1978) -, it made their
interpretation difficult. Of the same opinion that Hamacher was the 1st. volume
of the critical edition, edited by Nicolin/Schüler: Hegel. Frühe Schriften I (1989).
It took a knock from the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin for certain dark areas of its
collections to receive new light and volume 2 (in preparation) to take on the task
of making the relative chaos in which these notes and sketches are presented
XXIX
more understandable.

rather hides the importance of this name – then infamous as Frenchified – for Hegel. In
1800 Hegel traveled for no known reason to Mainz, the Jacobin republic founded by
Forster, once again occupied by the French, and dated the geometric notes written
there with the Jacobin calendar. Also while he was a tutor in Switzerland, he made a
quick trip to the “revolutionary” city of Geneva. Forster, an exceptional personality,
was the most prominent German Jacobin and, unlike Hegel, he took on the Terror. Cf.
g. Pickerodt, Georg Forster in seiner Epoche. Berlin: Argument, 1982.
XXVIII GWF Hegel. Der Geist des Christentums. Schriften 1796-1800 . Mit bislang
unveröffentlichten Texten (Frankfurt/M.: Ullstein, 1978). This edition presents the
curiosity that its Introduction is not only much longer than the presented text of
Hegel, as it consists of more than 300 pages, but in Germany it constitutes the first
Derridean essay on reading Hegel; At that time, perhaps the only possibility of
publishing on Derrida in Germany? The title of that introduction is: pleroma – zu
Genesis und Struktur einer dialektischen Hermeneutik bei Hegel. Werner Hamacher
has continued to be something like the German reference of deconstruction
XXIX
9
The knock came from an exceptional librarian, unfortunately
prematurely deceased, Eva Ziesche, with her report: Der handschriftliche Nachlass
GWF Hegels und die Hegel-Bestände der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preusssischer
Kulturbesitz. Teil I, Katalog. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1995. His chronological
reordering of the manuscripts was based on exclusively diplomatic criteria and was
therefore only approximate. It has certainly lowered the chronological expectations
based on orthography, which Nohl initiated and had its peak in the Nicolin/Schüler
edition. But above all it has served as a stimulus. Walter Jaeschke, editor of volume 2
 2
0
Characteristic of this moment is the intense coincidence of Hegel and
Hölderlin at least until almost the end of 1798 and the strength that Schelling's
theoretical project gains, for them, even, for Hegel, beyond that date. The
writing of the first of the manuscripts from the last third of 1796, No. 29 - to give
a significant example - could have taken place between 1795 and the first months
of 1797. But, in my opinion, the discursive concentration of the text marks a
distance from the previous essays on positivity; Furthermore, a paragraph in the
2nd part may refer to the crossing through the Alps in August 96. Therefore, it
seems most plausible to me to date these notes from the summer of 1796. A term
originating from Fichte in the criticism of “the positivity of the Christian religion”,
but with a previous trajectory in Hegel himself, takes on great synthetic
importance, the term “object”, especially as a (pejorative) name of the revealed
God: “Object ( infinite)". As for the later additions of a certain length, they can
be plausibly attributed to the winter of 1796/77 (it is not appropriate here to
account for other small late editorial variants, without complicating the reading
too much). The same line follows No. 30 , with a compact speculative wording, in
the key of a Fichte objected by Hölderlin: Being is absolute, indemonstrable, it
can only be believed (the same argument of Jacobi with God), since separation
presupposes the original union . Here the structure of future Hegelian speculation
is outlined, already in a certain way “secularizing” the “Pantheismusstreit ” , until
dissolving it at the end of Faith and Knowledge (1802).
The “Historical Outline on Judaism” (no. 30 ), even repeating images from a
year before (no. 23, heading: “state of the Jewish religion”), gives them a
decisive twist: the state of the Jewish people at the historical moment in that
Jesus emerged had turned “inward, to himself,” his activity was “purely interior
and directed toward himself .” (Hegel points here precisely to what will
constitute the core of his critique of romanticism.) And he cites three historical
figures: the Essenes, John the Baptist, Jesus, who “rose up in struggle against the
eternally dead.” That historical moment of Judaism thus becomes the parable of
the modern situation and Jesus becomes the figure of Hegel's own destiny (or,
rather, of a possible destiny of Hegel, which was the real destiny of Hölderlin).
The mention of Moisés is also repeated, who – as in “Positivity” – will henceforth
be established as THE legislator, without being able to gain, despite some

of the critical edition, has already carried out a rearrangement of these manuscripts,
which he has been kind enough to make available to me.
 2
1
biographical details, his own personality in the later sketches.

Excursion 2: Was Hegel anti-Semitic?

The Jewish people is therefore a metaphor for the modern world, not an
anti-Semitic evocation. Hegel is not referring to his contemporary Judaism either,
but to the historical Judaism of the Bible. There will be those who are suspicious
of the choice of Judaism as a metaphor; but for now the enlightened environment
of the first Hegel is not characterized by its anti-Semitism. Hegel's predilection
for Lessing's Nathan with his equation of the three religions of the Book (on a
pantheistic background as Jacobi implied), the recurring quotation - especially on
the relationship between State and religion - of the proto-Zionist Moses
Mendelssohn, Even the central role in the „Frühromantik ‟ of his daughter
Dorothea, as well as the civil integration of the Jews by the enlightened emperor
Joseph II, are important indications of an atmosphere. In any case, the topic is
complex. XXX XXXI Without leading to a monograph on the subject, we cannot forget
in the later Hegel the 2nd note to & 270 of the Philosophy of Right in favor of the
citizenship equality of the Jews, when this is granted to minority Christian
confessions that some even reject. political precepts. As & 209 says,

Conceiving the self as a general person - in which everyone is equal - is what

characterizes culture, a conscious thought of the general way in which each
person exists. A human being is valuable because he is one, not because he is
Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, German, Italian, etc.

Certainly, from Hegel's theological training comes the consideration of the

Bible as a source of historical knowledge, and of the Gospels as reliable
documents of the contemporary Judaism of Jesus, when these are rather various
compendiums of the primitive Christian kepiyua or -in other words less elegant
terms - of controversially propagandistic documents. No less outrageous is the
interpretation that, in his early writings, Hegel gives of Judaism as a religion of
law, 31 fear, the absolute transcendence of a terrible God, that precisely a
Christian should think twice before applying it to another religion or culture. Also
the assignment to Judaism of the aesthetics of the sublime is manifestly
schematic. On the other hand, even in the sketches of his youth, the figure of
Nimrod or the rebellion against the Roman Empire aroused Hegel's admiration.
What's more, the vision of Judaism both in the Philosophy of History and in the
History of Philosophy takes on a very different bias. This is due to the
fundamental importance that “negativity” takes on from the first writings of
Jena: only because the Jewish people went through absolute rupture and
nothingness, could the consciousness of freedom arise in them ( Werke 12.
388: Philosophy of History ). Finally the same
Jewish theology has sought elements of renewal in the Hegelian philosophy of
religion. Cf. the Jewish Encyclopedia (complete 1906 version), a. v. “Hegel, Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich.”
XXX Gonzalo Portales ( op. cit. ,162-181) has offered a broad summary of the
aspects involved.
XXXI Here we must take into account the influence on Hegel of Kant's philosophy
of religion, for whom the Jews lacked an ethical community (Portals, loc. cit. ).
But in Frankfurt Hegel will identify Kant himself with the Jews precisely because
of his legalistic conception of ethics.
 2
2
Hegel is also writing with the imagination in a stronger way than even the
brilliant style of No. 24, for he is now much more involved. No. 30, the notes on
Flavius Josephus, seem like a manuscript of no great importance, or even rather a
reading extract, pertinent almost more to the materials (volume 3 of the
Gesammelten Werke ) than to the writings; but to me they give me the impression
of a change of paths. Nimrod in the first note could even appear as a student
(“Stalinist”) of Fichte in the middle of a despicable people. Hegel has hardly
developed this figure afterwards, although it is already well drawn and directly
reflects the modern situation. And in the last note Nimrod is displaced by the
literary representation of modern bankruptcy in Abraham (mentioned in
“Positivity” only marginally). It almost seems like the outline of a novel, although
it is the figure of an idea, which freezes literary development. But this figure will
continue to haunt him even after having developed the destiny of Jesus.
Immediately before this last paragraph, two lines trace the illustrated coordinates
(“spirit of…” a la Montesquieu) in which these figures will initially be developed:

The spirit of the Greeks is what is beautiful; the spirit of the orientals, the
sublime and grandiose.

In Hegel's formation, the Greeks represent the ideal of a free and bankrupt
world; The orientals, on the other hand, represent the modern world in
bankruptcy, recalling the enlightened antecedent ( cf. supra , no. 26.1) of
Abraham. Both aspects are correlative and will reappear again and again in the
following sketches. So some small, apparently marginal notes reflect a capital
moment for the creativity of the young Hegel for several intense years.
And here something unexpected arises, a manuscript of erratic origin,
appearing and disappearing twice, disconnected from the series of texts in which
it would be chronologically inscribed. It is written by the hand of Hegel, no one
disputes it; but it has been argued time and again that it cannot be his, since it is
incompatible with what we know about him. This argument would be more
convincing if we assume, for example, that the Bernese Hegel is “enlightened.”
But that Hegel is several things at once and Hegel's illustration is full of creaks
that are not always subterranean; the allusions to Schelling, Fichte, Hölderlin in
the sketches are added from the previous year to what we know from the
 2
XXXII
3
correspondence as hatches to another bilge. It is the style of this
manifesto/program and its composition that does not fit with its Hegelian textual
environment, although this could also apply to a certain extent to the poem
Eleusis . Perhaps the way the sheet is folded – more typical of what was then
called a “billet ” – as well as the thematic composition of its text, hints at a
project that circulated among who? Only, for example, among the three friends
from Tübingen? The important thing is, above all, to READ IT, to see its possible
traces, responses, abandonments in the notes and subsequent essays. Nicolin
planned to begin volume 2 of the critical edition with this text, written in
XXXIII
Christmas of 1796/97. For me part prefer
present it in the end of phase Bernese, well, despite to its projective
character, rather it seems to look at a phase that is about to end (cf. below, p.
355 of my manuscript) .

Frankfurt
It is as if Hegel had made a sudden break, so that no one can imagine that
he controls his “evolution” and has all the cards in his hand. The historian knows
that they never have them, although the philosopher tends to think that he has
the conceptual line as a master key. While Hegel is writing about Abraham, at the
same time he lets out that unexpected nugget - or copies it, sends it, discusses
it... - and remains obsessed with the great essay on Abraham without a break in
continuity. This is shown by the intensity of the manuscript, elaborated and
reworked, accompanied by other attempts, which are, or rather are decomposed,
into collections of notes and ideas, drawn up in the free margin of previous
XXXII
32
Vid. the complete report of Ch. Jamme, H. Schneider (eds.), op. cit., “Einleitung
der Herausgeber”, ps. 19-76 The refusal to attribute it to Hegel was based on an
earlier dating than that currently established by Jamme, Schneider ( op. cit.), based
on the analysis of water seals on the paper of the original manuscript, which
reappeared after the Second World War. This last piece of information provides a
chronological term „ad quem ‟ ; and it is also the earliest current dating of texts 29 to
38 that places them as parallels in dates close to the manifesto/program.
XXXIII The first editing project for volume 2 of GWF Hegel. Gesammelte Werke was
interrupted by the death of Friedhelm Nicolin, when it was practically finished (2007).
This first project was characterized by excellent reading, especially of the complex
texts of Frankfurt's Hegel. The 2nd project, led by Walter Jaeschke, contributes to this
new criteria both in terms of the detail of the different layers of the text and its
distribution and ordering. According to them, this number 33 appears in the appendix
at the end of volume 2 among the texts of the young Hegel whose authorship is not
confirmed.
 2
4
manuscripts. Hegel is seeking from Fichte's conceptual apparatus to resolve the
issue of the dominating Object and submission to it, domination – servitude, the
politics of an unfortunate time, constantly alluded to, which is also the theology
of that time. The humble form of notes hides from the unsuspecting a feverish
laboratory of ideas. Above all, he must have studied, says Rosenkranz (p. 100),
Plato and Sextus Empiricus. What books does Hegel buy in Frankfurt? By the
preserved accounts of the booksellers they are above all the best, latest editions
of the Greek classics and the works of Schelling. Hegel knows that he is not (yet)
capable of writing treatises. In No. 3 9 , which Nohl already titled “Love,”
Abraham still appears at the beginning, but his figure is being erased in the ideal
aura that implicitly surrounded it from the beginning. And the end of this group of
notes culminates perhaps the greatest closeness to Hölderlin by prolonging the
invocation of love in Platonic beauty, after raising the decision before destiny.
Only Jesus will be able to be the new figure. Both Hölderlin and Hegel now see in
her a figure of destiny. It is destiny that now takes on an unprecedented
significance, which the romantics will display, but without delving into its
conceptual structure, since only destiny, not punishment, can reconcile what in it
represents a mere external, superficial reconciliation. The Manifesto/Program is
left behind. In Hegel, unification takes its course through negativity.
It should no longer be surprising that Frankfurt's political writings do not
express the enormous speculative charge that animates Hegel's political vision.
The taking of sides is decisive; but it occurs in an interiority that has become
autonomous from its enlightened roots and is not well expressed in the frenetic
reality, as seen in the first sketches “on the constitution XXXIV from Germany". The
time was turbulent, after the French Revolution came the wars of the 1st
Coalition, and those of the 2nd Coalition began in 1799. As regards England and
France, the war is constant from 1793 to 1802. France aspires to create a
protection zone against the threat of invasion, and a traditional geostrategy is
revived between it and the Holy Roman Empire, while a policy of aggression is
taking shape on the French side. Hegel closely follows the internal events in
France, but he also experiences them as they directly affect his Württenberg. . .
and to the Vaud from which he has just come. At Easter 1798 his translation

XXXIV “constitution”: here in the sense of type of State („Staatsverfassung ‟ ) or even

government , not in the current sense of fundamental law. Cf. the Jenense sketch
“Der Nahme für die Staatsverfassung Deutschlands” ( HGW 5. 52-57).
 2
5
(somewhat abbreviated) and commentary on a pamphlet against the oppression of
Vaud (Watt) by the Bernese oligarchy were published. Author Jean-Jacques Cart is
falsely declared dead; the translator does not appear. In later years Hegel
maintained an apparently absolute silence about this pamphlet, which, when it
was auctioned with the entire library after his death, was not attributed to him
either. It would have created problems not only in Switzerland, but in his native
homeland and then, even worse, for his academic career and, perhaps above all,
for his delicate political position in the Berlin of the Holy Alliance, especially after
XXXV
the assassination of Kotzebue in 1819. In any case, the moment in which
Hegel's translation was published was (coincidentally?) opportune, since that same
March Bern had just been defeated in the Battle of Grauholz by French troops,
called to help that January by the “patriots.” of Vaud. The pamphlet could
certainly seem like declared support for the French invasion. The final paragraph
breathes menace and is not wasted: “Discite iustitia, moniti” (You have been
warned, learn to be fair!) Typical Latin rhetoric of the “Révolution ” , borrowing
the poetry of Virgil.
Was it only the Bernese oligarchy that was warned? Certainly not, but also
the ducal sovereign in Stuttgart, Frederick II. The draft pamphlet written that
same year by Hegel is directed against him that same year: Let the citizens
choose the leaders . In fact, Mainz was already governed by German “republicans”
led by the distinguished Georg Forster and in the same year 1798 it became part
of the French Republic. Hegel certainly had friends involved in the negotiations
between France and Austria at the Congress of Rastadt, such as Sinclair, Minister
of Homburg, who measured the situation better than he and saw in the pamphlet
the danger of a call effect for another French invasion. The republican ideal was
confronted with the plundering of Germany by French troops since 1794, which
also alternated with what the Austrians made suffer in the military ebbs and

XXXV The thing was even “worse” than it seems, since the same publishing house of
the “Cercle Social ” that published Cart was “extremist” (almost the only Jacobins, by
the way, that Marx appreciated). Vine. In this regard, chap. 8 of Jacques D ' Hondt,
Hegel . Translated c. Pujol. Barcelona: Tusquets, 2002. D ‟ Hondt's characteristic was
always to dig into small data, opening questions and altering the academic „pax ‟ .
Along these lines it occurs to me (very) boldly to ask myself: could Hegel begin reading
and translating this pamphlet in Bern itself and could this be the cause of the
unexplained dislike that Herr von Steiger had with Hegel? For the political position of
Hegel of Berlin cf. the last 6 chapters of D ‟ Hondt's book, which summarize a series of
his previous monographs dismantling the legend about Hegel docile to the Prussian
State.
 2
6
flows. Hegel touched reality at home. The pamphlet was not published and only
remains of it remain.
The following year, 1979, Napoleon, who had returned from Egypt, carried
out the coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire, proclaiming himself First Consul. The
level of warfare is escalating one more level with the wars of the Second
Coalition, which last another three years. At that time Hegel worked on a series
of sketches that remained unfinished; It seems that catastrophic events happen
too fast. Hegel's republican ideal begins to raise serious questions: Is Germany
condemned to be the fodder of other powers, organized in modern States? Can
the Holy Roman Empire be a State, Germanic freedom a freedom if not
republican, then at least enlightened, as Kloptstock also hoped for a time from
Emperor Joseph II ? These approaches will be surpassed by the facts, when Hegel's
aim will always be to understand his time in thoughts. The project would end up
running aground in 1802. A new approach still has to wait.

Excursion 3: Hegel and politics

The 3rd sketch on the positivity of the Christian religion (1796) begins
brilliantly with the political fantasy of the people:

. . . Who could be our heroes, when we were never a nation? Who would be
our Theseus, who would have founded a State and its laws? Where can we find
our Harmodius and Aristogiton, to whom we can sing verses as liberators of
our country? ( JH 362)

That is why the very attempt of an honorary citizen of the République like
Klopstock to return to the Germans their own lost fantasy could not but fail, says
Hegel:

What the poet [Klopstock] warns his people about Greek mythology could be
returned with the same right to him and his people regarding Jewish
mythology, asking: “Is Judea the homeland of the Teutons?”

Well, in a passage earlier in 100 years the „Glorious Revolution ‟ polemicist

Samuel MastersXXXVI had already insisted on the same national basis of politics, but
directly in political and not literary terms:

The Supreme Ruler of the world. . . He has left each nation the freedom to
frame for itself the constitution that may be most useful and agreeable to it;

XXXVI The Case of Allegiance in Our Present Circumstances Consider ‟ d . London,

1689 (p. 8). Cit. by Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution . Barcelona:
Acantilado, 2013; cf. especially the chaps. XII, The revolution in political
economy, and XV, Conclusion.
 2
7
and just as it is inconceivable that all nations should come to an agreement
on the program of governments, it is even less reasonable to look to Judea,
Italy, or France for the measures or characteristics of the English government,
which was created in our nation and, therefore, can only be found in it.

A first characteristic of English politics was, therefore, its roots in a political

tradition, the lack of which in Germany, according to Hegel, ruined Klopstock's
poetic attempt. The same political approach of the young Hegel is produced from
Stuttgart in literary terms and surely could hardly have occurred in any other way
under a despotism that rarely - the case of Frederick II of Prussia or Joseph II of
Austria - could be considered even as enlightened. . XXXVII
A second English characteristic from the mid-17th century onwards was the
predominance of economics in the political sphere. In the 1650s Cromwell had
already been publicly attacked with economic arguments and the deposed King
James II was also attacked for supporting the priority of land and monopoly over
free trade and manufacturing, that is, over work as a priority source of income.
the wealth. Locke, whose political importance is hardly considered by Hegel in
the many mentions that he will make of him later, not only worried about the
unstable monetary situation, but proposed taxing real estate property,
eliminating monopolistic companies, attending to public welfare and promoting
work as the key to that well-being. Hegel, on the other hand, will entrust the
State to subject and subject the selfish economy to its superior rationality;
However, many Whigs of the 1700s understood it as "commonwealth " of
solidarity. Only after the “stabilization” desired by Walpole of the “Glorious
Revolution ” – twenty years later – is this social dynamic largely lost.
The economy ultimately turned out to be an eminent content of English
politics. In parliamentary discussions on the creation of the Bank of England, the
Tories object that the Bank would undermine royal authority, since it is only
compatible with a republic and economic democracy (commonwealth ) .XXXVIII It is
not surprising that in the fierce controversies of the last decade of the 17th
century, the humanist concern inherited from the Renaissance for virtue and its
degradation in luxury practically disappeared, which nevertheless characterized
the high-sounding rhetoric of the "Sturm und Drang " , v. g. Schiller's Fiesco –
which Hegel read in school – or the Conciliabulum of Three (infra, JH ), which he
himself wrote. For a humanist like the Tory Charles Davenant, the risks of luxury
were secondary to those of poverty; What's more, the old virtue belonged
irretrievably to the past;XXXIX the republicanism of the Bernese fragments ( infra ,

XXXVII Even a few months after the Hegelian passage, the Manifesto/Program “an
ethics” makes poetry the political action par excellence. The hope that Klopstock
once entertained in Joseph II would be repeated in Hegel with Frederick II's
successor, Frederick William III. And here opens the destiny of a bourgeoisie too
weak to be able to aspire to political hegemony and consequently relying on the
king and his army against the rapidly increasing proletarian and impoverished
masses during the 19th century.
XXXVIII Pincus, op. cit. 691 ff.
XXXIX Pincus, op. cit. 682. “Livy and those ancient writers whose great talent led
them to wonder about the causes of the rise and fall of governments. . . they pay
no attention to commerce; and Machiavelli, a modern writer, the best of all, does
not even mention commerce, as if it had no relation to the affairs of State,
although he lived in a government in which the Medici family had achieved
sovereignty through the wealth acquired. for commerce.” Nicholas Barbon, A
 2
8
nos. 17-20) ignored this theme a century later. On the other hand, a rapid social
evolution throughout the 17th century had imposed it in England. Germany will
follow another path. The Science of Logic , apparently far removed from the
sketches of youth, marks the most metaphysical point of that journey, although
not without far-reaching theoretical-practical effects. XL

Still in 1798, Hegel began a series of essays on Jesus in a rather long

manuscript (no. 43.1). The beginning closely mirrors the beginning of the main
essay (no. 23) of the “Positivity of the Christian Religion” , which is surely not
secondary, since it marks the point at which Hegel begins to diverge from
Hölderlin. From this Hegel assumes the tragic destiny of Jesus - at that time
figured in Hölderlin by Empedocles -; but, while for Hölderlin Jesus will be the
last of the Greek gods, the great atoner of miserable modernity, the culmination
of the new mythology advocated in the Manifesto/Program of 1796/97, for Hegel
his beauty is doomed to the failure of the that the famous chapter VI of the
XLI
Phenomenology of the Spirit will call the “beautiful soul.” In this context, the
new vibration with which the figure of Jesus is presented undoubtedly arises. And
since three of the essays begin with an „in illo tempore ‟ , one can compare how
Hegel's style takes flight, becoming especially luminous and confident in the last
of them.
The illustrated narrative, strained by the Kantian reference, no longer
serves. The historical tearing is the first thing, the lack of a whole, the dispersion

Discourse of Trade . London, 1690 (cit. by Pincus, op. cit. 668).

XL Germany and England had changed a lot after the Napoleonic Wars. Prussia, in
particular, had begun an ambitious reform plan, promoted by a constitutionalist
Council of State, while England was forced to make important changes due to its
same level of corruption and injustice. The Philosophy of Law (1821) roughly
coincided with the draft Constitutions that Humboldt and Hardenberg had
presented two years earlier. Certainly the assassination of Kotzebue (1819) and
the growing prominence of the reactionary „Kronprinz ‟ would end up closing -
definitively after the death of Frederick William III - the era of promises.
Characteristic of Hegel is his demand – not very Anglo-Saxon – to base Law on
Justice and his insistence on the institutionality of politics as opposed to the
politics of conviction or tradition. Cf. Edgar Maraguat's excellent preliminary study
in his translation of Hegel's pamphlet On the English Reform Project (1831),
Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2005.
XLI In section “C. The Spirit certain of himself. Morality.” Cf. Klaus Düsing,
“Christus und die antiken Götter in der Mythologie des späten Hölderlin”, in: St.
Dietzsch, G. F. Frigo (eds.), Vernunft und Glauben . Ein philosophischer Dialog
zwischen der Moderne und dem Christentum. Berlin: Akademie, 2006. 179 ff.
 2
9
and dissatisfaction; the Jewish people the image of the present. The historical
setting is broken into notes and dense theoretical paragraphs. The dominating
Object, the objectification and isolation of the subjective, domination and
servitude were taking on a more and more precise profile since the Bernese essays
on “positivity”. But here, already in the first outline, a radical critique of Kant
immediately begins: what Jesus preaches is not the fulfillment of the moral law,
but an attitude, disposition, mood ("Gesinnung"), the beautiful totality that limits
itself and shows in an action, the need for universal love, a new sensitivity of
“beautiful souls” who are emotional and ashamed of living in “imperfect”
situations. Everything could be understood as remains of the fine sentimental
analyzes of the Enlightenment (Montesquieu is even cited); but under the ethical
and theological label it is also a concentration in itself that is drifting towards
Romanticism. It is not about the spirit of Christianity, but about Jesus and his
destiny (just as it was no longer about the spirit of the Easterners, but about the
destiny of Abraham). The Gospel of Saint John displaces , as in Hölderlin, the
Synoptics. What the 4th gospel teaches is that God and human beings are the
same, and that Jesus teaches to make real what humans already virtually are. The
forgiveness of sins is transmuted into destiny and it is reconciled through love.
This is what Schelling is making a system: the substance-subject, whose
condensation and privileged access is found in oneself. The manuscript continues
searching the Gospels for passages that exemplify this theory, which is what draft
No. 43.2 also does.
The series of essays below about Jesus begin to flow first in opposition to
the positivity of the Jewish people; but, since this functions as a parable, it
immediately opens up into allusions to contemporary realities. A first important
notion is that of „pleroma ‟ , love as a complement, as the true totality of the
law. The 2nd essay, the most extensive, first rises in dense pages to a general
theory of the violation of the law, crime and punishment, destiny and its
overcoming by love, to apply it in the second half of the essay to the figure of
Jesus with the emotional scenes between Jesus and his disciple Peter, Jesus and
the Magdalene, as well as “the Supper”; but even this continues to offer an
unsatisfactory union, because reflection always threatens the unification of love
and – the brief 3rd adds. essay- love cannot contain the infinite. “What you have
to do is think pure life,” says the 4th essay, eliminating the Fichtean “what you
have to do is think self-consciousness” from its first version. The topic of the 5th
 3
0
essay is then the relationship between Jesus and God, and the most appropriate
gospel is that of John. But herein lies the destiny of Jesus, whom that divine
consciousness, preventing him from bowing to his world, condemned him to perish
at its hands. The faith in Jesus of his disciples was to such an extent the faith in
his own divinity that it even required the disappearance of the teacher; she, the
love between believers, was the true Kingdom of God (the slogan of the friends of
Tübingen); But destiny also stalked that community in the form of isolation in an
alien world, that is, the denial of its destiny. Does not the deepest motivation of
Hegelian politics lie here?
The last of these essays is especially clear and decisive in its writing. Jesus
is presented as a “pure idealist” and a resentful person who avoids contamination
with the world. And here comes a decided break with the political cliché –
sometimes conservative, other times revolutionary – of the “Goethezeit”,
energetically postulated by the Manifesto/Program of 1796/97: the suppression of
the State. Because the State EXISTS. Avoiding any relationship with him, when at
the same time it is necessary to survive, means falling not only into a lacerating
contradiction, but also into passivity under his dominion. The only thing left is a
private life limited to the security of property XLII and the feelings; This leads Jesus
to a freedom in the void, which excludes even the family, that is, to a sublime,
but atrocious resistance. The same union of love is realized by the community
only in God, it is impossible to escape that destiny. The community will
hypocritically establish a world made of corners parallel to those of the world
outside it and, to give itself an external reference to its intrinsic divinity, it will
fix it in Jesus, whom it will turn into the ONLY God-man. Such is the function of
faith in his Resurrection from the dead. The positivity, constitutive of
Christianity, thus takes on a new form. The life of Jesus is a failure... at the same
time that it opens up in Christianity a possibility... spurious, but at the same time
veiled exoterically, so to speak... THE truth: the divine condition of the entire

XLII In the Old Regime, civil society did not distinguish between State and society; The
State did not clearly distinguish between its respective properties nor did it respect
private property in principle, although it had to give in on this point. According to
Hegel, the proper name for private property is the realm of “bourgeois” society
(„bürgerlich ‟ ); When this, in a constitutional State – like the later Hegel – is
projected as civility („Sittlichkeit ‟ ), it already accesses, although subordinately, the
political („staatsbürgerlich) emanating from the State. Marx seems to me to be
indebted to this conception, at the same time that he dreams of the abolition of the
State.
 3
1
human race.
What is unexpected next is that a brief, but worked, sketch from
1799/1800 returns to Abraham, supposedly already overcome. A nuance: Abraham
now represents the “spirit” that governed the variable historical destinies of the
Jews, their contaminations with others, their fainting; Is the Enlightenment
notion of “spirit” being dynamically, historically, unraveled? Possibly this is an "a
tergo " reading, knowing what comes next. But there is another nuance that easily
goes unnoticed: what is examined now is a pre-Mosaic Judaism, and what is
contrasted with it is a pre-classical Greece. That Judaism is now almost
Promethean; but it rejects friendship with nature and tyrannically imposes the
State on those who want to isolate themselves. At the opposite extreme, joy and
abundance in the peace of love, the utopian haven of Baucis and Philemon. The
sketch remains there. And another more or less simultaneous sketch speaks of the
beautiful relationships based on love, as opposed to those of domination and
servitude characteristic, as usual, of the Jews; but Judea is immediately
transposed to a Swiss village . . . Beautiful relationships, love, joy, peace. . .
Neither Jesus nor his Church appear anywhere.
As always with Hegel, we must assume that nothing is left behind him, least
of all the long elaboration of Jesus and Christianity since the Tübingen years. And
indeed, he is writing a new introduction to the positivity of the Christian religion.
He does so with the same historical criteria that he applies to the spirit of
Abraham and with an express rejection of Enlightenment conceptual normativism;
Hegelian discourse also becomes more fluid and persuasive. But the most
astonishing thing in this explosion of creativity is an explanation of life, the great
notion that dominates the end of Frankfurt (and that will constitute the decisive
transition to speculation at the end of chapter 3 of the Phenomenology of the
Spirit ), but that only had been receiving allusions, apparently generic, since the
last sketches of Berne . His negative reaction, shortly afterwards, at the end of
Schiller's Wallenstein , could even be understood as rather subjective or
superficial; but now we can better understand Hegel's horror at that outcome that
gives the triumph of death over life – “that is not tragic, but frightening” -. The
sublime, but atrocious, destiny of Jesus seems gloriously acceptable, as the great
final paragraph of Faith and Knowledge will show in 1802 ; Now, however, the
triumph of death attacks the very core of the theoretical effort, meaning.
Because what life is has become explained with a new conceptuality, although of
 3
2
this explanation we only have two fragments left (one theoretical and the other
historical). The “beautiful relationships” are sublimated in a new conceptual
game that is configured with the real, reacting without domination, spreading;
but we can only intuit it.

Epilogue

Meanwhile Hegel has received a letter dated January 15, 1799 from his sister
Cristiane:
“This past night, shortly before 12, our father died very gently and
peacefully. I am unable to continue writing to you. May God help me.
“Christiane”
The times of that time were not ours, the letter would need four days to
cover the thirty leagues between Stuttgart and Frankfurt, and it was not until
March 9 that Hegel undertook the trip to Stuttgart to resolve the issue of
inheritance. For the first time he has a certain economic independence; but he
doesn't take advantage of it at the moment. His first trip, a year and a half later,
is significant and certainly not in a direction that his father would have
welcomed: the Jacobean city of Mainz; There he began his studies in geometry,
which he had begun that year with a “ Mayence/Vend[imiaire] l ‟ an IX.”
Scientific elaboration prior to his notes on the divine triangle shortly after XLIII and
therefore continuation of his lateral interest confirmed in Berne by the genuinely
Teutonic mysticism of Tauler and Eckhardt, now by Franz Baader? This may
indicate another indication of his rapprochement with Schelling, whom a month
later (on November 2, 1800) he asked for help to establish a time with him in
Bamberg before daring “the literary whirlwind of Jena.” Schelling replies (the
letter has been lost) that he has just left Bamberg for Jena. And Hegel is already
there on the following January 21, still without a house or infrastructure and even
without the academic qualification required to access the minimum teaching level
of „Privatdozent ‟ , which he must “enable”, not without having first passed –
with the help of Schelling, already an extraordinary professor- the doubts of the

XLIII Rosenkranz Report, ps. 101s. and text in HGW 5. 479-482 and lengthy
commentary by Kurt Meist ( ibidem, 5. 706 ff.), considering the possibility of a
continuation of the theosophical studies of late Berne on Eckart and Tauler, or the
beginnings of a philosophy of nature. Cf. geometric studies in the youth diary (July 23-
25, 1785).
 3
3
teaching union. Time speeds up. Meanwhile, on November 15, Fichte had
published a harsh criticism of Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism ; It
was, finally, the open break between the transcendental, subjective Idealism of
Fichte and the speculative, objective Idealism of Schelling. Hegel is quick to take
sides with this one. And for the first time he begins to publish; It will be quick and
intensive, always controversial. In the summer he defended his habilitation thesis
and in September of that same year the Difference between the systems of
philosophy of Fichte and Schelling appeared, which he had written in the
XLIV
meantime. Georg LukácsXLV has persuasively insisted - following Rudolf Haym -
on the haste of Hegel, who would have seen in this public controversy the
opportunity to enter decisively with his own voice on the Jena scene. This would
also cause the contemporary misunderstanding of the supposed identity between
the philosophical positions of the two friends.
But the agreement against was not entirely in . Hegel brought from
Frankfurt his own ideas, long matured, but still undeveloped. The most important
is his new notion of Spirit, which is no longer the enlightened abstraction that for
Hegel of Berne quasi-organically encompassed the empirical plurality of an era,
people or group, be it the Orientals, the Jews, our modern situation, the
Christianity. In Frankfurt the spirit was condensed in privileged personalities like
Abraham and Jesus; but in 1800 the term spirit takes on a speculative dimension
as the engine and substance of history revealed in those exceptional personalities.
Religion, for its part, becomes the universal image that the spirit makes of itself;
image of precarious substantivity subjected to history and soon replaced as a
culmination, because it represents the rupture, the loss of happy unity, which
46
only philosophy can reconcile. The penultimate paragraph of the Proem of the
Difference continues without interruption in July 1801 the brilliant paragraph that
on September 14, 1800 closed the “Second Fragment”; and he does so by valuing
Schleiermacher's romantic speeches On Religion (1799) as a symptom, while
counterposing it with the demand that "reason configure itself as nature from its
intimate strength." Such a configuration is carried out precisely by those

XLIV I quote from the translation of Mª C. Walls. Madrid: Tecnos, 1990. Its important
introduction brings a careful comparison of the philosophical positions of Schelling and
Hegel at that time. (Cit. Walls.)
XLV Der junge Hegel. Über die Beziehungen von Dialektik und Ökonomie ( 1 1948).
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973, p. 395. Translation of M. Sacristán, The young Hegel and
the problems of capitalist society. Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1976.
 3
4
privileged personalities such as “the individuality

The notion of Spirit receives its most systematic definition in the classes of 1805
1806, when Hegel was already writing his Phenomenology of Spirit. When reflecting
carefully on the deficient way in which nature is spirit, it is placed - compared to
Schelling - with a priority over the natural that requires the translation into Spanish of
Spirit with a capital letter. Cf. Hegel, Royal Philosophy. Translated JMR. Madrid: FCE,
2
2006, ps. 396 ff. This superiority of the Spirit is already professed, without that
foundation, in the long article in two installments of the Kritischen Journals der
Philosophie “On the scientific ways of treating natural law, its place in practical
philosophy and its relationship with the legal sciences.” positive” (1802/03). However,
even in 1804 Hegel's classes continued to treat spirit and nature symmetrically; and
the beginning of the philosophy of nature of 1805/06 still distinguishes with Schelling
between essence and form of the Absolute. ( Royal Philosophy , p. 5, ls. 34 s.)
interesting in which reason, with the construction materials of a particular era,
has organized a figure” (Paredes, p. 17 ). The Phenomenology of the Spirit will
construct a sequence of these figures. And it is no coincidence that Ludwig Siep
began his commentary on this work with an examination of Difference . XLVI The
theoretical force that Fichte assigned to
imagination, opening the way to the romantics, had molded the figures of
Abraham and Jesus. Now Hegel knows that philosophy is a system, although he has
not yet developed his own (Paredes, p. 37).
Absolute,XLVII annihilation, tearing apart, process are the characteristic terms
of the moment. The figure of Jesus no longer represents a personal destiny, but
time as the death of God, of the God that we are. In 1802, the grandiose final
paragraph of Believe and Know assigns to philosophy “the recovery of speculative
Good Friday, which otherwise occurred historically. . . in all the truth and
hardness of having lost God”; but he also knows that “the supreme totality can
and must be resurrected in all its seriousness and from its deepest depth,
encompassing everything at the same time as in the most radiant freedom of its
figure.” The very long paragraph from which these quotes are taken has been
written in one go, in a single, very complex sentence, and constitutes the final
station of Frankfurt's essays on Jesus. The quote from Pascal that comments in
that same paragraph “the feeling that God himself has died” is found in Hamman's

XLVI Der Weg der “Phänomenologie des Geistes”. Ein führender Kommentar zu Hegels
“Differenzschrift” und “Phänomenologie des Geistes”. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2000.
XLVII Kant ( KrV , A 323-326) had used the term in an emphatically affirmative
manner, following and specifying, as he says, a then current usage; once again the
catachresis as a way to compromise between the Enlightenment and Romanticism.
 3
5
correspondence with Jacobi (2. 11. 1783); Hamman also cited the same pious
XLVIII
stanza cited by Hegel in the 2nd system fragment of 1800. The religious
"Sturm und Drang " reaches, together with the Dispute of Pantheism, its powerful
speculative resolution.
At the end of this journey, the assumption of a discontinuity between the
youthful and brilliant Hegel and the mature Hegel, lost in the speculative desert,
is very unconvincing. Patricio Landaeta and Juan Ignacio Arias
. - . -.................................... .. . . . . . . 50
they consider the System der Sittlichkeit (1802/1803) a youth text; also Roberto
Finelli ( Mythos und Kritik der Formen. Frankfurt: Lang, 2000) has extended
Hegel's youth until 1803; Lukács ( The Young Hegel ), until after the
Phenomenology and the break with Schelling. Lorenz Puntel ( Darstellung,
Methode und Struktur. Untersuchungen zur Einheit der
systhematischen Philosophie G. W. F. Hegels. Bonn: Bouvier, 1973), on the other
hand, considers the Phenomenology of the Spirit not only as an Introduction to
the System, but as the first exposition of it, with which we would already be in
the definitive Hegel. Only in this case it would be a romantic exposition, with the
powerful romanticism not of fantasy, but of speculation, which is manifested in
the texts cited from 1800 to 180 3 . And Rudolf Haym ( The Romantic School , 1870
)
has come to consider the Phenomenology of the Spirit as the culmination and
XLIX L
liquidation of the first German Romanticism. I have taken the time of the
sketches, before Hegel began to publish with the intention of intervening publicly
and before he himself professed a fundamental novelty: the pretension of a
system. This has its plausibility, but it is only one possible point of view. The
Hegel who strives in the Jena years to capture his system twists his writing more
painful than grandiose, trying to reach something of which he is sure, but that he

XLVIII Cf. Hermann Timm, op. cit. , ps. 232 ff.

XLIX “The political interpretation of Hegel's Greek tragedy”, in: Co-herencia, no. 19
(Medellín, 2013). 113-133. Both authors are undoubtedly based on the continuity of
the Frankfurt theme of destiny, which Hegel tries to reconcile - in this experimental
text (?) which he did not consider appropriate to publish - with the terminology of
Schellingian speculation.
L “ With the Phenomenology of the Spirit the union of poetry and science that had
been the ideal of Schelling and his friends culminated. ... But with this, Romanticism
crossed its limits. The reviled Enlightenment once again provided the means of
scientific systematics. . . . With Hegel the critique of Romanticism was decided.” (
Die
romantic school. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Geistes. Repr. Photom.
Hildesheim: Olms, 1977, p. 864.)
 3
6
cannot grasp; He will first have to get rid of the theory of “powers” and
Schelling's “construction” for the time being, as well as to think consistently
about the superiority of the Spirit over nature, before being able to partially
sketch, especially from the classes of 1805. /06, your system. But the
Phenomenology of the Spirit itself is still the last failed attempt to translate that
system promised again and again in Jena, and not just its introduction. Although
Puntel is possibly right: unlike Christopher Columbus, Hegel has arrived where he
wanted without knowing it.
 3
7
TEXT 2

[P. 165 to 265]

[22]
[Positivity concept]
1 LI
[1795]

Positive faith is understood as a system of religious statements that we take as true,

since it is imposed on us by an authority to which we inexcusably have to submit our faith.
The first thing that this concept presents to us is a system of religious statements, or truths,
that, regardless of what we hold to be true, must be considered truths, and that would
continue to be true even if they had never been known or held to be true by any person. Now,
these truths that, because of what has just been explained, are often called objective truths,
must also be transformed into truths for us, into subjective truths: the truths that concern
understanding or reason must be taken by them as such; those that contain commandments
for our will must be assumed by it as maxims, the first of this kind and condition of all the
others being the one who orders us to believe these truths, since this is imposed on us by an
authority against which there is simply no room for disobedience-. It is none other than the
concept of positive religion according to which we are obliged to believe; True, historical
faith, as well as faith in what parents, educators, and friends tell us, also includes a faith in
authority; but this faith is based on a trust that our free will voluntarily grants to such or such
people, depending largely on the very credibility that we give to their words; On the other
hand, faith in the authority of positive doctrine does not belong to the scope of our free will,
and the confidence that we grant to it must be founded prior to the content of the given
doctrines being known or judged. Now, the right that God has over us, as well as our duty of
obedience to him, derives from the fact that he is our powerful sovereign and lord, and we
are his creatures and subjects, from the fact that he is our benefactor, to whom we owe
gratitude; Furthermore he is the source of truth, while / we are ignorant and blind[. As
regards these titles of law, let us only note that the last two already presuppose a certain
LI
According to Nicolin ( HGW 1. 635 ad 354,1) a possible recurring quote from the second of Schelling's
Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism about an “incapacity of reason” would place this text here between
November 1795 and April 1796. In effect, Schelling announces to Hegel on July 21 the imminent publication of
the first four Letters; Hegel responded on August 30 that he expected those Letters from one day to the next;
but in the end they do not enter No. 5 (August) of Niethammer's “Philosophischen Jahrbuchs” and its
publication is delayed to No. 7 (November). Surely Hegel reads it immediately, since not only does he wait for
it, but he directly receives all the numbers of that year -cf. “Auktionskatalog”, No. 184 195-, which in any
case would specify the chronological term 'ad quem ' left imprecise in NIcolin's conjecture. So number 22
would be immediately after the first part of number 23. But the quote conjectured by Nicolin has against it
that Schelling says weakness - "Schwäche" -, while Hegel speaks Kantianly of incapacity - "Unvermögen" - .)
 3
8
love for the truth, a kind of moral disposition; [this applies] especially to those who claim a
debt of gratitude to God, although it would be necessary to begin by demonstrating it - and in
this case the obligation of positive religion is deduced from the fact that, being this a favor
that God does us, obeying Gratitude is actually nothing more than pleasing God, giving him
joy, etc.-; [as regards] the first reason for this obligation, it is the one that really matters,
especially because it addresses what is sensitive in the human being, in which we must begin
by producing a moral disposition; given that relationship with God, a kind of coercive power
corresponds to this Being, the exercise of which the human being can never escape – the slave
can hope to escape from an earthly lord, to escape the circle of his power, but it is not This is
the case with God: if he takes the wings of dawn, there you are; If he were hiding in the
deepest part of the sea, there you are too. Whoever recognizes this supremacy of a Being -
not only over his appetites - and there is no one who is not forced to recognize it, whether
under the name of Nature, "fatum " or Providence - but also over his spirit, in all the
extension of its being, cannot escape a positive faith, since this is only possible when the
freedom of reason, its autonomy, has been lost and there is nothing to oppose an alien power.
Here is the primary point from which all faith or disbelief in a positive religion springs, as well
as the center around which all controversies therefore revolve, and, although there is no clear
consciousness of it, such is the foundation of all submission or rebellion. Here the Orthodox
have to stand firm, here not give in to anything; although they also grant that morality is
really the absolute and supreme end of humanity, although they also grant - since they cannot
deny what is obvious - that reason is in a position to construct a pure system of morality, with
everything They have to affirm that it is incapable of itself to achieve primacy over
inclinations, to make its own demands a reality; then they have no other choice but to
determine these demands, the supreme goal of humanity, so that, if not when defining them,
then when putting them into practice, the human being depends on a Being outside of he. /
Once this impotence of reason and the dependence of our entire being is admitted - which is a
necessary condition of everything that follows - it is enough to prove in an entirely historical
way that a certain religion, for example Christianity, is a positive religion granted Oh my God;
and this is all the easier because, once our servitude is recognized, we have already given up
the criterion for an examination of another type, completely renouncing the right to ask
ourselves about its intrinsic foundation, its rationality, as well as the compatibility of the
events related to the laws of experience. In such a case the question of rationality or
irrationality is completely irrelevant here, it may be raised, for example, to distract boredom,
but not as something that affects in the least the decision about my faith - once the higher
 3
9
court is recognized, all the lower authorities must remain silent before him; What is
considered true due to its rationality does not belong at all to the scope of my positive faith;
True, it may happen that something that I initially believed only because I was ordered to
believe it, I later believe because I find that it agrees with my reason, because I have
reasonedly convinced myself of it; [but] expecting or demanding that the entire content of a
positive faith can be verified by one's own reason is something that can only be undertaken by
one who is free from all positive faith - in other words, a believer will not undertake
reduction on the basis of his positive doctrines more than to satisfy, say, that [rational
believer] outside of him. The most obvious thing to do when faced with a question about this
would be to expect the opposite from a religion revealed by God, which contains divine
truths, that is, thought by God, since God's thoughts cannot be captured or measured by
human reason. How can we think, then, of the possibility of a positive faith in these truths?
How can these be transformed into subjective truths? In what way is the human spirit affected
in such a state, in which it is active, in which passive? Expressions like [“]faith is a living
conviction accompanied by feelings that produces works[”] are too vague to tell us much with
them.
I,355 / The Christian religion partly contains precepts about knowledge
relating to objects – along with their practical moment in each case –, partly
practical precepts.
The possibility of communicating one's own experiences and thoughts to the
other presupposes that he has already had others similar to these that we now
show him in a different context, at the same time that we invite him to compose
them in this other way; This presupposes in him the capacity to produce in himself
the actions that we indicate; Now, the truths of the Christian religion that have to
do with the cognitive faculty refer partly to imagination, partly to understanding,
partly to reason.
The imagination receives, with the permission of the understanding, historical
truths that agree with our other laws of experience; The only novelty for her is the
context to which she now has to bring representations that have already occurred
previously; He assumes them, therefore, together with the marginal representation
that they were real experiences, that there were feelings that had motivated
understanding to a necessary activity in all those who experienced them: this is
what faith means here. However, there are also historical truths that immediately
make it clear to a somewhat exercised understanding that they are incompatible
 4
0
with its laws, causing its rejection: this is the case of miracles and other
supernatural events; The understanding is not satisfied if it is referred to
supersensible causes, because it does not even understand that answer, which tells
it nothing. How then to fulfill the obligation to believe? The imagination is fully
satisfied with this indication of a supernatural cause - it doesn't matter - but the
understanding rejects its poetry and does not even take the imagination into
account when it comes to the reality or unreality of a representation; Therefore,
we must resort to a higher faculty, before which the understanding itself must
remain silent, and this is how faith becomes the subject of a duty and is referred to
a supersensible realm, to which the understanding completely lacks access. ; In this
sense, believing means: / [a)] abide – out of duty, that is here: out of
fear of
Almighty- a set of facts imposed on the imagination, [even] when the
understanding is always looking for another; [b)] also force the understanding to
put itself to work on this task that repugns it, lending the concept of cause, but
immediately eliminating its demands from consciousness as soon as it wants to
move on from there; [c)] present those facts to the imagination, so that their
consolidation leaves the understanding excluded.
Then, to satisfy the demands of reason, practical instances are assigned to it,
[instances] that are not directed to the will in a way that determines it to certain
actions, but to reason insofar as it makes demands on the will and the world.
sensible, that is, as law; [now,] in the system of a positive religion, reason can only
pose to the sensible world demands that that religion promises to satisfy; the
demands on the will[, on the other hand,] are made by the law of the Master, that
is, the same positive religion, which here promises its help; so that that will that
has not had faith in its own strength and that, with which it still attributes itself,
feels that it is impossible for it to satisfy the ideal that positive religion entrusts to
it, receives the guarantee that help will come to it. and support from above. In this
faith, what made all positive faith possible is raised to consciousness and reflected
upon: as far as consciousness is concerned, moral impotence and the sensation of
being a machine moved by given representations, although it also produces them;
[As for] reflection[, this] focuses on the fact that we do not know what the force of
this mechanism is [and] that we are insensitive to certain representations, as
repeated experience shows; Added to this is the hope that the first driving force of
 4
1
this work, like a benevolent and compassionate Lord, will take care of it and give it
a hand when it is about to get stuck. In positive faith the entire state of the
believer faithfully becomes the object of his reflection; Only, finding himself
already determined by the representations that positive religion gives him, he
believes that this determination does not come from the representation, but must
have its origin in his own activity, in his essence. As for the demands of practical
reason that positive religion promises to satisfy, / these are of two kinds, since
some he desires to be fulfilled, while he would be concerned about the fulfillment
of others; Positive religion promises you peace of mind in both cases. The
expression “reason desires” – or “reason fears” – indicates how sensitivity
intervenes here, that perhaps it is the one that has induced reason to present those
demands and that it itself is the one that wants to be satisfied. How does reason
come to demand the harmony of happiness with ethics – a postulate that has
become especially famous lately and is found in all peoples – when, as it itself
recognizes, this postulate neither depends on it nor can it determine it? It is when a
subject reaches a certain degree of mastery, of power, that reason transmits to
conscience this feeling of duty, of mastery; If it then turns to a will that has a
specific object for its impulse, the latter acts in the way that reason has given it,
mobilizing at the same time [its] physical forces; Whether they win or are defeated
in the struggle with foreign forces that oppose them, if the will remains firm,
reason is satisfied; and only in our times has it been possible to say of someone who
has died for his honor or for his country or for virtue, that he would have deserved
a better fate. Now, if reason finds a will more dominated by sensitive inclinations,
if it only rarely finds the opportunity to address it, sensitivity does not stop
perceiving in such subjects the voice, the “ought” of reason; Of course, he explains
it according to his own needs, interpreting it as a desire for happiness; but this [in
reality] differs from the sensible demand for happiness, since it is based on the
voice of reason and presupposes its power to pronounce an “ought”[. This demand
quasi-legitimized by reason then means [only] that one is worthy of happiness,
while its unworthiness means the inability of reason to pronounce an “ought,” its
defeat, which also implies its impotence in the face of happiness. to external
circumstances. In both cases, reason does not directly demand happiness - this
concept corresponds as little as sensitivity to understanding -, the only thing that
[reason] does is give - or not - to conscience its “ought”; This is captured by
 4
2
sensitivity, without [reason] being able to determine at all what the object of this
“ought” should be, since [reason] lacks an object over which to dominate; but,
even amalgamated with sensitivity, reason demands that its object be realized -
the unconditional nature of the demand is the work of reason, the demand for
happiness comes from sensitivity - and since it cannot make this mixture a reality,
since it is finds itself weakened and contaminated by the mixture with nature, then
it postulates an alien Being that possesses the domain of nature, that nature that it
now misses and whose contempt it can no longer allow itself. In this sense,
believing means a deficit in the awareness that reason is absolute, self-sufficient,
that its infinite idea can only be created by itself, clean of any foreign mixture,
that this idea can only achieve perfection by distancing itself precisely from this
alien intrusion and not through assimilation to it. From the ultimate end of reason
thus conditioned results moral faith in the existence of God, [faith] which cannot
be practical in the sense that it drives the will to realize that ultimate end, but, at
most, to realize the part of the ultimate end that depends on that [will]; and this is
all the easier for him because he realizes that the sensible will also be satisfied in
this way. -Who, such as a republican or a warrior, fights not precisely for a country,
but for honor; who, therefore, has proposed an end to his existence that does not
include the second component, happiness, has an end whose realization depends
entirely on him and therefore does not need help from others.- Furthermore,
positive religion supports faith morality with images, with data for the imagination,
bringing that object closer to it, even objectifying it to the point of saying that it
has sometimes occurred in human experience. Another famous need of reason, to
which it is not capable of giving any satisfactory answer, is the demand for
satisfaction through the penalties that immorality must necessarily entail. . .

HGW 1,281

[23]
[ Main manuscript ]

1
... the most contradictory considerations can be made about the
[Christian religion] and, however diverse they may be, voices will always be raised
against them with all kinds of reasoning, alleging that such an assertion only affects
 4
3
this or that system of the Christian religion, but not the Christian religion itself;
And each person identifies their system with the Christian religion and demands
that everyone take it into account. The way of dealing with the Christian religion
that is in vogue today judges it based on reason and morality, in addition to
resorting to the spirit of nations and times for more precise explanations; Such is
the way that a part of our contemporaries – very respectable for the rational clarity
of their knowledge and for their good intentions – describe as a beneficial
illustration leading to the [ultimate] end of humanity, that is, to truth and virtue,
while that the other part - not only respectable for equal knowledge and equally
well-intentioned purposes, but also enjoys secular ascendancy and the support of
public powers - cries indignantly against what it considers authentic degenerations.
Even more problematic from another point of view are investigations such as the
one proposed in this work; and yes, in the 1

The first leaf of the manuscript is missing, possibly replaced by the new beginning written in
1800 ( vid. infra, no. 54). Hegel insistently returns to illustrated readings: the Ideas for a
Philosophy of the History of Humanity (I, chap. 17) by Herder had inaugurated the line of
interpretation of the historical Jesus and the beginnings of Christianity that Hegel adopts in this
outline. Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem is a reading of Tübingen that Hegel prefers, in the
extensive political part of his essay, to Rousseau's Social Contract . But Herder's enlightened
scholarship gives way to concentration on the historical study of how a religion of ethical
autonomy becomes an authoritarian construct; Mendelssohn's harmonization of State and Church
breaks down in his sharp distinction by Hegel.
 4
4
In the opinion of Christian doctors, it is not that one has dealt with a mere ghost of
the Christian religion that it has built itself or that has long since disappeared, but
that one has really touched on an aspect of the system that for many is an object of
respect and concern. faith, then it is enough to be happy with the good treatment
received, if only he receives compassion for his blindness that does not allow him to
see certain things in the imperturbable light of their importance and inviolable
venerability.
I,282 / Hence, heading this dissertation with a profession of faith would not help one to
explain oneself satisfactorily; and, as it would be incompatible with the approach of this
work to expose the foundations that support this profession of faith or adequately justify
its content, nor would simply outlining it would rather arouse the suspicion that the author
gives great importance to his individual conviction and that his person has something to do
with all this. Let it be noted here, solely and solely as regards the thing itself, that the
principle on which all judgments regarding the different forms, modifications and spirit of
the Christian religion have been based is this: that the purpose and essence of all true
religion, including our own, is the morality of human beings, and that all the most specific
doctrines of Christianity, all the means of its propagation and of interpreting all its duties,
as well as other arbitrary observances, are considered valuable and sacred according to
their closest or most distant relationship with that purpose.
1*
The sad state of the Jewish nation [was that of] a nation which derived its
legislation from supreme wisdom itself, while its spirit lay crushed under a mass of
legal precepts which, pedantically prescribing a rule for every ordinary action of the

1
Following this prologue came the following articulation, which Hegel seems to have crossed out
late (in the second version of 1800?) and in which he alludes to a lost “sketch”:

TO.
Comparison with the degeneration of a mode of government (vid. outline)

to.
*
state of the jewish
religion
 4
5
daily life, gave the entire nation the appearance of a monastic order; Up to that
point, the service of God and virtue had been regulated and stuffed into dead
formulas, leaving the spirit with nothing more than the obstinate pride in this
obedience of slaves to laws that they had not given themselves, a pride that was
otherwise deeply wounded. and bitter, because his State was subject to a foreign
power[. Such a state of the Jewish nation could not but awaken in people of more
talent and heart - incapable of renouncing their personal dignity and of bending
themselves until they became dead machines - the need for freer activity and a more
proper virtue. than that of an existence without self-awareness, dedicated to fulfilling
with frailian diligence the inert and insubstantial mechanism of petty habits; [There
had to be] a nobler satisfaction than taking pride in this slave trade. Contact with
other nations made some come to know of sprouts of the human spirit of a superior
beauty, the Essenes tried to develop in themselves a more autonomous virtue, John
[Baptist] bravely faced the corruption of customs, which was cause and consequence
LII
of those misconceptions. Jesus, dedicated until his manhood to his own formation,
free himself from the contagious disease of his time and nation - free from the
impoverishing limitation that restricts activity to the needs and comforts of daily life,
free from ambition as well. and other inclinations whose desired satisfaction would
have made him participate in the contract of prejudices and vices - he proposed to
elevate religion and virtue to morality, restoring its essence, which is its freedom; and
morality had degenerated from the freedom that characterizes it, to a system of uses
such as each nation has in its traditional dress, in its cuisine and its typical drinks, as
well as in the rest in the customs of its way of life. live[. Jesus] reminded his people
of the moral principles that were in their sacred books (the supreme principles of
morality were already established and Jesus did not invent any new ones: Mt 22, 36,
vid. Deut 6, 5, Lev. 19, 18 (Lev. 18, 5); Matt 5, 48, vid. [Lev. 19, 2], “be perfect as”,
etc. Mt 7, 12 [“whatever you would have others do to you, do it to them”]
encompasses too much and can serve as a maxim of prudence even for the vicious, so
it cannot be valid as a moral principle; It would have been truly strange if a religion
like the Jewish religion, which made divinity its political legislator, had not also
contained purely moral principles), guided by these principles, he examined the
ceremonies and the multitude of subterfuges that had been found to evade the law,

LII Jesus
 4
6
By them he judged the peace of conscience that came from complying with the letter
of the law, sacrifices and other religious customs, instead of obeying the moral law;
Only this, and not the fact of descending from Abraham, was assigned a value in the
eyes of divinity, only she deserved beatitude in another life. The value of a virtuous
disposition and the indignity of a hypocritical exactness in the merely external
fulfillment of sacred rites was something that Jesus publicly taught the people both in
his homeland, Galilee, and in Jerusalem, the center of Judaism; Above all, he trained
a group of men in a more intimate way, so that they would help him in his efforts to
influence the entire town on a larger scale. But his simple doctrine, which called for
fighting against inclinations, self-denial, and sacrifice, could achieve little against the
combined power of deep-rooted national pride, of hypocrisy and prudery intertwined
with the entire constitution, and of the privileges of those who were in charge. both
of faith and of the exercise of the law. Jesus suffered the pain of seeing the total
failure of his plan to introduce morality into the religiosity of his nation, to the point
that even his efforts to instill, at least in some men, higher hopes and a better faith,
had only achieved a very ambiguous and partial result (vid. in Mt 20, 20 LIII an incident
that occurred when John and James had already had a relationship with Jesus for
several years; [the case of] Judas; Even in the last moments of his stay on earth,
immediately before his supposed ascension, they continued to show intact the Jewish
hope that he would restore the

LIII
The request of the mother of the Cebedeans, also commented on in the History of Jesus : “Make
these two sons of mine sit in your kingdom, one on your right and the other on your left.”
 4
7
State of Israel, Acts 1,6); He himself became a victim of the hatred of the priests and
the wounded national vanity of his people.
A teacher who did not declare himself against the established religion itself, but
only against the moral superstition of believing that by observing its uses the
requirements of the moral law have already been fulfilled, a teacher who, instead of
a virtue based on authority (which is either an absurdity or a direct contradiction),
demanded a morality based on autonomous, free virtue, such a teacher, I say, how
could one expect him to [not even] give rise to a religion! positive (which is based on
authority - not at all on the value of the human - or at least also resorts to extra-
LIV
moral motives)! According to this [authentic] image of Jesus, what he has taught is
a purely moral religion, not a positive one; miracles, etc. They have not had the
purpose of substantiating doctrines, since these cannot be substantiated with facts,
but rather to perhaps raise the attention of a people deaf to morality with these
striking phenomena; If he used some representations of his contemporaries - for
example the expectations placed on a Messiah, the representation of immortality
under the image of the resurrection, the attribution of acute and incurable diseases
to the influence of an evil and powerful being, etc. -, in Part of it was to assign them
a nobler meaning, part of it was because they lacked a direct relationship with
morality, since the ideas of an era do not belong to the content of a religion, which
must be eternal and immutable. Against the appreciation that Jesus' doctrine is not at
all positive and he wanted to base nothing on his authority, two sides rise up; Both
agree that religion undoubtedly contains principles of virtue, but also positive
precepts to please God through other practices, feelings and actions, which are not
reduced to morality; However, both sides differ in that for one such positivity is
accidental, indeed, reprehensible, in a pure religion - which is why they do not want
to grant the religion of Jesus the rank of a religion of virtue -, while for The other,
what makes it superior is precisely this positivity, declared as holy as the principles of
ethics, which it often bases on the former, to which it sometimes gives even greater
importance. This last camp has an easy time answering the question of how the
religion of Jesus became positive, since it affirms that it emerged positively from his
lips, that Jesus demanded faith in all his doctrines, even in the laws of virtue, based
exclusively on his authority, which he also took care to endorse with miracles, with

LIV where the positive [comes]

from
 4
8
his resurrection; and this side does not consider what Sittah says about him in the
Nathan [2nd Act, scene 1] as a reproach:
. . . even in the past
Its founder seasoned that faith with humanity, But that is not
why they love it, not because it is human;
Christ teaches it, Christ has done it is what matters.

HGW 1,286 / Regarding the phenomenon that a positive religion

found so much acceptance, he explains it by the fact that no other religion
responds as well as this one to the needs of humanity, since it has satisfactorily
solved the problems of practical reason that it itself is incapable of solving alone,
for example how one can wait for the forgiveness of sins – which is valid even for
the best, who is not free from them; Thus now elevated these supposed problems
to the very rank of postulates of practical reason, it is supposedly demonstrated by
it with rational arguments what was previously tried to be achieved by theoretical
means: the truth of the Christian religion. However, as it is known that the system
of the Christian religion in its present form is the result of the work of several
centuries, that in this gradual
determination of the dogmas, it was not always knowledge, moderation and
rationality that guided the Fathers of the Church, who influenced the acceptance
of the Christian religion not only the pure love of truth, but partly very convoluted
motivations, very little calculations. saints, impure passions and, many times,
needs of the spirit coming from pure superstition, then we will be allowed, to
explain the emergence of the edifice of the Christian religion, to accept the
influence that external circumstances, the spirit of the times [?]What did the
Churches intend[?]What, more specifically, was the entire History of dogmas due
to?[? But] it will not be this sectoral evolution within the process that the Church
has gone through that, following historical criteria, will guide the present
investigation, but rather some general reasons that concern in part the original
figure of the religion of Jesus, in part to the very spirit of the times; They explain
that from very early on the primitive Christian religion could be confused with a
religion of virtue, to become first a sect, then a positive faith.
The image presented here of Jesus' efforts to convince the Jews that the
 4
9
essence of virtueLV or valid justice before God is not found in the mere observance
of the Mosaic law, it will certainly be recognized as correct by all factions of the
Christian faith; but at the same time it will be considered very insufficient.
HGW 1,287 / The affirmation that the moral laws of Jesus are also
positive, that is, they derive their validity from the fact that Jesus has ordered
them, certainly shows a humble modesty and a renunciation of everything good,
noble and great that human nature possesses, but at least it has to presuppose in
the human being a feeling natural obligation before divine commandments; and if
not even something in our hearts corresponded to the requirement of virtue, if it
did not touch some chord in us, Jesus' purpose of teaching virtue to humans would
have been of the same nature and would have had the same success as zeal. of
Saint Anthony of Padua preaching to the fish; After all, the saint could also have
trusted that what neither his preaching nor the nature of the fish were capable of
could become a reality through help from above. But later we will deal with how
even moral laws have come to be considered positive. Since our intention is not to
investigate how this or that positive doctrine has been introduced into Christianity
or how it has changed with it, nor whether this or that doctrine is really positive
in whole or in part, accessible to reason or not, We will limit ourselves exclusively
to that which in the religion of Jesus gave rise to it becoming positive, that is, to
being presented with the pretension of not being a demand of reason - to the
point of even opposing it - nor of agree with it, but to be believed only based on
authority.
A sect always presupposes a doctrine, some opinions, almost always
different from the dominant ones, or at least from others; A philosophical sect
can be called that which is doctrinally distinguished by what it considers essential
in duty and virtue, by its representations of divinity, by considering that what is
depraved and unworthy is to deviate from ethics, but not to err in its deduction,
considering the popular faith of fantasy as unworthy of a thinking man, but not as
punishable; The opposite of a philosophical sect is not so much a religious sect as
a positive sect, which declares not only ethics irrelevant to morality, but also a
faith that, [even] not proceeding properly from reason, [nevertheless] is based on
the fantasy of the people; Furthermore, it considers it absolutely sinful and
guards against it, or replaces this positivity with another, in which case this new

LVCrossed out: if you will, the hope of eternal beatitude

 5
0
faith takes on the same value and rank as ethics and even equates those who do
not believe in it with morally bad people. even if it is not their fault (something
that can happen with positive faith, not with moral faith). Strictly speaking, it is
only this type of sect that should bear the name of such, a name that carries
something odious and is not fair to apply to a philosophical side, since it implies
the idea of condemnation and intolerance. Nor should one, as is common, apply
the name of religious sects to these positive sects, since in the end the essence of
religion does not consist in the positive. A third could be proposed between the
two classes, which, on the one hand, has as the sacred foundation of faith the
positive principle of [its] belief and knowledge of what is divine will and [our]
duty; but, on the other hand, it makes the moral commandments the essential
thing in the faith and not the positive doctrines that it can offer nor the uses
prescribed in it. Of this type was the doctrine of Jesus. He was a Jew; The
beginning of his faith and his gospel was the revealed will of God as the traditions
of the Jews had transmitted it to him, but so was in his own heart the living
feeling of duty and
 5
1
just, a moral law whose following was the main condition for pleasing God;
To this doctrine, to its application to individual cases and to its illustration with
imaginary examples (parables), certain elements of its history are added that
contributed to the establishment of a faith based on authority.
And the fact is that, no matter how important the moral character of a man
who teaches virtue and wants to counteract the corruption of the customs of his
time is, and although without his own moral character his words would fall dead
and cold from his lips, in this case There were also some circumstances that made
the person of the teacher more important than was properly necessary to present
the truth.
HGW 1,289 / * In fact, Jesus himself felt obliged to talk a lot about himself,
of his person; The circumstances that led him to do so were none other than the
only way in which his people were willing to listen; The Jews harbored the very
deep conviction that all their government, their religious ceremonies, their
political and civil laws had been received from the same divinity, this was their
pride, this faith closed the way to any speculation of their own, limiting it
exclusively to the study of the Holy Scriptures, while limiting the effectiveness of
virtue to blind obedience to those commandments that they had not given
themselves; a teacher who wanted to have more echo among his people than to
provide some new glosses [of those laws], and convince them of how deficient the
established ecclesiastical faith was, could not but support his statements on the
same authority; wanting to appeal to mere reason would have meant preaching to
the fish, since the Jews lacked sensitivity for exhortations of that type; On the
other hand, proposing a moral attitude had the support of the indelible voice of
the moral commandment, the voice of conscience, capable of itself to sink the
importance of ecclesiastical faith; but once the feeling of morality has decidedly
taken the direction of the ecclesiastical faith and has been completely
amalgamated with it, when [ecclesiastical faith] has taken lordship over the minds
and, having become the sole foundation of all virtue, of her has *

Jesus talks a lot about himself

 5
2
a false virtue has arisen, then there is no other way to measure oneself against it
than to oppose it with an authority equal to its own, the divine one; If Jesus
demands that we listen to his teachings, it is not because they correspond to the
moral needs of our spirit, but because they are the will of God; this coincidence
between what he said and the will of God, that whoever believes in him believes
in the Father, who teaches nothing more than what the Father has taught him
(the dominant and recurring representation especially in John) [is a ] resource of
authority without which Jesus could not influence his contemporaries no matter
how eloquent his presentation of the value of virtue for its own sake; He could
have had the consciousness of a union with God himself, or he could have felt the
intimately engraved law [of morality] as an immediate revelation of divinity, a
spark from him, and the certainty of teaching only what this law commands him.
could have made him aware of the coincidence of his teaching with the will of
God capable. Everyone has before them everyday examples of the extent to which
human beings are capable of renouncing their innate strength and freedom, of
how they voluntarily submit to eternal tutelage, of their attachment to these
chains of reason, an attachment all the more bigger the heavier they get. In
addition to promoting a religion of virtue, Jesus could only resort to presenting
himself as its teacher himself, demanding faith in his person, something that his
religion of reason only needed to oppose the positive.
*
There was also another cause, which was derived from the previous one:
the wait for a Messiah who, clothed in power like a plenipotentiary Jehovah, was
going to refound his State again; Only from this Messiah were the Jews willing to
accept new teachings with respect to those they already had in their scriptures.
The audience that Jesus gained among them – and in most of his close friends –
was based largely on the possibility that he might be that Messiah, that he would
soon manifest himself in all his greatness. Jesus, who could not find acceptance
except under this assumption, could not expressly reject it; but he tried to give a
moral bias to what they expected from the Messiah and postponed the time in
which *

like the
messiah
 5
3
He would manifest his greatness after his death. It has already been mentioned to
what extent his disciples have remained attached to this faith. Another new
reason to talk about yourself. And yet another reason was the danger that loomed
over his safety, his freedom and his life, concerns about himself that often forced
him to defend himself, to explain his intentions, the purpose of the way of life he
had chosen, so who not only praised justice in general, but, along with it, justice
in his own eyes.
Finally, just as in the case of a man extraordinary for his doctrine, he also
asks about the circumstances of his life, even about small traits that are of no
interest when dealing with ordinary people, the person of Jesus became infinitely
more important because of the story of his life and for his unjust death,
fascinating the imagination and retaining attention. We are interested in the
extraordinary destinies of unknown and even fictitious people, with them we
suffer, we rejoice, we feel the injustice committed against an Iroquois. How much
deeper did the image of the unjustly sacrificed friend and teacher have to be
among his people? How could they forget the teacher when propagating their
doctrine? His grateful evocation, his praise will be as dear to you, as endearing as
his doctrine; but it must be even more essential to them given the extraordinary
nature of their history, which surpasses human nature and its forces. *

Much of the trust and expectation that Jesus aroused among the Jews – so
incapable of a hard-won, self-based faith It was due to his miracles, although that
gift does not seem to have attracted much attention to his educated
contemporaries (for example, the Jews also cast out demons, and when Jesus
healed the withered hand in the synagogue, the first thing that caught their
attention it was not this healing, but the desecration of the Sabbath), as should
have been the case with those who surely know better than ordinary people what
is possible or not by nature; regardless of everything that the adversaries of
Christianity have presented against the reality of miracles and *

philosophers against their possibility, it is always granted that for the disciples

miracles
and friends of Jesus these acts were miraculous, which is enough for us here.
Nothing has contributed so much as this faith in miracles to making the religion of
Jesus positive, basing it entirely, including its doctrine of virtue, on authority.
 5
4
Despite the fact that Jesus demanded faith for his doctrine and not for his
miracles, despite the fact that eternal truths - being necessary and universal by
nature - must be based only on the essence of reason, not on external phenomena
of the sensible world fortuitous to This, the conviction of the obligatory nature of
virtue, now took the following path: blindly accepted miracles founded a faith, an
authority of its author, an authority that became the principle from which the
obligation of morality derived; However, if the Christians, once taking this path, /
had managed to travel it in its entirety, they would have greatly surpassed the
Jews; but in the end they stayed halfway; and just as the Jews made sacrifices,
ceremonies and an imposed faith the essence of religion, so the Christians made it
of superficial devotions, external actions, intimate emotions. This detour through
miracles and the authority of a person, plus some other intermediate stations, to
reach morality has the disadvantage of all detours, since the objective is thus
further away than it should be and the traveler easily runs the risk of losing sight.
seen the road itself between its revolts and the distraction of the stops; But this
[detour] also lowers the dignity of morality, which, despising in its autonomy all
foreign foundations, wants to be self-sufficient, based solely on itself. Now it was
no longer the moral doctrine of Jesus that had to be respected by itself, a respect
that would later have passed to the teacher, but was respectable only by the
teacher and he by his miracles. Whoever through this detour has become a pious
and virtuous being is a humble person who does not attribute his moral conviction
above all to his own moral strength, to the respect he pays to the ideal of
holiness, nor will he attribute any capacity or receptivity to himself. for virtue,
nor the character of free; but it is this character, the source of morality, that has
been completely renounced by those who submit to that law only by force,
 5
5
for fear of his master's punishment; Consequently, when the theoretical faith in
this power on which he depends is taken away, then, like an unbound slave, he
does not respect any law, since he had not given himself the law whose yoke he
endured - hence the abandonment of a religion Merely positive often translates
into debauchery; If the faith was merely positive, the fault lies directly with the
positive faith, not with its abandonment; Not being able to conceive that [reason]
is free, master, he could only see in her, as they say, the servant, and this is the
only function that remains for him in the face of his appetites. This journey from
the history of miracles to faith in a person, and from this / faith – if everything
goes well – to ethics is the royal path commanded by the professions of faith;
something as well known as it has been demonstrated that the characteristic
foundation of virtue is found in human reason, and that the range of human
nature, the degree of perfection required of it, must be placed above the
situation of a minority , who must protect her eternally, without ever achieving
access to the state of virility.
Aiming for a small goal [is foolish], etc.: Klopstock[, “The Rhine Wine”]
It was not Jesus himself who made his religious doctrine a peculiar sect
characterized by its own uses; Decisive here was the zeal of his friends and how
they had understood his teaching, how they configured it, what they intended
when they propagated it and what reasons they were going to rely on. What is at
issue, therefore, is how the character and qualities of Jesus' disciples, as well as
the kind of connection they had with their teacher, contributed to turning Jesus'
teaching into a positive sect. *

Although little is known in particular about the character of most of Jesus'

disciples, it seems certain that they were characterized by their uprightness,
courage and perseverance in professing the teachings of their teacher, as well as
by their humility and good character; but they were also accustomed to acting in
a limited area, they had learned and practiced their trades as they are usually
learned and practiced, and they did not stand out even as generals *
nor
the positive in the
as disciples
competent statesmen, on the contrary, did they feel proud of being neither one
thing nor the other[. This is the spirit with which they became friends and
disciples of Jesus; His horizon expanded a little, although without overcoming all
the ideas and prejudices of the Jews (see in the Acts of the Apostles [10, 34 f.;
10. 9-15] an example of Peter, the most fiery of all: “Now I truly realize [that...
in any nation he who fears God and practices righteousness is pleasing to Him]”
and [the vision d] the container with the various animals, as well as what was
already mentioned before) [;] and [as] they did not have a great treasure of
 5
6
spiritual energy of their own, their conviction of the doctrine of Jesus was based
above all on their friendship and their devotion to he –they had not conquered
truth and freedom by themselves, only after a painful learning did they arrive at a
vague perception of that [teaching] and certain formulations-; His ambition was to
understand it faithfully and preserve it, as well as to transmit it faithfully and
without additions, so that it would not take on spurious characteristics due to its
own elaboration. And so it had to be, if the Christian religion wanted to survive,
establish itself as a public religion and reach posterity as such. If it is worth at this
point to compare the fate of Socrates' philosophy with the fate of Jesus' teaching,
we find that the difference between the disciples of the two wise men was one of
the reasons why Socrates' philosophy did not become in public religion neither in
Greece nor elsewhere.
The disciples of Jesus had renounced any other interest – which, surely, was
short-term and could not be very important to them. , they had left everything
and followed Jesus; They completely lacked an interest in the State, like that
which a Republican has in his country; their only interest was limited to the
person of Jesus. The friends of Socrates had developed their faculties more widely
from their youth; They were imbued with the republican spirit, which gives more
independence to each individual and makes it impossible for anyone with a little
brain to depend completely on one person; In his State it was still worth having an
interest in him, and such an interest is inalienable. Most of them had already had
other philosophers, other teachers; They loved Socrates for his virtue and his
philosophy, not virtue and his philosophy for him. Just as Socrates himself had
fought for his country and had fulfilled all the duties of a free citizen - in war as a
soldier, in peace as a just judge - his friends were also more than mere passive
philosophers, more than mere disciples. of Socrates. So they were also capable of
reworking in their own minds what they had learned and giving them the imprint
of their own originality, many of them founded their own schools and were great
men in their own right, as much as Socrates himself. *

Jesus had considered it appropriate to set the number of his close friends
at twelve; He also gave them great powers after his resurrection as his envoys and
successors. Anyone has full powers to spread virtue, and to found the Kingdom of
God on earth there is no sacred number of men who feel called to undertake it;
Nor did Socrates have 7 disciples or 3 times 3, every friend of virtue was welcome
 5
7
to him; In a bourgeois Constitution it is appropriate and necessary to determine
how many members the representation of the people should have, [as well as] the
courts, and to adhere to it; but a religion of virtue cannot borrow these forms
from the Constitutions; as the
maximum prestige is limited to a
certain number, the meaning of persons was established, which then became
increasingly important in the Constitution of the Church as it spread, and this is
how councils were possible that resolved truths by majority vote and imposed on
the world his decrees as a norm of faith. *

There is another circumstance that draws attention in the story of Jesus:

that he sent his friends and listeners – once to a larger group, another time to a
not so large group – to places that he himself did not have the opportunity to visit
and instruct. In both cases it doesn't seem like they were away from him for more
than a few days. And, with the little time they had on these trips, it is impossible
for them to achieve great advances in the training and improvement of people. At

*
twelve
his mission for the country
 5
8
At best they could draw the attention of the people to themselves and their
teacher, spread the story of their miraculous deeds, but not achieve great
conquests for the cause of virtue; This way of spreading a religion can only be
reconciled with a positive religion; No progress could come from this in the
eradication of Jewish superstition or in the propagation of ethics, when Jesus
himself, after years of effort and treatment, had achieved so little with his most
intimate friends. **
Furthermore, the mandate that Jesus gives to his disciples after the
Resurrection, to spread his teaching and his name, also draws attention in this
regard. The moving farewell on the lips of a teacher of virtue before his death -
who uses the few moments he still has left to, in the most important moment of
his life, urge love and tolerance to his friends with the voice of most delicate
friendship, with the enthusiastic feeling of the value of religion and ethics, to
imbue them with indifference to the dangers that virtue and truth could bring
them - characterizes him as much as the mandate after his resurrection
characterizes the teacher of a / positive religion. , especially as expressed in
Mark [16, 15-18]. A teacher of virtue could
having said, instead of “go into all the world”, etc., that each one do all the good
he can in the sphere of activity assigned to him by nature and Providence; In this
farewell the teacher of virtue values exclusively works, in [ Mark he values only]
faith; He also establishes as distinctive an external sign, baptism, making these
two positive things - faith and baptism - a condition of beatitude, while declaring
condemned those who do not believe. No matter how much one believes one has
elevated faith to a living faith, active in works of mercy and charity, at the same
time one denigrates the lack of faith as a stubborn rejection of the truth of the
gospel against the best knowledge and knowledge of one's own. awareness; No
matter how much it is said that here we only speak of that faith and that disbelief
- not that it consists precisely of the dry words -, nevertheless that faith continues
to be essentially contaminated with a positivity that, at least, is as worthy as the
morality, inseparable from it, **
[for] blessedness and damnation depend on that [positive faith]. Furthermore, the
continuation [of the gospel] also shows that this positive is the priority content of
resurrection and command after his resurrection
that mandate, by enunciating the gifts, the qualities that will be conferred on
believers: expelling demons in their name, speaking in new tongues, taking
without snakes in the ground are in danger, drinking poisonous drinks without any
 5
9
risk, curing the sick by laying on of hands. There is a notable contrast between
the qualities attributed here to humans pleasing to God and what Matthew 7 says
above all. 22; precisely similar features are enunciated here, namely: casting out
demons in the name of Jesus, speaking as prophets in his name (which, as is
known, has more scope than merely prophesying and approximately coincides - or
at least is related - with kaIVGIG and ?00GR1g Aa?sv [speaking in new tongues])
and perform many other powerful actions, and yet with all these qualities
someone could be of a personal nature to be condemned before the judge of the
world. The words of Jesus referred to by Mark (16, / 15-18) are only possible on
the lips of a teacher of positive religion and not on the lips of a teacher of virtue.
These various circumstances have been inscribed in the doctrine of Jesus:
certainly it demands unconditional and disinterested obedience to the will of God
and the ethical law, making this obedience the condition of divine favor and hope
in eternal beatitude; [but those same circumstances] could have induced those
who maintained and propagated the religion of Jesus to base the knowledge of
the will of God and the will to fulfill it exclusively on the authority of Jesus, so
that they themselves presented the recognition of this authority as part of the
divine will and therefore as a duty; so they turned reason into a merely receptive,
non-legislative faculty, and everything else that could be shown as the teaching of
Jesus, and, later, of his representatives, was respected - merely because it was
the teaching of Jesus - as will. [divine], making salvation and damnation depend
on it; In this way, even the teachings about virtue having become positive, they
then forced
 6
0
positively - that is, not by themselves, but as commandments of Jesus - and,
having lost the internal criterion that made them necessary, they were equated
with any other positive, particular provision, with any regulation based on
circumstances or prudence; The religion of Jesus became a positive doctrine of
virtue, despite this being a contradictory concept in itself. Now, the doctrine of
Jesus not only distinguished himself from the public faith [of the Jews] by
declaring his indifference to it and thus constituting what would have been just
another philosophical sect, but he also declared that public faith sinful along with
its observance. of its commandments and uses; He could not conceive that the
supreme end of humanity was attainable by any other commandments than his
own, which were partly moral, partly consisting of positive beliefs and
ceremonies; In this way, the teaching of Jesus became the positive faith of a sect,
with extremely important consequences both for its external form and for its
content, which have distanced it more and more from what is beginning to be
considered essential in every true religion, including Christianity: that of being
characterized by
to establish in all its purity the duties of the human being and its motives, and to
show the possibility of the supreme good through the idea of God.
*
HGW 1,298 / A sect that sees the commandments of virtue as commandments
positives -and he also adds others-, takes on characteristics totally foreign to what
is a mere philosophical sect (which also has religious doctrines as its object, but
with no other judge than reason), characteristics that in a small society of
sectarian believers are appropriate , permissible and reasonable in themselves;
But as soon as their faith spreads and even becomes generalized, in a State, in
part they cease to be adequate - or, even if they are maintained, they take on
another meaning -, in part they become truly unjust and oppressive. The mere
fact that the number of Christians increased to include all the subjects of the
State made provisions and institutions that did not undermine the rights of anyone
when the society was still small, became citizen and civil duties, something that
could never be achieved. be. *

unjust in a State what applies in a small society

 6
1
Some things that were characteristic of the small sectarian group had to
disappear when it grew, for example: the close union and brotherhood of its
members, all the more united as they were more oppressed and despised. This
bond of common faith has been so weakened that those who do not also have
friendships or interests that give them closer contacts, or who cannot appeal to
anything other than the brotherhood in Christ to receive some support, with no
other qualifications than poverty, merits, talents or wealth, you will hardly be
able to count on the compassion or support of even good Christians. That close
union of Christians as a positive sect was completely different from the
relationship that may exist between the friends of a philosophical sect.
Associating with a philosophical sect changes little or nothing in domestic, social
or other relationships, equality is maintained with respect to wife and children
and uneducated people, without changing the direction and extent of human love
that may have the friend of a philosophical sect; On the other hand, whoever
joined the small Christian sect distanced himself from many to whom he had been
linked by kinship, position or service; His compassion, his good works were limited
to a narrow circle, which enjoyed priority in his eyes due to their common
*
opinions, his humanitarian love, his services, his possible influence. Just as
suddenly the community of property disappeared - possible only in a small sect -
by virtue of which it became a crime of divine lèse majesté for the believer, once
admitted to the community, to retain for himself something of his property. If this
maxim had been strictly maintained - so beneficial for those who owned nothing,
but which had to be a heavy obligation for those who, having property, now had
to completely renounce taking care of what until now had occupied the entire
scope of their activity -, if it had been maintained, I say, it would have little
promoted the spread of Christianity; So, out of prudence or necessity, it was
abandoned early, and thus whoever wanted to be admitted to that society did not
have to meet more than one requirement for admission; but voluntary
contributions to the common treasury were instilled even more as a means of
purchasing one's own *

heaven, with which the clergy from then on did nothing but gain, because at the
same time that they encouraged the laity to do this generosity, they were very
careful not to squander their own wealth thus acquired; In this way, to enrich
community of goods
 6
2
himself – poor and needy as he was – he turned the other half of the human race
into beggars.
In the Catholic Church this enrichment of convents, clerics and churches has

been maintained , from which the poor receive little, and also in a way that
perpetuates begging, which in some places gives rise to the unnatural perversion
that the vagabond thief, who sleeps on the street, have it better than the
industrious worker. In the Protestant Church, the pastor – if he gains the affection
of his flock – receives the eventual contribution of butter and eggs out of
friendship and not as a means to buy heaven; and as far as alms is concerned, not
even a poor Jewish beggar is turned out of the door of a charity house.
Regarding equality among the first Christians - how the slave became the
brother of his master, how the humility of not putting himself above anyone or
esteeming human beings for their honors and dignities or according to their
talents and other brilliant qualities, but according to the strength of his faith, it
became, together with the feeling of one's own / unworthiness, the first law of a
Christian - it is true that in theory this equality remains valid in its entirety,
although It is prudently added that this is so in the eyes of Heaven, so in this
earthly life no further notice is taken of it; and the naive person who listens to his
bishop or superintendent expound with moving eloquence these principles of
humility and the absolute abhorrence of pride and vanity, also seeing the devout
expression with which the distinguished gentlemen and ladies of the community
listen to him; The simple man, I say, who, after that sermon, approached in
confidence his prelate who is with the elegant gentlemen and ladies, hoping to
find in them humble brothers and friends, could immediately read in his smiling or
contemptuous expression that this should not be take it so literally that its
application will only properly take place in Heaven; and when even today
eminences of the ecclesiastical prelature wash the feet every year
 6
3
of a certain number of poor people, this is hardly more than a comedy that
leaves everything as it was - and that has also lost meaning due to the fact that in
our customs, washing the feet no longer has the Jewish meaning of an everyday
action and a courtesy with guests, which used to be reserved for slaves or
servants, while the custom of the Chinese emperor tilling the land each year,
although it has also degenerated into a comedy, has continued to have a greater
and more immediate meaning , since plowing the field remains a main occupation
of the majority of his subjects.
In the same way, another action [that had a meaning] in the mouth and in
the sight of the teacher of virtue Jesus himself, has taken on a figure in the *
reduced sect and another totally different one when the sect became generalized.
Anyone who, without having tested the gift of interpretation with dogmatic
concepts, reads the story of the last dinner or dinners that Jesus spent in the
heart of an intimate friendship, will surely find the conversation with his disciples
about the acceptance of destiny sublime. , the superiority that gives to the
virtuous / the consciousness of his duty above suffering and injustice, to the
universal love of humanity as the only possible demonstration of obedience to
God. Equally moving and human is the way Jesus celebrates the Jewish Passover
with them for the last time, reminding them that when, after having fulfilled
their obligations, they enjoyed a religious dinner or simply among friends, they
would remember him, their faithful friend and teacher who would no longer be
among them; that when eating the bread they would remember his body, which
was going to be sacrificed for the truth, and when drinking the wine, his blood
that was going to be shed, a symbol with which he himself associated in the image
the memory of him with parts of the food that they would eat – [symbol] that was
taken very naturally from completely ordinary objects, but that, looked at
exclusively from the aesthetic side, may seem somewhat banal, although in itself
it may be more pleasant than the metaphorical use sustained for so long of the
words flesh and blood, food and drink (Jn 6, 47 ff.), which even some theologian
has declared somewhat harsh.

*
dinn
er
Soon, among Christians converted into a sect, this very human request of a
friend who says goodbye to his friends became a commandment of the same rank as
 6
4
the orders of divinity; the duty to honor the memory of the teacher, which springs
spontaneously from friendship, in a religious duty; and the whole, in a mysterious
action of worship, which took the place of the Jewish and Roman sacrificial
banquets; The gifts of the rich put the poor in a position to fulfill this duty, which
otherwise they would not have been able to fulfill except poorly or with difficulty,
and which they accepted with pleasure. Soon an effect was attributed to these
banquets in honor of Christ independent of the strength that any healthy food gives
to the body, of which a spontaneous conversation exerts on the mood or, in this
case, of the edification that pious dialogues produce. . But as Christianity spread
more and more, generating greater inequality of rank among Christians – rejected in
theory, of course, but maintained „in praxi ‟ -, this fraternization disappeared, and
while in the past there were complaints in some places Since the banquets of
spiritual love sometimes degenerated into carousing and scenes of carnal love, little
by little there was less physical satisfaction, while the spiritual, mystical was valued
all the more; and in the face of such sublime pleasure, other more common feelings
that took place in the beginning, the conversation between friends, the evenings in
good company, the mutual honesty and the solace of spirits, are no longer taken into
account.
*
Another characteristic in a positive sect is its zeal to expand, making
proselytes for its faith and for heaven.
1
The just man who has adopted a philosophical system whose basis and
objective in all his life and philosophizing is morality, overlooks the inconsistency of
the Epicurean and even that of anyone who places in the

expansionist desire
Aside: the just man, possessed of the zeal to propagate virtue, is at the
once deeply convinced of the right of each person to have his own conviction and
will, and is equanimous enough to regard accidental differences of opinion and faith
as secondary, which no one has the right to change once assumed.
happiness the principle of their moral system, as long as in those options – despite
their theory, which if followed consistently, would erase any distinction between
what is just and unjust, virtue and immorality – the best part of oneself prevails;
that [just man] also has in high esteem the Christian who - although he makes his
system of dogmas, or at least a part of it, a falsely reassuring cushion for his
conscience - sticks rather to the true, divine of his religion, to the moral, and he is a
 6
5
virtuous man; This contradiction between head and heart rather induces him to
admire the incorruptible power of the I, which triumphs over convictions of the
understanding destructive to virtue and words learned from memory[. Thus also the
just man - whatever positive sect he chooses - will recognize morality as the highest
of his faith and will embrace as a brother, a supporter of the same religion, the
believer of any other sect whom he finds. a friend of virtue; and such a Christian will
say to such a Jew what the monk said to Nathan [act 4, esc. 7th] :
You are a Christian, by God you are a Christian! There never was a better
Christian!
and such a Christian answers such a Jew:
So much the better for us, since
what makes me a Christian in your eyes, makes you a Jew in my
eyes!
Yeah! So much the better for you! Because purity of heart was the essential
part of your faith for both of you, and that is why each one was able to see in the
other his partner in faith.
[On the contrary] whoever gives infinite value to the positive in his religion,
who in his heart is incapable of anything above this positive, will either – depending
on his character – pity the believers of other sects, or detest them. In the first case
he will feel motivated to show other ignorant and unhappy people the only way of
salvation in which he hopes, especially if he has other reasons to love them; and this
all the more so, since the way to find this path seems so extremely easy that the
memory can retain in a few hours everything that is needed.
 6
6
for this, and he who was lost, once he finds himself on the right path, finds so
many brothers who support him, so much food, rest and comfort. In the opposite
case, since his positive faith is as identified with him as the feeling of his own
existence, he cannot but believe that the rejection of that [faith] can only come
from ill will. For the average person, differences of character and inclinations are
much more understandable and tolerable than differences of opinion; It is thought
that it is very easy to change these and it is believed that it is something required -
one likes to attribute to others their way [of seeing things], when it is not simply
demanded - and that what is good for our way of thinking cannot be wrong for
others. The other motive or pretext that usually operates here is the pious, but in
this case clumsy, thought that it is our duty to promote the honor of God, to worship
and serve Him in the only way worthy of Him, and not to take part in those opinions
and positive practices should be considered a violation of the most sacred duties -
some will try to redirect the transgressor by convincing or persuading him - the
Spanish in America, and even today their Holy Inquisition, feel called to punish and
avenge these crimes against them with murder. majesty against divinity-; most
among the confessional regimes, Catholic or Protestant, penalize them with the
exclusion of civil rights. Each person becomes more firmly convinced of his positive
faith the more people he can convince or see convinced of it, [while] faith in virtue
is based on the feeling of its necessity, on the feeling that it is identical with the
identity more own; In all opinions of positive faith, the believer tries to marginalize
his own feeling that it is still possible to doubt them - as well as the experience of
others who have seen their own doubts grow until they become reasons to reject
positive faith -, trying to gather under the banner of your faith as many as possible;
The believer of a sect will always feel a kind of strangeness when he hears that
there are human beings who do not share his faith - an embarrassing feeling that
easily turns into antipathy into hatred towards them; It is typical of a reason that
feels incapable of making positive doctrines based on history necessary, that at most
 6
7
less try to stamp on them – or find in them – the other feature of the truths
of reason, universality; This explains why among the supposed proofs of the
existence of God the argument "ex consensu gentium " has always had a place,
which at least provides something reassuring: the mere fact of sharing the fate of
many has often had something consoling even in the face of God. to the horrors of
hell; and everything, including the yoke of faith, becomes more bearable the more
accompanied one is, and also in the desire to make proselytes often secretly
operates resentment because another wants to be free from the chains that we
endure without having the strength. to get rid of them. But now that Christianity has
already made such great conquests among the pagans, now that theologians
celebrate with great satisfaction that the prophecies of the Old Testament have
been fulfilled, or are about to be completely fulfilled, for the faith of Christ will
soon be widespread throughout the planet and all the peoples of the earth / will join
it, in the face of such an abundance of Christians, the proselytizing zeal has become
more lukewarm; and although the entire arsenal of Christian weapons that was so
victorious against the pagans and Jews has been maintained for controversy - there
would also still be much to do regarding the Jews, as well as the Muslims -, in any
case the provisions addressed to the Indians and Americans cannot but be described
in fact as scarce, taking into account what could be expected from the number of
peoples that make up Christianity, their superiority in all the arts and their wealth;
And when faced with the Jews, who are increasingly settling among us, the most
that is achieved is “affability wins”, and even the Crusades awaken the attention of
only a few at most. Certainly Christianity had a rapid and extensive spread due to
miracles, to the unshakable courage of its confessors and martyrs, to the pious
prudence of its later leaders - who were sometimes forced to resort to the good
cause of holy deception ( which the layman always calls a lie anyway)-; Certainly this
extraordinarily rapid spread of Christianity constitutes a great demonstration of its
truth and of divine Providence; However, today it is not at all strange that, if the
edifying stories of conversions in the
 6
8
Malabars, Paraguay or California arouse interest, this is due not so much to the
pious desire of their authors or to the fact that the name of Christ is preached on the
banks of the Ganges or the Mississippi; It is not so much about the expansion of the
Kingdom of Christ as – for many who call themselves Christians – the enrichment it
produces in Geography, Natural History and knowledge of the customs of the people;
In general, there is very little esteem and attention given to proselytes, when they
are occasionally exhibited as a rarity, so that the admiration expressed by this
triumph, [v. g.] in the spectacle of the baptism of a converted Jew, can be taken by
him as a congratulation for having returned from his wandering; but it can also be
taken almost as amazement at the strange errancy that has led to the Christian
Church. The fact that all this happens so rarely can also be excused by the fact that
the internal enemies of Christianity, the most dangerous, constantly require so much
preparation and work that it is not enough to worry much about the
1 salvation of the Turks and Samoyeds.

*
In a bourgeois constitution only those duties are considered that derive from
the right of another, nothing else can the State obligate me to do; The right of the
other must be maintained, whether I make it a duty to respect it for moral reasons
or not, in the latter case in which the State proceeds with me by force, as with a
piece of nature[. Before my duty arises, the right of the other must first be deduced;
Someone very conscientious may have qualms about accepting the legal demands of
another as valid, as long as the latter has not demonstrated them; but, once
convinced of the right of the other, he will recognize, without the need for a judicial
ruling, his duty to satisfy those demands; It is, therefore, the knowledge of the right
of the other that produces the knowledge of what is one's own duty. Now, there are
also other duties, which do not come from the

1
Here the text is interrupted for half a page. Hegel then inserted (“In a Bourgeois Constitution”…)
with another letter two double pages, the content of which continues without interruption in the
previous manuscript starting on page. 310 (...“he confessed his own”).
*
How a moral or religious society becomes a State
right of another, example the right to a good work: he needy
lacks by itself of rights over my pocket, unless what do you suppose
that I should consider assistance to the poor as a duty; [but] for me my duty is not
HE derives from his right, [because] his right to
life, health, etc. No addresses no one in particular but to humanity
in general (the child's right to life is directed to parents); that [right] imposes on the
State (or in general on those who are closest to it) the duty of maintaining it, not on
an individual (a common excuse when a man is asked to help a poor person is that he
 6
9
does not know Why does it have to be him and not someone else? Rather, he is
willing to contribute along with others, in part, of course, because this way he does
not have to bear all the expenses alone, but he also feels that this duty does not fall
to him alone. about him, but also about others); The poor have the right to demand
alms from me as long as I am a member of the State, [but] they do it to me here,
directly, when they should do it to me through the mediation of the State; For me as
a human being [or, more precisely,] as a moral being, it is a moral requirement in
the name of ethical law that I impose good works on myself as a duty; [but by
addressing] me as a sensitive being (endowed with sympathetic affections), he does
not make an [ethical] demand of me, but acts on me as a natural being, awakening
my compassion.
Justice means that I have to respect the rights of others; It is a virtue when out
of duty I make it my maxim: not because the State demands it, but because it is a
duty, and in this sense it is not a requirement of the State but of the moral law. The
second type of duties - for example in what it is up to charity to contribute to the
poor fund, foundation of hospitals - the State cannot demand it as a duty from
individual to individual, so to speak, but from all citizens. ; [but] beneficence as
such is a duty demanded by morality.
There may also be other duties that do not come from rights that other
individuals have over me or from rights of simple humanity - in a word, from the
rights of others - but that I have voluntarily assumed (not because the ethical law
requires it); In this case also the rights that I grant to another have been granted
only by my free will. Of this type are the duties that I voluntarily impose on myself
when entering any society whose purpose is not opposed to that of the State (in
which case I would transgress its rights); Entry into that society grants its members
certain rights over me, the sole foundation of which is my voluntary entry and the
duties thus voluntarily assumed.
The rights that I grant to such a society over me cannot be rights that the State
has over me, otherwise it would recognize within the State a power different from it
and equal to it in rights; The State cannot accept that I grant a society the right over
my life or the judicial decision over property (except as a friendly justice of the
peace, to whose ruling I voluntarily submit)[. Now, to such a society I can also grant
the right to watch over my morality, guide me in this regard, demand that I confess
my faults and impose penances for them; but these rights can only / last as long as
 7
0
my decision to impose on myself the duties from which those rights derive; Since
these duties are not based on the rights of another, it is up to me to suppress them
along with those rights; Since in any case these duties have been assumed so
voluntarily that they were not even mandated by the ethical law, I can even annul
the rights of another when they arise from duties that only on my own initiative have
been imposed on me by the ethical law, for example: I can annul arbitrarily the right
that I granted to a poor man to ask me for a weekly allowance, since he did not have
that right in itself, but it came exclusively from the duty that I imposed on myself to
give it to him.
Since the State cannot demand morality from its citizens as a State, but only as
a moral being, and since the State's duty is rather the opposite: not to take measures
that are contrary to morality, or that surreptitiously undermine it; Since its own
priority interest - even if it were in favor of legality, which is its goal - is that its
citizens are also morally good, it will take direct measures to achieve this (since
here we are not talking about the invisible influence with which the various
Constitutions shape the virtuous spirit of a people); If the State enacted laws so that
its citizens were moral, it would assume something that does not concern it and [it
would become] as contradictory as it is ridiculous. The only way for the State to
ensure that citizens use these provisions is the trust that must be aroused in them.
Religion is the means par excellence to achieve it, and whether it is effective in this
depends on the use that the State makes of it; The religions of all peoples show this
goal, they all have in common that they always aim to produce an attitude that
cannot be the object of civil laws - and if religions are better or worse, it is due to
how they want to influence the will for the attitude to arise and with it the actions
appropriate to both civil and religious laws: instilling terror in the imagination or
motivating it morally. If the religious measures of the State become laws, we only
arrive at the same thing as with all other civil laws: legality.
HGW 1.309 / Now, what is impossible for the State is to motivate the
people to act out of respect for duty; If he also uses religion to do so - he may
even seduce people into believing that by observing these religious customs
ordered by the State he has already complied with morality, and persuade them
that for a human being it is enough -, That is what good people have always tried,
in small or large ways.
This is what Jesus also tried in a town especially unapproachable by
 7
1
morality, since he clung all the more firmly to the illusion that legality is already
morality because in him all the moral precepts were at the same time religious
and were only precepts, only They were obligatory because they were divine
commandments. So, when an Israelite fulfilled these commandments of his God,
that is, when he celebrated his festivals correctly, offered his sacrifices as
prescribed and paid tithes to his God, he had already fulfilled everything that he
could consider as his duty; but the precepts, which at the same time could be
moral, were also laws of the State, therefore incapable of producing more than
legality, and no pious Israelite could feel obliged to do more, since, in effect, he
fulfilled what the commandments of God demanded: legality. Jesus' purpose was
to revive the moral sense, to influence the mentality; That is why he presented,
also through parables, examples of just ways of acting, especially in contrast to
what, for example, a legalistic Levite would be obliged to do, leaving it to the
good judgment of his listeners to decide whether it was sufficient. In particular,
he showed them the contrast between what civil laws require - as well as religious
precepts converted into civil laws - and what morality requires (especially in the
Sermon on the Mount[:] the „complementum ‟ of the laws, the moral attitude),
how little the observance of these precepts contributes to the essence of virtue;
In the spirit of acting out of respect for duty, for the fact that it is duty and
because then it is also a divine commandment, what he actually tried to explain
to them was religion in the true sense of the word. With all their religiosity, they
could not be more than citizens of the Jewish State; Citizens of the Kingdom of
God were only a few. Once freed from the positive precepts, which were
supposed to replace morality, reason, thus established in freedom, would have
been able to freely follow its own precepts; but too young, too inexperienced in
following her own laws, unaware of the pleasure of a freedom achieved by her
own effort, she fell again under a yoke of formulas.
The first Christians were united by a common faith and, in addition to having
this point of union, they constituted a society, whose members encouraged each
other to progress towards good and to have a strong faith, instructed each other
in matters of faith and in other duties, They resolved doubts, comforted those
who were hesitant; each one warned the other of his faults, confessed his own,
deposited his repentance, just as his profession of faith, within society, promised
obedience to society and to those to whom it had entrusted supreme custody, as
 7
2
well as to the penalties that could be imposed. By accepting the Christian faith,
one simultaneously entered this society, assumed duties towards it and gave it
rights over oneself; It would have been contradictory to accept the Christian faith
and not submit at the same time to Christian society and its demands towards the
proselyte and every Christian; and the greater or lesser degree of piety of each
person was measured, especially at the beginning, by their degree of fidelity or
obedience to society. Also in this a positive sect differs from a philosophical sect:
a man becomes an adherent of a philosophical sect by the recognition and
conviction of the doctrines of a philosophical system and, in practice, by virtue;
The first aspect integrates that man into the sect, the second makes him a citizen
of the kingdom of morality, of the invisible Church, without assuming any duties
other than those he imposes on himself, nor granting that society more rights over
him. than those that he himself grants him: the duty to act justly, the right to
demand it from him; On the other hand, upon entering the society of the positive
Christian sect, he assumed the duty of obeying its statutes, not because he
himself considered them obligatory, good, useful, but because he left the
judgment of them in the hands of society and recognized it as a duty. that others
imposed and understood, assuming the duty to believe something, to consider it
true, because society mandated belief in it, while, if / I am convinced of a
philosophical system, I reserve the right to change this conviction when required
by my reason; By entering the Christian religion, the proselyte gave him the right
to estimate for him what is true, and assumed the duty of accepting it
independently of his reason [and even] against her opinion, assuming, as in the
social contract, the duty to submit their free will to the majority of votes, to the
general will – one's heart sinks imagining that situation and the outlook is even
sadder if one thinks about the possible results of such pedantry; but the prospect
is most lamentable, if one really consults in history what kind of miserable
formation the human race has assumed by each renouncing, for himself and his
descendants, any right to judge for himself what is true, what is good and just in
the most important matters of our knowledge and faith, as well as in all other
things. The ideal of perfection that the Christian sect tried to realize in its
members varied over time and as a whole was always extremely confusing and
objectionable, as can already be assumed from the way in which it had to be
realized, namely: annihilating the freedom of will and reason (theoretical and
 7
3
practical reason); This ideal can also be judged by the heroes who have
incarnated the ideal of the Church: what gives those who are truly pious a holy
will such as that required of their ideals by the Christian Church, is what they can
have in common with thieves. , insane and ruffians; The same concept unites
them. As an ideal of moral perfection could not at all be the object of civil
legislation - and even less could the ideal of Christians with Jewish and pagan
governments -, what the Christian sect attempted was to influence the mentality
and determine by it the value of human beings, the rewards and punishments they
deserved. The virtues that he esteemed and rewarded were of a type that the
State cannot reward, while the faults that he punished were not the object of
ecclesiastical sanction for also violating civil laws, but for opposing divine
commandments, as sins: some, / as vices and crimes that, although immoral,
cannot be the jurisdiction of civil courts, others, which, although also punishable
civilly, at the same time violated moral or ecclesiastically moral precepts, and
only in this sense could they be punished by the Church, others, that transgressed
merely external provisions of the Church. This did not take the place of the State
to exercise its jurisdiction - since both jurisdictions were totally different - rather
it often tried to free a civil criminal from the arm of the law, if he had acted in
the spirit of the sect. A similar end and similar means to achieve it – morality,
respectively reciprocal encouragement, exhortation, teaching – can gather around
them a small society without prejudice to the rights of each person and the rights
of the State. Respect for the friend's moral qualities, confidence in the love he
professes for me must have awakened my confidence in him to be sure that the
shame that comes with confessing my faults will not be received with contempt or
punished with a giggle, that the trust with which I place my secrets in him will not
be betrayed, and that, in advising me what is good, his motive will be my best
interest in my own well-being, and respect for what is right even before my
usefulness; In a word, they have to be friends between whom this union is
possible. This condition already limits that society to a few; If it is expanded, I am
forced to accept as witnesses of my shame people whose sympathy for me I do not
know, as advisors people whose prudence I do not know, and as guides regarding
my duties those who have not yet shown me of his virtue - a demand that is
unjust. In that society I can only promise obedience, and she can only demand it
from me, if she has convinced me that a certain behavior is a duty - I can only
 7
4
give her my faith, and she can only demand it, if I myself am clear about the
reasons for her TRUE- . I can leave that society if I believe I no longer need it, if I
believe I have reached the age of majority, or if I see features in it that do not
allow me to continue giving it my trust, if it seems to me that it no longer fulfills
its purpose, or if I want / to abandon my goal of moral progress - a goal that only
virtue, but no one else, can demand of me -, completely or at least in the way
that society requires it; Furthermore, within it I will be able to choose the means,
as long as I want the end, without any approval other than my good understanding
and no other reason than trust in my friends.
This contract, which properly occurs in any friendship that is based on
mutual respect or the common will for good, can easily become annoying and
petty, if it extends to small things and begins to highlight what in itself should be
left aside. always at the discretion of each one.
The first [Christians] were also friends, they had in common the teaching
they received and the situation of being oppressed, in which they met or their
friendship became closer; They gave each other comfort, instruction, and support
of all kinds; Its purpose was not so much the free search for truth, which was
already given, but rather the overcoming of doubts and confirmation in faith, in
addition to progress in Christian perfection, closely linked to them; As Christianity
spread, any Christian would have had to find in anyone else - the Egyptian in the
British - wherever he found him, a friend, a brother comparable to his family and
his neighbors; but this bond became increasingly loose and the friendship as
superficial as it often was between parishioners, separated by vanity, collision of
interests, who often treat each other externally and verbally with Christian love,
while at the same time considering and they proclaim their petty envy,
stubbornness, and arrogance towards others as zeal for Christian virtue, or they
easily attribute their de facto aversion to some doctrinal difference or improper
conduct.
Entry into this society was considered a duty of every human being, the most
sacred duty towards divinity, and its abandonment as entering hell; but although
he who abandoned the sect received hatred and persecution from it, yet this
entailed as little loss of civil rights as having always been totally outside of it; nor
did entry confer civil rights or candidacy for them.
A fundamental condition for entering Christian society – radically different
 7
5
from a philosophical one – was absolute obedience in faith and in works that must
be promised to society; how to become, or not, a member of society depended on
each individual; since this had nothing to do with civil rights, that condition did
not contain any injustice.
All these characteristic features of a circle of good friends who share the
purpose of the search for truth or moral progress are also found in the society of
the Christian sect united by the promotion of Christian perfection and the
consolidation of its truth, and we later find it on a large scale in the Church that
has become universal; but, once this Church has become general in a State, it has
degenerated in its being and has been filled with injustices and contradictions;
The Church now constitutes a State.
When the Church was still in its beginnings, each community had the right to
elect its deacons, priests and bishops for itself; As the Church spread, when it
became a State, it is inevitable that the communities lose this right and, just as in
the civil State each community entity yields to the sovereign – whose will is valid.
as an expression of the will of all - the right to choose for oneself the
administrators of that entity, its tax collectors (which it can no longer set for
itself), in the same way each Christian community has lost the right to choose for
itself itself to its pastors, delegating it to the spiritual State.
Confessors have been publicly designated as counselors of consciences; But
one can no longer choose the friend whom one esteems to take as a confidant of
one's own secrets and faults, but rather the rulers of the spiritual State have
designated him as an official to whom each one must abide.
The once voluntary confession of one's faults is now the duty of every citizen
of this spiritual State, a duty whose non-compliance the Church declares a debtor
of the greatest of its penalties, eternal damnation.
The custody of Christian morality is the main object of this clerical State;
Consequently, even thoughts and all sinful vices or inclinations whose punishment
cannot correspond to the State are the object of its legislation and punishment.
The civil State punishes crimes committed against itself; But not only these, but
also all crimes that cannot be the subject of civil legislation, are punished as sin
by the clerical State, making the record of canonical punishments infinite. Just as
no society can be denied the right to exclude those who do not want to submit to
its laws - since it is up to one to enter it, assume the corresponding duties and
 7
6
with it the rights to its advantages -, just as it is recognizes any corporation or
guild, the Church also has the right to exclude from its community those who are
not willing to accept the conditions of faith and other behavior required by the
Church. But from the moment this State completely overlaps with the civil State,
the exclusion of the clerical State also deprives the individual of his civil rights,
something that did not happen when the Church, still small, was not dominant,
while now the two types of State come into collision. The fact that the Protestant
Church, like the Catholic Church, is a State - although the former rejects that
name - is manifested in the fact that the Church is a contract of one with all and
of all with one so that each member of society can see protected in a certain faith
and certain religious beliefs, to maintain that [society] and to take measures in
order to consolidate the [faith] of each member (I said: [protect] in a certain
faith, since protect each one in his individual faith, to prevent him from being
disturbed in his faith or because of it with violence - the only possible way - that
would already be an article of the social contract); Consequently, both with
regard to these measures and with regard to general faith (which is the object of
the ecclesiastical contract, just as the rights of persons and things are the object
of the civil contract), each one has to submit his will to the general will, which is
expressed in the will of the sovereign; Now, this sovereign [is constituted] as a
legislative power in the councils, synods and, as an executive power, in the
bishops and consistories; These maintain the constitution contained in the
resolutions of the councils and in the sacred books, as well as ordain officials,
over whom they naturally arrogate the right to demand conditions of faith and
obedience, as well as, „stricto jure ‟ , the right of depose them, if they consider
them incapable of complying with these conditions. This clerical State becomes a
source of rights and duties totally different from the civil one and a single
circumstance in the character of the entry contract would suffice - that the
duration in which each person wants to maintain it is left to individual discretion,
and that it does not force its descendants - so that this ecclesiastical right, which
could be called pure, does not immediately contain anything that harms the
natural right of each individual or that of the State. Such a contract of entry is
made by each Christian in his community through the solemn act of baptism; But
since the object of the rights and duties of the Church is faith and beliefs, and a
newborn is not capable of assuming them voluntarily nor can he be thrown into
 7
7
them, the godparents partly take over the duty of educating him in the faith. of
the church; and since the child participates in the benefits of the Church before
having fulfilled the contract of faith on its part - and the [Church] does not like to
waste its good works in vain, if the child has a right to them it is because he
wants fulfill those duties himself in the future -, the godparents are responsible
before the Church as guarantors that they will educate the child so that, when the
time comes, they fulfill their part of the contract; On the other hand, in some
Protestant States the so-called Act of Confirmation has been introduced, in which
the child renews his baptismal alliance - currently at the age of 14 or 15
voluntarily -, closes the contract with the Church himself and therefore solemnly
performs what the godparents could only promise; It is clear that the Church has
carefully taken its measures so that the child until then has only known about the
faith of the Church, of course that the Church declares the understanding and
ideas of a 14-year-old child of legal age - and accepts the almost always
mechanical recitation of the professions of faith as an expression of the free
choice by an understanding that, given the importance of the object, has made
the mature decision of its eternal salvation -, while the civil State postpones until
20 or 25 years the ability to pursue legal civil actions, which, by comparison, are
bullshit. The Church as a State is concerned with ensuring that the children who
are going to become its future members are educated in their faith by making
parents claim the right to decide in which faith they want their children to be
educated; but the parents have already ceded that right to the Church - not to
the children - by the ecclesiastical contract in which they have been obliged / to
have them educated in the faith of the Church; This, for her part, fulfills her duty
by filling the child's blank fantasy with her images, his memory - if not his
understanding - with her concepts, and taking his tender heart through the
process of feelings that she has arranged, according to what she It is said that:
Isn't what is done to children
violence? -understand well: except what the Church does to
them-
Not content with this pure ecclesiastical Law, the Church has always been
united with the State, and from there a mixed ecclesiastical Law has emerged, to
the point that there are few States left in which civil Law has remained pure; The
principles of both [States] constitute independent sources of duties and rights; As
 7
8
far as the legislative power is concerned, both are incompatible by nature and
what there is always is a „status in statu ‟ – no matter how much Protestants rebel
against this expression on the one hand, on the other they have put so much of
their honor into nothing, They have defended nothing with as much courage as the
thing itself; Regarding the executive power, the Catholic Church declares itself
 7
9
Furthermore, totally independent of the civil State, it also removes its
officials, the servants of the Church, from civil jurisdiction, while the Protestant
Church in this has submitted itself more to the State; But in cases where the Law
of the Church and that of the State come into conflict, the majority of States
yield to the Church, whether Protestant or Catholic, and have to sacrifice their
rights to them.

*
a) Civil rights concern the security of people and property of each citizen,
without their religious beliefs counting for anything; Therefore, whatever faith he
adheres to, it is the duty of the State to defend his citizen rights - rights that the
State can only deprive him of if he violates the rights of others, because then the
State enforces the same rights against him. maxims that he professes as a citizen,
treating him in accordance with them; As far as faith is concerned, the citizen
cannot make any commitment to the State, since the State is not capable of
setting or accepting such conditions.
HGW 1,318 / On the other hand, all the members of this State are united by
a church; and since a society has the right to exclude anyone who is not willing to
abide by its laws, then the citizen who does not have the faith of that Church, or
abandons it, demands from the State as a right to be able to exercise their civil
rights; but the Church excludes him from its community and, since it encompasses
the entire State, it also excludes him from the State. Which of the two will make
their right prevail? The civil State, which has taken it upon itself to protect the
rights of the good citizen (whom we want and can assume complies with its laws,
no matter what faith they have) and for whom it is not at all business to enter
into matters of faith? Or the ecclesiastical State, which has the right to exclude
from its community anyone who disagrees with its faith, thereby excluding him
from the State? In almost all Catholic or Protestant countries the ecclesiastical
State has made its rights prevail against the civil State, and no dissident can claim
the civil rights or the protection of the law in matters, both criminal and civil,
which a citizen enjoys; cannot acquire any kind of real estate or *

hold any public office or receive the same tax treatment; Furthermore, since

Conflict between Church and State

baptism is not only an ecclesiastical act by which one enters the Church, but also
a civil act by which the existence of a child is communicated to the HGW State,
granting him at least as many rights as the Church allows. , this obliges the father
 8
0
of the child whose faith differs from the Church of the country, to baptize him
according to the customs of the latter and by one of its officials - something that
the Church does not do with the intention of welcoming the child into its bosom,
since then entrusts the father to educate him in his religion; The only thing he
wants to demonstrate in this way is that he has stripped the civil State of the
right to receive citizens, so that baptism in the respective Church affiliates the
child of an adherent of the dominant Church both in it and in the State; Another
similar case is that of marriage, which in many countries, even to be valid, /
requires to be officiated exclusively by an official of the dominant Church,
without the latter attempting to impose a ceremony foreign to the faith professed
by the couple; it simply performs a civil act. In this way, the civil State has ceded
its rights and jurisdiction to the ecclesiastical State, not only when they come into
conflict, but when an act of both requires double ratification. The type of
relationship that the Church has with the State is also similar to that which the
unions and their rights have with it. These also constitute a society within the
State, to which its members assign certain rights and to which they assume
certain obligations by entering it. In a city, a guild therefore includes all those
who have the same trade and holds, as a society, the right to admit into it
whoever it wishes and exclude anyone who does not comply with its regulations;
Now, on the other hand, the State has the obligation to protect everyone who
wants to earn a living in any way, as long as they do not violate civil laws (laws
that in themselves have nothing to say about guilds); But if the union does not
allow it to someone, if it therefore excludes him, it excludes him at the same
time from the entire community and, preventing him from exercising a civil right,
deprives him of a right granted to him by the State; and also in this case the State
has abdicated the right of its citizens.
The State also has the right to appoint an official whom it considers qualified
to entrust the training of its youth in knowledge; but the members of each branch
of knowledge are associated in a guild, which holds the right of admission or
exclusion, according to whether its laws are accepted or not; and since anyone
who is not unionized would be excluded from this society, and with this, in this
sense, from the State, it is the State that renounces its right by forcing itself to
accept as teaching officials those who have been trained, in the union of
corresponding knowledge, such as teachers („magistri ‟ or „doctors ‟ ), or at least
 8
1
the guild obliges the official [without] that [requirement] to correct it later; and
if the [official] resists it, as the guild wants to get its way anyway, it gives him the
title, an honor that is difficult to decline or that would surely be eccentricity to
reject.
Thus, when in recent times certain Catholic governments have granted non-
Catholics civil rights, staffing their own clergy, and building their own churches,
some have praised it as generous tolerance, while others have argued that Talking
about tolerance and indulgence is meaningless here, since what has happened is
mere justice[. These conflicting positions are compatible in the sense that the
granting by the State of these rights is undoubtedly nothing more than the
suppression of a great injustice and therefore constituted a duty, while for the
Church, which has the right to exclude from the State those who profess another
faith - although it no longer claims as before, and even now in some places, the
right to deny them air, soil and water - it will always be tolerance; and when the
State demands as a duty respect for the rights of these other believers, then the
officials of the tolerant Church (even if it is the Protestant one) always speak of
the indulgence, the compassion, the love that must be shown towards the lost. ,
all of which are affections that are not a matter of imposing as duties, since they
must be shown voluntarily.
b) Every community needs special buildings, special teachers and other
personnel to celebrate its services and to teach religious themes; To build the
former and provide for the maintenance of both things, as well as for the
beautification of certain ritual objects, the entire town has contributed private
donations and contributions; The buildings erected, the salaries and income set
for teachers and other servants of the Church are the property of the
communities, of the people in general, and of the State; But the fact that they
have almost always been considered property of the [civil] State is due to the fact
that it is united with the ecclesiastical State, or because this is the result of the
union of many communities; The difference between the churches and the income
of their servants being property of the State as civil or as ecclesiastical is
unimportant and is not even perceived, as long as in a State there is only one
Church; But this difference is obvious and generates discord as soon as different
Churches are established.
The Church that is beginning to be established demands its share in this
 8
2
property of the State for reasons that come from civil rights; and the State has
the obligation to grant the communities - whatever their faith - churches for their
divine offices and teachers in its sense, while the dominant Church until then
defends the right to its property, which has been conferred and maintained
without discussion; If the State has enough strength to defend its right and if its
administrators are intelligent, impartial and fair enough to know this right of
theirs and simply want to defend it, it will grant each Church the means it needs
to celebrate its own divine office. Now, although a State, as a civil State, as well
as its legislators and administrators as such, should not have religion, what usually
happens is that, as members of the dominant Church, it imposes on them the duty
of protect her rights; and the dispute between both Churches is not ordinarily
resolved by state rights but by the power of one of the parties and the weakness
of the other. The fact is that, if the Church that is being established extends so
much that the rights of the opposing Church could only be maintained by
exterminating the followers of the new doctrine or at least by great brutalities
and a great deployment of means, the The State would be harmed too much, and
its laws and rights would be seriously violated; so the State, realizing the danger
it runs, grants the new Church some rights, but, using the language of the Church,
it then speaks of tolerance; or the dispute is resolved in another way: the hitherto
oppressed Church becomes dominant, so that the hitherto dominant Church
becomes merely tolerated; It is also normal that the State then enters into the
same alliance with the now dominant Church, granting it in turn rights as
unlimited as those of the previous one. From here and from what has been said
above, we understand the observation made by many sagacious historians: that
amazingly all the Churches, despite the sufferings they have gone through - a
memory that should have made them tolerant -, as soon as they became
dominant, they also became intolerant; and that this observation / does not
constitute only a casual statement, a generalization of history and experience,
but is deduced by itself with an inescapable necessity from the rights of each
Church, since every society has the right to exclude from it those who do not
abide by its laws and regulations; Consequently, when a religious society becomes
dominant in a State, it maintains that it is its right to exclude from its community,
and therefore from the State, the faithful of another faith, which is why it
becomes intolerant of both faiths. as with the property of the minority Church.
 8
3
This dynamic of the ownership of a Church is notable both in the first propagation
of the Christian Church and in that of each new sect of its. At first, Christians met
in their homes, building buildings for their worship at their own expense, while as
soon as they became dominant the Church asserted its rights, destroying pagan
temples and appropriating them, even when in a city or community the majority
remained pagans; according to civil law [only] a totally Christian community had
the right to it; [so the emperor] Julian defended the ecclesiastical and civil law of
the pagans, recovering the temples that had been taken from them by the
Christians. The Protestants used the, until then, Catholic churches for their
worship and applied the income of the clergy and monasteries to their own
purposes, a civil right they had in addition to their own ecclesiastical right; but in
doing so they violated the right of the Catholic Church, which it continues to
claim, since it considers Protestant churches, bishoprics and monasteries, as well
as their ecclesiastical income, something that „de jure ‟ belongs to it; That is why
it also has its bishops and abbots „in partibus [infidelium] ‟ . Two ecclesiastical
rights are not legally compatible, since they directly and irreconcilably contradict
each other; Its [contradiction] can only be resolved by violence or civil law, which
must then be admitted as a higher law, something that the Catholic Church
rejects outright and the Protestant Church only grants in some aspects: when a
Church grants something, it renounces in part to his right and considers it a
gracious concession.
Whoever abandons the official Church banishes himself from his homeland
and loses his civil liberties; and it might / seem cruel and unjust to persecute
someone for his faith, depriving him of the enjoyment of his civil rights, banishing
him from everything that is dear to him by nature and custom. But the Church
demonstrates not only with the language of justice, but with that of generosity,
that this does not mean that this person suffers injustice, that she has not
opposed that change of faith, that she respects the freedom to leave her
Church. ; But, since in order to enjoy civil rights in this country an ecclesiastical
connection is required, a condition that is no longer met as the individual has
changed his faith - something he himself already knew -, one cannot at all speak
of having committed an injustice to him; Yours is the freedom of choice. -If this
exclusion referred only to the Church, it would apply only to someone who has
already abandoned it; but the exclusion also extends to the State, and the State
 8
4
concedes that its rights are violated; In this the Church and the State are one and
the same.
c) Every human being comes into the world with the right not only to
sustain themselves as animals, but also to develop their potential until they
become human; This right is the one assumed by parents and the State, sharing
the duty of properly educating the child; and, apart from this duty, the State
would also have the greatest interest in forming the young hearts of its future
citizens, so that their virile maturity brings them honor and benefit in due time.
Now, there is a [type of] State that has believed it could not better and more
naturally satisfy both that duty and its own interest than by entrusting this care,
totally or partially, to the Church; With this, it satisfies not only the interest of
the State, but also that of the Church, since young citizens are thus also educated
as citizens of the Church; But then it is exclusively up to the Church to ensure
that this does not endanger the right of young citizens to the free formation of
their faculties. Just as the State, by the mere fact of endorsing the rights of
children - at least as persons - and protecting them, has the right to educate them
in accordance with its principles and purpose, the Church also claims this same
right, since from the first moment / makes the children share in its benefits, and
therefore also trains them and predisposes them through teaching, so that in due
time they also fulfill their duties towards the Church. Now, if a citizen upon
reaching mental maturity does not like the laws or other characteristics of his
homeland, in most European States he has the free option to leave it; and his
dependence on the laws of his country is based on this free decision of his will to
want to live under them; No matter how much custom or fear may have
influenced this decision, it cannot invalidate the possibility of free choice.
If the Church, however, had taken religious education to the point that
religious reflection completely oppressed understanding and reason, or at least
had filled the imagination with such horrors that reason and understanding were
neither capable nor licit become aware of their freedom and also use it in
religious matters, the Church would have taken away any possibility of freely
choosing and deciding to belong to it - when only in that freedom can (and
intends) to base its right on someone - it would have violated natural law. of
children to a free formation of their capacities and would have educated them for
it as slaves instead of as free citizens. It is true that first impressions do violence
 8
5
to the imagination and children's hearts, that the example of the most beloved
people, united with us by the first ties of nature, has great power - this happens
in all education, without it having why seize the freedom of reason; But the thing
is that the Church also educates in the faith, that is, instead of developing reason
and understanding so that they themselves form their own principles or so that
they judge the teachings they receive according to its laws, it marks the
imagination and memory with images and words armed with terror; These are
presented in a light so holy, inviolable, dazzling that, on the one hand, the laws
of understanding and reason have to be mute before their radiance, impossible to
use, while, on the other, laws are prescribed for them that, for [ be prescribed to
them,] are heterogeneous to them – and this / foreign legislation does deprive
reason and understanding of freedom, that is, of the power to follow the laws
that are their own, based on their nature; The freedom of choice to enter the
Church disappears; The State, despite its good intentions, has become a traitor
against the rights of children to a free formation of the faculties of the soul. The
resource of educating children apart from the positive faith of a Church, reserving
the freedom of choice for their mature age, would not only entail infinite
difficulties in execution, but could not be accepted for prescriptive reasons; The
Church, in fact, believes itself obliged to declare it a crime that children remain
in such ignorance of the faith, apart from the fact that it would be extremely
painful for it to inculcate what has been postponed in childhood, since it is now
almost impossible to print faith in the very marrow of the soul, so that it involves
all the ramifications of human concepts and faculties, all areas of wanting and
aspiring. For this reason also, when the patriarch (in Nathan ) hears that the Jew
has

educated the girl not in her faith, but rather in any

and from God neither more nor less taught

that what reason demands,

It is when his indignation reaches its peak and he declares the Jew guilty of

be burned
three times! That? Let a child grow up without any faith?
As? Does the great duty of believing never teach him at all?
 8
6
That's evil!

And there are many more possibilities of converting someone even to the faith of
another Church, if their understanding is accustomed from youth to the duty to
believe, than to gain faith and submission to the beliefs required by a Church of
that person. whose imagination is free from its images, and its understanding from
its bonds.
Two more observations are relevant here: [the first is that,] although one
must accept the faith of the country to become a citizen of a Christian State, the
reverse does not apply – that a proselyte [of that faith] is already a citizen. of the
State -, as is natural, given that the Church has a greater extension than the
State, while the latter claims independent rights in each place. (What was the
case among the Hebrews of the „proselyti portae ‟ [foreigners of another faith]?
Second: The object of the contract underlying a Church consists of faith and
beliefs. In the Protestant Church, freedom in this regard, especially in recent
times, is much greater than in the Catholic Church, to the point of not admitting
comparison; but both vigorously maintain the rights that arise from this contract.
In the Catholic Church the belief is kept even literally; On the other hand, in the
Protestant Church it is known that the faith of the wisest and most upright
theologians is in no way the same as that which they have subscribed to or sworn
to in the symbolic Books.LVI ; As for the other officials of the civil State, what
almost always happens is that they barely know the doctrines of the symbolic
Books, despite the fact that they also have to subscribe to them; Whoever, for
example, does not share the doctrine of baptism professed by the Church or
thinks in a radically different way about the main dogmas of Protestantism, will
not be called to answer to anyone, even if he has written or made public in
another way; But if you want to be consistent and not have your child baptized, or
not profess the symbolic Books when taking office, then the Church, despite not
having filed any protest for its beliefs, will complain against the consequences
that naturally derive from them. and will assert their rights.
*
As regards the very contract on which the rights of the Church itself are

LVICf. below, p. 331.

 8
7
based, [let us note the following:] it could be that the first rights of the
sovereigns are based on the rights of the conqueror, who left the vanquished alive
under condition of his obedience, the original contract of the victor with the
vanquished on which the rights of the descendants of those sovereigns could be
based, who consequently would no longer hold them by right of conquest, but by
right of succession, just as the will of the individual would be would submit, as in
the first contract, to the will of the sovereign; Here we are not interested in
either defending or refuting this theory, but there is no doubt - whatever the
origin of civil society and the rights of its lords and legislators - is that it belongs
to the very nature of civil society to that individual rights have become rights of
the State and that the State is obliged to maintain my rights as its own and to
protect them. On the other hand, when we turn to the rights of the Church as a
State, there is no doubt that, at least in its beginnings, its contract and its rights
were based exclusively on the free consent of all individuals. In this State the
general will, that is, the majority of votes, is expressed as laws of faith, and
society unites to protect this faith[:] one for all, all for one; Regarding the
organization and order of the general assembly in which the laws are made, as
well as in order to protect them - protection required above all for teaching of all
kinds and for worship -, the ecclesiastical State requires officials and has them.
willing. Now, with regard to [this second] point, the agreement of all in the same
faith, it is a very different thing to think that the contract of the Church derives
its agreement from the spontaneous coincidence of the faith of all, so that the
general faith is nothing more than the expression of everyone's faith, or to think
that this can also be determined in part by majority vote and such possibility is
accepted. This second principle has been solemnly accepted by the Church

Contract of the Church representation, the active citizen in Catholic doctrine , since
the assemblies of the Church have received the supreme power to ultimately
decide what the faith of the Church is, with the respective minority being
absolutely obliged to submit to the most. The members of such an assembly are
partly representatives of their flocks, partly mainly officials of the Church. It is
certainly assumed that it is in/as representatives that they have full powers; but
the people have long since lost the right, which they had for several centuries, to
choose by Yeah same their representatives and officials. So
the
Church officials - who in turn are appointed by officials or, in part, by a
body that It doesn't depend either of the people - constitute the
 8
8
assembly of the Church, and its whole forms a self-sufficient organization; They
manage, determine and govern the faith of the people, of the laity, if they are
allowed even the slightest intervention in it. Since the Church is not concerned
with the person and property - which can be protected with violence - but with
beliefs and faith, it goes directly against the nature of beliefs to submit to the
vote of the majority what is one's own, individual; and what is possible in the civil
contract – subjecting one's will to the general will, making this the law for oneself
– is totally inadequate to produce that ecclesiastical contract, that is, a contract
on faith; This is in itself impossible and, if agreed despite that, invalid and void.
If the assembly is made up of representatives who are representatives not
only nominally but in fact, that is, who have really been elected by the
communities themselves, they cannot receive any other powers than that of
declaring what the faith of the community is and what articles it considers. main
ones, as conditions that must be shared by other communities, to unite with them
in a Church; Granting them full powers to determine according to their
understanding the faith of the community and submitting it to a majority vote
would form a representative republic, which diametrically contradicts the human
right not to submit one's opinions to a foreign authority and would put individuals
in the same situation. of the contract just mentioned, that is to say: in a
constitution that could be called a pure democracy. This is how the Church of the
first centuries spread, in effect, as a representative republic, showing a striking
conflict between the principle of freedom of opinion of each singular community
and its representatives, whose principle was the duty to submit to the majority
vote. In fact, when there were divisions - which, as is known, were never lacking
-, both parties appealed to a free and general Council, wielding the principle that
it is a duty to submit to the majority, since each party hoped to obtain it thanks
to its successful arguments. , his eloquence and, above all, his intrigues, along
with the support of power; The victorious faction then demanded the application
of this principle and the submission of the minority, while the latter usually took
refuge in the other principle and cried out against the violence that was being
inflicted on their free conviction. Very often, occasional alliances were formed to
achieve a specific goal, constituting a single legal entity, with which the
resolutions of the assembly can no longer be valid as decisions of a free majority,
but rather as the victory of a faction that, to achieve its Objectively, deception
 8
9
and violence of all kinds were allowed, horribly mistreating the defeated party
through rebels; such an assembly of holy fathers was called by their adversaries a
band of outlaws, and the only objection that Mosheim raises against it ([
Institutionum ] Historiae ecclesiasticae [... libri quatuor ... , ] saectio 5, pars 2,
cap. 5[, & XIV]) This harsh expression is not also applied to some other assemblies
of the Church that did the same merits to earn that title.
But since the laity have also lost the right to even be represented in what
concerns their faith, since the bishops and dignitaries of the Christian Church are
mere officials, the consequence is that the laws of the faith are made by their
rulers and It may not matter to the people - although not to the bishops - whether
their religious authority and judge is a single person (the Pope) or a group of
people independent of him, whether the clerical constitution is a monarchy or an
aristocracy - in In both cases their rights are the same: equal to zero. It is not
worth spending a single word discussing the legitimacy of a government like this,
of a constitution of this type on matters of faith; It would be completely useless.
HGW 1,330 / The fundamental principle of the Protestant Church is that its contract
is based on a general agreement of all its members, that no one can be required
to commit to an ecclesiastical contract whose condition would be the submission
of his faith to a majority vote. Certainly Luther, at the beginning of his great
enterprise, has appealed to a free general assembly of the Church; But it was
only later that the great principle of Protestant freedom, the palladium of their
Church, was found, when participation, appearance at a council, was rejected,
not because one could know in advance that one's own cause was going to be
lost, but because it contradicts the nature of religious beliefs that the majority
vote decides on them, since each person has the right to agree for themselves
what their faith is. Therefore the faith of each Protestant has to be his faith
because it is his faith, not because it is the faith of his Church; one is a member
of the Protestant Church, because he has voluntarily entered it and voluntarily
remains in it; all the rights of the Church over him are based exclusively on the
fact that his personal faith is also that of the Church.
The Protestant Church cannot be accused of any injustice, when, after
drawing up its code of laws, its constitution in matters of faith remained faithful
in all its actions to this principle of its pure ecclesiastical law with unshakable
firmness. But the teachers who founded it and the officials it gave rise to - and of
 9
0
whom we will discuss later - were sometimes tempted not to consider themselves
mere representatives of their communities - acting as those who had only been
entrusted with explaining the community's will. - but to consider that they had
broader powers and that the communities left it in their hands to decide among
themselves what the faith of the Church is; This is manifested in the fact that
many clauses in the symbolic Books of the Protestant Church are so loaded with
subtleties that they cannot be considered a belief endorsed by all the people, but
are the work of punctilious theologians; Due to the history/origin of these
writings and their acceptance as a norm of faith, it is also known that most of the
time the matter has been discussed exclusively among theologians; Only those
laymen who were essential as holders of the power to invest these Books with
sufficient authority and guarantee it took part in it. Two circumstances can be
adduced here in favor of the theologians: that they were forced to give the
symbolic Books a more learned form, finely specifying some of their doctrines to
the satisfaction of their own faithful, since the Catholic Church fought with those
weapons. ; and that the less learned part of the Church could leave them this
elaboration of the doctrines of their faith, without giving them any of their
unalterable rights. However, it will always be possible to object that the
theologians could have kept their learned arguments, their subtle distinctions,
for their books, without the cause of their Church having been harmed; In the
end it was above all about the legitimization of their [theologians'] faith, while
that of the people cannot be legitimized for reasons that they do not know; With
a simpler form, certainly the symbolic Books would not have presented such a
polemical edge in all directions; but they would have enjoyed more the respect
of a standard of faith recognized by popular wisdom as their faith according to
the solemn principle of the Protestant Church; and this all the more so, since
weapons that provide excellent service for a time later become useless, which is
what has happened with the learned form of the symbolic Books, whose argument
is not for the people, but only for the learned, and It has already become useless;
And the fact is that today's theologians no longer seek their legitimation in it, so
that, if the people never needed these weapons, today the learned also despise
them.
It can also be argued to justify the theologians - who determine what the
faith of the people is, only without it - that in the later symbolic Books that
 9
1
contain the faith of the Protestant Church LVII They have done nothing more than
interpret the norm of faith that the people themselves had accepted, an
interpretative office that could have been transferred to them without prejudice
to the rights of popular faith. And/it is true that there is nothing to object to in
this office, if the passages adduced from the norm of faith could only have one
meaning; but when a doctrine is susceptible of two or more interpretations and
only one has been accepted by theologians, or when

LVII
The specific books of the Lutheran faith are the Augsburg Confession, the Apology of the
Confession, the Smalkalda Articles, the writing On the Power of the Pope , Luther's small and
great Catechism and the Formula of Concord, in addition to the three Creeds of the ancient
Church (the Apostles, the Nicene and the Athanasian).
 9
2
a proposition they have extracted with impeccable logic consequences that
have then been presented as doctrines of the Church, then they have acted on
their own account; And to know which of the two possible interpretations
corresponds to the meaning that the Church gives it, we would first have to ask
her; The same goes for the consequences, since there is a correct critical canon -
certainly often little observed, especially in cases of conflict -: that it cannot be
assumed, no matter how strictly certain consequences are derived from a system,
that whoever professes it also has than profess them.
In matters of faith there is no social contract properly; It is possible to
associate to respect the faith of others, or the rights of property, but honoring the
right of the other to be free in what concerns their faith is properly a civil duty;
one cannot force oneself, and even less force one's own descendants, to want to
believe something - since in the end every contract is based on the will, but one
cannot want to believe in something - and the faith of the Church must be in the
strictest sense a general faith of this Church, that is, of all its individuals. * When a
human society, when one or several States, such as [also] a Church, contracts an
agreement with another society, which in this sense is another State - apart from
the fact that they are already related in other aspects -, or with members of her
State, the least that can be said of her is that she has acted imprudently; and it
has linked to faith, that is, to something mutable, the condition under which the
other has to fulfill their part of the agreement; The very form of the contract has
put him in danger of renouncing the first and most sacred right that every
individual and every society has to change his mind, if he really cares very much
that the other fulfills his duty; or he changes his faith, and then the obligation of
the other, which only depended on this condition, disappears. / Certainly the
[civil] State and the Church quickly deal with the members of their respective
States, when they change their faith en masse, since the bourgeoisie and peasants
continue to pay the same fees, rents, tithes and other infinite minutiae that they
paid to the Catholic Church; These contributions are necessary for the cult of the

*
contract with the state

Current Church – which also requires money for its installation and maintenance; In
the end, giving gifts to a Church or granting it rights [in perpetuity] would be as if
 9
3
someone wanted to beautify a place on the bank of a river under the condition
that the same waves that now bathe it will always remain there. In any case,
continue paying candles for this altar in which they no longer burn or are used,
continue supporting this monastery in which there are no longer any prelates or
monks, as well as infinite other contributions and „onera ‟ , when all of this is
properly destined for Catholic worship and faith, [it is something that], once these
disappear, drags the corresponding rights without remission in their fall; and when
the taxes that must be paid to the new Church are collected for the same amount
and supposedly with the same rights as in the previous Church, the least that can
be said is that a great and unjust inequality has been maintained between the
burdens of members of the same Church. It is intended that the obligation of the
taxpayers, pecheros and serfs continue to be maintained as subjects of this abbey,
monastery, parish, from which the obligation of these payments arose, since the
new Church has entered into possession of all the assets and rights of the ancient
Church, including these; but that obligation was not due to the individuals nor,
even less, to the buildings of that abbey, etc., but to them as members, as
officials of the Catholic Church, that is, to the Catholic Church itself; Now, since
the taxpayers no longer belong to it, since the Catholic Church has disappeared
from that place, the rights that emanated from it and were linked to it should
have also declined with it.
And if, for example, in that reformed country they had remained Catholic,
would it be fair to demand the same contributions from them? Would the State
have the right to demand them? They already pay other taxes as citizens; these
ecclesiastical taxes never belonged to them. [Could the new Church demand them?
The [Catholics] / will respond with reason that they were only obliged to the
previous one and that they cannot pay anything to the new one either, since they
do not belong to it. A similar case is that of many Catholic countries, for example
the Austrian countries, which has generated many disputes and embarrassing
situations, especially since the Edicts of Toleration of [Emperor] Joseph [II]. Are
those who are not Catholics obliged to continue paying the same fees that they
previously paid to the Church, the same fees for baptism, confession, maintenance
of the various items of Catholic worship with which they were previously obliged to
contribute? No, say the Protestants, because they no longer belong to the Catholic
Church, and what they paid to it they paid back to them. Yes!, say the Catholics;
 9
4
They can belong to the Church they want, but they are still obliged to pay the
same to this parish, to this convent. Here the Protestants argue with principles
opposite to those that their Church applies within itself, and the Catholics with
those same principles that the Protestant Church proclaims within itself.
The same discomforts are generated when a Church with a certain faith
enters into agreements with other States; When, as such, he wants to impose an
obligation on the other contracting party, he already forces him to something that
he himself has the right to change, at the same time he requires the other party
not to change it. Thus the Protestants have paid with much blood for the freedom
of their faith and worship in the imperial Constitution; but according to the terms
of all the peace treaties, the Catholic sovereigns have assumed before the
evangelical and reformed Church the duty of [respecting] their worship, their
property. Now, the Protestant Churches have solemnly proclaimed in their
confessions and professions of faith what is essential in them. And since the
aforementioned agreements with the Churches have been made as their concrete
profession of faith, I believe that it has been [the Protestant theologian Johann R.
A.] Piderit who, to the indignation of Protestants, argued some years ago in the
following way: the Protestant faith is [no longer] the same, as can be seen from
the comparison of the writings of the representatives of their Church, the most
famous theologians, with their symbolic Books; Consequently the [Protestants] can
no longer demand the rights that the Catholics have guaranteed them in the peace
treaties, since the agreement has been contracted with the Churches / in
accordance with their declaration of a certain faith; and if Protestants want to
continue maintaining the validity of the same rights, they have to preserve the
faith of the Church, renounce their right to change it and revoke the changes
introduced. This argument, otherwise rigorous, would be impossible if
The Protestants would not have given the impression of handcuffing the freedom
to improve their faith - a freedom that no agreement can mortgage - if the
sovereigns who signed the peace treaties, instead of agreeing to them in their
capacity as heads of their Churches, or members of them – with the assistance of
theologians, always at their disposal and delighted to feel so important – would
have done so as sovereigns, that is, as heads of State, not for their Churches but
for their States. Freedom of religion and fidelity to one's own faith is a right that
must be protected in each person as a citizen before considering him or her as a
 9
5
member of a church, and the sovereign has the duty to guarantee it as a sovereign
to his subjects; and no more divine right could the [Protestant] sovereigns have
claimed as a duty of the other party, although - unfortunately! - they only
achieved it by defeating it; and just as the current tenor of the treaties also
legally grants the Reformed and [the] Lutheran Church the free exercise of their
religion throughout the [Roman-]Germanic Empire, it would have been more
correct to declare that the Catholic sovereigns undertake to not to try to disturb
and harm the freedom of religion in the States of Brandenburg, Saxony, etc. -it
would have been the same to say the Church of Brandenburg, the Saxon one, since
this means a State insofar as it adheres to a faith, whatever it may be-; and thus,
after centuries of barbarism and years characterized by rivers of blood shed in
defense of this right to one's own faith, one would have enjoyed seeing clearly,
explicitly and solemnly recognized in international agreements a fundamental
article of the social contract, a inalienable human right by joining any type of
society. / In recent times, great men have emerged, imbued with the noble feeling
of the right of each one – and therefore of everyone, that is, of the Church – to
have a more refined faith, to continue progressing in their beliefs; At the same
time, they perceived how much of this right has been given up in the treaties of
the Church with States outside of it that abide by the symbolic Books, and what
inconsistencies with this eternal right the ecclesiastical State incurs when,
believing that its own State contract It is based on certain formulas of faith, it
considers it its duty to jealously preserve faith in that literality; These great men
have claimed for the concept of “Protestant” the meaning of an individual or a
Church that, far from being bound by certain immutable norms of their faith,
protests against all authority in matters of faith, against any obligations that
contradict that sacred right; and if the Church adhered to this negative definition,
it would have the merit of having warned the State of a duty that it has usually
ignored, that of protecting the freedom of faith of its citizens, as well as of having
defended in the place of the State what he neglected to defend.
Every time the Church agrees with all or some of its members – or any
individual does so with it – on rights that properly only reside in the civil State, it
commits injustice with itself or against individual members of it. Although this is
not felt immediately, sooner or later it has to manifest itself; and if a citizen
loses civil rights by abandoning the Church, he will demand their restitution from
 9
6
the State in vain, since the latter, neglecting to establish his rights, let the
Church do it for him; so that it appropriates and defends them as its own, as it
was sufficient for its purposes that the universal right, freedom of faith and
worship, was only valid for a singular case, its own.
On the contrary, if the formation of a Church cannot at all be seen as a
contract in matters of faith, but arises from everyone sharing the same faith
spontaneously as a Church, as a union for a purpose, this purpose may well be
the protection and conservation of this faith, the regulation of a cult appropriate
to it and the cultivation in its members of qualities appropriate to the ideal of
perfection proper to that Church.
HGW 1,337 / Regarding the protection and preservation of the faith – that is,
protection of faith and the free exercise of worship, as well as the observance of
other provisions - this is properly an obligation of the State, and that protection,
that guarantee is necessarily included in the social contract; Only in a poorly
organized State or, as has been said, in a State unaware of this duty, which has
not vindicated this right of protection, can it happen that its citizens, or a part
of them, may be forced to defend this right of theirs by force, or deprived of it.
The Protestants found themselves in this situation; and the sovereigns who had
the courage to raise their voices for the right of their subjects to the free
exercise of religion, fighting valiantly against another part of the state power,
did nothing but fulfill their duty as sovereigns, although we have already spoken
of the inconveniences which brought with it the fact that they signed peace and
agreements no longer as sovereigns, but as members or heads of a Church.
Since the Church cannot protect its faith against state violence, the only
thing it can do is protect that [faith] against itself and sustain it.
If the faith whose protection is in question is seen as a general faith from
which some individual differs, in whole or in part, then this individual would no
longer be, consequently, a member of the Church and would be deprived of its
benefits. at the same time that the Church would have lost its rights over him; If
the latter, on the other hand, maintained its right over him by forcing him to
allow himself to be indoctrinated by it, to obey its precepts about what he
should and should not do, this right could only be based on the individual, upon
agreeing to the contract with the Church, would have forced, for future cases,
to leave the determination of the true faith in the hands of the majority vote or
 9
7
of the representatives of the Church, allowing itself to be guided in this by it;
but such [contract] would imply attributing to the Church a kind of infallibility,
when protesting against an authority of that type is the supreme duty of a true
Protestant - the dissident would find himself here in the case of a transgressor of
civil laws, whose representatives they force him to respect them; But an
ecclesiastical contract of that nature is impossible: the Church can only enforce
its faith, its laws so to speak, with those who voluntarily accept them, with
those who freely believe and live according to them. The only thing left is that
the right of the Church is based on protecting against an individual the faith that
he himself has previously professed, the general faith of the Church, not because
it is the faith of the Church, but because it has been the faith of this
individual. ; The dissident is not in the same case as the spender, whose
remaining assets are administered and controlled by the State – here the State
does not protect both the spender's right against himself and the right of the
presumed heirs or of the community that, if no, he would have to take care of
him-; The case of the dissident of the Church is rather that of the madman,
whom the State has to protect, among other weighty reasons, because he can no
longer assert for himself his right to a healthy understanding, nor can he be
considered to have renounced him, so it is the relatives or the State who return
his situation to normal[. It is in a way analogous to this that the Church wants to
assert the right of each person to the ecclesiastical faith; but both cases are
different, since it depends on each one whether or not they want to claim that
right, in no way can the use of their right to a certain faith be considered – as in
the case of the madman – inalienable and that the Church must allow them to
enjoy it. of him „nolentem volentem ‟ ; Everyone must be treated as the State
treats an adult, whose discretion is what decides to enforce a right or not. These
principles set the limits on the Church's obligation to protect its faith within
itself.
It is not a duty of the Church that arises from someone's right - who should
simply be put in possession of that right. , but only of a duty that she imposes on
herself; She is so convinced of the importance of her doctrines for humanity, so
filled with an overflowing zeal to make humanity happy with them. What it can
do is provide so that any of its possible beneficiaries become in a position to
know these benefits; In this case, it must be entrusted to the discretion of each
 9
8
person who takes advantage of that opportunity - to apply imposition or
punishment would be to try to impose good with violence, like the Spanish in
America or Charlemagne in Saxony. And it is true that in some Protestant
countries those who miss worship and the Supper are called before the judge,
and they are punished if they continue to reoffend; It is true that, although no
one should be forced to leave their [previous Catholic] faith, in some countries
with a reformed State and Church they are encouraged to attend the preaching
of the new doctrine to make their own judgment about it; It is true that,
apparently, in some places the Jews - of whom until now no one has taken much
notice - have to attend Protestant worship from time to time, even by
representatives; but, even so, the Protestant Church has quite adhered to the
limits [above] indicated, while, on the contrary, the most hated aspect of the
history of Catholic countries is how and with what principles dissidents have
been treated as rebels against the Church - whose faith determined by majority
vote or by mere force has to be law for each and every one -, as rebels against
divinity - whose judiciary the Church has usurped -, completely equating in this
case the ecclesiastical contract with the civil contract and the rights of the
ecclesiastical State with those of the civil State.
Of course there can be an agreement on these provisions, that is, it can
apparently be left to the majority vote, of representatives or of the sovereign
how to organize these measures, how to examine the people's teachers and
appoint them. On the other hand, there is not even the question of whether this
Church can have power over an official whom it has appointed, but who
distances himself, along with his community, from ecclesiastical doctrine and
denies the Church; and this community now constitutes a new Church in itself,
over which no other Church can have the slightest power, since state power is
only attributed to it within its own limits; The most that this Church, or
eventually the State, can demand from the new community is the declaration
that it has separated from it, in no case a justification before them; Let's say
that the old Church does not want to recognize this separation and asks the
State for help to prevent it - help that it always has at hand, well, if it is called
the dominant Church it is because / exercises the rights of the State for its own
benefit - well, The State would have the unwavering duty to protect the
freedom of faith and worship of the new Church. Another question – which in
 9
9
recent times has aroused widespread interest – is whether the leaders of the
Church, when a preacher arouses their suspicions, can deprive him of his position
and livelihood. Their statement that they are obliged to protect the faith of the
Church and ensure that this is what is taught is totally consistent; therefore,
anyone who teaches another is not valid as an official. Of course, in the Catholic
Church this right of the Church is not even discussed; On the other hand, in the
Protestant Church many argue against the fact that it would be infinitely more
honorable for the Church if it made virtue and truth the sole purpose of its
dispositions – and that it is against the nature of both to want to link them to
certain professions of faith, and that not even a ray of what is called truth has
ever penetrated into the souls of those who have claimed it and those who
continue to support it; If virtue and truth constituted the goal pursued by a
Church and its dignitaries, as well as those of the State, it would never happen
that they would bother an upright, hard-working man, jealous of the good and
morality of his community, but who does not fully adhere to the concepts taught
by your Church; They would be ashamed not to be able to get along with him[.
The most they could do is recommend that you imitate them in a good way, that
is, in respecting the opinions of others; and if he were worthy of such
dignitaries, ecclesiastical or civil, or they of him, this advice would not even be
necessary.
The most effective, and therefore widely used, means of protecting the
faith of the Church consists of banishing the possibility that its faithful might fall
into doubt or come across other doctrines. As for internal doubts, that is, in the
faithful themselves, which come from the very activity of understanding and
reason, sufficient efforts have already been made to prevent them with various
resources: by making the child's soul receive its first impressions from the
Church, who retain for life a certain power over human beings, arming the
doctrines of the Church with all the horrors of the imagination - capable, like
certain sorcerers who are believed capable of paralyzing the use of bodily
forces, of inhibiting all forces of the soul or forcing them to be guided solely by
those images -, to which must be added the poor cultivation of these forces by
themselves, the total isolation of the knowledge of ecclesiastical doctrines in a
tremendous majesty, completely disregarding the resemblance, the mixture with
other doctrines, the dependence on other laws, an isolation like that of two
 1
0
0-
paths towards different cardinal points, which never meet: if in one of them
that of domestic affairs, the sciences, the fine arts - we are presents a man of
the deepest and most agile understanding, of the greatest subtlety and
sensitivity, he will no longer be recognized, none of that will be perceived in
him, when he is found on the path of the Church. As for the exterior, the
possibility of a change of faith is excluded by strict censorship, prohibition of
books, etc., preventing the debate of other people's beliefs in conversations,
chairs or pulpits, since the Church must ensure the faith that is property of each
one, and this property is damaged if one's own doubts or the reasons of others
could take it away from the believer. Every Church presents its own faith as the
„non plus ultra ‟ of all truth and starts from this principle – that faith can be
pocketed in the brain as if it were money, and that is also how it is actually
negotiated with, since As any Church affirms, nothing is easier than finding the
truth, it is enough to pocket its catechism in your brain - and that does not apply
to you that
only in the seriousness that wears fatigue gracefully
1 whispers the truth from a hidden spring,

but he offers [his faith] in the market. The flow of ecclesiastical truth
2 thunders streets and alleys, anyone can fill their brain with its water.

*
Its water carriers are the teachers of the Church, who, because they are its
officials, call themselves servants of the divine word: [of the word,] because their
science does not spring from the most intimate part of their life, because they are
words that they came upon them; servants, because they are not lords, they are
not legislators, but they obey another's will.
The very mode of worship is as little susceptible of social contract as faith
is; And if worship is understood in the proper sense of the term - as certain
actions that supposedly represent immediate duties towards God, without being
able to derive from other duties towards oneself or others - there can be no other
reason for its obligation than the voluntary recognition of that duty, and in no way
can the conviction that something responds to that duty be left in the hands of a
majority vote; However, in order to provide for the exercise of this universally
recognized duty, a reciprocal contract can be agreed upon, left in the hands of
the majority - as would be the case in a democratic constitution of the Church - or
entrusted to a government in the case of a monarchical or aristocratic Church.
 1
0
1
1
Schiller, The Ideal and Life. Hegel read this poem with the title The Kingdom of Shadows, in
the version that was published in The Hours (1795), a magazine published by Schiller that is a
must-read for the friends of Tübingen.
2
From here the manuscript continues with another ink and another calligraphy, which suggests
an interruption from November 2.
to November 2
 1
0
2
All these functions are ordinarily and very naturally brought together in the
[Protestant] clergy, whose members are not only free teachers of ecclesiastical
truth but at the same time officials, to whom is entrusted the duty incumbent on
the Church of protect your faith; The same goes for the priests, who on the one
hand elevate prayers, sacrifices, etc. to divinity in the name of the people.
through which it is hoped to obtain divine favor, while on the other hand they
guide the people and stand at their head. Apart from this, it is also his main
ministry to promote both through the dogmatic doctrine of the Church and
through its morals and through its other vigilance and warnings what is understood
by piety, fear of God; something that in each Church cannot but have another
tone and other features. *

What changed most with the spread of Christianity was the way morality
was promoted. When the Church went from being a private society to becoming a
State, what was a private matter became a matter of State and what by nature is,
and was, a matter of free will, has become a duty - of which, By the way, a public
law has been derived in part from the Church; The Church has established the
principles of morality, indicating at the same time the means to appropriate these
principles and establishing in particular under the name of casuistry a detailed
science on their application to particular cases.
The moral system of the Church presents as a dominant feature that is based
on religion and our dependence on divinity; The foundation on which it is built is
not a fact of our Spirit, a sentence that could be derived from our conscience, but
something learned, and morality, therefore, is not an autonomous, independent
science, with its own principles; so the essence of morality is not based on
freedom, there is no autonomy of the will.
It starts from historical knowledge; The feelings and state of mind that must
be produced - gratitude and fear - have already been prescribed to keep us
faithful to our duties, duties whose criterion is divine approval; this is known in
the case of some duties, *

What form should morality take in a Church?

while in that of others it must be artificially deduced. This calculative art has
spread so much and with it the multitude of duties has grown so infinitely that
there is hardly anything left to choose on one's own; and what in itself is not
 1
0
3
directly commanded or prohibited as a duty, becomes important without any rest
in asceticism, which does not allow any thought, no action, no spontaneous look,
no pleasure of any kind, joy, to pass unchecked. , love, friendship, kindness, but
it takes hold of every impulse of the soul, every mental association, every fleeting
thought that passes through the head for a second, every sensation of well-being,
and calculates duties by a deduction similar to that taught by the system of
eudaimonism –[it even] knows how to deduce a danger through a long chain of
deductions-. Acetic medicine also prescribes a long series of exercises that the
soul must go through and is a detailed tactical science that teaches how to
maneuver artificially and regularly against all the enemies of piety that the
human being harbors in his chest - or that they can become. any situation, any
opinion-, and of course against the invisible infernal enemy.
So it is certainly very difficult for the uninitiated to judge in each case how
one should act, since, given the multitude of moral and preventive rules, it is easy
for them to collide in the simplest thing and a well-exercised sagacity is required
to solve such cases well
complicated, while common sense, which has not at all thought about all these
precautions, usually spontaneously adopts a more correct way of acting than that
of the most learned casuists, without - as often happens with them - omitting a
good action for the sake of it. fear of the possible, and even remote, risk of sin
derived from it. In all these rules of morality and prudence, we have been acting
„a priori ‟ , that is, / based on the dead letter; On it a system has been built of
how the human being should act and feel, how he should react to these or that
supposed truths, granting memory the power to legislate over all the forces of the
soul, even the most noble. Someone who has not been woven into the fabric of
this system since childhood, and who otherwise knows human nature from dealing
with others and from his own feelings, will feel like he is in a haunted world if he
is taught the system and is taught it. is forced to live in it; It will be difficult for
him to recognize in the individual of the system a being of his own species, the
easier it will be for him to find oriental fairy tales and our books of chivalry
natural; I would even be less misguided if I wanted to base a system of Physics on
these fictions of fantasy and a Psychology on these modern monstrosities; and if
he prostrates himself before God and men as a poor sinner and corrupt human
being, it is not worth declaring himself guilty before God, himself and others,
 1
0
given the innate corruption of our nature – in the end we are worthless and It4 is
always a consolation that we have this in common with all other human beings,
whoever it is that serves as a reference to believe themselves superior. Let's say,
then, that someone has gone through the entire process prescribed by the Church
of knowledge, feelings and states of mind, without having advanced more than
another lacking all this apparatus - like some virtuous among the supposedly blind
pagans -, although he has has come very far in timidity and caution, submission
and obedience, while at the same time it has been left behind in courage,
determination, strength and other virtues - without which it is impossible for the
best of the individual and the State to develop - or even lacks they. What, then,
has humanity gained from the painful normative system of the Church? And the
question becomes inexcusable, if you think that each of these Churches houses a
large mass of hypocrites who display all that knowledge, feelings - including the
language of the Church -, where they are found in their element: what force is
Can you attribute to them if, despite having observed and done everything that
the Church requires, they are still bad people and also impostors?
HGW 1,345 / This claim of the Church to model the mentality of the
people have been useful, even very useful, to the State - or rather to its leaders,
since what they have done is destroy it -, namely: a domination, a despotism
that has already won everything given the oppression by the clergy of any free
will; The Church has taught us to despise bourgeois and political freedom like
dregs, compared to heavenly goods, as well as the enjoyment of life; and just as
the lack of means to satisfy material needs leaves the animal part of the human
being lifeless, so too the deprivation of the enjoyment of a free spirit, of a free
reason, brings death – a state in which this loss is It feels as little as the body,
once dead, longs for food and drink. So Jesus' effort to direct the attention of his
nation to the spirit and conviction in the observance of his laws, which, to be
pleasing to God, has to be living, [has been perverted]: his „complementum ‟ of
The laws have once again become, under the government of the Church, rules
and regulations, which in turn require new „complementi ‟ [sic], and this
attempt of the Church has also failed, because the spirit, the conviction, is
something too ethereal. to be able to retain it in the letter and imperative
formulas or in imposed feelings and moods.
 1
0
5
From here another scourge was derived: that these feelings supposedly
typical of the path of perfection, as well as the actions that supposedly express
them - dinner, confessions, certain collections on the occasion of them and
during divine service - are public, they are offered to the ecclesiastical State. or
to its officials – who, because they are, are also supposed to be our friends .
[Now,] in this public presentation of progress on the path of piety, no one really
likes to be left behind, [so] they take part in the feelings and their signs - and
this is all that the Church can command. or generate-.
HGW 1,346 / Neither do our customs, as they express feelings
Through external signs, they refer both to feelings that one really has and to
those that one should have, just as when a relative dies one is forced to feel
more than one sometimes really feels, and the external signs of This feeling is
not so much due to what is truly felt, but rather to what should be felt - there is
even an agreement on the intensity and duration of the feeling; and as this also
applies to our public religion, v. g. of mourning and fasting in Lent or of
brilliance and abundance at Easter - and many of our customs refer to
regulations of feelings to which universal validity is attributed - we are full of
inert and empty uses and customs; the feeling has disappeared from them, at
the same time that the rule imposes it on us. Nothing has done more damage to
the development of the moral sense and the knowledge of the nature of the
human soul - in this regard [see] the novels of a Mariveaux, etc. - than the
ascetic frailuna and casuistry.
In this way the Church has not only prescribed a lot of external actions with
which we directly venerate the divinity and obtain its favor - in part they also
serve to generate the devotion and dedication of our spirit that it imposes on us
- but it has also directly imposed laws on how to think, feel and want, so that
Christians have retreated to where the Jews were; The characteristic of the
Jewish religion – servitude under a law – reappears in the Christian Church, even
though Christians congratulate themselves on having freed themselves from it;
The difference lies partly in the means, since the religious obligations of the
Jews were also partly coercive - something that also happens partly in the
Christian Church, since in some places those who do not comply with them are
still burned at the stake and in In any case, the usual thing is that they are
deprived of their civil rights; The main means is to influence the imagination,
 1
0
which is also true of the Jews, only with other images, since among Christians6 it
is mainly about
terrifying fire arranged in high towers to assault the
fantasy of the dreamer,
1 when the
torch of the law fails darkly
The main difference would be that the Jews believed that external ceremonies
were enough to fulfill God, while Christians are taught that what is important is
the attitude with which two different people perform the same action; Now, the
attitudes of the Christian are minutely prescribed; The order of salvation
meticulously establishes not only the sequence of the various knowledges it
requires - it is true, on the other hand, that this sequence can be established
clearly - but also the various states of mind that must be derived from those.

1
This is a poem that Schiller had published in No. 2 of his magazine Thalia , but in a stanza
that he later deleted for the edition of his Works. Hegel had already referred to this poem
above , in number 15.
[knowledge] and its sequence. The Church prescribes [thus] the route that must
be taken; and also adds the contradictory supplement of sending feelings, while
in Judaism it was only about actions; This difference is not of a nature to
achieve the goal of morality and religion -morality-, which in this way is
intrinsically impossible, as it was also for the Church to achieve more than
legality and professional virtue and piety. Wanting to control one's feelings
brought, and had to bring, inevitable consequences: the self-deception of
believing that one had the prescribed feeling, that one's own feeling coincided
with the one described, when that artificially produced feeling could in no way
be equated in intensity. nor in value with a true, natural feeling; This self-
deception produces either a false tranquility - which, highly valuing these
feelings produced in a spiritual greenhouse, the only thing it does is inflate one's
self-esteem and be weak at the moment when one must have strength - or,
when someone by themselves He himself realizes this, plunges into perplexity,
anguish, suspicion – a state of mind that often leads to madness; Many times he
also falls into despair who, despite all his good will and all possible efforts,
believes that he has not yet raised his feelings to the height required of him, and
since he finds himself in the field of feelings, without being able to reach never
to have a reliable measure of his degree of perfection (if deceptions /
 1
0
7
imagination are excluded), he will feel cowed, lacking energy and decision,
incapable of more than a certain consolation thanks to confidence in the
unlimited grace of divinity –A small increase in the tension of the imagination is
also enough to transform this state into hallucination and madness. The most
common is a variant of the self-deception referred to above in which, despite all
the abundance of spiritual feelings, one's own character is more or less
preserved, so that the ordinary individual lives side by side with the spiritual
individual, adorned as he is. I add some rhetoric and certain gestures of his, but
remaining the same as always in his treatment and conduct; Of course, on
Sunday or among the other faithful, or in front of his prayer book, it is
completely different; often it is not enough to accuse him of hypocrisy, which
requires awareness
 1
0
of the contradiction between the motives of the actions and what one wants8to
represent with them, since the consciousness of this is completely lacking and
the individual simply lacks unity of character; In the event that both attitudes
come into collision and the carnal one, as is very common, predominates, among
the immense quantity of moral and ascetic precepts there will never be lacking
one applicable to transgression, so that, dressed in this way, it may appear to
whoever commits it is even worthy of praise. The Catholics are the ones who
have carried these subtleties furthest, while the Lutheran Church has rejected
most of [these subtleties] externally, but at the same time established a system
of guidelines and rules of feeling, which no one has maintained and practiced so
consistently. like the pietists; and although these seem to be only a sect of this
Church, it cannot be said that their system of faith or morals has deviated in the
slightest from the statutes of their Church, on the contrary: they seem to
express its same system, only more narrowly, and, if they seem to be
distinguished from the majority of Lutherans, it is because nature and common
sense prevent them from allowing their life and feelings to coincide with their
system. The Reformed Churches, more than others, seem to be those that on the
whole make morality the main thing, while neglecting asceticism.
*
Given the desire of the various Christian Churches to establish, impose
and generate the motives for actions, either through statutes and public
regulations, or by exercising the power necessary for this; and given the
impossibility of governing human freedom with these means, incapable of
producing anything other than legality, it was inevitable - unless the Church had
managed to definitively erase what was human in a part of humanity and make
this lack the indelible feature of a race - that individuals arose again and again
who, not finding the aspirations of their hearts satisfied in this ecclesiastical
legality or in the character molded by asceticism, at the same time felt capable
of giving themselves a law of morality springing from their own freedom ([vid.]
the beguines in Mosheim[, Institutionum historiae ecclesiasticae libri IV . Saec.
XIII, pars II, cap II, && XL s. ]); In the event that they did not keep their faith to
themselves, they became founders *

Necessity of the emergence of sects

 1
0
of a sect, which - if the Church did not manage to repress it - spread and, as9 it
moved away from its source, only retained the rules and laws of its founder,
then converted by its supporters into ecclesiastical statutes. instead of laws
derived from freedom, which in turn generated new sects and so on: first in the
Jewish Church the Christian sect emerged, which became the Church; Within this
Church the generation of new sects was repeated, which in turn became
Churches; And so it must continue, as long as the State ignores the scope of its
rights, allowing the State of a dominant Church to emerge within itself, or even
associate with it, thereby once again exceeding its powers. * The basic failure in
the entire system of a Church is the disregard of the rights of any faculty of the
human spirit, especially the first among them, reason; and once this is despised
by the system of the Church, it can only consist of the systematic contempt for
what is human. The legislation of the Church has not made the healthy
separation in the field of the faculties of the human spirit that Kant did for
science, and it will still take centuries until the spirit of Europeans / learns to
recognize and practice in its activities, in the laws, the difference that the wise
sensitivity of the Greeks had spontaneously found. And the Christian Church –
like any other whose principle is pure morality – treats and presents the moral
precepts of reason, which are subjective, as objective rules of understanding;
but the Christian Church posits the subjective [itself] of reason as an objective
rule.
Reason proposes moral laws, necessary and of universal validity; That is
why Kant calls them objective -although in another sense than the rules of
understanding-; Now, converting these laws into subjective ones, into maxims
[of real behavior], finding motivations for them, is the task in which attempts
differ infinitely. Theologians have rarely denied that [legislative] capacity of
reason - which is currently quite generally recognized - or, when they have done
so, it is above all because they have understood by that capacity above all the
second, that is, that reason would not be in *

April 29, 96
conditions to provide its law with motives that could generate respect for the
law and incline the will to act in accordance with it. The Christian religion gives
us objective motives, motives that are not the law itself.
 1
1
The only moral motive, respect for the ethical law, can only be effective0in
the subject in whom this law prevails, within whose interior it springs up; The
Christian religion, on the other hand, announces the moral law to us as
something that exists outside of us, as something given; Therefore you can and
should try to get respect by other means. It could even be considered a
characteristic of positive religion that it posits ethical law as a given. This is how
virtue has become an art of a convoluted nature - when, on the contrary, a
healthy ethical sense capable of deciding for itself is in a position to do so
instantly -, an art with multiple resources and exercises that, as Any other art
has to be learned, but at the same time it has had a curious destiny: while all
other human arts have been perfected and one generation has learned from the
other, morality is the only one that has not prospered sensibly, but that each
one has to relearn it for himself from the beginning, without the experience of
previous generations being worth it. Civil laws and/constitutions aim at the
external rights of people; the ecclesiastical constitution, what the human being
owes to himself or to God. As for what the human being owes to God and to
himself, the Church claims to know it, while at the same time it sets up a
tribunal to rule on it. Before him he has placed everything that may be divine in
human actions and adventures, at the same time that he has pointed out in his
laws what humans must feel in those cases, thus creating a lengthy moral code
that contains both what You have to do what you have to know and believe, as
well as what you have to feel. The entire legislative and judicial power of the
Church is based on the possession and application of this code, so that all the
power of the Church is illegal, in the event that submission to that foreign
"Codex " opposes the right of the reason for each one; Now, no one can renounce
the right to give himself his own law, to be the only one to whom he has to be
accountable for its compliance, otherwise he would cease to be human. But it is
not up to the State to prevent this alienation – this would mean wanting to force
the human being to be human, and it would be violence. The rise of all sects in
the Christian Church during the Middle Ages or in more recent times was based
on individuals who felt entitled to be their own legislators, but who had been
born in times of barbarism or in a popular class condemned to brutality by their
sovereigns; So the beginning of this legislation was ordinarily a feverish, wild and
disorderly fantasy, although among its creations a beautiful spark of reason did
 1
1
1
not fail to flash at times and the inalienable human right to make laws from the
very privacy of oneself was always upheld. each.

HGW 1,359
[24]
1 [Historical reworking ]
[1796]

The fantasy of each town has its objects that are peculiar to it: its gods,
angels, demons or saints, who survive in the traditions of the town, whose story
and actions the lover tells the children, impressing their imagination to attract
them and making those stories. In addition to these creatures of the imagination,
in the memory of most peoples, especially free peoples, live the ancient heroes
of their national history, the founders or liberators of States and, almost even
more so, the champions of time. immemorial, when the people were unified into
a State under civil laws. These heroes do not live isolated only in the fantasy of
the people; Its history, the memory of its exploits is linked to public festivals,
national games, certain internal institutions or external circumstances of the
State, well-known buildings and places, public temples and other monuments.
Any town that had received 1

The content of this outline, although related to the previous one, presents a new thematic
beginning. The pagination in Latin letters of the previous sketch continues; but the current
outline also presents its own numbering in Greek letters and abandons the marginal subtitles.
The handwriting and reasons for internal criticism indicate a date between May and August
1796.

its characteristic religion and government - or a part of them and its culture -
from other nations, but appropriating them completely - like the Egyptians,
Greeks, Romans -, it has had that national fantasy. The ancient Germans, Gauls,
and Scandinavians also had their Walhalla, where their gods lived, their heroes,
who lived in their songs, whose exploits filled them with enthusiasm in battles or
at banquets filled their souls with great decisions; They had their sacred groves,
where these divinities were closest to them.
Christianity has depopulated Walhalla, cut down the sacred groves and
eradicated this fantasy from the people as a shameful superstition, as a
 1
1
2
diabolical poison; In exchange, it has given us the fantasy of a people whose
climate, whose legislation, whose culture, whose interests are foreign to us,
whose history we have no connection with. absolutely nothing that see.
In the imagination of our
people live a David, a Solomon; but the heroes of our homeland
they doze in history books the scholars, andfor these you have /
exactly so much interest in an Alejandro, a Caesar, etc.
like the story of
a Charlemagne or Frederick Barbarossa. Aside from, say, Luther among
Protestants, who could our heroes be, when we were never a nation? Who would
be our Theseus, who would have founded a State and its laws? Where can we
find our Harmodius and Aristogitón, to whom we can sing verses as liberators of
our country? The wars that have devoured millions of Germans were due to the
ambition or independence of their sovereigns, the nation a mere instrument,
which, despite fighting with fierce fury, in the end could not say why [we have
fought] or what we have achieved. . The Reformation and the bloody defense of
the right to carry it out is one of the few events in which a part of the nation has
been interested; It is true that this commitment did not evaporate like that of
the crusades with the cooling of the imagination, but rather remained active as a
feeling of a lasting right: the right to follow the religious beliefs of one's own
conviction, whether that achieved by oneself, well it was the traditional one;
But, apart from the annual reading of the Augsburg Confession, which is
customary in some Protestant Churches - and tends to bore anyone - and the
cold sermon that follows, what is the festival that would celebrate the memory
of that event? It seems as if the rulers of Church and State gladly see how the
memory slumbers in us - indeed, does not even live - that in other times our
ancestors have felt that right and were willing to risk their lives a thousand
times to maintain it.
Anyone who, without knowing the history, the formation of the State of
Athens and its legislation, spent a year within the walls, could learn quite well
about them from their festivals.
Therefore, without a fantasy springing from our soil and linked to our
history, in the absence of any political fantasy, only here and there does a
remnant of native fantasy creep in among the masses as superstition, whether it
 1
1
be the advice of a hill or spectral place of once threatening knights, or of3 a
house in which friars and nuns appeared, or where an administrator considered
unfaithful or a neighbor still cannot find rest in his grave - if [superstition], as
the spawn of a fantasy without roots in history, it does not imagine weak or bad
individuals to whom it assigns powers of witchcraft: diminished and sad remains
of a pretension of autonomy, of something of its own, whose eradication is seen
as a duty by the entire enlightened class of society. nation and belongs to good
tone; [but] with this attitude of the more or less refined part of the nation it
becomes totally impossible – apart from the formlessness and crudeness of the
material itself – to transform that remnant of mythology and, with it, the
sensitivity and fantasy of the people. In this respect the idyllic games of a Hölty,
Bürger, Musäus have nothing to say to our people, whose culture is too backward
in the rest to be able to enjoy them, while the fantasy of the more or less
refined part of nation develops in a completely different terrain from that of the
vulgar classes; so the writers and artists who work for the [refined part of the
nation] are not even included in the [vulgar classes. On the contrary, the
Athenian citizen whose poverty excluded him from the right to vote in the public
assembly - or even had to sell himself as a slave - knew as well as Pericles or
Alcibiades who Agamemnon and Oedipus were, represented in the theater by
Sophocles and Euripides in the noble forms of a beautiful and sublime humanity,
and captured by Phidias and Apelles in pure figures of bodily beauty. The
authenticity of Shakespeare's characters - in addition to the fact that many of
them are known to history - has made them have a very deep impact on the
English people, constituting an area of their fantasies, to the point that on the
occasion of an exhibition of academic paintings [like] the Shakespeare Gallery ,
he surely understands and can freely enjoy the part in which the greatest
masters compete.
The scope of representations that could be common to the fantasy of the
cultured and uncultured part of our nation - religious history - presents
difficulties for a poetic elaboration that could ennoble the nation: the
uncultured part, among other things, / adheres rigidly to the content as an
object of faith, while, as regards the cultured part, even if the poet beautifully
elaborates [that content], the very names remind one of the old Franks or smell
of Gothic, while the fact being imposed on reason from early years awakens a
 1
1
4
feeling of discomfort incompatible with the enjoyment of beauty, which arises
from the free play of the faculties; Even when in some minds a liberated fantasy
no longer aspires only to the beautiful and great, deep down one continues to
notice its ideals, or the very receptivity to them, which are cut off by the
catechism.
When the taste for ancient literature spread and with it the taste for the
fine arts, the cultured part of the nation incorporated the mythology of the
Greeks into its fantasy, and its receptivity to these representations demonstrates
a certain autonomy and independence from the understanding, which, in any
case, always had to interfere with the free enjoyment of them. Others tried to
return to the Germans a fantasy of their own, arising from their own roots,
warning them:
Is Achaea the homeland of the Teutons?
Only this fantasy is no longer the fantasy of the Germans; It was always in vain
to try to restore the lost fantasy of a nation, and in the end it could not but be
even less successful than Julian's attempt to restore to the mythology of his
ancestors its pristine force and universality in contemporaries, and that This
attempt had much more in its favor, since there was still much of it in the minds
of the people and the emperor still had many means to make his mythology
prevail. That old Teutonic fantasy finds nothing in our time to get close to, to
connect with, it is so isolated from the entire scope of our images, opinions and
faith, it is as foreign to us as that of Ossian or that of the Indians; and what the
poet [Klopstock in the Odes ] warns his people about Greek mythology could with
equal right be warned him and his people regarding Jewish mythology, asking
him:
Is Judea the homeland of the Teutons?
As much as fantasy loves freedom, it is also necessary that the religious
fantasy of a people be firm, that its system be linked above all to certain known
places, rather than to a specific era; This knowledge of the place is usually for
the people one more proof, or the surest proof, of the truth of the story being
told. Hence the living presence of the mythology of the Greeks in their minds,
hence the firmness of the faith of Catholics in their saints and miracle workers;
For Catholics, the miracles that occurred in their country are much more present
and important than those that occurred in other countries, which are often much
 1
1
5
greater, or were even performed by Christ. Each country usually has its patron
saint, who has performed miracles especially in this country and is venerated
primarily there. Furthermore, each people feels especially distinguished and
honored by the special attention that this protective god has dedicated to them,
and this advantage over other peoples makes them even more devoted to him,
as is the case with the Jews. This is how a town makes that fantasy its own.
What is properly history in our sacred books, like most of the Old
Testament - which does not properly impose the obligation to believe like the
New Testament - can itself become an object of popular fantasy; [but] it is so
foreign to our customs, to our government, to the culture of our bodily and
mental faculties, that we have almost no point of coincidence, except
occasionally in human nature in general; and it is for the most part indigestible
for anyone who begins to enlighten himself, that is, to demand generality for the
laws of his understanding and his experience - a class of individuals that only
grows; so it can only be valid for two kinds of readers: one, who with holy
simplicity accepts everything as truth, since it is convinced that [those facts of
sacred history] would also have been accessible to general experience, another,
who does not even This question arises about truth or falsehood for the
understanding, since it is only interested in the subjective truth for fantasy, as
we can read from Herder. The Greeks had their religious myths almost only to
have gods to whom they could dedicate their gratitude, erect altars and offer
sacrifices; To us, however, sacred history should serve us to learn and perceive
certain things regarding morality. But a healthy moral discernment that
approaches [sacred history] for this purpose will often be forced to introduce the
moral into most of the stories, before being able to find something moral in
them, and very many will put it in a place of shame. I struggle to make them
compatible with its principles. The main usefulness and effectiveness of that
[reading] that a pious man can feel in himself is edification, that is, the
evocation of dark sacred feelings (since he is dealing with representations of
God), whose confusion he refuses to advance in. moral perception, but it usually
involves a regression to other supposedly sacred passions, such as a zeal for
honoring God as holy as it is misunderstood, pious pride and presumption, and a
drowsiness devoted to God.
This different way of reading the old legends with the understanding or
 1
1
6
with the fantasy can be exemplified with that story of Moses which tells us that
he has seen God on Sinai; The normal Christian reader takes it as a sensible
perception according to the laws that govern all our sensible perceptions; the
enlightened, sensible Recha says [in the Natán ]:
wherever he was, he was before God.
He admits the objective existence of God, but denies the possibility that the
human senses can perceive him, and maintains that God is present to him
[Moses] everywhere, even when he does not think about it, and especially in this
case he denies the sensible presence of God. In a third sense, it can be stated
that in the place and moment in which Moses believed he had felt the presence
of God, the divinity was as truly present to him as a sensation that we consider
true, without wanting to decide on the object. which cannot be dealt with in
this judgment, while at the same time affirming that in the place and the
moment in which an individual does not think about God, God is not present.
The first judgment affirms the sensitive perception of the object God; the
second denies sensible perception, but affirms that / God has been there; The
third affirms that there is perception of God, but not as an object – the first
affirms that in Moses the senses and understanding have been active; the
second, only fantasy; the third, fantasy and reason. For the one who pronounces
the second judgment, only the object speaks and as an object he judges it,
according to the laws of his understanding and experience; The spirit of Moses
speaks directly to the spirit of the one who pronounces the third judgment –
which understands, which is manifest to him – without worrying about the
object.
(the first accords subjective and objective truth to the fact; the second
affirms that there is objective truth, but subjective error; the third affirms
subjective truth and - if it were possible to speak like this - objective error)

Difference between Greek fantasy and positive Christian religion

One of the most pleasant sensations of Christians is to compare their

happiness and their knowledge with the misfortune and darkness of the pagans;
 1
1
and one of the favorite topics of spiritual shepherds when leading their sheep7to
graze through the meadows of self-satisfaction and superb humility is the very
plastic description of this happiness, in the face of which blind pagans are
usually very badly off. Above all, they are blamed for the distress of a religion
that neither promises them forgiveness of sins nor allows them faith in a
Providence that guides their destinies according to wise and beneficial purposes.
But we immediately had to realize that we can spare ourselves our compassion,
since among the Greeks we do not find the needs of our current practical reason,
which, by the way, is actually made to bear everything.
The supplanting of the pagan religion by the Christian is one of those
astonishing revolutions, the causes of which cannot but attract the attention of
the thinking historian. The great obvious revolutions must have been preceded
by a silent revolution, secret in the spirit of the time, less perceptible to no one
than to contemporaries and as difficult to explain in words as it is to understand.
The lack of knowledge of these revolutions in the spirit world makes the result
somewhat surprising; a revolution of the type of the supplantation of a native,
primal religion by another upstart, a revolution that occurs directly in the realm
of spirits must be all the more directly due to the spirit of the time itself.
How could a religion that had been established in the States for centuries,
with whose Constitution it was intertwined in the most intimate way, be
relegated? How could faith disappear in gods to whom cities and empires
attributed their origin, to whom the people brought their offerings daily, whose
blessing they invoked for all matters, under whose sign only their armies had
been victorious, whom they had celebrated after their victories, to whom joy
directed its songs and seriousness its prayers, whose temples, altars, riches and
statues were the pride of the people, the glory of the arts, whose worship and
festivals were nothing but occasions for collective joy? A faith in the gods
entangled with a thousand threads in the fabric of human life, how could it be
torn from this plot? A bodily habit can be opposed by the will of the spirit and
other bodily forces; The habit of a singular faculty can be opposed by other
faculties, without having a firm will. But when it is a habit of the soul that is not
isolated - which currently often happens with religion - but involves all aspects
of human powers and is linked in the most intimate way with the very generative
force of yourself, what force must the opposite weight have to overcome that
 1
1
force? 8
Contact with Christianity brought the negative consequence that the
people realized the misery and desolation of their religion, that their
understanding perceived how incoherent and ridiculous the fables of their
mythology were and that they were no longer content with them. ; The positive
consequence was that they adopted Christianity, this religion so adequate to all
the needs of the human spirit and heart, which so satisfactorily answers all the
questions of human reason, and that without taking into account the fact that it
demonstrated its divine origin with miracles. Such is usually the answer to that
question, and / we are so accustomed to using expressions here such as
illustration of understanding, change of vision, etc. It seems to us that with them
we express deep thoughts and have everything explained; and we represent that
operation as something so easy and its consequences as necessary; In the end, it
is very easy for us to make any child understand how absurd it is to believe that
up there in Heaven there is that gang of gods who, as the pagans believed,
scheme, eat and drink, fight, when they do not They devote themselves to other
things that any decent person among us is ashamed of.
But anyone to whom it has occurred to the naive reflection that those
pagans ultimately also had understanding, that furthermore in everything that is
great, beautiful, noble and free they continue to be our model, to the point that
we cannot but marvel at these human beings as another species; who knows that
a religion, especially a religion of fantasy, is not torn from the heart, and even
less so from the hearts and the entire life of a people, with cold deductions from
the office, who also knows that the means used the Christian religion to spread
were anything but reason and understanding, whoever, instead of explaining the
introduction of Christianity by miracles, has ever asked himself the question of
what the time must have been like in which miracles and miracles were possible.
By the way, miracles such as those that history tells us, whoever, in short, has
considered these reflections, will not find the answer given to the question
posed above satisfactory.
Free Rome - which, in addition to subduing a multitude of States that had
lost their freedom first in Asia, then in the West, had destroyed some that were
still free, since these would not have allowed themselves to be subdued -, the
victor of the world, preserved at least the privilege of being the last to lose her
 1
1
9
freedom. The Greek and Roman religion was a religion only for free peoples,
and, by losing freedom, its meaning, its strength, its adaptation to human needs
can only be lost with it. What are the cannons of an army that has run out of
ammunition? Will you look for other weapons? Of what use are the nets to the
fisherman, once the current has dried up?
As free men they obeyed laws given by themselves, they obeyed people
they themselves had designated as their superiors, they fought wars that they
decided, they gave up their property, their passions, they sacrificed a thousand
lives / for a cause that was their own; [they] did not teach or learn, but they put
into practice virtuous maxims that they could rightly consider their own; In
public, private and domestic life each was a free man, each lived according to
his own law. The idea of his homeland, of his State, was that invisible, superior
thing for which he worked, his motive, his ultimate end of the world or the
ultimate end of his world, which he found captured in reality or which he himself
helped to shape and preserve. . His individuality disappeared before this idea,
whose conservation, life and duration was the only one that interested him, at
the same time that he could realize it himself[. To demand, or beg,
permanence, eternal life for his individuality, was something that could not even
occur to him, or only for a moment; An inactive, inert situation was needed so
that he could feel with some force a desire referring only to him: Cato did not
turn to Plato's Phaedo until that which for him had been the supreme order of
things, his world, his republic, was destroyed; That's when he fled to an even
higher order.
Their gods dominated in the kingdom of nature over everything that could
make humans unhappy or happy. His work was great passions; His gift, great gifts
of wisdom, eloquence and advice. They were asked for advice about the success
or failure of a company and their blessing was implored; they were thanked for
their gifts of all kinds. [But] even to these lords of nature, to this power, the
individual could oppose himself, his freedom, if he came into collision with
them. His will was free, he obeyed his own laws, because [the ancients] did not
know divine commandments or, if they called the moral law a divine
commandment, it was not given to them anywhere, in any letter, it governed
them invisibly ( Antigone ). At the same time, they recognized the right of each
person to have their will, whether good or bad. The good ones recognized the
 1
2
duty to be good; but at the same time they respected the freedom of others0to
be able [not] to be one, and that is why they did not establish either a divine
morality or one made by themselves or by abstraction, to impose on others.
Successful wars, greater wealth and access to greater well-being and luxury
created in Athens and Rome an aristocracy of military prestige and wealth, and
gave it a dominion and influence over many individuals, who, captivated by the
exploits of those men - and even more so because of the use they made of their
wealth - willingly and voluntarily granted them preponderance and power in the
State, aware that they themselves had given it to them and that they could
withdraw it as soon as they felt bothered. with that; but little by little [the
people] stopped deserving the reproach that has been so frequently made to
them: that of ungratefulness, choosing this injustice when it came to choosing
between it and the freedom to curse the virtues of a man who brought the
misfortune of your contry. Soon the freely granted preponderance was
maintained with violence, and this mere possibility presupposes the loss of
feeling, of conscience that, under the name of virtue, constitutes according to
Montesquieu the principle of republics: the willingness to sacrifice, if necessary,
to the individual for an idea that for the republican is realized in his homeland.
The image of the State as a product of its activity disappeared from the
citizen's soul; the care, the perspective of the whole was found in the soul of an
individual or a few; each one was assigned his or her more or less limited place,
different from the place of another, the government of the state machine was
entrusted to a small number of citizens, and these served only as singular gears
that only gained value in union with others - the part of the dismembered whole
that was entrusted to each one was so insignificant in relation to that whole that
the individual did not need to know that proportion or keep it in mind. The great
goal that the State set for its subjects was to be useful in it, while the goal that
they proposed for themselves was profit and sustenance, in addition to, let's say,
their vanity. All activity, all purposes now referred to the individual, no activity
anymore to a whole, to an idea: each one worked either for himself or was
obliged to serve another individual. The freedom to obey laws given by oneself,
military leaders and authorities chosen in times of peace by oneself disappeared,
as well as to carry out plans in whose decision one had intervened; all political
freedom disappeared; The right of the citizen was reduced to the security of
 1
2
1
property, which had become his entire world; The phenomenon that destroyed
the entire fabric of his goals, the activity of his entire life, death, had to be
something frightening for him, since nothing survived him, while the republic
survived for the republican, in which - which It was his soul - he sensed
something eternal.
But once all his goals, all his activity were directed towards the singular,
once the action of the individual did not have any universal idea for which he
was willing to live and die, neither could his gods welcome him, since they too
They were incomplete singular beings, incapable of satisfying an idea. For the
Greeks and Romans, those poorly gifted gods, affected by human weaknesses,
were enough, since the eternal, the autonomous was carried within them. It was
possible to allow the gods to be mocked in the theater, since it was not the
sacred that could be the object of that mockery; a slave could say in Plautus: „si
summus Jupiter hoc facit, ego homuncio idem non facerem[?] ‟LVIII , a
consequence that could not but seem strange and ridiculous to his spectators,
since - unlike what happens with a Christian - the principle that the pattern of
human actions could be found in the gods was completely foreign to them. In
this situation, without faith in something lasting, absolute, accustomed to
obeying a foreign will, a foreign legislation, without a homeland, in a State that
gave no cause for joy but only meant pressure for the citizen and whose wars
[ They only pursued fame and luck, with a cult whose celebration and festivities
could not provide the liveliness that had fled from people's lives; in a situation in
which very often the slave, superior in any case to his master by natural gifts
and by training, could no longer perceive greater freedom and independence in
him; In a situation like this, I say, the people were offered a religion that either
already responded to the needs of the time - since it had emerged in a town in
such a state of corruption and with such emptiness and lack, only with other
nuances-, or it was moldable according to the needs of the people and could
have appeal to them.
In any case, reason could never give up finding somewhere the absolute,
the autonomous practical; There was no longer a way to find it in the human
LVIII
The quote from Hegel is erroneous, since the author of the aforementioned comedy –
Eunuchus , act III, esc. 5- is Terence; Only the second part of the phrase – “I, little man, can't I
do the same?” – is a literal quote, the first part – “if supreme Jupiter does it” – is added by
Hegel to complete the meaning.
 1
2
2
will, [but] it was still shown to reason in divinity, which the Christian religion
offered outside the scope of our power, of our will, although not of our
supplications and prayers; Consequently, the realization of a moral idea could
only be desired (since a wish is what one cannot realize oneself, but rather one
hopes to receive it without doing anything on one's part) and not an object of
the will. It was this revolution, produced by a divine being - while humans
remained in total passivity - in which the first propagators of the Christian
religion trusted and, when this expectation finally disappeared, it was simply
replaced by revolution. universal when the end of the world arrives. As soon as
the realization of an idea is placed outside the reach of our power - and the
people of that time felt capable of little more than that - it makes no difference
to what infinity the object of hope is inflated, an object that, therefore, , was
capable of absorbing everything not [only] in fantasy, but in the expectation of a
reality adorned by the enthusiasm of an oriental imagination. Nor, while the
Jewish State found within itself the courage and strength to remain
independent, are the Jews barely - many say never - seen taking refuge in the
hope of a Messiah; Only when they were subjugated by foreign nations and felt
their helplessness and weakness do we see them delving into their sacred books
in search of that consolation; At the time when they were offered a Messiah who
did not meet their political expectations, the people [still] believed that it was
worth it for their State to remain a State - a people to whom this is indifferent
will soon cease to be a people. and shortly afterwards, detaching himself from
his apathetic messianic hopes, he took up arms and, after doing everything
appropriate to an extremely enthusiastic spirit and enduring the most horrible
calamities, buried himself with his State under the ruins of his city; / if the
feeling of what a people can do for its independence had not been lost to such
an extent, and if we did not have the arrogance of wanting to prescribe to a
people who, instead of taking up their own cause, should have lived and died
Because of our opinions - although we do not lift a finger for them - [the Jewish
people] would figure in history, in the opinion of the nations alongside the
Carthaginians and Saguntines and above the Greeks and Romans, whose cities
survived their State. The dispersed rest of the Jews have not abandoned the idea
of their State; But neither has he returned to the watchword of his own courage,
but once again to the banner of an inert messianic hope. Also the adherents of
 1
2
3
the pagan religion felt this lack of practical ideas; a Lucian, a Longinus felt that
they should be found among human beings, and their sad experience on this
point turned into bitter complaints; others, however, such as Porphyry,
Iamblichus, attempted to endow their gods with wealth that was no longer the
property of humans, to recover a part of it as a gift through enchantments.
Apart from previous attempts, it has been our day above all to reclaim, at least
in theory, the treasures that have been squandered to heaven as human
property; But what era will have the strength to assert this right and make its
possession effective?
It is within this spoiled humanity – which must despise itself on the moral
side, but nevertheless believed itself to be the favorite of divinity – where the
doctrine of the corruption of human nature had to arise and be welcomed. : on
the one hand it coincided with experience, on the other it satisfied pride by
shaking off guilt and giving itself a reason for pride in the very feeling of one's
own misery, it made honorable what is shameful and sanctified that impotence
in perpetuity, turning even into a sin the possibility of believing in something
that was strength. The area in which the pagan gods ruled, until then limited to
nature, was extended in the case of the Christian God to the free world of
spirits, granting him not only the exclusive right to legislate, but expecting from
him - as his work - everything good impulse, every better purpose or decision;
but not in the sense in which the Stoics attributed all good things to divinity
and/considered their souls from their lineage, a divine spark, but as the work of
a being outside of us, in which we have no part, which is distant from us. , with
which we have nothing in common. Furthermore, even the ability to passively
accept these divine influences was weakened by the incessant intrigues and
cunning of an evil Being, who made constant incursions into the terrain of the
other Being both in nature and in the realm of spirits; and when the Manichaeans
seemed to assign to the principle of evil sole dominion within the kingdom of
nature, the Church, from its orthodoxy, claimed against such an assertion,
dishonorable to the divine majesty, the greater part of that power for it; but the
principle of evil was amply compensated for this loss by the [Church] granting
him a power in the realm of liberty.
With an honest heart and well-intentioned zeal, that powerless humanity
took refuge before the altar, where it found and reverenced autonomy and
 1
2
morality. But as Christianity penetrated the most corrupt, superior class, 4as
great differences were established within itself between the distinguished and
the vulgar, as despotism poisoned all the sources of life and being, the era He
manifested the total insignificance of his being in the change that his concepts
of the divinity of God underwent and in his disputes about it; and her misery was
shown all the more clearly because he surrounded her with the nimbus of
holiness and proclaimed her the supreme honor of humanity.
In fact, from the ideal of perfection, the only place where the sacred was
kept, the moral also disappeared or, at least, fell into oblivion. Instead of the
moral, of the true divine, whose intuition would have reflected at least rays that
warmed the heart, the mirror was limited to showing the image of its time,
[mere] nature for the purpose that human pride and passion wanted. lend it -
nature, since we see all the interest of faith and knowledge directed to the
metaphysical or transcendental aspect of the idea of divinity. We see little
attention directed to the dynamic concepts of understanding, which theoretical
reason can extend towards infinity, but rather the application to its infinite
object of numerical concepts, of concepts of reflection on diversity, etc., and
even of mere sensible representations of arising, creating, producing, so that
their attributes are derived from [supposed] data of their nature. These
determinations and subtleties were no longer locked in the cabinets of
theologians, their audience was the entire Christendom; All classes, all ages,
both sexes took part equally and the difference in those beliefs provoked the
deadliest hatred, the bloodiest persecutions, often a complete breakdown of all
moral ties and the most sacred relationships. Such a reversal of nature could not
but attract its most terrible vengeance.
As for the end they assigned to this infinite nature, it was very far from
being an ultimate moral end of the world; It was not only limited to the
propagation of the Christian religion, but also to purposes proposed by a
community, individuals, especially priests, who introduced into that [end]
presumption, arrogance, ambition, envy, hatred and other passions. However,
the time had not yet come for the beautiful colors of the current theory of
Providence and consolation, which constitutes the keystone of our eudaimonism.
The situation of the majority of Christians was too miserable for much happiness
to await them in this world, they also had the universal concept of a Church too
 1
2
5
deeply ingrained for the individual to have expected or demanded something like
that for himself. However, the demands of the individual were all the stronger
insofar as they could be linked to the interest of this Church. The [Christians]
despised the joys of this world and the earthly goods, of which they were
deprived, to find abundant compensation for it in heaven. The idea of the
Church had replaced that of the country, of a free State; but it was distinguished
from the latter in that no freedom had any place in it and, while the idea of the
country was completely earthly, that of the Church was intimately linked to
heaven, which was so close to the system of Christian sensibility as to that the
renunciation of all joys and goods may not represent any sacrifice, and it only
had to seem something extraordinary to those spectators of martyrdom to ignore
that feeling of closeness to heaven. Thus the despotism of the Roman emperors
had expelled the human spirit from the earth: the plundering of freedom had
forced it / to seek refuge in divinity for the eternal in it, for its absoluteness;
The misery spread by [despotism forced him] to seek and hope for happiness in
heaven. The objectivity of divinity has gone hand in hand with the corruption
and slavery of humanity and is properly nothing more than a revelation, a
phenomenon of this spirit of the times. Such was the way in which this spirit
manifested itself through its objective God, when humans began to know
amazingly so much about God, when so many mysteries of their nature in such a
variety of formulas, that [even] children knew it by heart; The spirit of that time
was manifested in the objectivity of its God, when he was transposed not to the
infinity of a mass but to a world alien to us - whose territory is closed to us, in
which our action lacks effectiveness, if not It is, at most, forcing supplication
and magic -, since the human being himself was a Not-I and his divinity another
Not-I. The clearest way in which [God] manifested himself was the mass of
miracles he produced, which replaced reason itself as reasons for decision and
conviction. The most sinister way, however, occurred when for this God they
fought, murdered, slandered, burned, stole, lied and deceived. In that period,
divinity had to have completely ceased to be something subjective and had
become totally an object, while that perversion of moral maxims later found a
theoretical justification that was as easy as it was consistent. Christians know by
revelation from God himself that he is the Most High in Heaven, Lord of the
entire Earth, of living and inert nature, as well as of the spirit world; To refuse
 1
2
6
this king veneration as he himself has commanded it can only be ingratitude and
crime: this is the system of all the Churches, which only differ in who should be
the judge/executor of this crime. A Church arrogates this power to itself; the
other condemns consistently with its system, but does nothing to execute that
verdict on earth, since it is convinced that divinity itself will execute it and it
seems that the zeal [of resorting] to doctrine and others is increasingly cooling.
minor means of bribery and repression, which in any case exclude death, while a
certain compassion seems to be / replacing hatred - a feeling of helplessness
which, despite being based on the arrogance of believing oneself in possession of
the truth, is preferable to that one-. A free man could have neither that zeal nor
this compassion, because as a free man among the free he would not grant
anyone else the right to improve and change him or to want to interfere with his
principles; Nor would they have been allowed to discuss with others the right to
be as they are and want, good or bad. Piety and sin are two concepts that the
Greeks lacked in this sense; The former designates an attitude of ours that acts
out of respect for God as legislator; this, an action that transgresses the
commandments insofar as they are divine; „ ay1ov , 'avaytov , „pietas ‟ and
„impietas ‟ , expresses sacred feelings of humanity and attitudes or actions that
are in accordance or contrary to them, as well as divine commandments, but not
in a positive sense; and if a [Greek] could have thought of how to demonstrate
the divinity of a commandment or a prohibition, he could not have referred to a
historical fact, but only to the sensitivity of his heart and the agreement of all
good people. .

1
In the situation of a people that, after completely losing its political
freedom, lacks any interest in what refers to the State - since we can only be
interested in something in which we can actively participate -, at the same time
that the only purpose in Life consists of earning one's daily bread with more or
less ease or abundance, limiting interest in the State to waiting - with absolute
selfishness - for its stability to grant or preserve it to us, it must also be noted in
the traits that we perceive in he

1
Here a new page of the manuscript begins after a small blank space at the end of the
previous page.
 1
2
7
spirit of the time an aversion against the servitudes of war, since they are
incompatible with the general desire for a calm, stable consumption - not only
do they bring inconvenience, but death can end the very possibility of continuing
to enjoy anything; or whoever turns [to the military] as the last resort for his
sustenance and the satisfaction of his needs left by his laziness, a licentious life
or boredom, will always be a coward before the enemy. In this state of
oppression, of political passivity, we see among the Romans a mass of people
who escaped military service through flight, bribery, mutilation of their
members; and a people with this disposition could not but receive with open
arms the religion that raised to honor and the highest virtue the dominant spirit
of the times: moral impotence, the disgrace of being trampled - an operation
that, to the pleasant surprise of the people, transformed the contempt of others
and one's own feeling of shame into glory and pride - a religion that preached
that it was a sin to shed human blood. This is how we see Saint Ambrose or Saint
Anthony surrounded by their numerous people, instead of going to defend the
walls when a horde of barbarians approached their city, prostrate themselves in
the churches and in the streets imploring the divinity to remove them. them the
imminent misfortune. And why would they want to die fighting? The preservation
of the city could only be important to each person to preserve his property and
the enjoyment of it; If he had exposed himself to the danger of dying fighting,
he would have done something ridiculous, since the means, death, would have
directly nullified the end: property and its enjoyment; the feeling that, when
defending property, more than defending this property itself, what they
defended to the death was the right to it (since whoever dies defending a right
has sustained it), this feeling, I say, was foreign to a people oppressed, for whom
it was enough that 1

They will donate their property to him.

The possibility of belief in miracles is in a precise relationship with the

need for a given, objective religion. An event whose

1
The page of the manuscript ends here with the crossed out beginning of a sentence: the
[only] thing he was interested in maintaining was his faith
The next page changes the subject.

condition is supposed to have occurred only once, a narrated perception that

 1
2
8
simply cannot be elevated to experience, is totally unthinkable to the
understanding, which in this case is the only competent judge; The
understanding cannot but begin to think about the totality of the conditions of
that event, although the story itself simply does not add those data and,
therefore, it has to suspend / the task of thinking certain, certain conditions; If
a condition that occurs to him seems ruled out, he tries another and, if all the
ones that his sagacity can find prove improbable, he does not abandon the
demand that a totality of the conditions must be met, even if this or that one
does not exist. will give. If you believe you satisfy your fruitless search by
explaining that the cause is a superior Being, then your understanding becomes
silent, it remains silent, because it has not been counted on, the explanation
was not directed to it.
-On the other hand, the imagination is easily satisfied and, [once it] has
descended to its territory, the understanding lets it do and it is as if it
accompanied it with a smile, but without any interest in snatching its toy away,
since it is no longer available. demands nothing; He condescends to leave his
general concept of cause to the imagination to use, but without taking part in it.
-But the presenter of the miracle is not satisfied, but begins to riot and shout
that this is atheism, blasphemy, infamy.
-The unbeliever doesn't care, he sees no relationship between immorality and
irreligiosity on the one hand and the affirmation of the rights of his
understanding on the other.
-Then the scene changes: reason is appealed to by explaining the great moral
purposes of these miracles, the improvement and happiness of the human race,
the feeling of impotence of reason is resorted to, the imagination is strongly
overheated, until reason, Powerless, with nothing to oppose to these terrors, to
this subjugation, she anguishedly accepts the laws given to her and imposes
silence on the objection of understanding. Belief in miracles is exclusively a
matter of this state of mind. It is not worth discussing miracles based on
understanding; The result has always shown that nothing is achieved this way; It
is the interest of reason that has always decided for or against. If she finds
herself in need of external legislation, if she [finds herself lost before] the
horrors of an objective worldLIX [ . . . ]
LIX
Here was more text, currently lost.
1
 1
2
HGW 1,409 9
[25]
1 [ Fragment about the miracle ]
[1795]

The dispute over the possibility and reality of miracles is being heard
before various courts and cannot be clarified so soon, as long as the parties in dispute
do not reach an agreement. Everyone agrees on the truth of miracles for fantasy, and
only a fantasy in which the understanding is always intruding will reject them. [Now,]
discernment is always involved, at least, when judging suitability for a given purpose.
On the part of aesthetic discernment, of the freedom of the imagination, Herder is
the first, perhaps the only one, who has treated the Old Testament in this sense, an
elaboration of which the New Testament is not susceptible. Those who deny miracles
usually appeal to the court of understanding. Their weapons are experience and the
laws of nature. The defenders of miracles defend their cause with the weapons of a
reason: not precisely autonomous reason, which sets its goals independently, based on
its being, but rather a reason to which goals are set from outside, and then reflect
according to them, either by inventing subordinate ends, or by deducing superior ends
from them. The contradiction between both sides – whether one should start from
history when founding the supreme science for human beings – is reduced to the
question: Can reason give itself its supreme end, and no one else? Doesn't it contradict
the most intimate part of your being that this goal is imposed on you from outside or
by a foreign authority? Or is reason incapable of him? This is the only point that the
opponents of miracles should adhere to compared to their defenders. Entering into
historical and exegetical discussions, entering into this field, means ignoring one's
reason or not maintaining it, so the defenders of miracles have won the game. And
the fact is that, even if it could be demonstrated that each of the miracles can be
explained by natural causes, too much would have already been granted to the
supporter of them (apart from the fact that the explanations that have been given so
far in this regard tend to be very forced. and on the whole they cannot be satisfactory

This fragment, transmitted and retouched by Rosenkranz (pp. 510-512), corresponds

thematically above all with the end of the previous sketch; but in any case he does not pursue it
directly and his approach is more abstractly Kantian, less historical. They are only reasons of
thematic plausibility – already adduced by Nohl – that recommend this approximate, but not
necessarily strict, chronological location.
 1
3
0
for anyone, as long as it is not generally accepted that neither history nor authority
can give reason its supreme end). If only a miracle were inexplicable, reason would
have been superseded. Such is the position from which we must start. / The fact of
bringing the dispute before the court of understanding shows that we do not feel very
safe, that we have been impressed by the story of the miraculous events and we no
longer dare to discard them based only on [reason], but that the facts that are
presented to us as miracles could be used to overthrow that autonomy of reason.
Once you go down with the defender of miracles to the field of understanding, there
is endless discussion about possibility and impossibility. In fact, this point usually
remains unresolved and, when we go down to specific cases, the adversary of miracles
demands either that perceptions be elevated to experiences - that is, that they be
explained by natural laws - or, if he does not see it possible, , denies the perceptions
themselves and then both parties no longer understand each other. The supporter of
miracles cannot understand what interest the adversary may have in clarifying
miracles or denying them, since, once he has agreed to discuss them, he has betrayed
his indecision about whether his reason assists him or not. The clumsiness that he
shows, and has to show, with his concern for wanting to explain everything, partly
makes him hateful - since only bad intentions will be attributed to him -, partly
betrays that he would be afraid of even the smallest vestige of a miracle and that
what he The goal is usually to get confused rather than to achieve peace of mind and
security through clear and unprejudiced knowledge of the facts. On the other hand, if
the adversary of miracles, driven by the polemical intention of converting the other,
adopts a contrary position, he is setting out to whitewash a Moor and what he
achieves is to plunge him into doubt and upset him.
 1
3
Ros 515 1
[26]
LX LXI
“Fragments of historical studies”
[1796?]

[1]
Spirit of the orientals

[ It characterizes its] respect for reality in reality, adorning it with

fantasy. +

The oriental character is firmly established. Once they are one way,
Orientals no longer change; nor do they change direction once they have taken
it. What is out of their way does not exist for them; But if anything hinders their
progress, they declare it hostile. Once their character is established, it is
impossible for them to renounce it or assume what opposes it, reconciling with
it. For them there is only dominator and dominated. Power is the concept that
makes beings equal. Violence, its reciprocal relationship: violence of brute force
or genius or word. Once a character is established, he does not admit anything -
except himself - that he does not dominate, although, at the same time that he
is dominated, it dominates him; And there are barriers in it, inescapable
realities that, if encountered with other adverse realities, with the hostile, are
incapable of changing that relationship. Since the limits of character result in
realities that love cannot unify, they have to be united objectively, that is,
under a law. Reality is always necessity, such is the law that dominates
everything. That is why the oriental character so closely combines two
characteristics that seem contradictory: the claim to dominate everything and

LX Rosenkranz ( Hegels Leben , ps. 515-532) selected under this title, with some interspersed
comments, a double series of “fragments”, which he assigned to the Berne era (p. 60, where
Rosenkranz also adds another text, which I have added with number 6). Perhaps some of the
texts (eg No. 18) is only an excerpt, or that not all of them coincide chronologically. The
dating is neither precise nor detailed, which would make it more reliable; but it is consistent
with the enlightened historical content and energetic writing of the Berne finale. Rosenkranz
presented the “fragments” without titles, one after the other, without a clear order,
separated by a line and a double space. The underlines, added by Rosenkranz, are removed.
When Rosenkranz uses a hyphen to articulate a paragraph - in these texts he does not use the
full stop -, he separates it with a full stop marked with a crossed cross ( + )...
LXI The brief allusion to the content of this text in the penultimate paragraph of the
“Commentaries on Flavius Josephus” ( infra , no. 32) must be considered in my opinion, the
same as Greek beauty –which shares that paragraph-, as a summary and not as an advance.
Until the last year of Frankfurt, the theme of the Eastern spirit – in contrast to the Greek –
constitutes something like an enlightened substrate for the subjective , personalistic
intensification of the characters Abraham and Jesus.
 1
3
the submissive acceptance of any slavery. Both are governed by the law 2of
necessity. Both domination and slavery are just in this case, since they are
governed by the same law of violence. In the East, a man is considered happy
who has the courage to subdue someone who is weaker than him and the
prudence not to attack someone who is stronger, submitting to him in the first
place; while the wise man is someone who withdraws from realities and acts
through speech and sentences. Noble is he who, enjoying a higher education,
knows how to distinguish and only dominates as long as he encounters
resistance, while at the same time he equates himself with the defeated,
recognizing the law of necessity about both; The victor in fact respects the
possible vanquished in himself, while at the same time he/she respects the
possible dominator in the de facto subject. The infinite divinity of the Orientals
consists precisely in this possibility of the opposite, in this possibility of the
infinite diversity of real beings as possible dominators and possible subjects, in
this power that manifests itself in the transitions from negative to positive, of
the positive to negative. What happens is woven in the loom of His [divine] will
and government, and from the fountain of His command the rivers of times and
centuries flow into the abyss of His power. +

Given the firm disposition of the oriental character, there are very few
relationships that human beings establish, and any novelty is immediately
assigned its place. Once that character is firmly established, the oriental does
not mix with anything that is not related to it. He dispenses with almost
everything that may bother him; He fights and dominates the rest, or he is the
one who submits to violence, but without altering his pretensions. The
tranquility of the oriental lies in this immobility, this inability to be affected in a
thousand ways by as many different things as there are. Since for him the world
is a collection of realities that in their naked form only count as merely
opposite, lacking their own soul and spirit, he has no choice but to muddle
through by trying to replace what they lack in their own content with an alien
brilliance. , borrowed. The oriental always adorns reality with imagination.
Everything is wrapped in images. Of course these images are images of realities,
and it does not seem that one poverty can lend shine to another; but when
linked with reality they become poetic. The unification of the disparate
generates an appearance of life, which consists of the equality of the united.
 1
3
3
That for which it is known as similar accesses – given the inequality of the
different – an obscure consciousness; but the [Orientals] cannot dare to highlight
a figure of pure life. The sublime splendor of his images fills awe, the brilliance
of his descriptions is blinding. But if it is surprising, it is precisely because you
feel the violence of that union between different people; If it dazzles, it is
because the splendor of that objective reality is inaccessible; Since love has not
united, sensitivity goes empty and the beauties, the pearls of the oriental spirit,
do not go beyond being monstrosities of wild beauty. On the other hand, where
the objectivity of life as a unity emerges, stripped of its diversity, it can only be
a concept, a generality as the only content of its descriptions. +

There is no room for a great diversity of characteristics in this type of

character. Such diversity would destroy itself. But what could not be reduced to
them - although ultimately of the same general type, only with greater and
deeper force - had to turn out to be invisible, superior, wonderful. The
composition of the oriental kingdoms, lasting or ephemeral, the system of
obedience and subordination of these savage masses, clearly show the power
exercised over oriental characters by other equally oriental ones, only endowed
with strength, depth and obstinacy, as well as the blind passivity, which almost
leads to annihilation, of the former compared to the latter. From there also
comes the importance and, therefore, the sobriety and seriousness in the word,
manifestation of an invisible life and in itself unknowable. +

Just as the Orientals adorn the naked reality of other things with fantasy,
they also have to burden themselves with foreign adornments, for they have an
incomplete consciousness of themselves and are incapable of finding a
satisfactory unity in representing their nature. They cannot adorn themselves
with clothing that takes its shape and beauty from the human figure and its own
free play, but with things that are totally foreign; nor with a natural totality,
which one appropriates above all out of love, adorning himself rather with his
own sensitivity, but with brilliant things stripped of their own life and a figure
formed by life, [v. g.] gold, made, for example, in borrowed forms [such as]
ornaments that form flowers, etc. +

Among the Easterners , what was excluded from nature was precisely the
natural, which was not in their own eyes but something low and subjugated .
The feminine soul and the love of women was the only passion whose pleasure
 1
3
4
did not have to do with domination. In many Eastern nations it is a great
dishonor, especially among notables, to talk about women and things that have
to do with them. Perhaps it is that here even the bravest did not feel in control
of the situation and were confronted with their weakness; or that, rather,
honoring femininity as something alien to everything else in their spirit and
superior to them, they had qualms about degrading it by naming it at the level of
the rest of the mass of vulgar things; and no one would be privately ashamed of
this weakness, but it would only be considered dishonorable to mention it, [that
is,] to speak of anything that referred to this aspect of human nature. Since they
feel that what affects women can never become like all the other things - a
relationship of domination and servitude - and neither can they allow themselves
to be treated in that way nor can they be safe in this, they can't think of any
other way. thing to lock them up! +

The Jews had no such qualms. They talked about sexual relations freely
and bluntly; but everything that refers to them they have for a reason
 13
5
merely real, as refractory to the spirit of love as everything else. Therefore this
spirit does not govern in this matter either and that is why the treatment they
give it even in their laws and in the books that contain the sum of their training
is so outrageous, vile and shameful; and the more sacred and pure the life-giving
principle is, the more odious it is that its organs and its manifestations are
exposed and treated as mere things. +

Among the orientals, the beard is very sacred. Among the Jews the razor
was not to touch the head of a Nazarene or consecrated to God. Every seventh
year, perhaps even every fiftieth, was consecrated to God and one could not
work a field or prune the vines or harvest grapes. Serfs, livestock, and wild
animals can enjoy free access to the spontaneous fruits of the earth. It is a great
arbitrariness to grow a beard. This is surely an organ of the body, but in a very
small degree; and in this sense the same applies to cutting one's nails; it is even
an even greater mutilation, surely, than circumcision, so common among the
Orientals and imposed on the Jews. So letting a beard grow cannot be
interpreted as respect for the integrity of the human figure; In any case, this
respect is directly incompatible with the concealment of the figure under
clothing of bad taste and an overabundance of bright and varied ornaments. The
arbitrariness that one imposes as a law is maintained with all the more
stubbornness, just as sacrifice is all the more meritorious, the greater the
arbitrariness to which one submits. But why did the Easterners impose precisely
this arbitrariness? And why did they even give the beard sacred importance?
Since for the Eastern spirit there is no value and consistency except in the
infinite object, since it does not believe that anything has consistency, life of its
own, then it has to adorn itself externally with shiny things, without any life,
and in the end it too becomes into something valuable; so he also has to try to
maintain, above all, his beard, which is the least essential part of his organic
totality, honoring above all the least important thing he has.

[2
]
 13
6
Memory is the gallows from which the Greek gods hang strangled. / Poetry
is often called the exhibition of a gallery of those hanged men, shaken by the
wind of ingenuity so that they rotate mocking each other in the most diverse
groups and postures. +

Memory is the tomb, the deposit of the dead. In it rests the dead in its
capacity as dead. And like a pile of stones it appears. Sorting, reviewing,
dusting: all these are undoubtedly occupations with the dead, but they do not
depend on it. +

On the other hand, muttering unintelligible prayers, saying masses, reciting

rosaries, celebrating empty religious ceremonies, that is indeed the work of the
dead. The human being tries to become totally an object, to let himself be
governed in everything by something foreign. This service is called devotion.
Pharisees!

[3]
The mourners at the funeral services for those killed in the first year of the
Peloponnesian War. Thucydides, Book A, 8 : “and the women of the family
appear to mourn at the tomb.” 2 There is no greater relief for pain than letting it
out loud, than having said it clearly in all its magnitude. Its manifestation makes
it objective and the balance is restored between the subjective, the only thing
that exists in pain, and the objective, which in pain is nothing. Only by
manifesting does pain enter consciousness and, once conscious, it is already
past. It has accessed the form of reflection and then other impressions relegate
it. But as long as the mind remains occupied and the pain is totally subjective,
there is no room for anything else. Tears are also a similar discharge, a
manifestation, an objectification of pain. Pain has then become an image,
because, in addition to being subjective, it has also become objectified. Now,
since pain is subjective by nature, it also very much resists coming out of itself.
Only extreme necessity can drive him to do so. Also when the state of need has
passed, when everything has been lost and the pain has turned into despair, it
withdraws into itself; So it does a lot of good to externalize it, something that a
heterogeneous instance cannot achieve. Only by surrendering to oneself does

2 Quote in Greek in the

original.
 13
7
one have pain as oneself and as something partly outside oneself. A painting
does not produce this effect. [In her] [pain] only sees, but is not moved. For the
subjective, the word is the purest form of objectivity. That does not mean that
it is already something objective, but it is moving towards objectivity. As for the
song of lamentation, it also has the form of the beautiful, since it flows
according to a rule. That is why the funeral songs of professional mourners are
the most human thing there is for pain, for the need to get rid of it, /
developing it with maximum depth and keeping it in mind in all its extension.
There is no more balm than making it present to them.

[4]
Thucydides, Book Ap: “But we ourselves, who are now living, have
1
continued to increase our kingdom.” Only the popular assembly of a small free
State can speak like this. That “we” is not entirely true except before her and
through her mouth. That truth will always be very limited in larger republics.
The greater the mass of fellow citizens who pronounce that “we,” the more
alien it becomes. Each individual's participation in an action is so small that he
can hardly speak of it as his own action. His share in the glory of his nation is
greater; but it only means: I belong to the nation, and not: I am. This everything
exercises dominion over him and he finds himself under it. In this sense, a large,
free people is therefore a contradiction in itself. The people are the totality of
all individuals, and each and every one is always under the domination of the
whole. Their action, which is the action of each person, is an infinitely small
fragment of a national activity.

[5]
Lycurgus, before returning to Sparta after an absence of ten years,
consulted the oracle of Delphi about the plan of legislation he had prepared,
with the intention of putting it into practice. The Pythoness, in the name of
Apollo,

1 In Greek in the original.

 1
3
8
called friend and favorite of the gods. He told him that he was more of a god
than a man. He declared that Apollo approves of the plan he has drawn up; that
if he gets them to accept his laws, there would be no better instituted republic
in the whole world than the Lacedaemonian one. +

Once, little by little, he had introduced his laws, he returned to visit the
oracle; He declared to him that he had taken great care to make the
Lacedaemonians as happy as they were virtuous and that, if they always kept
their laws, they would enjoy eternal fame and happiness. +

If the Lacedaemonians, and the other Greeks, had been capable of

submitting to positive divine laws, or had it even occurred to them, would they
not have had to force the other Greeks, would they not have had to preach to
them that they also accept their Constitution, since a sentence from the
universal oracle had declared it the most perfect? And the others, being
consistent, wouldn't they have had to accept it? +

But the Greeks were / a free nation and did not allow themselves to be
given laws even by a god. A dessideratum such as ratification by divinity was
foreign to them.

LXII
[6]
Achilles died as a result of an arrow wound to the heel. He could have been
injured in exactly the same way at any other point on his body. Therefore it was
an absolute coincidence that he was injured there. The only thing necessary was
the direction of the arrow. But the affected part was distinguished from the
other parts (with which it cannot but be related, since it constitutes a whole
with them) by being the injured part. This possibility of being wounded that the
other parts have and the opposite reality of not being so, as well as the reality
of the wound in the heel and that of its opposite possibility - simultaneously not
being so -, are united by the Greeks in their imagination with a myth. , the
immersion of Achilles in Lethe; According to this myth, the uninjured parts could
not be injured either, while the injured part was the only one that could be
injured.
LXIII
[7]
LXII This fragment is not found among the “Historical Studies”, but in Rosenkranz's summary
of them on pp. 60s.
LXIII Rosenkranz (p. 521) interrupts his enumeration here to warn: “Here I overlook a series
of similar aphorisms, since their content returns in Hegel's later classes, although changed by
 1
3
9
After the fall of Roman and Greek freedom, when humanity lost the
dominion of its ideas over objects, the genius of humanity split. The spirit of the
degenerate crowd said to the objects: I am yours, accept me! He threw himself
into their whirlwind, let himself be carried away by them and perished in his
instability. +

The spirit of the Stoics did the opposite. He said: you are alien to my being,
which knows nothing about you; I dominate you in my idea; Whatever you are, it
doesn't matter to me, I despise you too much for me to want to lay hands on
you. +

Other spirits felt that the objects should be otherwise; but they did not
have the courage to seize them and train them. The hegemony of the objects
weighed too much on them, leaving them only the feeling of their own
helplessness. A part of these spirits imagined objects invisible to the senses,
which they found in popular phantasmagoria, projecting their ideas onto them
and begging them: welcome me as one of yours, appear to us, reveal yourself to
us, attract us to you, dominate us! They were called theurges. +

Another part of these spirits heard of a new object of that type, escaped /
from the external objects that were forbidden to them, threw themselves into
the arms of the faith that the invisible would dominate themselves and the
external objects. And they were called Christians. The Church in its maturity has
united both things, the desire of the Stoics and that of those broken spirits
within themselves. It allows the human being to live in the whirlpool of objects,
while promising elevation above them thanks to light exercises, various
resources, lip movements, etc. Only occasionally has the desire of the theurgists
crossed the minds of the so-called fanatical Christians. This unification has never
properly become a mechanical exercise, as happened with the rest.

[8]
In the series of God's revelations, as his figures generated one another and
followed one another, his revelations as the Sun, stars, sea, air, and love
preceded his revelation as a human being. This last figure could not but
culminate the series of his successive generations. The establishment of the

the context. However, it would seem to me that I have deprived the reader of too much if I
did not communicate some reflections on the Greek and Roman world [ . . . ] These aphorisms
were important for Hegel himself, as can be deduced not only from the fact that he preserved
them, but also from the care with which he reviewed many stylistic details.” [ . . . ]
 1
4
0
Roman State, while depriving almost all of the known earth of freedom,
subjected nature to a law alien to humanity and broke contact with it. His life
was reduced to pebbles and logs; The gods became created and helpful beings. If
power was shown in something or good actions were seen, if greatness prevailed,
it was a matter of the human heart and character. Only after the death of
Theseus did he become a hero to the Athenians. Demetrius and Antigonus did
not receive sacrifices from the Athenians until they were past. [Instead] the
Roman Caesars were deified. Apollonius of Tyana worked miracles. The great
was no longer supernatural, but unnatural; And nature, having ceased to be
divine, was no longer beautiful or free. In this separation of nature and the
divine, a human being became the link between both, that is, their reconciler
and redeemer. +

But the people of the Jews, in the infamy of their hatred, have gone to
hell. A remnant of him has continued to wander the earth as a permanent sign.
And if all forms of humanity must exist in modern people - although the noble
ones will always be suffering - this people also belongs to one of them as the
ideal of the most despicable. In the Homeric world diversity does not extend
downwards except to Thersites, who only suffered from a loose tongue.
However, after being hit, he sheds a tear. Frightened and silent, he sits up and
wipes away his tears. Their fear and silence constitute an acknowledgment that
there are more powerful humans. / In Homer even the worst of human beings at
least had to preserve this sensitivity for the best. While in a modern human
world [- Schiller's The Bandits- ] we can see alongside Amalia's heavenly pure
soul Schufterle, who roasts children over the fire; and when the leader of the
gang, who is beginning to realize his destiny, threatens the bandits with a
terrible sieve, they think: he is in a bad mood today. It is in this „totum
revolutum ‟ of the most diverse kind, which the systematicist usually
encompasses under “the human”, where the Jew has/his place. A Jewish man [,
Moses,] has benevolently attributed these words to God: whoever does not keep
my commandments I will punish until his third and fourth generation. But the
Furies of his religion are already hitting him in the hundredth. Of course,
perhaps they do not believe they are punished for being Jews, when the
Christian throws them down the stairs, when they have allowed themselves to be
humiliated for hours to earn a few cents and they continue to chatter for
 1
4
another hour and come back again the next day. 1

[9]
What a cultivated taste and a reason free of prejudices continue to miss in
the Greek spirit, despite the fact that they know how to appreciate its nobility
in all its breadth as in all its modalities, is the nobility in the passion of love, a
nobility that among the nations of Germanic origin have taken on a totally
different, more sublime figure in modern history. Could this not be a
phenomenon that also points to the spirit of free life of the [Greeks]? If a knight
from the times of knight-errantry were to enumerate to an Aristides the deeds
he did for his beloved, the adventures he ran for her, the long series of years in
which, with iron patience, not a moment was dedicated to another something
that his beloved had finally confided to him; if such a knight had left Aristides in
doubt as to who the object of that activity might have been (or if a young
nobleman described to this same Aristides with all the fire of imagination and
the same indeterminacy the beauty of the object of his love, if she described to
him the deep respect she felt for him, the sacredness and purity of her feeling,
the enthusiasm in his closeness, how the only interest of her life is to work, to
breathe for him), Aristides, who would not know who he was directs all this
torrent of feelings, feats, enthusiasm, wouldn't it reply more or less the
following?: I dedicated my life to my country, I didn't know of anything superior
to its freedom and well-being, I worked for it without claiming honors, / power
or wealth; but I am aware that I have not done so much for her nor has my
respect been so unique and deep; For the rest, I surely know Greeks who did
more, with nobler enthusiasm; but I don't know anyone whose feeling would
have reached a level of self-denial like yours. And what was the purpose of this
sublime life of yours? It must have been infinitely greater, more worthy than the
most sublime thing that I can think of, greater than the country and freedom!

[10]
The unbridled imagination of medieval females has been unleashed
everywhere in the monstrosities of witchcraft, in the mania for venting petty
envy on others and in the thirst for revenge, which has led them to the stake.
For Greek females, the bacchanal parties offered them a free space in which to
 1
4
2
lose their inhibitions. After physical and mental exhaustion came the peaceful
return to the realm of ordinary feeling and traditional life. The wild maenad was
the rest of the time a reasonable female. In that case witches, in this case
maenads; the object of fantasy: there diabolical appearances, here a beautiful
god crowned with branches; In the first case, the satisfaction of envy, revenge,
and hatred was socialized, while in the second there was nothing but pure
pleasure, often taken to limitless frenzy; there a progression of occasional
attacks of madness until reaching the total and lasting ruin of the spirit, there a
return to daily life; There, this disfigured frenzy was not seen by its time as an
illness, but as sacrilegious desecration that could only be atoned for at the
stake, while here this need for certain feminine fantasies and temperaments was
sacred, festivals were dedicated to its outbursts, that the State sanctioned, and
this made it possible for them to become harmless.

[11]
Contempt for human beings +

Everyone tends to judge others by the standard they have made for
humanity and demand that they be that way. Just a great

Experience and an exceptionally kind heart can prevent us from doing so. This
type of demand is characteristic especially of Europeans. It is a kind of
stubbornness. So the public prosecution of behavior - for example / those of a
Rousseau - by rational norms is nothing more than a sign of our time and not
higher culture or an approximation to the purpose of humanity, to perfection.
Apart from the fact that the first thing would be for each one to examine
himself, only virtue, which gives standards to itself, can judge and demand; But
no one has the right to put themselves in the place of virtue and demand it on
behalf of another. Anyone can answer: virtue has the right to demand this of
me, but not you.

[12]
In the states of modern times the security of property is the hinge around
which all legislation turns; Most political rights refer to him. Already in some
free republics of antiquity, the strict right of property was limited by the
Constitution, which is the concern of all our authorities, the pride of our States.
 1
4
The Lacedaemonian Constitution barely took into account the security 3of
property and industry, to the point that one can almost say that it was
forgotten. In Athens it was common for rich citizens to have part of their fortune
stolen. Certainly an honorable pretext was used for the person from whom they
wanted to be stripped, and that was to confer upon him a position that required
a real expense. Whoever among the tribes in which the citizens were distributed
was chosen for an onerous position, could search among the citizens of his tribe
if he could find another richer one. If he thought he had found one and he
claimed that he was less rich, he could offer him an exchange of his fortune,
which he could not refuse. The case of Pericles in Athens, of the patricians in
Rome, of the Medici in Florence shows historically how dangerous the excessive
wealth of some citizens is even for the freest form of Constitution and how it is
capable of destroying freedom itself; In vain did the Gracchi and others try to
stop the decline of Rome through intimidation and proposals for agrarian laws; It
would be worth investigating to what extent the strict right of property should
be sacrificed to the lasting form of a republic. Perhaps one has been unfair to
the system of „sansculotisme ‟ in France, attributing solely to plunder its claim
for greater equality in property.

[13]
Ros 526 / In Italy, where political freedom had taken on purer forms and more beautiful
features than in Germany - although something was lost earlier than in Germany
- legal knowledge emerged in Bologna before poetry; The children of the most
noble families came there from all over with the sole aspiration of becoming
wise and just judges in their country; And it was only in the judicial system that
they continued to serve an idea, the laws, when otherwise they were only at the
service of a man. +

The States of central and northern Italy in the Middle Ages presented an
extremely incomplete and precarious type of association. The history of Italy at
this time is not strictly the history of one people or of several, but rather that of
a multitude of individuals; and since large masses do not appear in this picture,
except for brief moments, only to evaporate immediately, it is extraordinarily
difficult to apply general points of view to it. The history of singular individuals
is all the more interesting, since their singularity has not disappeared in the
 1
4
4
general forms of State and Constitution. What was common [at that time] was
that only a momentary interest unified people. Rarely is a union sustained by
lasting interest found. All conflicts were about the rights of families and private
individuals, who could never be convinced to give up their rights for the greater
good of social unification. Coexistence in the cities was more about coexistence
in the same space, within the same walls, than submission to common laws. The
power of authority was weak. There were simply no ideas that were dominant
yet. It is not only that the countryside was filled with innumerable castles, each
built for the safety of its lord; also every family palace in the city was fortified
with towers, etc., all besieging everyone. The exercise of justice was limited to
the victory of one faction over the other.

LXIV
[14]
The voice of the Catholic clergy is on the verge of hoarseness. Their
particular class, the habit that distinguishes them, the isolation of all human
beings and their relationships, the tension that at every moment pulls their
muscles to internalize the reaction and control themselves retains their voice in
their chest – otherwise sunk in almost all of them-, a voice that grates finely in
the throat, but without cleanliness. Protestant pastors preach with the solemn
voice of vulgar life. When the Catholic voice tries to preach with a loud voice, it
pierces with its scream and its cry whines.

[15]
+
Public death penalty
Speaking of the Japanese, Montesquieu observes that the frequency of
public executions, and cruel ones at that, has brutalized the character of the
people and has even made them indifferent to punishments and crimes. How is
this phenomenon, which results in exactly the opposite of what legislators and
judges intended with public punishments, which is terror and fear of crimes? / Is
it only custom that takes away its nauseating, cruel and chilling character from
death at the hands of the executioner, its terrible preparations, the anguish of

LXIV This fragment, which Rosenkranz had published with the others in Prutz's Literarische n
Taschenbuch (1843), was eliminated in the Life of Hegel (another fact that suggests a certain
concern on the part of Rosenkranz to present a “presentable” Hegel).
 1
4
5
death and contempt or - what for some is even more depressing - the general
compassion? Custom would only produce indifference, as happens to the warrior
on whose right a thousand fall and on his left ten thousand. What is actually the
most striking thing in a performance, and what feeling does that phenomenon
produce? +

The first thing that catches our eye is a defenseless being who is tied up,
surrounded by a numerous guard, supported by infamous henchmen, and there
he is, totally helpless, subjected to the exhortation and prayers of the clerics,
which the criminal repeats to himself. shouts in an attempt to numb his
awareness of the current moment. This is how he dies. The soldier who falls
destroyed next to the other or wounded by an invisible bullet does not awaken in
us the feeling that the execution of the evildoer produces in us. I think that it is
before this last spectacle where we feel that a human being has been deprived
of the right to defend his life. We can mourn the death of someone who dies in a
fight with another; But that death does not affect us as painfully as the other
one, and the fact is that he has been able to exercise his natural right to defend
his life. Furthermore, he fell, because the other defended the same right. If the
feeling of indignation at seeing how a defenseless being is executed by armed
men - in greater numbers in addition - does not enrage the spectators, it is only
because for them the sentence of the law / is sacred. But this representation
does not completely displace the feeling produced by the immediate spectacle.
No matter how much the executioners are at the service of justice, simply
knowing this cannot repress the general feeling that has marked with dishonor
the profession or status of these human beings who here, before all the people,
are capable of killing with blood. cold to a defenseless being, and that here they
fulfill their task as totally blind instruments, the same as the beasts to which
criminals were formerly thrown. The enlightened understanding will be able to
use all its forces to disqualify as prejudice this voice of the people, as well as
the dark feeling that supports it, it will be able to urge it again and again the
lack of rational foundation that the analysis of that feeling reveals and it will be
able, on the other hand , equate executioners with other officials as servants of
the State and justice who fulfill their duty; But, just as happens with / other
feelings, you will not be able to eliminate this one either. Certainly, he who sees
things with equanimity will always know how to distinguish between the human
 1
4
6
being for himself and the job that arouses his sensitivity, doing justice to the
former, even though he would also wish for a better job; Just as in another case,
even if I were convinced of the despicability of a custom or habit in a town, I
would not consider the individual [of that town] with whom I had anything to do
with a scoundrel. +

Apparently, with respect to the people of this profession, the striking

observation has been made that on the whole they are calm, upright and mostly
pious people. Could this be an effect of their profession, which shows them with
the greatest immediacy the punishment of crimes? Or is it not more of a self-
affirmation to save his individuality in the face of the contempt he feels for his
profession; of the feeling that the dignity of the person is above the appreciation
or contempt for their job? As far as I know, there would have been no public
executions among the Greeks. At least Socrates drank the hemlock in prison, and
Euripides' Orestes was also going to give himself the way to die that he himself
would have chosen. Nowadays, if someone were to propose the abolition of
public executions, a thousand voices would shout that in this way a fundamental
purpose of punishments would be lost, their exemplary character. +

It seems that the Greeks have not proposed this ultimate purpose of
punishment, and their legislators have not considered it necessary to shock the
sensitivity and imagination with a horrific spectacle to replace what personal
morality and respect for the laws could not achieve. / Altogether the supposed
need for horrendous public punishments only shows that legislators and judges
lack confidence in the ethical sentiment of their people. +

With the same bitterness it would be objected to this proposal [to abolish
public executions] that, in the event that death sentences were not carried out
publicly, a barrier against the injustices of prevaricating judges would be lost.
Despotism would murder in the dark more brazenly than it can allow in the
public light. (In Venice, are all executions carried out "privatim " ? Or only those
due to State crimes?) There is nothing here to reply to citizens of a State who
make this objection because they have reason to fear something like that; and
simply in any State in which a court that has not been elected from among the
people decides behind closed doors about the life of a fellow citizen, there is
nothing more desirable for the subjects than that this remainder of the
importance of the public voice; And in the face of public execution the court
 1
4
7
seems to justify its sentence in the eyes of the people, which is read together
with its foundations. But in States in which the citizen has the right to be judged
by his peers, while anyone has free access to the courtroom, the inconvenience
[of a public execution] would make no sense.

[16]
Hume is characterized from the beginning as a historian of modern times by
the same type of facts that he recounts. The object of its history is a State of
the modern era, whose internal relations are not only legally determined - as
was also the case in Antiquity - but are also based on the legal form rather than
on the unconscious free life that they entail. True, the juridical, the awareness
of the general as well as its opposite, the particular, assigns to each class its
corresponding place; but its action is no longer inspired by an idea that would
animate everyone from the totality of the human being. True, this idea is our
strength and power; but what the immediate consciousness perceives is the
external relationship of [that force and power] with the others who act,
commanding or obeying, at the various levels and types of matters. Those who
are in charge, whose actions are what history presents to us as what happened,
always have the State above them and as their environment in all the diversity
of their situations. It is in them as thought. It determines them; They guide their
calculations by him, it is he who they keep present in their conscience, so that
in the acts of the [statesman] it is not so much his disposition that we pay
primary attention to, but rather the considerations that guide him. Their very
actions are mostly orders and compliance. Apart from the fact that the thought
of the State is the determining factor, there is no action that is only one's own. +

Just as the whole of an action - in which each actant only corresponds to a

fragment - is dispersed into so many parts, so the entire work is a result of so
many individual actions. The work is not done simply by doing it, but is a
thought-out result. None of those who act possess the consciousness of the
action as a whole. It is the historian who recognizes [this everything] by the
results, and the antecedents have already put him on the track of what has
caused those

[results]. The only ones who can be considered actors are those who rule or
those who influence them in some way; the rest cooperate through the common
 1
4
8
order. Since everything is ordered under the power of this order, the majority
only intervenes as a set of gears. The living thing, the transformation in the
organization of [the gears] is something small, gradual and invisible. Since
everything is determined in advance, people cannot follow a great man - like the
Sicilians follow Timoleon -, nor can anyone make entire plans on their own - like
Alcibiades, Themistocles, etc. - when precisely these plans are the that
characterize the great man; rather, one must act by behaving in accordance with
a predetermined scope.

1
[17]
p. 519. “But the subsequent conduct of Johann Georg revealed the reasons
that had deterred him from exploiting his advantage over the emperor and
effectively supporting the designs of the king of Sweden.” “Support” is the most
important term in the paragraph, while the intention is to imply the opposite.
This opposite resides in the term “dissuaded,” responsible for overall giving a
negative meaning, despite the fact that most of [the paragraph] expresses it
positively.
q. 504. “Where the path of goodness (that is, to convert Protestants) was
of no use, soldiers were used, so that the straying ones would return to take
refuge in the fold of the Church.” The main idea of this appendix is the
conversion procedure. This procedure is made explicit: kindness and employment
of soldiers. Leaving aside here that the idea - what is explained to us here is the
procedure for its realization - necessarily has to have been expressed before and
is very important, its exposition once again occupies half of this appendix and,
by the way, its half larger. Furthermore, it is its posterior half. Both
circumstances mean that [the exposition of the underlying idea] takes priority
over the main idea [of the paragraph] – the conversion procedure – and is 1

Commentaries on Schiller's History of the Thirty Years' War . The pagination cited
corresponds to the 1st edition, 1793. The last paragraph specifies a concept from the previous
fragment.

that is what is retained. Only the expression “take refuge” is still related to the
procedure and, reproducing the main idea, corrects the defect a little. +

The next paragraph says again at the end: “preach the gospel to heretics.”
The historical is somewhat blurred, the main idea is presented to the reader
 1
4
9
again, already quite exposed before, and the next paragraph ends once again:
“impose its objective.”
The characterizations are excellent. / Nothing lends itself better to them
than long paragraphs, in which a plurality of features end up coming together.
But this resource becomes mannered when Schiller uses it to expose a situation
composed of many supervening circumstances, especially when the situation
refers to a circumstance that is not oriented towards an action according to a
causal link in time and space. In this case the features are too dispersed, they
are excessively heterogeneous. Their unity consists only in the point to which
they are referred in the past; v. g. p. 501: “Reinforced with the men of the
enemy garrison who joined him, the Saxon general von Arnheim directed his
march to Lausitz, / province into which the army of an imperial general, Rudolf
von Tiefenbach, had invaded in order to punish the elector of Saxony for having
gone over to the side of the enemy.” What disparate elements are piled up here!
“Having passed” should all the more rightly come before “reinforced”, since this
is only a secondary circumstance. Furthermore, the change of sides of the
enemy garrison of Leipzig is presented as being associated with leading the
march to Lausitz - and the paragraph ends with the punishment of the prince-
elector by the imperial general -, things that have very little to do with each
other. The grammatical connection is directed only to the understanding, not to
the imagination. The juxtaposition of phrases without a relative pronoun is the
truly natural connection of the series of events. The Romans use the infinitive a
lot in the historical style.
r. 508. “This unexpected, inexplicable lack of resistance aroused
Arnheim's distrust all the more, since the rapid approach of the relief army from
Silesia was no secret to him, while the Saxon army was too devoid of siege
engines and He also lacked the manpower to assault such a large city. Fearing an
ambush, etc.” The main idea is Arnheim's distrust, increased by the reasons for
his distrust. These reasons are thoughts passing through Arnheim's mind. But
their enumeration turns them into facts and circumstances. We forget that we
are only seeing them in Arnheim's mind, we ourselves are the ones who see
them, thus losing the main idea; Arnheim's distrust. That is why this is what
should close the paragraph. In this way, many times, to describe the situation of
a hero, the most disparate things are brought together in the unity of his
 1
5
0
thought as an end and a means. The Greeks narrate successively. The only thing
that is seen is the external action of the one who acts and not it as his thought,
as his objective. But it is always very clear if the action was an end and, even
more important, if the end was great. This is shown by the action. If that one
was big and this one was small, the person was a small spirit. +

The interweaving of sentences by means of the relative pronoun disrupts

the natural succession in which the sentences are ordered and is partly due to
the clumsiness of the relative particles, partly to the scarcity of absolute
particles, etc.

1
[18]
In the monarchy the people were not an active power except at the time of
combat. Like a mercenary army, it not only had to maintain its formation under
the fire of combat itself, but, as soon as victory was achieved, it had to return in
perfect obedience. From experience we are accustomed to seeing how a mass of
armed men enters at the command's command in a regulated fury of slaughter
and in the lotteries of death and life, while another similar order returns them
to calm. This same thing was asked of a people that has taken up arms for itself.
The slogan was freedom, the enemy was tyranny, the supreme command was a
Constitution, the 1

Written in French. Rosenkranz (61 s.): “In Switzerland Hegel had no choice but to speak
often in French, so he practiced writing in that language. With predilection he read Benjamin
Constant, in whom he maintained an interest throughout his life. In his own way he dealt with
political themes in minor essays, for example the transformation that the military undergoes,
when a State goes from being monarchical to republican.”

obedience to their representatives subordination. But there is a notable

difference between the passivity of military subordination and the ardor of an
insurrection, between obedience to the orders of a general and the flame of
enthusiasm that freedom infuses through all the veins of a living being. This
sacred flame is what tenses all the nerves, because of it, to enjoy it, they had
become tense. These efforts are the joys of freedom, and do you want freedom
to renounce them? These occupations, this activity for public affairs, this
interest is what is acting, and do you want the people to surrender again to
inaction, to boredom?
 1
5
[Closing on page. 265]. 1
 1
5
TEXT 3 2
[P. 291 to 309]
HGW 2.5
[29]

[ OUTLINES and notes on positive religion ]LXV

[1]
Positive religion means a faith whose practice is given in theory - that is,
what is subjective in itself is only given as something objective -, a religion that
proposes representations of something objective as the principle of life and
actions. that can never become subjective. Practical activity acts freely, it is not
united with its opposite, nor does this determine it – far from unifying a previous
plurality, it is unity itself; it is only preserved by opposing the plurality in front
of it, which is pure dispersion for the practical faculty; practical unity is
LXVI
affirmed by completely eliminating the opposite.
All moral commandments are demands that this unity prevail against
impulses; and they only differ in that, representing this unity, they are directed
against different impulses.
What is the concept of morality?
[M]oral concepts do not have objects in the same sense that theoretical
concepts do. [T]he object of the former is always the self; the object of these is
the non-self. The object of the moral concept is a certain determination of the
self that, in order to become a concept, in order to be known by becoming an
object, opposes the self with another determination, is considered an accident
of the self, excluded from the determination of the self. that at that moment /
is knowing. The concept is a reflective activity. A moral concept that has not

LXV This title contains a kind of laboratory, in which Hegel reworks the theme of
the positivity of the Christian religion according to Fichte's Foundation of the
Doctrine of Science of 1794/95. The spelling changes direction often, indicating
discontinuities, which this translation marks with a space between paragraphs; but
the text itself marks discontinuities with lines and intermediate spaces.
2
On the margin : [on the other hand] the theoretical unity is empty, it lacks
significance, multiplicity [and] it is only thinkable in relation to it
LXVI Hölderlin , Judgment and Being (1795) : “<I am I> is the most opportune
example for this concept of originary judgment as theoretical judgment, since in
practical judgment the [I] sits in opposition to the Not-I , not to itself." The trace of
this little essay by Hölderlin is also very noticeable in the following sketch by Hegel
(no. 30).
 1
5
arisen in this way, a concept without activity, is a positive concept; However,3at
the same time it must become practical; It is only something known, something
given, something objective, and it only gains its power, its strength, its
effectiveness through an Object that arouses respect or fear, before which we
would have to fade away, to succumb, if those concepts did not open up to us.
path to that Object, to a hope of indulgence, thus making it possible for us to
become one with it.
The positive moral concept can lose its character of positivity, if the
activity it expresses develops by itself and gains strength; but what is ordinarily
called positive does not constitute its own reflected activity and can never give
up its objective nature.
True, the moral can also become something objective, since it is
represented and conceived; but it is always linked - or this connection can be
immediately reestablished - with the consciousness that we are ourselves, that it
is our free force and activity that constitutes the object of knowledge. The
moral and what is ordinarily understood as objective are in direct opposition.
The infinite Object, as well as its way of acting, are also positive for the
cognitive faculty: miracles, revelations, apparitions...

In intuition, a whole must not be given, the cognitive faculty has to give up
relying on a part to imagine its own laws as a whole [and must] be affected
without the phenomenon reflecting the same amount of activity. LXVII nor should
intuition ever be thought of as a whole of this kind; the activity of the cause
must/be something unknown, [for] a member of the interaction is not an object,
not a non-self, nor a self, unlike human interactions, in which a member is a
self.
The practical self consists of an ideal activity that transcends the real, and
in the demand that the objective activity be equal to the infinite - practical faith is
faith in that ideal; then a faith is positive, if that transcending occurs together with
the demand for [that] equality, a demand that can only come from a powerful

LXVII
Cf. Fichte, Foundation of the entire doctrine of science (as a manuscript for his listeners),
1794/95. Beginning of the 5th Theorem, I. (Trans. by Juan Cruz, Buenos Aires: Aguilar, 1973 .
117: J.G. Fichte Gesamtausgabe I, 2. 388): “the causal relationship consists in the fact that,
due to the limitation of activity in one of the two (or due to a quantity of passivity in it), an
amount of the suppressed activity equal to the same amount of activity in its opposite,
according to the law of reciprocal determination” (trans. own).
 1
5
Object that dominates us [with its] authority; But both this and its way of acting4 is
not within the reach of our understanding, understanding it would mean that we
determine it; Their ways of acting must be miracles for us that are impossible for
us, that is, they presuppose an activity that we do not recognize in the activity of
an ego; In this they differ from the actions that we recognize as actions of free
beings in that they constitute actions of an ego.
With respect to the moral end that we attribute to divine Providence, we
overlook other aspects of its being that are unknown to us, since in this case we
judge divine activity insofar as it is the activity of an I.

[2]
HGW 2.8 / Religion
A religion
found a religion.

The other extreme of dependence on an object is precisely the fear of

objects, the flight from them, the fear of merging with them [is] the ultimate
subjectivity.

Aim[:]
1 .) the real, in space
2 .) objective internal determinations[, being] accompanied by the awareness
that they are internal determinations
3 .) internal determinations without awareness that they are internal
determinations
Religion is the free worship of divinity. A merely subjective religion, without
imagination, is [mere] righteousness.
To understand is to master
To vivify objects is to turn them into gods.

To contemplate a torrent, to see how it has to fall to the depths due to the
laws of gravity and how it is enclosed and pressed between the bed and its banks,
that is to understand it; to give him a soul, to take part in him as an equal, to love
 1
5
5/
him, that is to make him a god. However, like a torrent, a tree is also an object,
it can be subjected to pure necessity; Also humans, once deified, no longer belong
to the common mortals, but are only demigods, not the eternal, necessary [gods].
When subject and object – or freedom and nature – are thought together in such a
way that nature is freedom, and subject and object are inseparable, there is the
divine; such an ideal is the object of any religion. [A] divinity is both subject and
object, it cannot be said that it is a subject in opposition to objects, nor that it has
objects.
Theoretical syntheses lead to mere objectivity, in complete opposition to the
subject; practical activity[, in turn,] annihilates the object and is totally
subjective; only in love is one with the object, LXVIII without [it] dominating or being
dominated; This love, converted by the imagination into a being, is divinity; The
human being separated [from her] then has reverence and respect for her; The very
unity of love gives [separated man] his bad conscience, and the consciousness of
division makes him afraid of [divinity].
That fusion can be called the union of subject and object, of freedom and
nature, of the real and the possible. If the subject retains the form of subject and
the object retains the form of object, nature remains nature and the fusion has not
been carried out; the subject, the free being, predominates and the object, the
nature, is what is dominated.

HGW 2.10

[30]
2
[Faith and Being]

Faith is the way in which what is united is found in our representation, the
unification in which an antinomy is resolved. Unification is the activity; This

LXVIII Hegel has added here in the margin with another letter: In ancient times
the gods walked among humans; As the separation and distance increased, the gods
also distanced themselves from humans; With this they gained in sacrifices, incense
and worship, and were more feared, until the separation became so great that
fusion could only be achieved through violence. Love can only occur with what is
equal, with the mirror, with the echo of our being.
 1
5
6
activity reflected as an object is what is believed. In order for the members of the
antinomy to unite, they have to feel or recognize themselves as antagonistic, their
reciprocal relationship as antinomy; but the only way that the antagonistic can be
recognized as such is if it is already unified; unification is the criterion of
comparison, in it the opposites appear as such, unsatisfied. Now, if it turns out that
limited opposites cannot subsist as such, that they should be eliminated from each
other, that is, that to be possible they presuppose their unification (this is already
presupposed in order to be able to show that they are opposites), it is
demonstrated that they have to be united, that unification must be. But the
unification itself, the fact that it exists, is not thereby demonstrated, since what is
believed is [only] the way in which the image of unification is presented;
Furthermore, it cannot be demonstrated, since the opposites are dependent, while
their union is independent of them; Furthermore, proving entails dependency;
True, what is independent compared to these opposites of each other can in turn
depend in another sense; and then we must proceed again to the new union, which
then becomes what was believed.

2
Nohl title. The ductus changes are marked as in the immediately preceding fragments .
HGW 1.11 / Unification and being mean the same thing; in each proposition the
copula “is” expresses the union of subject and predicate: a being; being can only
be believed; believing presupposes a being; Therefore it is contradictory to say
that, in order to believe, one must first be certain of being. This independence,
that being is absolute, is what is shocking; so it will have to be, but that does
not mean it will be for us; the independence of being is supposed to consist in its
being, whether it is for us or not; The being must be able to be something totally
independent of us, since it is not intrinsically necessary for us to relate to it. To
what extent can there be something that we could not believe? In other words, it
is possible, thinkable, something that we, on the other hand, do not create, that
is, that is not necessarily necessary. From the fact that something is thinkable it
does not follow that it is; It will be, yes, as soon as it is thought; but what is
thought is something divided, opposed to what thinks; It is not an entity. If a
misunderstanding can arise, it is only because there are different forms of
unification, of being, and that is why it can be said that there is something, but
that does not mean that it is necessary for me to believe it; one way of being
 1
5
7a
does not imply the other way. Furthermore, believing is not being, but rather
reflected being; In this sense it can also be said that it is not by being that one is
reflected or one reaches consciousness; what is does not have to be believed,
although what is believed must be . Now, what is thought of as something
separate must come together, and only then can it be believed; Thought is
unification and is credible; but not what I thought yet.
What is separated only finds its unification in One being, since a being
[only] in One sense, [being thus] diverse, would presuppose a nature that would
not be nature either, which constitutes a contradiction; [so] a unification might
also not be in the same sense a unification; Now, a positive faith is one that,
instead of the only possible unification, proposes another, instead of the only
possible being, another being; which, therefore, unifies
certainly opposites, but incompletely, that is, they are not one in the sense in
which they should be unified.

In positive religion all unification must be given beforehand; what is given

is something that is lacking until it is received; and after received it must be
able to continue being something given; only that something given is never, in
that sense, but something opposite and also as unified, which is a contradiction.
This contradiction comes from the confusion between more incomplete
unifications, which in another sense are still in the opposition of an incomplete
being, and the being that is perfect in the sense in which the union must be
realized, and thus a mode of the union is confused. be with the other. The
various modes of being are the most complete or least complete unions. In every
unification there is a determining and being determined that are one; but in
positive religion the determinant must also be determined insofar as it
determines; Your action should not be an activity but a passivity; but what is
determining in its passivity also belongs to the same union; in this the one who
acts could have been active; but this is an inferior form of unification, since in
the action that proceeds from a positive faith, what is united is itself in turn an
opposite that determines its opposite, and the unification that occurs here is
only incomplete, since both remain opposites, one is the determinant, another
the determined; and the determinant itself is active, but the form of the activity
is determined by another, which means to be given, [so that] the active as such
must be determined; What determines the activity must, as an entity, have been
 1
5
8
previously unified, and if in this unification the determining factor must also
have/been a determined, it is because it was determined by another, etc. and
the positive believer would have to be totally passive, absolutely determined,
which is contradictory. That is why all positive religions determine a more or less
narrow scope, to which they limit activity, granting certain unifications; For
example, in intuition they recognize a certain being in the human being, as it is
endowed with sight, hearing, it moves, it is active, but with an empty activity,
in each concrete action it is not the actant who has determined, since It is as an
actant, as a determined act.
The determining factor is a power that gives the activity its direction, its
form, even when it is believed and acts out of trust. Trust is the identity of the
person, of the will, of the ideal in the midst of various contingencies. When,
although I am not him nor he me, I nevertheless believe him and act guided by
him, then he determines me, in front of me he is a power and my behavior
towards him is positive.
Positive faith requires believing in something that is not; Now, what is not
can come to be or not come to be; In this sense what is [thus] determined is not
an entity, and yet, since it requires faith, it must be an entity. A power is felt,
the attitude towards it is passive, but it is not in this feeling where the power
lies, but in the division of a feeling in which the passive (which thus becomes an
object) and what produces the power is opposed. passivity (which in this sense
becomes the subject).
Every positive religion starts from an opposition between something we are
not and what we should be; He erects an ideal in front of his [real] being and, in
order to believe in that [ideal], he converts it into a power. In positive religion
the entity, the unification, is only a representation, something thought: I believe
that it means that I believe in the representation, that I believe that I represent
something to myself, I believe in something believed (divinity according to Kant)
[,] Kantian philosophy[, or] positive religion (divinity [ is his ] holy will; the
human being, absolute negation[)]; In the representation everything is united,
the representations are united; The unified representation is a thought, but
what is thought is not an entity.
 1
5
HGW 2.17 9

[31]
[Historical sketch on Judaism]
[1795/1796]

The history of the Jews teaches that this people has not been formed
independently of foreign nations, that the form of its State has not developed
freely, but was torn by violence from a previously assumed mood; The transition
from pastoral life to the State did not occur gradually and spontaneously, but
due to outside intervention, and this situation, in addition to being violent, was
accompanied by a feeling of lack; but this feeling was not general, since it did
not extend to all aspects of the situation; custom had made peace with some of
them, which[, on the other hand,] prevented the emergence of a complete or
clear ideal capable of opposing that situation. The plan for the liberation of his
people could only arise in the soul of a man who had achieved a series of
knowledge and well-being in the school of the priests and at court, and, after
breaking with them, had learned in loneliness to not miss them and to achieve
the unity of their being. At first the only thing he could do to arouse in the
people the desire for independence was to use the feeling of their oppression, as
well as the vague and rather impotent memory of the past so different from
their ancestors, while the faith in their own divine mission In turn, it awakened
in the Jews an enthusiastic, although passive, faith in the possibility of realizing
it. The truth is that in this realization they behaved almost completely passively;
regarding Moses' attempts to free them from the slavery of their customs,
customs and mentality over 40 consecutive years with another way of life, to fix
in the fantasy of the Jews the ideal that he had and to implant the enthusiasm
For that [ideal, they lacked success.] Many of the [Mosaic] laws referring to
divine service, and especially the penalties established for their transgression,
also demonstrate that in the spirit of his people there was something against the
whole that had to be subdued. by force, which had to be replaced by other
customs. In any case, their characteristic always continued to be inconstancy,
time and again they continued to be unfaithful to their State, and only necessity
made them return to it. The individual was totally excluded from active interest
in the State; His political equality as a citizen was the opposite of republican
 1
6
equality, since it was only equality in insignificance. Only with the kings 0
did
many subjects emerge, along with the inequality, inevitable under that
government, at least a relationship with the State, [since] many managed to be
important compared to their inferiors and many more had at least that
possibility.
Only in later times, when the lords or enemies of the [Jewish people] stopped
showing indifference towards their faith - which they so willingly abandoned as
long as [that faith] did not encounter resistance -, only then did a small part of
the people incur in the fierce fanaticism that characterized him from then on.
However, this part of the town was never able to constitute a whole either; The
time of the fantasy of theophanies and prophets was already in the distant past
and the nation was at unequal levels of reflection. There were still moments
when activity was turned outward to maintain the independent existence of the
State; but when it was totally and absolutely annihilated, the strength [of the
Jewish people] turned inward, towards itself, and sects and opinions and parties
for and against arose. This purely interior human activity directed at oneself, this
interior life whose object, unlike the interest of a great citizen, is not external,
demonstrable and representable, it is only expressed by signs; and he almost
always fails by letting himself be guided by them in the attempt to reach the
living; and nothing is more outrageous than this dead thing, because it refers
directly to life, being ultimately the opposite of it. In a time when the thirsty for
inner life (unable to unite with the objects around him, had to be their slave and
live in contradiction to the best in him, mistreated by them and mistreating
them), he who sought something better where Being able to live received the
offer of a dead privilege on the grounds that this was life; At that time the
Essenes, a John, a Jesus, who had created life in themselves, rose up in struggle
against the eternally dead.

HGW 2. 19

[32]
1
[Series of notes]
[1797-1798]

Advancement of legislation with increasing separation

 1
6
1
Written later, already in Frankfurt, outside the previous issue
1
. This means that
the unity of love (beauty, nature, joy, happiness) - which has been characterizing
the Berna sketches immediately preceding - has contaminated the Fichtean theme
of the autonomy of the subject and domination - servitude. Abraham's entry on the
scene also comes from Bernese notes on Flavius Josephus (no. 33).

Noah: permission to kill animals, but not to drink the blood (Kant,
prohibition of hunting, eternal peace; capture of live cattle) and prohibition of
murder; [state of] utmost need

Blessing of Abraham: property and possession for himself and his

descendants [,] [state of] least need
[state of] utmost need, less separation, that is, less diversified; greater
separation, less need
The 10 commandments [of] Moses: worship of God and observance festivals;
new: respect for parents, adultery; lies and fornication.
[the] greater [state of] necessity [implies] a less diversified separation; the
greater the separation, the less [state of] need
that at the beginning of culture, because there were fewer things united; In a
higher culture less need may be felt with a more widespread separation, because
there is always much that is united; but the [state of] necessity in a higher
culture tears apart all the more and makes human beings all the more terrible as
culture increases, [for] needs, separations and unions increase.

a divinity that assures his people an animal existence; She is the quintessence of
all truth and all right - this [people] has nothing left but a deified animal
existence -, the infinite subject, in the face of the infinite nothing subsists;
always adhere to this relationship, remind humans of it in all their actions, link
it with all activity, therefore invisible –[need for] sacrifice-

The relationship between the Jews as citizens could not be other than the
equal dependence of all on the priestly caste, which eliminated in advance the
condition of all political laws, that is, [that of being] laws of freedom.

HGW 2.77 / the Israelites behaved very passively in [their liberation from
Egypt], the actions of Moses and Aaron had the same effect [on them] as on the
 1
6
2
Egyptians, that of a power over them; The greater rigor with which they
responded did not awaken in the [Israelites] any activity of their own; Instead of
reacting more strongly, they simply suffered more deeply. 2nd Book[book] 5, 21.
[op. cit.] 6, 9 [:] the Israelites behave with total passivity; Only Moses
influences the king and forces permission by frightening him, not with the
Israelites, since they did not scare him at all, but with Moses' god; Also in their
liberation they are a slave, a unique example of an imposed freedom. After each
reading [of the Exodus ] those who preside always make nothing more than deep
bows [(] Exod [ or ] 12, 27 and before[)]; for the rest – his only reaction was to
grumble at his release – otherwise passive obedience; the Egyptians drove them
out, Ex [ odo ] 12, 33,34.
They are not started with a heroic action; but in their fantasy something
great is done for them; For them Egypt suffers the most diverse plagues and
misery, they abandon it surrounded by a cry of lamentations; but they have not
done anything, they have not fought, they were more human, but out of
cowardice - like their god
the violence against whose attack one defends oneself, justifies death and
destruction, since the one who has suffered it has proposed this end for one or
the other, it is directed towards them, so that the rights are balanced; The
Israelites suffer, but do not defend themselves; The Egyptians succumb, but not
because of their enemies; The [only] activity that the Israelites have proposed is
to cleverly take the vessels of their neighbors, who confidently lend them to
them; they have done nothing else. [T]he spirit of these newly liberated people (
Exodus ] 13, 17; 14, 11,12)[:] it is better that we be their slaves than perish
outside in the desert.

Comparison - of the invisibility of the Jewish god, ineffability, prohibition

of representing him (Moses' face shone in such a way that they could not look at
him), stay in the sancta sanctorum -
with the Eleusinian mysteries, in which they were taught with words, images,
sacrifices, but they could not be talked about; The Mosaic laws and ceremonies
did not [come] at all from the fantasy of the people, or at least it is not known
to what extent, many arbitrary things - the formalities, trifles - [were
established] therefore at once. The exodus, the action, [was] of the people, in it
its spirit, its goal, its ideal, because here it was realized
 1
6
Even before Moses had a tent, God showed the Israelites in the fire 3
– a
pillar of fire and smoke; to a certain extent he needed something visible, but
indeterminate, formless, like fire, before he had fixed the invisible in the sancta
sanctorum; the blood, because it is the living thing, consecrated to God;

Totally Egyptian is the separate estate of the priests, the purifications,

the impurity of many birds and animals.
The religion that the Israelites had given themselves freely had to be
either extremely simple, or more or less Egyptian, or the opposite of it. Because
the Mosaic religion had not at all arisen from the very spirit of the nation nor had
anything to do with it, [but] it had been given to it [as something] foreign, dead
to it; hence its volubility
Mosaic prohibition of blood. 3rd
Book 17, 10 ff.

The Mosaic religion [is] a religion by misfortune and for misfortune; not for
happiness, which wants laughing games; the god [of Moses is] too grim

Since the Jews were nothing as citizensLXIX and they only gained value in
relation to God, they had to link as many actions as possible with religion.

Multitude of purifications; There is a naive purity, that of those who do

not know that they have become impure, and a purity through corruption: / the
virginity of a corrupted fantasy, which [believes that] it is stained with
everything, an impurity of reflection, [that] separates the world

When the infinite Object is everything, the human being is nothing; If it is

still something, it is so by the grace of the infinite Object; This one has alienated
something [from himself], and the something to which the infinite grants being is
sacred to him, since what is in him is through him. Therefore it must remain
LXIX On the margins: to be nothing as citizens, without freedom or rights,
[either] by [being in the state of] nature, [in which] nothing is yet determined,
or by annihilation, the latter being the case of the Israelites[ ;] the value of the
slave [is] not the autonomous action for himself, oneself as an end, but the
service he renders to his master; The State [is thus] something foreign, external
to the human being; The abundance of services in everyone who is free ([that is,
subject of] honor) [is] at the same time a sign of servitude, as in the serfs of the
land
 1
6
4
pure; The saints wanted to annihilate themselves and therefore they despised
everything that was in them, they wallowed in the mud and allowed themselves
to be devoured by lice so that divinity could exist; but this still gave the Jews a
being; In any case it had to be ordered to them what was pure or impure;
everything had to be referred to divinity.

All the legislation of Moses springs from the idea [that] God is Lord; all
your action is either to serve him or for your satisfaction insofar as he has
allowed it, confinement in the real; everything ideal, everything free, everything
beautiful, banished, because it is not real; nor is there immortality, since it is
equivalent to human autonomy; Always remain in what God allows you to be,
respect this, keep it pure, enter into as few relationships as possible; to remain
in strict unity according to the ideal, in as few positive relationships as possible:
a religion of misfortune, because in misfortune separation occurs, there we feel
object and we have to take refuge in what determines [us]. In happiness this
separation has disappeared: love and concord reign - although this cannot be
elevated to the rank of God - once we are freed from the contingent separations
that affect us; For then, instead of a dominating god, there would be a friendly
being, a beauty, something living whose essence is unification, while the god of
the Jews is absolute separation, which excludes all free unification, allowing no
other than that of domination or servitude.
 1
6
5
The acquisition of property can disturb the equality of citizens, and the
laws of Solon wisely took care to preserve the equality of testamentary orders
(while the laws of Lycurgus, which sought the same thing, did not achieve their
goal, vid. Pauw); In Moses the same thing [was due to] another completely
different reason, the inability to acquire property. God says: you cannot sell
anything, because the land is mine; strangers and natives of a strange nation you
are to me - from the Book 3 of Moses 25, 23 ss, ib [ idem ], v. 55-[,] just as the
servants of the field the firstfruit, the Israelites the firstborn, the first offspring
and the firstfruits of the field.

[Faced with the] (recurrent) threat of punishments and promise of

rewards [it] makes a big difference whether we act thinking about it or not; In
positive legislation they are completely relevant, because once passed, what has
been done to satisfy the need renews it; But it is enough not to speak of
obligation, for [punishments and rewards] to lose that relevance, and Israelite
legislation, like any other, was only at the service of imposition. Imposition
pursues ends and works for ends; not joy or jokes or love; but the Jewish
religion, since it came from mere imposition, had to have ends; it was only at
the service of imposition, it only partially unified, so that they could subsist side
by side, or it unified by annihilation, [like] food

The equality of nothingness was felt by Korah, Dathan felt it; They were
indignant that Moses arrogated to himself a privilege and domination over God's
subjects. L. 4th 16, 3.

A single autonomous impulse of Moses brought upon him the punishment of

not entering the land of Cana. L. 4th 27, 14.

L. 5º 4, 19: you do not have to worship the sun, the moon or the stars,
since God has made them for the common use of all nations: because hostility
was the beginning of the religion of the [Jews],

L. 5º 30, 11: these laws are not in heaven, they have been intimated to
you
 1
6
enough; you can testify 6

L. 5º 7, 7,8: Reflection on the reason for such a great preference of God

[for the Jews] over all nations: because of a special love for you and because he
wanted to fulfill his Covenant, which he made with your ancestors (here causes
and ends are needed again), for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (9, 5.6); the Jews
would not have deserved it

HGW 2.81 / hostility against other gods must be stronger than any love;
One should not have contemplations, either out of compassion or friendship,
with those who secretly serve other gods, but rather denounce them (L. 5º 13,
6,7). The case of other nations is completely different, in which the service of
other gods by an individual would never have implied hostility against his own
nation.

Whoever [remains] without having reached the Promised Land, or (L. 5º 13,
6.7) had not yet enjoyed his wife, his vineyard, his new house, he had lost the
purpose of his life; The first case was due to punishment, the second they did
not risk, because it would be stupid to put the entire possibility, condition, life
at stake for reality.

Rigor of marriage laws and importance of legitimate filiation (L. 5º 23,3, so that
no illegitimate children or their offspring could be accepted as members of the
State)

L. 5º 32, 11: he has done with them what an eagle does with its chicks, a
beautiful example, but not very successful in the sense that the chicks have not
become eagles; More accurate would be an eagle that heats stones and would
have tried to teach them to fly, but whose heat never lit the flame of life in
them.

While the struggle with foreign nations remained undecided, while the
Jewish State and the hope of preserving it remained intact, enthusiasts for this
whole, prophets, arose; but with the destruction of this everything [...]
 1
6
Only later in another era, when the Jews lived oppressed as servants 7of
other nations, although they had overcome the worst in the sense that they
could subsist physically, then, on the one hand, they once again felt attracted to
their god, who [already ] was permitted to them; [and on the other hand,] since
they were attacked by other parties, they had to react differently, resort to
other forces, develop another consciousness

The Jews stuck only to objective unity and its service; but they did not keep it in
them, they dispersed, they were divided; The best ones renounced the previous
unity (easy eating and drinking, for which they had to break with so much) and,
breaking with it, they became a more rigorous one - the Essenes -; Either they
maintained unity and [divine] service all the more firmly, covering up their
rupture in the rest, without allowing it to surface to conscience – the Pharisees –
or [they resorted to] the prudent tyranny and unity [of the] Sadducees.

[33]
[Project/Manifesto: an ethics ] [December
1796/January 1797]LXX an ethics . Since in the future all
metaphysics will be reduced to morality (Kant, with
his two practical postulates, has limited himself to
giving an example of this without exhausting the
topic), this ethics will be nothing more than a
complete system of all 2 ideas or, what is the same, of
LXX
Dated between the last days of his stay in his father's house in Stuttgart - upon returning
from Bern - and the first in his new position as tutor in Frankfurt. Although it is written in
the hand of Hegel, its authorship is still disputed or is considered to be shared with Hölderlin
and Schelling, perhaps even with a broader group. (Summary of the discussion in Walter
Jaeschke, Hegel-Handbuch .Leben-Werk-Schule. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 2003. 76-80.)
Despite its character as a manifesto/program, which has led it to be known as "The first
program of German idealism", the content - otherwise not very coherent - points rather to the
past, since it could be say that it is the last text in which “the age of Goethe” has not yet
been antagonistically dispersed: Aufklärung, Sturm und Drang, Klassik, Romanticism, Idealism
are still a kind of „totum revolutum ‟ , while
 1
6
all the practical postulates. 8
Naturally the first idea is the representation of myself as an absolutely free
being. With the free, self-conscious being, an entire world arises at once from
nothing: the only true creation from nothing that can be thought of. From here I
will descend to the fields of Physics; The question is this: what world does a
moral being need? I would like to lend wings again to our laborious Physics,
which advances painfully based on experiments.
In this way, if philosophy provides the ideas and experience the data, we
will finally be able to have broad outlines of that Physics that I hope for in the
future. It does not seem that current Physics can satisfy a creative spirit such as
ours is – or should be.
From nature to human work . Starting from the idea of humanity, I want to
show that there is no idea of the State , because the State is something
mechanical and there is no idea of a machine . Only what is the object of
freedom is called an idea. Therefore we also have to go beyond the State!
Indeed, every State must treat free human beings as if they were mechanical
gears and, since it must not do so, it must disappear . You yourselves realize
that here all the ideas of perpetual peace, etc. They are only ideas subordinate
to a higher idea. At the same time I want to record here the principles of a
history of humanity and leave

that since 1798 the magazine Athenäum has experienced a first great bankruptcy and Hegel
himself is carrying out with the figure of Abraham a twist that raises the irreducibility of
modern abstraction and its tearing away from the classical ideal and its civility. Starting in
1800, this forced him to refound his youthful attempts in a theory of the Spirit. That is why I
consider it more appropriate to place this “Manifesto/Program” closing the old (Berne) than
opening the new (Frankfurt). Its place in the midst of the sketches about Abraham,
extemporaneous and brilliant as a literary genre, perhaps represents something like a near
past about to fade before the new figure of Jesus .
2
In a series of passages in this text Hegel writes lowercase after a period; These are short
sentences, for which neighboring texts use more semicolons, sometimes even commas. This
relative peculiarity in the punctuation can hint here at a kind of declamatory prosody, since
the text has peculiar intonations of an “I” addressing vividly a “you.” In any case, this is not
the only time that Hegel writes in lower case after a period, as the texts of “ Jesus and His
Destiny” ( infr., no. 45) show exemplarily, often as suture signs between two versions of the
same text. in evidence all the miserable human work that is the State,
Constitution, government, legislation. Finally, it is about the ideas of a moral
world, divinity, immortality, [that is,] subversion of all adulterated faith,
persecution of the ecclesiastical state – which lately / feigns reason – for reason
itself. absolute freedom of all spirits, who carry within themselves the
intellectual world and for whom[, therefore,] it is not licit to search outside
themselves for either God or immortality.
Finally, the idea that brings them all together, the idea of beauty , taking
 1
6
9
the word in its highest Platonic sense. Indeed, I am convinced that the supreme
act of reason, in which [reason] encompasses all ideas, is an aesthetic act, and
that truth and goodness are only united in beauty . The philosopher must
possess as much aesthetic force as the poet; Our philosophers tied to the letter
are people who lack aesthetic sense. The philosophy of the spirit is an aesthetic
philosophy; impossible to think anything with finesse – not even in [what is mere]
history – without [having] an aesthetic sense. Here it must be made clear what is
really missing from people who do not understand the ideas and confess with all
sincerity that everything that goes beyond tables and records is confusing to
them.
Poetry thus gains a higher dignity, it finally returns to being what it was in
its beginnings: teacher of humanity , since there is no longer philosophy or
history, only poetry will survive all other sciences and arts.
On the other hand, it is often said that the masses need a sensitive religion
. Not only the masses, but also the philosopher needs it. Monotheism of reason
and the heart, polytheism of imagination and art, this is what we need!
Here I will begin by talking about an idea that, as far as I know, has not yet
occurred to anyone: we need a new mythology; but this mythology must be at
the service of ideas, it must become a mythology of reason .
As long as we do not make ideas aesthetic, that is, mythological, they will
be of no interest to the people and, at the same time, as long as mythology is
not rational, the philosopher will have to be ashamed of it. So that in the end,
enlightened people and by / illustrating have to reach out to each other,
mythology has to become philosophical and the people rational, while philosophy
has to become mythological to make philosophers sensitive. [T]hen eternal unity
reigns among us. Never again the contemptuous look, never the blind fear of the
people before their wise men and priests. Only then awaits us the equal
formation of all forces, those of each one as well as those of all individuals. No
force will be repressed anymore, then general freedom and equality of spirits
reign! A superior spirit sent from heaven has to found this new religion among
us; She will be the last and greatest work of humanity.
 1
7
HGW 2.26 0

[34]
 1
7
[COMMENTS ON FLAVIO JOSEPHUS and note on ABRAHÁN]LXXI 1
[1795/1796]

[1]

[Flavio] Josef[o,] Jewish Antiquities,] L. 1[º,] chap[ap.] 4

To this affront and contempt of God (it has already been said before that
humans did not obey the divine order to disperse) they were induced by Nabrod
(Nimrod), grandson of Ham, a bold man of defiant strength. He convinced them
that they did not have to be so simple as to believe that their luck and well-
being comes only and exclusively from the hand of God, but that they have
earned everything good thanks to their courage and virtue; In this way he
immediately changed everything and established a tyrannical government,
because he believed that this was going to be the easiest way to banish respect
for God from the human heart and to attract them through impudence and
violence. He even threatened that, in the event that God decided to flood the
world again with a flood, he planned to have the power and resources to offer
the appropriate resistance, since he would have decided to build a tower that
was going to be much higher. from which floods and waves could arise, thus
avenging the death of their ancestors (Note: Eupolemus in Euseb[io, De ]
Praepar [ atione ] Evang [ elica ,] has indicated that this tower was not built
until after the flood by the survivors.)
1
Apparently this flood has caused humans to lose faith in nature, which

they have now begun to see as an opposite and hostile being, and they began to

mobilize their forces against it. And this separation from nature, in whatever

LXXI

Preparatory materials that Hegel has edited on a full page, as above in the
Manifesto/Program “An Ethics” ( text no. 3 3 ). The two pages they consist of present an
identical passage, but with changes in topic marked in this translation each time with a blank
line. From the point of view of content, the last two notes of these materials are
heterogeneous with the rest: the first marks a vein that comes from Berne ( cf. supra no.
26.1) and goes through the following years being loaded with subjectivity, the second marks
the beginning of a new theme with the fantastic creation of the character Abraham, who will
occupy Hegel a lot and recurs as an obsession even at the end of Frankfurt ( cf. infra, no. 45 ).
The verbal tense sometimes oscillates between indirect and direct speech (an oscillation that
is not uncommon in Hegel).
1
Added at the foot of the page with reference here and written in another letter, like the
one below, no. 51, to which contents of this text also pass: both Nimrod and Noah, who
from then on killed animals, which he received from God in the propiety; I only
[had to] respect the blood, because life resides in it
 1
7
way it may have occurred [(]in the ancient Germans, surely by knowing the
2
products of a more benign climate), cannot but give rise to the State, etc.

The fact that Isaac could no longer withdraw the blessing he had given
Jacob, even when he saw that he had been deceived, indicates the respect, the
dignity that the merely subjective enjoyed; a dream, a vision can be seen as
something that comes from outside; On the other hand, a blessing cannot but be
accompanied in any circumstance by the awareness that it comes from oneself,
and it is certainly conceivable that the blessing given by a father to the son who
deserves his love could bring him luck and well-being, just as a Damn the
opposite, although it is not an effect per se; but how sacred a blessing had to be
so that it could not be withdrawn even after recognizing error, and how deep
the faith in a dominion over nature by something subjective, whose dignity here
appears as sublime as that of a word or an act of divinity for the faith of a
people, and just as irrevocable!

When Moses communicated to Pharaoh his intention to take the Jews out of
Egypt, with the consequence that the Jews would be even more oppressed, the
only effect that this order [from Pharaoh] had on them was to complain about
Moses as the cause of this increase in their loads; to such an extent that
liberation from their state had ceased to be a profound need for them; They did
not undertake anything either, but left Moses alone to make Pharaoh afraid, and
at no time did they show that they attributed his liberation to his own strength,
as was also evident with his fainting in the Red Sea, when Pharaoh He led an
army against them.

[Flavius] Josephus,] Jewish Antiquities,] Book 4, chapter 4

The cause of the mutiny according to Korah, etc. Death: although the
people believed that nothing could happen without divine will and curse, they
were persuaded that God would give Moses pleasure in everything he undertook
in this case against them, they put all the blame on Moses that / God He
punishes not spontaneously and of his own free will and because their sins have
deserved his anger, but for the sake of Moses, who constantly turns God against
 1
7
them. 3

[2]
The spirit of the Greeks is what is beautiful; the spirit of the orientals, the
sublime and grandiose.
[3]
Abraham was a rich shepherd, an independent prince. The ground under his
feet, an immense plain, the sky above him an immense vault; He did not till the
soil, his cattle grazed it, he was not obliged to take care of it, to flatter the land
so that it would bear fruit, to get used to certain places to become fond of
them, to assume them as part of his little world, to establish a friendly
relationship with the [land]; He immediately abandoned the springs that
provided water for him and his livestock, the forests whose shade cooled him.
 1
7
4
TEXT 4

[P. 384 to 462]

HGW 2.14 1

[45]
(1798-1800)
Jesus and his destiny

[1]

<Jesus made his appearance shortly before the last crisis, which the
fermentation of the various elements of Jewish destiny made inevitable. In such a
time of internal fermentation, the plurality of these elements develops, until they end
up condensing into a whole and the oppositions take on the clear outlines of an open
war; but before the last act there were other partial explosions. People with a vulgar
soul, although with strong passions, only partially understood the destiny of the
Jewish people and for this reason they were too impatient to allow themselves to be
carried passively and unconsciously by the waves of that [destiny], limiting themselves
to swimming with the current of their epoch; On the other hand, it was also unable to
wait for a further development that would allow it to join a stronger power[; so] he
was ahead of global maturation and fell without honor or effectiveness.
<Jesus, instead of fighting only one aspect of the Jewish destiny -since he was
not a prisoner of another part of it-, he opposed its entirety; Therefore he was above
him and wanted to elevate his people above him. But enmities like those he tried to
eliminate can only be overcome with courage, love cannot reconcile them; That is also
why his sublime attempt to overcome the whole of destiny had to fail in his people
and he himself became a victim of [it]. Since Jesus had not taken sides with any of the
factions of destiny, it was inevitable that his religion would find such a great
reception in the rest of the world among those who had nothing to defend or support
in a destiny in which they did not participate - not so within his own people, since
they still had too much [own destiny]-.

1
<Before the spirit of Christ>
 1
7
HGW 2.14 2 / [... precepts that] could be considered based on a [vi]ve modification of the 5
human nature -[or] <rights that the [human being] himself abandons by establishing
powers above himself- were purely positive for the [Jews], they were commanded to
them. Therefore, the order in which the various modes of Jewish legislation will be
presented here is foreign to them, it has been constructed, and their differentiation is
given exclusively by the various ways of reacting to them.>
To the commandments - I mean: the precepts relating to divine service - that
demanded mere service to the Lord, direct servitude, joyless obedience, Jesus
contrasted the most opposite to them: <an impulse, even> a mere necessity of the
human being. religious actsLXXIILXXIII They are the most spiritual, the most beautiful,
which also aspires to unite the separation that development inevitably generates; /
tries[n] to expose unification in the ideal LXXIV as something that, far from being
opposed to reality, is already fully, <-and therefore expresses[n] and reinforces[n] this
unification->; On the other hand, religious actions, when they lack that spirit of
beauty, are the most empty, the most absurd servitude, demanded by the
consciousness of their [own] annihilation, an activity in which someone expresses their
non-being, their passivity. >; Compared to this, the satisfaction of the most vulgar
human need is more noble, since in the end a being is directly felt, or preserved, no
matter how empty it may be.
It is a tautology to say that the state of utmost necessity violates the sacred,
since the state of necessity is a state of heartbreak and the action that violates a holy
1
object is that state in action; <the human being in need either becomes an object
and is oppressed, or he is the one who is forced to make nature an object and oppress
it. Not only is nature sacred, the holy can also occur in what are objects in
themselves, and not only because they in themselves represent the unifying ideal of a
plurality, but also because, relating in some way to that ideal, they belong to it. . The
state of necessity can impose the profanation of that holy thing; but violating it

LXXII Here he ends, leaving some free space, this 1st page of the 2nd version , and then goes on to
rework the 1st version, whose beginning he does not include. This leaves a gap in meaning that I
have hypothetically filled.
LXXIII 1st version: Religious uses
LXXIV The 1st version is still here: also in an action, a symbol[,] act
1
The paragraph continues like this in the 1st version: But desecrating a sacred object with a
banal action is something that can only come from contempt for it; and even a minimum of
respect will guard against incurring arbitrariness or an occurrence in this regard. The
contrast between the sanctity of an object or precept and its violation becomes all the
greater the less need there is for it and the greater the arbitrariness in the profanation.
The way Jesus had of showing all his contempt for
 1
7
unnecessarily is shameless, when that [holy thing] in which one people unites
6 at a
time is common to them, the property of all; Furthermore, the violation of the
sanctuary becomes an unjust violation of everyone's rights; the pious zeal that
destroys temples and altars of a foreign cult and expels its priests, desecrates
common sanctuaries that belong to all. Now, if renunciation and servitude are
necessary for something holy to unify everyone, then what anyone who separates
themselves from others does is recover their right; And as for the others, the violation
of the holy thing or precept can only be considered annoying because he renounces
the community with them and claims his free will to use his thing, be it time or
whatever. But the less important this right and its abandonment are, the less someone
will want to oppose their fellow citizens in what is most sacred to them, tearing apart
the community with them at the most intimate point that unites them. Only when the
whole of the community is an object of contempt - and this is how Jesus left the
entire existence of his people - did those considerations that a friend shows in
unimportant things disappear in front of someone who has a heart and a soul with he;
nothing that was sacred to the Jews prevented him from doing anything or postponing
even the satisfaction of the most vulgar need, thus manifesting his separation from his
people with a total contempt for servitude under objective laws.>
HGW 2.14 6 / Matt. 12.
His companions scandalized the Jews by plucking grain on the Sabbath, which
could barely appease their hunger; respect for the Sabbath surely could have
postponed this small satisfaction until they reached a town where they could find a
place to eat. <Jesus argues with the Pharisees that they censured this illicit action
with the figure of> David<; but he had resorted to

servitude under objective precepts was breaking them himself with the most gratuitous
actions or inciting them to do so.

the shewbread in a state of dire need; <he also alleges> the violation of the Sabbath
by priests when they officiate<; but since this> is legal, 1

therefore there is no sacrilege; <finally he aggravates his fault on the one hand with
the observation that, if the priests desecrate the Sabbath only in the temple, before
those [Pharisees] / there is even more -nature is more sacred than the temple-, with
which, for the other, in general, elevates nature – which the Jews saw without gods,
without the sacred – above their limited world, whose relationship with God they limit
 1
7
to a single place made by them; But what Jesus does in the immediate sense
7 is to
oppose the human being to the sacralization of a given time, which he declares
inferior to an irrelevant satisfaction of a human need.>
The same day Jesus heals a withered hand; <certainly the typical behavior of the
Jews with livestock in danger puts before their eyes - the same as David's recourse to
the sacred bread or the occupations of the priests on the Sabbath - that the sanctity
of this day is not absolute for them either. , because they know something more
important than the observance of this precept; but also in the case with which /
argues against the Jews, it is a case of necessity and necessity erases the guilt;> the
beef that falls into the well requires immediate help, but it is of no importance that
that man remained deprived from the use of his hand until the night; <what Jesus'
action expressed was> the whim of performing this healing a few hours earlier, and
the primacy of such a whim over a precept coming from the supreme authority.
Jesus opposed the use of washing hands before eating ( Matt 15/2) human
subjectivity, [which he placed] above servitude under a precept, [opposing] the purity
or impurity of the heart to the purity or impurity of something objective>. He
converted indeterminate subjectivity, character, into a very special area, with
absolutely nothing in common with strict compliance with objective precepts.
Unlike the purely objective precepts - to which Jesus / opposed something
completely foreign <, the subjective in general> -, the laws that

1
The 1st version continues: the true argument is that he himself, his will, is what is opposed
to the fundamental precept of observing the Sabbath, respectively called moral or civil,
received a different treatment from JesusLXXV . <Since they express natural human
relationships in the form of precepts, they give rise to confusion when they become,
wholly or partially, objective. Since laws are unifications of opposites in a concept
that does not suppress their opposition, but the concept itself in turn consists of the

LXXV
2
The 1st version follows: , since they are subjective in that they are based on an activity of
the human being, on some force of his; All civil laws are at the same time moral, although
they are distinguished from purely moral laws - which cannot be civil at the same time - in
that they draw the limit on the possible opposition between various living beings, so that
they can still endure.
2
The 1st version follows: Such laws are by nature partly positive, since they merely
constitute the reflection on a partial force, foreign to the others, / which it consequently
either excludes or dominates; But they can also be totally positive, if they do not even act
as a faculty of a human being, but as a power that is totally alien to him, since he does not
even have this Lord within him, but absolutely outside of himself.
 1
7
opposition against the real, what it expresses is an ought-to be; This command
8 is
moral, considered not according to its content but formally, as it is produced and
conceived humanly; But if we pay attention only to the content, such as the concrete
unification of certain opposites - so that the ought is not derived from the quality of
the concept but from its imposition by an alien power - then the mandate is civil.
Since this last perspective is not subjective, since it does not allow us to understand
the unification of opposites, civil laws are limited to limiting the opposition between
several living beings; however, purely moral laws determine the limit in the opposition
within a living being; those, therefore, limit the opposition of living things among
themselves; these, the opposition of One aspect, of One force of a living being against
other aspects, other forces of the same living being, so that within this being one
force is dominant over another 2 <. Purely moral laws – those that cannot become civil
laws, that is, whose opposites and their unification cannot be formally alien – would
be those that limit forces as long as their activity is not directed at other human
beings. Laws whose only effectiveness is civil are positive laws, and since their
content is equal to that of moral laws - or since the unification of objectivities in the
concept presupposes something that is neither actually nor potentially objective -, the
overcoming of their form of Civil laws are respect for duty, as long as their duty is not
ordered by a foreign power but is derived from the concept itself. But even moral
precepts incapable of becoming civil can become objective, if the unification (or
limitation) does not itself operate as a concept, as a precept, but as something foreign
to the force thus limited, however subjective it may be. This mode of objectivity
could only be eliminated by reestablishing the concept itself and with it the limitation
of activity. LXXVI It could be expected that this would be how Jesus would have acted
against the positivity of moral precepts, against mere legality, showing that what is
legal is generality and in this lies all its validity, because although on the one hand
every ought-to-be, every precept is presented from outside, on the other hand, / as a
concept (the generality), it is subjective; Consequently, as a product of a human
force, the faculty of generality, of reason, loses its objectivity, positivity, heteronomy
and what is commanded is represented as something that has its foundation in an
autonomy of the human will. Now, along this path, positivity only partially disappears;
and if we compare [the one who is subjected] to the Tungu shaman or the European
prelate who governs Church and State, or to the Great Mongol and the Puritan, with
the one who obeys the imperative of his duty, the difference is not that the former
have made servants, while the latter would be free, but the former has the lord
outside of himself, while the latter carries it within, but at the same time he is his
own servant; For the particular, impulses, inclinations, sensitive love, sensuality or
however you want to say it, the general is necessarily and eternally something foreign,
objective; There remains an indestructible remnant of positivity, which becomes
totally odious when the content that the general mandate of duty takes on as a
determined duty contains the contradiction of being both limited and general, and its
partiality imposes the harshest claims based on its general form. Woe to human
relationships that at that moment do not coincide with the concept of duty! Because
this, far from being the mere empty thought of generality, must be expressed in an
action, excluding all other relations or dominating them.>
A man who wanted to restore the human being in its entirety could not take that

LXXVI The 1st version continued like this : To make these precepts subjective, Jesus did not
follow the path of showing that they are general laws, that their generality is the
manifestation of a human faculty, the faculty of generality, of reason, whose further
development, by presenting them as products of a human force, I would strip them of their
objectivity, of their positivity; but since the generality is opposed to the particular and,
when it dominates, the particular is the dominated, there always remains a remainder of
positivity
 1
7
path, which <does nothing but adds to the tearing apart of the human 9being a
1
stubborn arrogance>. For him, acting in the spirit of the laws could not mean acting
against inclinations out of respect for duty; / and it is that <both parts> 2

of the spirit (unavoidable to speak in this way given this internal tearing) would
then find itself not in the spirit of the laws, but confronted with it: <one, because it is
exclusive, then limited by itself; the other, because it is oppressed.>

<This spirit of Jesus, superior to morality, is shown to be directly opposed to the

laws in> the Sermon on the Mount, which is an attempt to remove the legality, the
form of laws, from the laws, using the example of several of them. ; It does not
preach respect for the laws, but rather shows what complies with them, while at the
same time invalidating them as such and consequently, being superior to obedience to
them, it makes them superfluous. <The commands of duty presuppose a separation
and in them the domination of the concept is announced as an ought-to-be; but above
this separation there is a being, a variant of life that only the object makes exclusive
and therefore limited, / since only this limitation of the object produces exclusion and
only this refers to it. Although Jesus also expresses as commandments what he
opposes to the laws and places above them (do not think that I want to destroy the
law..., your word be..., I tell you not to resist, etc., love God and your neighbor), this
rhetorical appearance of commandments has nothing to do with the ought-being of
the imperative; It is only the consequence of expressing the living in thought, of the
living being presented in the alien form of the concept, while the imperative of duty,
because it is general, is essentially a concept. And every time that the living is
presented to us in the form of something reflected, said, Kant was very wrong in
considering as a precept that, demanding respect before the law, love commands, the
following way of expressing itself, inappropriate for the living: “Love God above all
things and your neighbor as yourself.” And on this confusion of the imperative - which
consists of the opposition between the concept and reality - with the totally
accidental way of expressing the living is based his sagacious reduction to the
imperative of what he calls a precept: “Love God above all 1
1
1st version of the previous sentence: which just tears you a little less.
2
1st version: one part

things and your neighbor as yourself.” As for his observation that love – love in the
 1
8
sense that he believes he should give it: fulfilling all duties with pleasure – cannot
0 be
commanded, it falls under its own weight; And in love all idea of duty disappears;
Even the honor given to this word of Jesus by considering it the ideal of holiness,
although unattainable by any creature, is carried away by the wind: in the first place,
an ideal whose duties are supposedly fulfilled with pleasure is contradictory in itself.
same, since the duties would require opposition, and none of them would be fulfilled
with pleasure; Furthermore, if [Kant] can support this contradiction without
unification in his ideal, it is because he declares [“]rational creatures[”] (a curious
composition) [prone] to fall and incapable of achieving that ideal.
<Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount with a kind of paradox, in which he
unequivocally lays bare his entire soul before the expectant crowd of listeners,
declaring that what they can expect from him is something totally strange, another
genius, another world. They are cries, exaltedly departing from the beginning from
the common vision of virtue, exaltedly announcing another right and another light,
another region of life, whose relationship with the world can only be that of suffering
LXXVII
hatred and persecution. But [he declares to them] that what he shows them in
this Kingdom of Heaven is not the rescission of the laws, since they have to be
observed with another justice, which completes what is deficient in the law, with
more content, more complete. than the justice of those who fulfill their duty. This is
exemplified below with several laws[.]
HGW 2.1 58 You can call that supplement a propensityLXXVIII to act as
The laws would rule, the unity of the propensity with the law, which makes the latter
lose its form of law; This coincidence of propensity is the TAnpo ua of the law, <a
being> 2 , which, as they used to say, is the complement of possibility; and it is that
3
Possibility is the object as something thought, the general; <be> , the synthesis
of
subject and object <in which subject and object have lost their contrast>, as well as
that virtuous propensity, is a synthesis in which the law (which is why Kant always
calls objective) loses its generality, the subject its particularity and both its opposed;

LXXVII The 1st version continues : As soon as he begins, he declares to them that in the
Kingdom that he has come to found and whose ideal he is presenting to the Jews,
everything that the laws require must be fulfilled; but that his intention is to complete
what is always lacking in what has the form of law, which demands from his friends a more
complete justice, with more content than the justice of the Pharisees.
LXXVIII The 1st version follows: not the support of moral convictions due to a propensity for
them, but a prone moral conviction, that is: a moral conviction without struggle.
2
The 1st version says instead of “a being”: reality.
 1
8
On the other hand, in Kantian virtue the opposition is maintained and one
1 part
becomes dominant, the other dominated. The coincidence of inclination with law is
such that law and inclination are no longer differentiated; <as for the expression
coincidence of inclination with the law, it is very inappropriate, if one takes into
account that / there law and inclination continue to appear as opposites, and gives
rise to the misunderstanding as if moral conviction, respect for the law , its
determination of the will would receive the support of a propensity different from it;
and since those who coincide are different, the coincidence would also be purely
accidental, a mere unity of strangers, a mental operation. Now, here - in the
complement of the laws and what has to do with it - duty, moral conviction, etc. They
cease to oppose propensity as the general, and propensity ceases to be particularized
in the face of the law; In this way, that coincidence is life and, as a relationship
between different ones, love, a being that expressed as a concept, law, is necessarily
equal to the law - that is, to itself -, or opposite to the concept as real[,] as a
propensity, it is also equal to itself[,] to the propensity.
1
Such is the commandment you shall not kill, a principle that is recognized as
valid for the will of any rational being and can serve as the principle of universal
*
legislation. Jesus / opposes to that commandment the superior genius of indulgence
(a modification of love), which not only does not violate that law, but makes it
completely superfluous, since it contains a plenitude that is too rich and alive
compared to something as poor as that commandment.>

3
The 1st version says instead of “being”: reality.
1
1st version of this paragraph: No commandment can express more than an ought-to, because
it is general; With this he simultaneously manifests his insufficiency to express a being; To
that commandment, you shall not kill, Jesus opposes a virtue, universal love, * which not
only makes superfluous the content of that commandment, but also its form, eliminating
the opposition of the commandment as an imperative with what resists it and banishing
any thought of sacrifice, destruction or submission of the spirit, at the same time that it
surpasses in richness and life the cold command of reason;
*
From here on, the term “indulgence” ( Versöhnlichkeit ) replaces “universal love” (
Menschenliebe ) in the 1st version in the 2nd version.

Since in indulgence <the law loses its form and the concept is displaced by life,>
generality is lost, which in the concept encompasses everything particular<; but the
loss is only apparent and in truth an infinite gain is achieved, given the richness in
living relationships with the individuals, even if they are few, with whom one
interacts. What is excluded is not reality, but <something thought,> possibilities; and
 1
8
this richness of possibilities <in the generality of the concept>, even the 2form of
commandment, tears apart life and is <so poor> in content that it leaves the field
open to everything except the only mistreatment it prohibits; On the other hand, in
the face of indulgence, anger is also a crime, and the rapid reaction of feeling to
being subdued, the outburst that in turn wants to subdue, which is a kind of blind
justice, ultimately presupposes a certain equality, but in hostility; On the other hand,
the spirit of indulgence lacks a hostile attitude in itself and its aspiration is to end the
hostility of the other. When judged from love, it is a crime, and even greater than
anger, to call a brother a scoundrel; but a scoundrel who isolates himself by hostilely
opposing another, a human being, and tries to continue in this differentiation, is still
someone, it is worth it because he is hated and a great scoundrel can even be
admired;> that is why love is even more foreign to him Calling someone a cretin,
something that not only breaks any relationship with them, but also any equality, <any
essential community,> imaginatively subjects them completely <and marks them as
LXXIX LXXX
nothing. On the other hand, love that before the altar becomes aware of a
disagreement, leaves the offering right there, is first reconciled with its brother and
only then returns purified and united before the one divinity. He does not go to the
judge to get justice, but instead 2

reconciles without taking into account the law at all.>

Likewise, Jesus opposes love both to the duty of marital fidelity and to the right
LXXXI
to divorce; On the other hand, love excludes concupiscence, which that duty did
not prohibit, while at the same time it limits the legality of divorce to a single case,
1
opposed to the duty of fidelity; <So on the one hand the sanctity of love is the
supplement (the TAnpoua) of the law against adultery; Only thanks to this holiness is
it possible to repress one of the many human aspects when it wants to become the
whole or rise up against it, and only the sensation of the whole, love, can prevent the
dispersion of the being. On the other hand, love suppresses the legality of divorce,
and whether love remains alive or is extinguished, there can be no question of legality
LXXIX Hegel's Note: The explanation given of the word pAKa seems to support the
meaning given to it here; On the other hand, the moral sense in which cretin is
interpreted as softer than scoundrel creates difficulties, judging both words not by the
intention with which they are uttered but by the impression they cause; Now, then
the supposed cretin has reason to feel sui juris and, if he is as awake as the other, to
return the compliment.
LXXX 1st version: Love even demands the renunciation of the right arising from a breakup,
an offense, it demands reconciliation.
LXXXI 1st version : to the legality of
 1
8
or law. When love disappears for a woman that still loves, it is love that becomes
3
unfaithful to itself and sins; and transferring the passion of [love] is nothing more than
a loss of it, for which a bad conscience will pay. True, the destiny of [love] is
inescapable in this case and marriage is already separated from itself; But the support
that man obtains from a right and from the law, allowing him to have what is just and
convenient on his side, only adds a despicable harshness to the offense against a
woman's love. Only in the case that Jesus excepts, when the woman has given her love
to another, is the man allowed to no longer be subject to her. Surely, if Moses had to
give the Jews laws and rights regarding marriage, it was because of their [hardness of
heart,] OkAnpo KapSta; but before it was not like that.
When a commitment is established about something real, the subject and the
object are thought to be separate, and also when the commitment refers to the
future,> / in the promise, the declaration of the will and the action itself are
completely separated; It is, therefore, about the truth, that is, the firm reciprocal
belonging of both; In a commitment under oath the idea of an action <-already
occurred, or> to come-, is linked to something divine, <representing in an entity> the
1
connection between the word and the act, <the link, the being same; but since the
truth of the oath cannot be given direct visibility in each case, the truth itself, God, is
put in its place; This is communicated to the other, who is thus convinced, while the
entity interposed by the determined spirit of the one who swears> acts in turn on him,
excluding the contrary to the truth<; and there is no way

1
The 1st version continues as follows: The insufficiency of law and right, of respect for the
law in both cases, that of duty and that of legality, is obvious when a virtue, a living
reference, the tAnpoua of all laws.
1
1
The 1st version follows: it is represented very vividly through recourse to an entity that is
present, the truth in general,
see what superstition there may be here>. When the Jews swore by heaven, by earth,
by Jerusalem or by the hair of their head, entrusting their oath to God, placing it in
the hands of the Lord, they linked the reality of what was thus asserted with an
[O]bject, <not only equating both realities,> but delivering into the hands of a foreign
power the coherence between that object and what is committed, <the equality of
both; With this, power over the word is conferred on God, when this power must be
based on the human being himself; The committed act and the object <by which one
swears> are chained so closely that, if one is eliminated, the other is also denied, it is
 1
8
eliminated from the representation; Therefore, if the committed act or the 4
asserted
reality do not actually occur, the object by which the oath was sworn is also
renounced, heaven, earth, etc.; and> in this case his Lord has to vindicate him, God
becoming the Avenger of His own. It is this linking of the committed act to something
objective that Jesus rejects; Instead of insisting on the duty to keep the oath, he
simply declares it superfluous, since neither heaven nor earth nor Jerusalem nor the
hair of the head is the human spirit, the only link between his word and an action, but
rather the property of something. foreign, and the certainty of the / act cannot be
linked to something foreign, <it cannot be delivered outside,> because the link
between the word and the action has to be living, based on the human being himself.
<An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth say the laws. The equivalence of
retaliation is the sacred principle of all justice, the principle on which all government
must be based.> But what Jesus demands here in general is to renounce LXXXII to the
1
right, elevate the entire scope of justice <or injustice> to love, <in which /
disappears along with the right also the feeling of inequality and the imperative that
accompanies it demanding equality and therefore the hatred of enemies .
The laws and duties that Jesus had been talking about until now were
collectively civil, and the supplement he added to them did not consist of confirming
them as laws and duties, demanding respect for them as motives, but, on the
contrary, despising them; As for the supplement, it is a spirit whose actions may be
found in accordance with laws and duties, if judged by them, but it does not attend to
LXXXIII
duties and rights. Later he talks about the virtue of good works as a purely moral
duty; What Jesus condemns in it, as in prayer and fasting, is the interference of
something foreign, the impurity of the action - do not do it to be seen -: that the
purpose of the action, that is, the intended action, before its performance, is equal to
the action performed. In addition to that hypocrisy that introduces into the thoughts
of the action the alien element of being seen by others, here Jesus also seems to
reject the awareness of the action as a duty fulfilled.> “May your left hand not know
what the hand is doing.” right” <cannot mean not knowing what has been done, but

LXXXIIgive up : “Aufgebung” ; then: elevate (the entire area of justice): “Erhebung” , which in
the 1st version was suppression : “Aufhebung”.
LXXXIII The 1st version continued: Later Jesus condemns the conscience of good works, of
prayer and fasting, [that is,] the fact of reflecting that by doing so a duty has been
fulfilled; Jesus does not find a big difference in whether it is me or others who look at me,
whether I only enjoy my applause or also share that of others.
2
The 1st draft then ended like this: However, it does not lose its characteristic of opposing
the particular, which explains the submission of the [particular] to the honor conferred by
the [general].
 1
8
the opposite of being seen by people; If the phrase can have a meaning, it will
5 be to
refer [negatively] to one's own reflection on one's concordance with duty. Surely there
is no big difference in whether the action is only my thing or whether I think that
others are watching me, whether I enjoy only my conscience or whether I also enjoy
the applause of others;> and the obvious applause of others for that triumph that
virtue has achieved, the general over the particular, <no longer> is, so to speak, the
generality <merely thought> but rather the intuited at the same time as particularity:
[generality] in the representation of others, [particularity ] in others <as real>
themselves; and the solitary consciousness of duty fulfilled is of the same species as
honor, only that in honor the generality, in addition to being universally valid, is also
2
universally recognized; <in his own consciousness of his duty fulfilled, the individual
gives himself the attribute of generality, he senses himself as something general,
elevated above himself as a particular, at the same time as above what is contained in
the concept of the particularity, above the mass of individuals; And as soon as the
concept of generality is applied to the individual, the concept of particularity also
takes on this relationship with individuals and the opposition between [particularity]
and [individual] recognizes itself in the generality of the fulfillment of the duty. Now,
this self-awareness is as alien to action as the applause of the people. Jesus also
speaks of this security in oneself, in one's own justice, and the consequent contempt
for others (consequent / due to the necessary opposition between the particular and
the general) in the parable of Luke 18, 9 ff. [:]
<The Pharisee thanks God – [in reality] he is so modest that he does not
recognize the strength of his will here – that he is not like many other thieves, unjust,
adulterers or like the publican next to him; fast as prescribed and conscientiously pay
tithing like an honest man. To this awareness of his own righteousness – which is not
at all said to have been false – Jesus is opposed by the crestfallen publican who does
not dare to raise his eyes to heaven, while he beats his chest saying: “God, have
mercy.” of me, who am a sinner.” The consciousness of the duty fulfilled in the
Pharisee, as well as that of the young man for having faithfully observed all the laws (
Matt 19, 20), precisely this good conscience, is a hypocrisy, since, although it is
consistent with the intention of the action, On the one hand, it indicates a reflection
on oneself, on/the action, an impurity that does not match the action; On the other
hand, if it is the image that the Pharisee and the young man have of themselves as
moral beings, the content of that image will be the virtues; and these are limited,
since their scope is previously given to them and their matter is restricted, so that
they are incomplete even if taken together, while good conscience, the consciousness
 1
8
of having fulfilled one's duties, presents itself hypocritically as a whole. 6
This is precisely the spirit in which Jesus speaks of prayer and fasting; In both
they are either completely objective and imposed duties, or precepts based on a
need; They cannot be represented as moral duties, because they do not presuppose
any opposition that can be unified in a concept; In both cases Jesus censures the
appearance that is given to others, especially in prayer, as well as the verbiage that
gives it the consideration of a duty and its fulfillment. Regarding fasting, Jesus ( Matt
19, 15) judges it by the feeling that motivates it, by the need that drives it. Apart
from cleaning the prayer of spurious elements, / Jesus also indicates a way of praying;
This is not the place to consider what true prayer is.
<There is not much to comment below on the demand to abandon the worries of
life and despise wealth, as well as on Mt 19, 23: how difficult it is for a rich man to
enter the Kingdom of Heaven; It is a litany, which is only forgivable in sermons and
rhymes, since that precept lacks truth for us. The destiny of property has become too
powerful for us to tolerate reflections on it or to imagine ourselves without it. But at
least we can realize that the possession of wealth, with all the rights and concerns
that it entails, introduces conditions that establish limits and dependencies on the
virtues; Duties and virtues certainly fit within them, but without allowing a whole, a
full life, since it is tied to objects, external conditions, and something is added to life
as its own that in the end can never be appropriated. Wealth immediately reveals its
opposition to love, to totality, since / it is a right and is immersed in a multitude of
them; That is why both honesty - the virtue that directly refers to wealth , as the
other possible virtues within its scope necessarily imply exclusion, and each act of
virtue is itself exclusive. Impossible to even think about a possible syncretism or
serving two masters, since the indeterminate cannot be reconciled with the
determined as long as their forms are maintained. Jesus, to destroy the sphere
opposed to love, had to show not only the complement of duties, but also the object
of these principles[,] the essence of the sphere of duties.
<Luke (12, 13ff.) presents the conception of Jesus contrary to riches in a context
that clarifies it even more. A man had turned to Jesus, asking for help so that his
brother would agree to share his inheritance with him; rejecting such a request is
considered to be the behavior of only an egoist. Jesus' response to the supplicant
seems to directly allege his incompetence and nothing more. But in his spirit there
seems to be something more than his incompetence to intervene in this distribution,
because he immediately addresses his disciples with an exhortation against greed and
adds the parable about a rich man who is frightened by the voice of God: “Fool!
 1
8
Tonight your soul will be demanded of you, whose will be what you have amassed?
7 “So
it is with him who accumulates riches for himself and is not rich in God.” So Jesus
addresses the profane in the terms of law, while he requires his disciples to rise above
the realm of law, of justice, of propriety, of the services due in this regard to
friendship, of the realm entire property.
<In contrast to this absence of law and duty in love - the highest for Jesus - is
the preaching of John the Baptist, of which Luke (ch. 3) has preserved some samples:
“How could they hope that they would escape the wrath of their destiny,” he told the
Jews, “however much they could hope that they had Abraham for their father? The ax
is already under the roots of the trees.” And when the Jews asked him what they
should do, he told them that whoever has two tunics or superfluous food should give it
to the one who has none; He warned the publicans not to demand more contributions
than those prescribed; to the soldiers, who should not harass or extort, but should live
off their salary; It is also known about him ( Mt 14, 4) that he disapproved of Herod's
relations with his brother's wife, a rebuke that cost him his head; His destiny was
fulfilled in a given area, just as his teaching -judging by the preceding samples-
referred to certain virtues. This is how he himself saw it, when he announced to
another that he will take up the fork and clear the threshing floor; John places his
hope in faith and not in his baptism of water, which in his successor will be of fire and
spirit.
HGW 2. 177 <To the conscience, to know one's own fulfillment or non-compliance with the
duty is opposed in judgment by the application of the law to others; “Do not judge –
says Jesus – and you will not be judged; With the measure you judge, it will be
measured to you.” This subsumption of others under a concept that is set forth in the
law can be considered a weakness, since the one who judges is not strong enough to
fully support [the others], but rather divides them and, instead of enduring his
independence, [he takes them] not as they are, but as they should be; With this, they
have been subjected to thought, since the concept of generality is his. But judging in
this way, he has recognized a law to whose domination he himself has submitted, he
has established a judgmental criterion that is valid for him, and with the loving
attitude towards his brother of removing the speck from his eye, he has sunk below
the Kingdom of the Love.
<What follows is no longer an opposition between the law and what is above it,
but the presentation of some manifestations / of life in its beautiful and free region,
such as the unification of humans in asking, giving and take. Everything concludes with
the aspiration to expose the image of the human being as described before in the
 1
8
opposition to given areas, [but now] totally outside this area – which is why the
8 pure
also appeared rather in its modifications, in particular virtues such as compromise,
marital fidelity, truthfulness, etc.-; an aspiration, certainly, that can only be poorly
fulfilled in parables.

HGW 2.1 79

[2]

<Jesus has opposed the positivity of the Jews by the human being; to the laws
and their duties, the virtues; and in these he has put an end to the immorality of the
positivized human being.> 1 Certainly the positivized human being is neither moral nor
immoral with respect to a concrete virtue <which - both objectively and subjectively -
he is serving, and this observance with the that it fulfills certain duties, it is not that
it is directly immoral towards them>; but it is linked to immorality, since it entails a
concrete indifference towards other aspects; in fact, that specific observance LXXXIV
Positive has a limit that it cannot exceed, so beyond it it is immoral. Therefore this
immorality of positivity 2 corresponds to an aspect of human relations/relations
different from positive <obedience>: within the scope of the latter it is neither moral
LXXXV
nor immoral. <By establishing subjectivity

1
Beginning of the 1st version: The opposite of virtue is not only positivity, but also the
lack of virtue, immorality.

LXXXIV 1st version: virtue

LXXXV Here follows the 1st version: Now, the opposite of virtue is immorality, vice. The
speculative moralist, the moral teacher gives a philosophical description of virtue: the
description must be deduced, it cannot contain contradictions, the description of a
thing is always the thing represented; The application of this representation, of the
concept, to the living, says how the living has to be; There must be no contradiction
between the concept and the variability of the living, but rather the former is
something thought and the latter an entity. A virtue in pure speculation is and is
necessary, that is, it is its concept, and the opposite cannot be: in it as a concept
there is no change, achievement, generation or disappearance; but you have to stick
to both at the same time, to the concept and to the living; virtue as a modification of
what is alive either is or is not; It can arise or disappear. Therefore the speculative
moralist can both be passionate in a warm consideration of the virtuous and fall with
the same passion in that of vice; But his thing, when he does not limit himself to
coldly calculating his concepts, is only to wage war on what is alive, to polemicize
against it. On the other hand, the teacher of the people, the reformer who addresses
humans themselves, although he cannot speak about the genesis of virtue, its
formation, he can speak about how destructive vice is and the return to virtue. vice is
 1
8
Against the positive, the indifference of observance and its limits vanish. The9 human
being is what counts, he is the one who gives his nature and his act; He has no barriers
except where he feels them, nor his virtues other qualities than those he himself
determines. This ability to determine opposition is freedom, the “O” of virtue or vice.
In the opposition of the law against nature, of the general against the particular, both
oppositions are really established, one is not without the other; In the moral freedom
of the opposition between virtue and vice, one excludes the other, so that, when one
of the two is established, the other is only possible. The opposition between duty and
inclination has been unified in the varieties of love, in the virtues. Since it is not the
content of the law, but its form, that was opposed to love, it could assume the law,
but, in doing so, the law lost its figure. On the other hand, the content of the crime is
opposed to the law, it is excluded from it, and yet the [law] persists; Crime, in fact,
destroys nature and, since nature is one, he who destroys is as destroyed as that
which he destroys. When what is one is in opposition, the unification of opposites only
occurs in the concept; a law has been generated; If the opposite has been destroyed,
the concept, the law, remains; but then it expresses only what is missing, a gap, since
its content has been eliminated in reality, and [the law] is called criminal law. This
form of the law is directly opposite [, also] / due to its content, to the law of life,
since it indicates the destruction of life; but it seems even more difficult to think how
the law can be eliminated in this form of punitive justice; In the previous suppression
of the law by the virtues, only the form of the law disappeared, but not its content;
but here form and content would disappear, since the content is the punishment.>
The punishment is found directly in the violated law; the criminal loses the same right
that he has violated in another by the crime LXXXVI . <The criminal has placed himself
outside the concept that is the content of the law.> True, the law only says that he
must lose the right that it contains; and like the law LXXXVII <directly> only belongs to
thought, also <it is only the concept / of the criminal that

destructive, because it brings punishment. Punishment is the necessary, harmful

consequence of a crime; but not every consequence of a crime can be called a
punishment, for example the worsening of the criminal's character; It cannot be said
that it deserved to be even worse.
loses the right; and for it to really be lost, that is, for the real criminal to also lose
what the concept of the criminal has lost,> the law has to be linked to something

LXXXVI The 1st version follows: ; that is, he deserves the punishment; The need for this to
occur is external and corresponds to the crime,
LXXXVII Subsection of the 1st version: if it expresses a duty,
 1
9
living <clothed with power>. Now, if the law persists in its tremendous majesty
0 and
the punishment for the crime is deserved, it cannot fall into oblivion; The law cannot
condone punishment or be merciful, <for it would destroy itself; The law has been
violated by the criminal, once he has denied it, it has no content for him; but the
form of the law, the generality, pursues him and even bends to the profile of his
crime; His act becomes general and the right that he has suppressed is also suppressed
for him. <In other words, the law endures and the well-deserved punishment
continues.> Now, <that living entity whose power has merged with the law,> that
executive who in reality takes away from the criminal the right that he has lost, The
judge is not abstract justice but a being, and justice is nothing more than an accident
of his. The need for deserved punishment is beyond all doubt; but the administration
of justice is not necessary, since, being an accident in a living being, it can disappear
and be replaced by another, so that justice is casual: it can be in contradiction
between its intended generality and its reality in a living entity; an avenger can give
up his revenge; a judge, to act as a judge. But then justice remains unsatisfied,
because it is inflexible and, as long as the laws are supreme, justice cannot be
avoided, and the individual has to be sacrificed to the general; In other words, he is
guilty of death. <That is why it is also contradictory to think that the law could be
satisfied in one representative for each type of crime; For as long as it is assumed that
others suffer the penalty in him , he is their generality, their concept, while the law -
both as it commands and as it punishes - is only law in opposition to the particular.>
The law derives its generality from <the individuals who act or> from particular
actions; and actions are particular insofar as they are related to the generality, to the
laws, as conforming or contrary to them; and its relationship with them, its
particularity in this sense, is immutable; The actions are real, they are what they are;
What has happened has no turning back, the punishment follows the act; their
connection is indissoluble; If there is no way to prevent an action from having
occurred, if its reality is imperishable, there is no possible reconciliation, not even by
serving the sentence; <certainly the law is satisfied, since the contradiction between
its explicit duty-being and the reality of the criminal, the exception that he wanted to
make from the generality, is eliminated. However, the criminal is not reconciled with
the law (whether the law is foreign to him or he carries it within him as a bad
conscience); > in the event that the criminal has suffered his punishment, this hostile
being, the alien power that the criminal himself has created and armed against
himself; Once the law has affected the criminal's own action, it withdraws from him,
but remains in a threatening position, without his figure disappearing or becoming
 1
9
friendly; <the punishment suffered does not change anything in the bad conscience,
1 in
the awareness of a bad action, that oneself is bad; and the criminal always sees
1
himself as such, his action is a reality over which he lacks power, <and this reality of
his is in contradiction with his consciousness of the law>. But the human being cannot
endure this anguish; In the face of the tremendous reality of evil <and the immovable
firmness of the law> there is no other refuge left but grace; The pressure and
suffering of a bad conscience can make her fall back into the subterfuge of <trying> to
escape herself<, as well as the law> and justice, throwing herself into the arms of the
holder of abstract justice, to enjoy his goodness. ; <He hopes that in his case he will
turn a blind eye, that she will not see him as he is; It is not that he himself denies his
transgression, but he harbors the deceitful desire that goodness itself denies the
crimes and he consoles himself by thinking about the false image that another being
1
may form of him. And in fact, if punishment must be considered absolute, if it were
unconditional and there was no aspect in it that could refer to a higher realm, then
there is no possible return to the integrity of conscience without cheating nor can it
be eliminated the threatening law and a bad conscience, except by hypocritical
LXXXVIII
begging. Law and punishment do not admit reconciliation; However, they can be
LXXXIX
eliminated by the reconciliation of destiny. [T]he punishment comes from the
transgression of a law, against which a human being has declared himself
independent, but from which

1
The 1st version follows: , whose terrible effect, its threatening being, she cannot cancel by
herself.
He continues to depend, unable to escape from it either as punishment or as his own
act.
4
<And it is that, since the character of the law is generality, the criminal has broken,
yes, the matter of the law, but the form, the generality, endures; so that the
supposedly dominated law also remains in force, only that its content communicates
the form of opposition, since it has as its figure the act that contradicts the previous
law; The content of the act now presents the figure of generality and is law; This
perversion of the law, that of becoming the opposite of what it was before, is the
punishment: the human being, by virtue of having freed himself from the law, remains
subject to it; and just as the law remains general, so does the act, since this is what is

LXXXVIII The 1st version says: Impossible to return to virtue? Is it impossible to erase
punishment and threatening power, if not through subterfuge and unworthy supplication?
LXXXIX 1st version of the previous sentence: Punishment cannot be eliminated, but fate can be
reconciled;
 1
9
particular [of it].> The representation of punishment as destiny is a very different
2
1
thing; <in destiny, punishment is a hostile, individual power, in which the general
and the particular are one above all in the sense that duty-being and execution of this
duty are the same thing; The law, on the other hand, is just a norm, something
thought, that requires something in front, real, from which to receive its power.
Likewise, in this hostile power, the general is not separated from the particular in the
sense in which the law, like the general, is opposed to the particular, that is, to the
human being or his inclinations. Destiny is purely hostile and the human being also
faces it as the other power in the fray, while the law, like the general, dominates the
particular and each human being is subject to it 2 . / Considering the crime of a human
3
being imprisoned under a destiny, it is not about the rebellion of a subject against
his sovereign, nor about the escape of his master's servant, nor about the liberation of
a dependency; It is not a return to life from a state of death, XC <because the human
being [simply] is and before crime there is no separation or opposition, much less a
dominator. The only way for something foreign to life to occur is to go outside the
integrity of a life neither regulated by laws nor contrary to them, killing life. The
annihilation of life does not consist in its not being, but in its separation; and
annihilation consists in being made hostile: Life is immortal and, when it is killed, it
appears as its horrible specter that, asserting all its ramifications, unleashes its
eumenides. The error of crime, which / believes that it is destroying other people's
lives and becoming bigger, disappears when the deceased spirit of the life it has
destroyed breaks out against it, like Banquo, who had known Macbeth as a friend and,
far from being eliminated With his murder, he immediately began to occupy Macbeth's
seat not as his diner but as an evil spirit.> The criminal believed he was dealing with a
foreign life; but the only thing he has done is destroy his own; and it is that life is not
distinguished from life, <since it resides in the one divinity, and although he in his
pride has destroyed it, he has only destroyed its friendly character, turning it into an
enemy.> What crime has done is produce a law whose domination is set in motion;
<this law is the unification in the concept, the equality between what is violated,

XC The 1st version follows: ; Just like the punishment and the act, the law is something
objective, impossible to erase.
1
The 1st version follows: in the confrontation with destiny, the human being does not have
to do with a law,
2
The 1st version continues: , that he violated her and that now he suffers his revenge.
3
1st version: “flight” instead of “rebellion”
4
The 1st version follows: but a killing of life;
 1
9
apparently foreign, and one's own failed life.> [O]nly then does the violated life
3 rise as
a hostile power before the criminal, / mistreating him as he has mistreated; so that
1
punishment is destiny, the return <identical of the act of the criminal himself>, of a
power that the criminal himself puts on a war footing, of an enemy that he made for
himself. <A reconciliation with destiny seems even more unthinkable than with the
law and its punishment, since reconciliation with destiny seems to require that
annihilation be annulled. But as far as reconciliation is concerned, destiny has an
advantage over the punishment of the law, and that is that destiny is in the realm of
life, while the law and the punishment of a crime belong to the realm of
insurmountable opposition between absolute realities. In this field> it is unthinkable
that punishment can be eliminated or the consciousness <of bad reality> erased, since
the law is a supreme power, <to which life is subjected>, above which not even the
divinity, <for [this] is only the violence of the supreme thought, only the administrator
2
the law. A reality can only be forgotten, that is, its representation can be lost in
another weakness, even though its being has been permanently established.> But in
the punishment that is destiny, life precedes the law, which is subordinate to it. .
<The

1
In the 1st version: the return of the law that the criminal himself has established
2
2
1st version of the previous sentence: because this is only the executor of the supreme, the
servant of the law.
[law] is a mere deficiency in [life], the power of a lack of it;> and life can heal again
from its wounds, can recover the hostile life that has been separated, eliminating the
1
misery of crime, the law <and the punishment. From the moment in which the
criminal feels the destruction of his own life (he suffers punishment) or realizes (in a
bad conscience) that he is destroyed, destiny begins to work, and this sensation of a
destroyed life becomes necessarily turns into nostalgia for what was lost; the lack is
recognized as a part of oneself that should be there and is not there; This emptiness is
not a non-being, but rather recognizing and feeling life as something missing. Once
you feel the possibility of this fate, you fear it, which is a totally different feeling
from the fear of punishment, since it is the fear of separation, horror of oneself, while
the fear of punishment is directed to something foreign; / in fact, although the law is
perceived as its own law, in the fear of punishment it comes from outside, unless the
fear of one's own indignity is kept in mind; But in punishment, the reality of a
misfortune suffered by the concept of being human is added to the indignity, in the
 1
9
sense that the human being has become unworthy of that concept; Therefore,
4
punishment presupposes a master external to this reality; and the fear of punishment
is fear of that man; On the other hand, in destiny the hostile power, the power of
hostile nature, therefore the fear of destiny, is not the fear of something that comes
from outside. Nor is it that punishment makes it better, since it is nothing more than
suffering, a feeling of helplessness in the face of a man with whom the criminal
neither has nor wants to have anything to do with; The only thing it can produce is
stubbornness, obstinacy in resistance against an enemy who would be shameful if he
oppressed us, because that would be surrender. On the other hand, in destiny the
human being discovers his own life and begging before him is not like begging a lord,
but rather a return, an approach to himself. Fate, in which one feels what one has
lost, awakens a nostalgia for the lost life. This nostalgia can already mean an
improvement - if one can speak of improving and being improved - because by feeling
that one has lost life, or that life is what has been lost, one discovers it as

HGW 2.19 0 1
THE 1ST VERSION CONTINUES: Transgression, crime and punishment never maintain the
relationship of cause and
effect, whose characteristic would be an objective link, a law; If they maintained that
relationship, cause and effect would have nothing to do with each other and it would be
impossible to recover their unity; On the other hand, destiny, the impact of the law on the
criminal, can be annulled, since he is the one who has established the law; the separation
he has produced can be united. This unification occurs in love.
 1
9
something that was favorable to him before; and this knowledge is in itself
5 an
enjoyment of life; and in nostalgia there can be a conscience so intense that, placed
in the contradiction of its guilty conscience with the life that it senses again, it delays
its return to the latter, lengthening the bad conscience and the painful feeling by the
same amount, even fueling it at each time. for a while, so as not to frivolously
reconnect with life, but with all the depth of his soul, and welcome her back
friendly. There have been criminals who inflicted suffering on themselves with
sacrifices and penances, which have prolonged and multiplied bad
conscience as
pilgrims in rough sackcloth, barefoot on the burning sands and, at the same time that
they were impregnated with the feeling of their guilt, of their lack, on the other
hand, at the same time they perfectly sensed this life, even if it was hostile to them,
making it possible for them to accept them wholeheartedly. new; and it is that / in
opposition the possibility of reunification is contained and, just as [consciousness] was
opposed [to life] in suffering, it can be admitted into it again. The possibility of
reconciling destiny is due to the fact that the hostile is felt as life; Consequently, this
reconciliation is neither destruction nor oppression of something foreign, nor a
contradiction between one's self-consciousness and the different image one expects of
oneself in another, nor a contradiction between what one deserves according to the
law and its observance. between the concept and the reality of the human being. This
feeling of life that finds itself again is love and in it destiny is reconciled.> Considered
in this way, the crime of an evildoer ceases to be a fragment; The action that comes
from life, from the whole, also represents the whole; The crime, which is the
transgression of a law, is nothing more than a fragment, since it begins by leaving the
law outside of itself, which is foreign to it; The crime that comes from life represents
1
this whole, / but divided; and the feuding parts can be reunited into a whole.
<Justice is satisfied, since the criminal has reached

HGW 2.19 1
1
The 1st version continues: So destiny is not something foreign like punishment, nor
something real, precise and firm, like bad action in conscience; destiny is the
consciousness of oneself, but of a hostile self; the whole can restore friendship within
itself, it can return to its pure life through love; In this way his conscience regains
faith in himself, his intuition has changed and destiny has been reconciled.
Therefore, the forgiveness of sins does not directly eliminate penalties, since
each penalty is positive, real, inescapable; nor does it suppress bad conscience, since
no act can be turned back; It is through love that destiny is reconciled. /
 1
9
to feel wounded in himself the same life that he has wounded. The pangs
6 of
conscience have softened once the evil spirit of the action has abandoned it, nothing
hostile remains in the human being and the crime at most remains like an inert
skeleton in the charnel house of realities, memory. But the scope of destiny extends
beyond punishment, since it is also called upon by guilt without crime and is therefore
infinitely stricter than punishment; Often its rigor seems to become the most
scandalous injustice as it intervenes all the more terribly the more noble the guilt,
namely, the guilt of innocence. And the fact is that, since laws are nothing more than
thoughts that unite oppositions, these thoughts are far from encompassing the
diversity of life; and punishment only exercises its dominion as long as life has
accessed consciousness, where the concept has united a separation; but, beyond the
limits of the virtues, it lacks all power over the relations of life that have not been
dissolved[,] over the / aspects of life that occur in a living union. On the other hand,
destiny is incorruptible and unlimited like life itself; It ignores any circumstances, any
diversity of approach, of situation, any area of virtue. Wherever life has been hurt, no
matter how rightly it has been, no matter how good the conscience is for what
happened, destiny intervenes and therefore it can be said that innocence has never
suffered, but that all suffering is guilty. Of course, the honor of a pure soul is all the
greater the more consciously it has hurt life to achieve the noblest thing; and the
blacker is the crime of an impure soul the more consciously it wounds life.
It seems as if the only possible cause of a destiny was another's crime; but this is
only the occasion, while the cause lies in the way of assuming it and reacting to it.> XCI
Whoever suffers an unjust attack can defend himself by facing it and defending his
right, or not defend himself; With his reaction, whether passive <suffering> or
struggle, his guilt, his destiny begins, without suffering punishment or injustice; in the
fight he sticks to his right and defends it, <and he does not give up his right by
behaving passively, his

1suffering is the contradiction of recognizing that one has the right>, but <he does
XCII

not have the strength to sustain it in reality,> he does not fight for it <and his destiny

XCI Beginning of the paragraph in the 1st version: The cause of destiny is either one's own
crime or another's crime;
XCII 1st version: he feels his right, he does not take it lightly; but that feeling lacks will;
cannot make his right real,
 1
9
is not to want to do so>. He who fights <for what is in danger> has not lost what
7 he
fights for, <But with this he runs danger and therefore has submitted to destiny,
XCIII

since he enters the battlefield between powers and risks fighting against another; On
the other hand, courage is more than passive suffering, because, even if he succumbs,
he foresaw this possibility and consciously assumed the guilt, while passive suffering
only abides by its lack, without opposing it with a fullness of strength; On the other
hand, the suffering of courage is a just destiny, also because the brave man has
ventured into the field of law and power;> and for that reason alone, the defense of
rights is as unnatural a state as passive suffering with its contradiction. <between the
concept of what is just and its reality; And also in the fight for rights there is a
contradiction; the law, which is something thought and therefore general, is in which
another thought attacks, so that we would have here two generalities that cancel each
other and yet are; Those who fight also face each other as realities, as two living
beings, life in struggle against life, which is once again contradictory.> The defense of
the attacked is at the same time an attack on the aggressor, who thereby finds himself
in turn. the right of self-defense, so they are both right; both are at war, both have
the right to defend themselves and entrust the decision of right to power and force XCIV

<-since in the end law and reality have nothing to do with each other, they get
confused and make the former depend on/the latter-> or they submit to a judge, that
is to say, since they are enemies, they present themselves as defenseless , dead,
<they renounce their respective domination of reality, of power> and let a stranger, a
law, decide about them through the mouth of a judge, thus submitting themselves to
a treatment against which they both ultimately protested when They resisted the
infringement of their rights, that is, they opposed the way another treated them.
<What is true in the two opposites, courage and passivity, is united in the beauty of
the soul in such a way that the brave remains alive, but the opposition disappears, and
in passivity the right is not recovered, but the pain disappears. In this way the right is
lost without suffering for it and a free life rises above both that loss and the struggle.
his / what the other touches, <escapes the pain of loss>, escapes being subjected <by
the other or the judge, escapes the need to subject the other>; Whatever aspect of
himself is affected, he withdraws from it and only gives the other a thing <which he
has declared foreign to him from the moment of the attack>. But this <renunciation of
his relationships, which is an abstraction of himself, has no limits. <defined. (The
XCVXCVI

more lively are the relationships from which a noble nature has to withdraw, because
they are stained - and it could not retain them without staining itself -, the greater is
its misfortune; but this misfortune is neither just nor unjust; if it becomes in his
destiny, it is only because he freely, of his own free will, disdains those relationships;
from that moment on all the sufferings that come from there will be just and now
constitute his unhappy destiny, which proceeds consciously from his own hand, and is
his honor. suffer with justice, since he is so above these rights that he wanted to have
them as enemies. And having appropriated this destiny, he can endure it, face it,
because his sufferings are not pure passivity, they have not been imposed by a foreign
power, but are his own product.)> to save himself he kills himself, so as not to see
what is his own in hands of others, he stops calling it his own and trying to save
himself annihilates himself; And when something falls under another's power, it ceases

XCIII The 1st version continues: nor does he give up on the idea, and his suffering is a just
destiny; but he can rise above this suffering, this destiny, if he renounces the right
attacked and forgives the offender his fault.
XCIV The 1st version continues: , which contradicts the status of both rights
XCV The 1st version is still here: , not himself, not something of his.
XCVI The 1st version is still here : , it is a self-destruction finally doomed to emptiness;
 1
9
to be it; <and> there is nothing that could not be attacked and abandoned. 8 <The
XCVII XCVIII

misfortune can become so great that his destiny,> this self-destruction, <leads him to
renounce life to the point> of being completely doomed to emptiness. <But by
considering the most radical destiny in this way, the human being has at the same
time risen above all destiny; life has been unfaithful to him, but not he to life; He has
avoided it, but not violated it; he may feel longing for her as for an absent friend, but
she cannot pursue him as his enemy; and he is completely invulnerable, / he
withdraws like a modest plant from all contact and avoids life rather than make it his
enemy, rather than arouse a destiny; This is how Jesus demanded that his friends
abandon father, mother and everything, so as not to be exposed to a possible fate
allying themselves with a degenerate world. And so also: Whoever wants to take your
tunic, give him your cloak also; If a member hinders you, cut it off. Supreme freedom,
that is, the ability to renounce everything to preserve oneself, is the negative
attribute of the beauty of the soul. On the other hand, whoever wants to save his life
will lose it. So the greatest guilt is compatible with the greatest innocence; and the
most radical destiny, with being above all destiny.
A disposition of mind so superior to the legal situation, far from being confined
to the objective, has nothing to forgive the offender, and the fact is that he has not
violated any of his rights, once he has renounced it as soon as his object. And since
she has not hurt any life in herself, she is willing to reconcile, because it is easy for
her to immediately recover any living relationship, to enter again into the relationship
of friendship, of love; As for her, she knows of no hostile feelings, no conscience or
demand that the other restore the violated right, nor pride that would require the
other to confess that he has been below him in the lower sphere of law.> XCIX
Forgiveness of faults, the willingness to reconcile with the other C : such is the
condition that Jesus emphatically sets for one's own faults to be forgiven and CI <your
own hostile destiny is eliminated. Both things are nothing but different applications of

XCVII The 1st version continues: Both struggle and abandonment should have a limit; but
XCVIII The 1st version continues: And this is how Jesus also oscillates between both, more in
his behavior than in his doctrine
XCIX
1
In the 1st version, everything that precedes this paragraph is summarized as follows: If someone
is involved by the action of another in a destiny, he can reconcile this by not incurring the
enmity on his part, or by eliminating it by forgiving the offender and reconciliation with
him.
C
2
The 1st version follows: it is the elimination of the right and the law that makes its
appearance with it;
CI The 1st version follows: and this forgiveness necessarily follows from that condition, since
it is the opposite or the overcoming of the enmity and opposition of rights, opposition that
is the only one that provokes destiny; He who, having opposed others, is willing to
reconcile with them, harbors a disposition capable of eliminating by itself the rights and
the enmity that he has provoked. The disposition to be in harmony with the offender is
nothing but the other side of the same disposition with the offended, of the restoration of
the life hurt by itself, of the elimination of the destiny caused by the crime that oneself
committed. That is why Jesus repeats so much: as you forgive others their faults, yours will
also be forgiven by your heavenly Father.
 1
9
the same trait of the soul. In reconciliation with the offender, the spirit
9 stops
adhering to the right that it achieved against him in that legal opposition, and by
abandoning the right as its hostile destiny - the evil genius of the other -, it is
reconciled with him and has gained the same in life. , has made so many other lives
friendly that were hostile to him, he has reconciled the divine with himself and the
destiny that his own crime had armed against him has dissolved in the night air.
In addition to the personal hatred arising from the offense that the individual has
suffered - hatred that aspires to the fulfillment of the right thus arisen against the
other - there is also a righteous anger, a rage for rigor in the fulfillment of the law
that is not directed against a grievance. individual but against a violation of its
concepts, its precepts. This just hatred, by recognizing and establishing duties and
rights for others, whom it judges subordinating to them, establishes those same rights
and duties for itself; but by making their destiny the just anger for their crimes, which
does not forgive them, he has also deprived himself of the possibility of receiving
forgiveness for his faults, of reconciling himself with a destiny that affected him for
them, since he has consolidated qualities that do not allow him to rise above his
realities, his faults.> This is why the commandments are due: do not judge and you
will not be judged, because according to the measure with which you measure, you
will be measured. The measure is the laws CII <and rights>; What this commandment
cannot mean is that the transgressions to which you turn a blind eye will also be
forgiven to you – only an association of criminals grants its members the right to be
bad.CIII But beware of doing good and loving because the laws say so and out of
obedience to the commandments, instead of feeling their living origin, CIV <for that is
to recognize a dominion over you against which you are powerless, / stronger than
you, a power that is not you; Prior to your action you establish something foreign both
to yourself and to others, you absolutize a fragment of the whole, of the human spirit;
With this you establish a dominion of the laws and a servitude of sensitivity, or of the

CII The 1st version follows: by which one judges, laws to which others are subjected,
with which each one submits himself, since life is above all;
CIII The 1st version continues: it cannot mean that, if you excuse others from doing
good and loving, you are also exempt;
CIV The 1st version presents from here until the end of the paragraph the following editorial
variant: if not, you yourselves put yourself under the dominion of the laws, which cannot
but judge you, over which you have no power, which are stronger than you; and your
judges are your lords, an indomitable power, to which, like everyone else, you yourselves
are forever subjected, without being able to rise above it in love.
 2
0
individual, and you feel the possibility of punishments, not of a destiny, those0coming
from outside, from something independent, while this is due to your nature and you It
is certainly hostile for the moment, but it is not yet upon you, but only against you.>
The renunciation of right and perseverance in love not only avoids the fate in
which one could become entangled, if one were to accept the gauntlet <holding one's
right against the offender>; Also a destiny awakened against oneself by one's own
action of an illegitimate violation of life can be appeased by a love that becomes
stronger than that. CV
<The punishment of the law is nothing but just; What crime and
punishment have in common, their connection is mere equality, not life.> [T]he same
blows that the criminal has given are those that he in turn receives, CVI The tyrant in
turn provokes annoying rebels,CVII the murderer executioners; <and the rebels and the
executioners, who do what the tyrants and the executioners did, are called righteous,
because they do the same; Do it consciously as avengers or as blind instruments, it is
not your soul that counts but only your actions. In other words, in justice we cannot
speak of reconciliation, of returning to life.> Before the law, the criminal is nothing
more than a criminal being; but just as the [law] is a fragment of human nature, so is
the [criminal]; If the [law] were a whole, an absolute, neither would the criminal be
more than a criminal. Nor does the hostility of fate prevent us from feeling that the
punishment is fair. But since this [punishment] does not come from a law external to
the human, since only in the human being does the law and the right of destiny arise,
it is possible to return to the original state, to the totality; and the human being is
more than an existing sin, <more than a crime endowed with personality;> he is a
human being, in him there is crime and destiny, <he is capable of gathering himself
into himself> and, when he does so, overcomes them CVIII
. <The elements
from reality have dissolved, spirit and body have separated;> the crime remains, true,
but in the past, like a fragment, <like a dead ruin,> the part of it that was a bad
conscience has disappeared and the vision that he had of himself has ceased to be the
memory of crime <; life has found life again in love. Just as there is nothing foreign
that comes between sin and punishment, there is nothing between sin and its
forgiveness; life split from itself and comes together again. 5

CV The 1st version continued: No improvement can be expected from punishment, since it is
nothing but a manifestation of justice and only justice is what it preaches;
CVI The 1st version continued: the punishment only makes him feel his powerlessness or,
rather, a power equal to his own;
CVII 1st version: instead of “annoying rebels” it says “tyrants”.
CVIII The 1st version continued : and it immediately rises above reality,
 2
0
(Certainly in the spirit of the Jews, an alien court opened an unbridgeable
1 abyss
between impulse and action, pleasure and act, life and crime, crime and forgiveness;
every time they were referred to a link between sin and reconciliation in love, their
Being without love could not help but become indignant, judging - if his hatred was
compatible with the form of a judgment - that such an idea was the idea of a
madman. CIX
And they had entrusted all the harmony of beings, all the love, spirit and
life to an object that was foreign to them, <they had stripped themselves of all the
<geniuses> in which human beings are united / and placed CX nature in other people's
hands; They were bound by chains, laws given by a higher power; The conscience of
disobedience towards the lord found its immediate satisfaction in the corresponding
punishment or the payment of the debt constituted its immediate satisfaction, nor did
they know any other bad conscience than the fear of punishment; and the fact is that
self-consciousness directed against oneself presupposes in any case an ideal
confronted with a reality that is not up to its standard, an ideal proper to the human
being, an awareness of his own nature as a whole; But the misery of the Jews reached
the point that when they looked at each other they no longer found anything; They
had stripped themselves of all nobility, of all beauty; Their poverty was at the service
of the infinitely rich and what they stole from him, with the sense of their own
identity that they appropriated from him, had provided them - unlike a bad
conscience - a reality that was not poorer, but richer; Now, then they had to fear that
the lord they had robbed would make them sacrifice their loot by returning it to him,
which would throw them back into the experience of their poverty. The only way to
settle his debts was to pay them to his omnipotent creditor; but, once paid, again 5

Here Hegel later made a call in the text that orders the order to be reversed between the next
two paragraphs, as this translation does with the critical edition (not like Nohl). This also draws
parallels.
They were left with nothing. CXI
A better soul, upon becoming aware of its guilt, does

CIX Beginning of this paragraph in the 1st version: It is certainly painful to compare the feeling
of a beautiful soul - and the recognition of a beautiful soul by another - with the spirit of
the Jews, as well as to see the way in which they were going to receive the announcement
of the forgiveness of sins; But it becomes even clearer with this comparison what the spirit
of Jesus and that of the Jews was, and why Jesus expressed himself in the form of the
forgiveness of sins. To the Jews this announcement of the forgiveness of sins must have
been absolutely incomprehensible,
CX Here it has been deleted from the 1st version: the beautiful links of
CXI The 1st version continued: If they were only debtors to the Lord, if they only owed
atonement to him, it had to be incomprehensible to them how a human being could
announce the forgiveness of sins, find in love the certainty of that [forgiveness], to live
 2
0
not seek through sacrifice to buy anything or return what was stolen; what
2 his
voluntary deprivation, his wholehearted gift, his fervent prayer seek – as opposed to a
feeling of duty and observance – is to draw closer with his soul to something pure, to
strengthen his life in the intuition of the beauty he longs for. and achieve free delight
and joy, something that your conscience is incapable of reaching when enclosed in
itself; On the other hand, the Jew, by paying his debt, had only resumed the
observance from which he wanted to escape, and returned from the altar with the
feeling of a failed attempt and of having renewed the recognition of his servile yoke.
Unlike the Jewish return to obedience, reconciliation in love is a liberation; Unlike the
recognition, again, of domination, this is eliminated once the living bond is recovered,
the spirit of love, of mutual faith, of a spirit that, in the face of domination, is the
supreme freedom: a state which for the Jewish spirit represents the most
incomprehensible contrast.
Later it will be better seen that Jesus did not place the connection between sin
and its forgiveness, between alienation from God and reconciliation with him, outside
of nature; In any case, here it can already be said that he put reconciliation in love
and the fullness of life, and> 1 in this sense it was expressed on any occasion and with
hardly any changes in form. Wherever he found faith, he boldly said: your sins are
forgiven, a sentence that does not constitute an objective annulment of punishment
or a destruction of destiny, which was not eliminated, but rather the confidence of
one who recognized himself in a common disposition - the faith that understood him. -
and reading in it his own elevation over law and destiny, he announced the forgiveness
of sins; Only a pure, or purified, soul can throw itself into the arms of the one who is
pure with such trust in a human being, with such dedication, with a love that reserves
nothing; <and faith in Jesus means more than knowing what he really is, feeling that
one's reality is less in power

1 and strength, and serve him; Faith is knowing the spirit with the spirit, and only
equal spirits can know and understand each other, while unequal ones only know that
they are not what the other is; Difference in the power of the spirit, in its degree of
strength, is not inequality, but the weakest person seeks, like a child, the protection
of the one who is superior to him, or can be educated until he reaches his height. His
among humans as a spirit above laws and domination, how there was going to be a living
bond before which all chains are founded and in which the utmost freedom is found, how
all domination was going to disappear in the mutual faith, so that only with crime would
lord and law appear.
1
Beginning of this paragraph in the 1st version: This idea of crime, destiny and reconciliation is
that of Christ,
 2
0
is only faith, while he finds in another the beauty that is yet to be developed in3 him;
That is to say, that his own behavior and activity have not yet achieved peace and
balance with the world, that he still needs to gain a firm awareness of his relationship
with things. And this is how Jesus expresses it (Jn 12:36): believe in the light until you
yourselves are the light, and you yourselves will become children of the light. On the
other hand, it is said about Jesus (Jn 2:25) that he did not trust the Jews who believed
in him, because he knew them and because he did not need their testimony nor did he
recognize himself in them.> Boldness, <security> deciding about the fullness <of life>
and the richness of love [is based] on the feeling of someone who carries within
himself the entire human nature; That spirit does not require that celebrated wisdom
about human nature, a science that is certainly broad and very useful for torn beings,
whose nature contains a great plurality, many dispersed particularities of all colors;
but what they seek will always escape them, the spirit, replaced by mere
characteristics, while a moment is enough for an integral nature to feel it completely
and experience its harmony or its cacophony; hence the sure, confident expression of
Jesus: your sins are forgiven.
Once Peter recognized a divine nature in Jesus, thus demonstrating that he had
felt all the depth of the human being to the point of being able to conceive a human
being as a child of God, Jesus gave him the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven; What he
bound should be bound in Heaven, what he loosed also in Heaven should be loosed.
Since Peter had at that moment reached the consciousness of a God, he had to be able
to discover in anyone <the divinity - respectively the lack of it - or the divinity as a
feeling of it in a third [, that is,] the force of > faith <or disbelief>, a faith that would
free him/<, or not,> from the persistence of destiny, from eternal, immutable
domination and from laws; I had to understand the attitudes – whether their crimes
belong to the past or their spirits still linger[, namely] guilt and destiny; He had to
bind what was still under the reality of the crime, and untie with the power to declare
it above its criminal reality.
There is in the story of Jesus another <beautiful> example of a repentant sinner:
the famous Mary Magdalene, the beautiful sinner. Let me here consider as different
forms of the same story narratives divergent in time, place and other circumstances,
which also indicate different events; This is not about what <reality> was. CXII nor does
it change anything in our point of view. Maria <, aware of her guilt,> CXIII learns that
Jesus is eating in the house of a Pharisee surrounded by a large number of respectable
and honest people ( honnêtes gens , most resentful of <the faults of a beautiful soul CXIV
); his spirit makes him cross>CXV ahead of this company to Jesus, she stands weeping at
CXII 1st version: the substance of the matter
The entire passage has received many small editorial changes, which can only be
collected in part.
CXIII 1st version:bad woman life
CXIV 1st version: the beauty
CXV 1st version: boldly crosses
 2
0
his feet behind him and covers them with tears and dries them with her hair,4/ kisses
them and anoints them with perfumes of authentic and precious spikenard water;
timid virginity in its proud self-reference cannot proclaim the necessity of love; Even
less can the outpouring of his soul challenge the righteous gaze of good people, the
Pharisees and the disciples. His sins consist of having skipped the scope of the law; but
a deeply wounded soul, on the verge of despair, cannot help but force its shyness at
the top of its lungs, - despite its own feeling of what is right - giving and enjoying all
the fullness of love, to sink its conscience in this intimate pleasure. . Before these
tears that flow, before these living kisses that erase any guilt, before this beatitude of
a love <that is drinking the reconciliation of its own effusion>, the only thing that
<feels>CXVI the righteous <Simon,> is 1
<the inconvenience of Jesus paying attention to
such a creature; He assumes it to such an extent that he neither expresses it nor
thinks about it, but immediately draws the conclusion that, if Jesus were a prophet,
he would know that this woman is a sinner.> Her many sins are forgiven, says Jesus,
because she has loved much. ; But he who is forgiven little has loved little. <Through
Simon's mouth only his discernment had spoken;> among Jesus' friends a much nobler
interest arose, a moral interest: the perfume could surely have been sold for three
hundred denarii and the money given to the poor; his moral tendency to help the
poor, his calculating good sense,CXVII His <attentive,> intelligent virtue is nothing more
than brutality; and it is thatCXVIII <not only did they not understand the beauty of the
situation, but> they were even offending the sacred outpouring of a loving spirit. Why
do you sadden her?, says Jesus, what she has done for me is a beautiful work; and 1 <it
is the only thing in the story of Jesus qualified as beautiful: only a woman full of love,
expressing herself> so spontaneously, without seeking any practical or doctrinal
application. <Surely it is not out of vanity nor> 2
to put his disciples in the right point
of view, <but> to calm the situation, <so> Jesus has to draw their attention to a point
to which they are sensitive, without explain to them the beauty of the [situation],

CXVI 1st version: go

1
1
The 1st version continues: the sinner, the just man was not up to the task of such a
scene;
CXVII1st version: his finalist wisdom
CXVIIIThe 1st version continues: they felt nothing
The 1st version continues: and of all the beautiful teachings, of the sublime acts that the
story of Jesus presents, this is the most beautiful, because only a woman who loves could
act like this
2
The 1st version follows: to reconcile his disciples a little with this action
3
The 1st version follows: preventing scandalizing a sensitive mind and disturbing it with
certain aspects of the action
 2
0
deriving from the action a kind of veneration towards their person. In the 5face of
brute souls we must now content ourselves with preventing them from profaning <a
beautiful spirit>, 3
; It would be useless to try to explain to a coarse nature the fine
aroma of the spirit,CXIX / whose breath he was unable to perceive. <“He has embalmed
me,” says Jesus, “in anticipation of my burial.”> “Many sins are forgiven, because he
loved much.” <”Go in peace, your faith has saved you.”> CXX Someone will say that it
would have been better if Mary [Magdalene] had accommodated herself to the destiny
of Jewish life, if she had traveled through it like an automaton of her time, correct
<and vulgar, without sin and> without love: without love, since surely the The time of
his people was one of those in which a beautiful spirit could not live without sin,
<both this [time] and any other> could return through love to the most beautiful
conscience.
But love not only reconciles the criminal with destiny, it also reconciles the
human being with virtue, which means 6
that, if love were not the only principle of
virtue, virtue would always also be its own opposite. / What Jesus opposed to <total>
slavery under the law of a foreign lord was not a <partial> servitude under one's own
law, the violence against oneself of Kantian virtue, but 7
<virtues> without domination
or submission, <variations of love; and if they were not to be seen as variations of One
Living Spirit, but [each] virtue were absolute, insoluble collisions would occur between
most absolutes [virtues]; and without this unification in the spirit> every virtue lacks
something, since <by its name it is singular and therefore> limited; The circumstances
that make it possible, <the objective conditions of an action,> are contingent, apart
from the fact that the / reference of virtue to its object is also singular; CXXI and what is
excluded by it is not limited to the relations of such virtue with other objects. [S]o
that every virtue, both in its concept and in its activity, has its limit, beyond which it
cannot go. No matter how virtuous someone is in accordance with a certain virtue and
only it, while also acting beyond the limit of their virtue, they will have conduct <
faithful to their virtue, > but necessarily and totally vicious; On the other hand, if in it
there is another virtue whose scope extends outside the limit of the first, it can well
be said that the virtuous conviction does not enter into any collision CXXII <, as long as it

CXIX The first version continues: if you have not incorporated it into your being as soon as the
first breath arrives, you are already condemned to your coarse condition.
CXX The 1st version continues: What are a thousand automatic watches in their correct
movement against a single moment of love like this? For a debased humanity, a beautiful
soul had to become a sinner.
CXXI 1st formulation of the following sentence: and excludes other relationships with [its object],
CXXII
 2
0
is taken in isolation <and in general, that is, under abstraction from the virtues6 seated
here>; in fact, virtuous conviction / is only one; but <this same goes against what was
previously assumed and, once both virtues are established,> the practice of one denies
the matter of the other <and therefore the possibility of its realization, being as it is
another virtue equally absolute, with which the well-founded demand of this other is
rejected.> [A] right that was renounced in one relationship can no longer be sacrificed
in another or, if it is reserved for this one, the first will be left with nothing. As the
range of human situations opens, the number of virtues also grows.

6
Subsection of the 1st version: if I may be allowed the expression,
7
The 1st version continues: the virtuous disposition – the expression “disposition” has the
drawback that it does not refer at the same time to the activity, to the operating virtue –
as well as the number of inevitable collisions and the impossibility of fulfilling the
[virtues themselves. ]. If someone of many virtues wants to set priorities among the
mass of his creditors, which he finds impossible to satisfy, he is already declaring
himself less innocent against the past ones than against the others, which he considers
superior; In other words, virtues can also cease to be absolutely binding and even
become vices. In this complexity of relationships and with so many virtues, the despair
of virtue and/even its own criminality is inevitable. Only if a virtue renounces firm
<and absolute> consistency in its limited form, if it renounces taking part even in the
only situation that is exclusive to it, if the living <One> spirit begins to act CXXIII only in
accordance with the totality <of the given circumstances, but without any limitation,
without their diversity dividing him,> but he himself is the one who limits himself,
only then, although the circumstances remain complex, is when that amount of
absolute and incompatible virtues. Here it is not at all the case that all virtues are
based on the same principle, only that this principle [would] present itself in different
variants depending on the situations, as a particular virtue; and it is precisely for that
reason, because this principle is general and therefore it is a concept, in concrete
situations <the / concrete application> necessarily has to occur CXXIV , a specific
virtue, a certain obligation; (<immutable are
[supposedly] the reality given in the complexity of situations, as well as the principle,
the norm for all and consequently its various applications to realities, the multiple
virtues;) [but then] the virtues, by subsisting absolutely, are destroyed between
them;> 1
their unity in the norm is only apparent, since it is only thought, and such a
unity neither eliminates diversity nor unites it, but rather makes it endure in all its
force>.
2
The 1st version follows: as regards the limits between the virtues nor as regards exclusively
the conviction itself; but yes in action, in what refers to its material;
CXXIII The 1st version qualifies: virtuously
CXXIV
2
1st version: its modification
1
Editorial variant in the 1st version of the previous parenthesis: it is already objected against
that rigidity, that absolutism of the virtues, which thus destroy each other; since the
situations are diverse, there would also be multiple [virtues]; These are its principle, the
norm that applies to all [situations], since they are immutable;
 2
0
A living bond of virtues, a living unity is totally different <from the unity
7 of the
concept>; to certain situations it does not pose a specific virtue, but rather it presents
itself intact and simple even in the most motley mixture of relationships; Its external
figure can be modified infinitely, it will never be the same twice and its manifestation
will never consist of a norm, since it cannot have the form of a generality against the
particular. Just as virtue is the complement of obedience to the laws, love is the
complement of the virtues; He eliminates all the dogmatisms, the narrownesses, the
exclusions, the limits of the virtues, so that there are no longer either virtuous vices
or vicious virtues. for he is nothing but the same living relationship of beings; In love,
all separations, all restricted relationships, have disappeared, and with them also the
limitations of virtues. Where would there be room for virtues, when there is no longer
a right to renounce?
Jesus demands that love be the soul of his friends: I give you a new
commandment, that you love one another; In that they will recognize that you are my
<friends>;CXXV love <universal to all> humans is an empty invention, but characteristic
of times whose reality is so miserable that they cannot but raise ideal demands,
virtues with respect to an entity of reason, and thus appear magnificent in those
objects of thought. . Love for one's neighbor is love for those with whom one enters
into a relationship. <What is thought cannot be the object of love.> True, love cannot
be imposed, true, love belongs to sensitivity, it is an inclination; but this does not
take away any of his greatness nor does it lower him CXXVI the fact that by essence it
does not exercise any domination over a foreign being; On the contrary, it is governed
so little by duty and right that its triumph consists in not commanding anything and in
lacking hostile power against another; To say that love has conquered <does not>
mean <that it has subdued its enemies, as it is said that duty has conquered, but> that
it has conquered enmity. One way to dishonor love is to order it, thus giving a name to
what is something living, a spirit; its name, the fact that it is reflected upon and
uttered is not spirit, it is not its being, but the opposite; and only as a name, as a

CXXV Here the 1st version says, instead of “ friends”, “disciples” ; and then it continues: to the
commandment to love God he adds the commandment to love one's neighbor (that is, not
to all human beings; a love that extends to everyone, about whom nothing is even known,
to whom you don't know, with whom you have no relationship,
CXXVI The 1st version continued: true, you can only order something that depends on the will
and by someone on whom it can depend; True, only reason can order and only in what
refers to duty, since reason and duty presuppose opposition and freedom; only a free will
can receive orders; the ought-to-be expresses the opposition between thought and
reality; / In this sense, love, of course, cannot be commanded,
 2
0
word, can it be ordered, only in this way can it be said: you must love; / love
8 itself
pronounces no ought-to be<; It is not a generality opposed to a particularity nor a
conceptual unity, but harmony of the spirit, divinity; Loving God means feeling in the
whole of life, feeling limitless in the infinite; True, this feeling of harmony is not a
generality; and in harmony the particular is not opposed, but rather agrees, otherwise
there would be no harmony; And love your neighbor as yourself does not mean that
you love him as much as yourself - loving yourself is a meaningless expression - but
love him as you are, a feeling of equal life, nor more powerful. nor weaker.>
Only love breaks the power of the objective, only it demolishes that entire
sphere; The limit of a virtue always continued to establish something objective on the
outside; all the greater was the insurmountable diversity of the objective established
by the plurality of the virtues; Only love is without limits, what he has not united
<lacks objectivity for him>, or he has not noticed it or it is only virtual, he does not
have it before him. CXXVII

Jesus celebrated the farewell of his friends with an agape; love is not yet
religion, so this banquet is not properly a religious action; and it is that <the union in
love>CXXVIII It cannot be the object of religious veneration without a prior objectification
by the imagination; Now, what lives and manifests itself in agape is love itself and
everything that happens in it only expresses love; love, for its part, only occurs as a
feeling, but not as an image; The felt and the imagined are not united by fantasy.
Certainly in agape something associated with feeling also objectively occurs; but there
is no image that unites them and that is why the agape oscillates between a banquet
of friends and a religious act, an oscillation that makes it difficult to unequivocally
characterize its spirit. Jesus broke the bread: take, this is my body, given for you, do
this in memory of me; He also took the cup: drink it all of you, this is my blood of the
New Testament, shed for you and for many in remission of sins; Do this in
remembrance of me.
When an Arab has drunk a cup of coffee with a stranger, he
has thus established
an alliance of friendship / with him, this common action has united them and by / this
bond the Arab is obliged to help him and be faithful to him in everything. It cannot be

CXXVII The 1st version continued : Jesus could not directly oppose love to the insensitivity of
the Jews, since, given the negative character of insensitivity, it cannot but show itself in a
way that is its positivity, justice and right; and with this legal figure it always appears, v.
g. through the mouth of Simon in the story of Mary Magdalene - if this were a prophet,
would he know that she is a sinner? -; In the same way the Pharisees consider it improper
for him to deal with publicans and sinners.
CXXVIII The 1st version said here : the force or set of forces
 2
0
said that eating and drinking in common is what is called a sign; The union between
9
sign and meaning is not <in itself> spiritual, life>, but an objective link; sign and
meaning are foreign to each other, <and their connection is exclusively outside them
in a third party, in thought.> [E]eating and drinking realize the very union <and>, far
from being a conventional sign, < It is in itself the feeling of communion; CXXIX drinking a
glass of wine together will go against the natural sensitivity of people who are
enemies, since their habitual disposition would be incompatible with the community
that this action implies.> The dinner that Jesus and his friends share is already an act
of friendship ; and they are even more united by the solemn eating of the same bread
and the drinking of the same chalice; This is also not <only> a sign of friendship, but
an act, the very feeling of friendship, of the spirit of love.
But what follows, Jesus' declaration: this is my body, this is my blood, although
it almost makes the action religious, is not enough; the declaration and the
corresponding action of distributing food and drink partly objectifies the feelings; <the
community with Jesus, the mutual friendship and the union of all in its center, its
teacher, is not only felt, but has become visible, every time Jesus calls the bread and
wine that he will distribute among all his own body and blood given for them; That
communion is not only represented in an image, in an allegorical figure, but is linked
to something real, something real / is given and consumed, bread. So, on the one
hand, feelings are objectified; but, on the other hand, this bread and this wine,> and
the act of distributing them, is not merely objective, it contains more than what is
seen, it is a mystical action; a spectator who did not know of the friendship between
them nor had understood the words of Jesus, would only have seen the distribution of
some bread and wine and its consumption; As when the friends, when saying goodbye,
broke a ring and each kept one half, the spectator sees nothing but the destruction of
a useful thing and its division into useless fragments, without

3
1st version of the following sentence: now courage is your friend ; He has not understood
the mystique that is in the fragments. Considered objectively, bread is just bread,
wine is just wine, but both are also more than that; <this plus> does not <apply to
objects> as an explanation, a mere similarity: just as each piece you eat is from a
single bread and the wine you drink from a cup, / although you are particular, you are
one in the love, in the spirit; <In the same way that you all share this bread and wine,
you all participate in my sacrifice; Take whatever simile you want, in the continuity
between the objective and the subjective, the bread and the people, it is not the
CXXIX 1st version of the following sentence: of course, coinciding while eating at a table d'
hote does not unite; But honest people who are at odds do not meet over a glass of wine
anywhere else (than at a table d' hote ) , [unless] they have first reconciled inside.
 2
1
comparison that unites the compared; It is the opposite of the parable, which presents
0
the diverse that is compared as something separate and distinct, since it is only a
matter of comparing based on thinking the equality of the different; Obviously in this
[mystical] link diversity disappears and therefore also the possibility of a comparison.
The heterogeneous are united in the most intimate way; Jn 6:56: “Whoever eats my
flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me and I in him”; or Jn 10, 7: I am the door: in
these and other strong expressions of identification, the representation is forced to
separate what is united in the diversity of a comparison, so that the / link is presented
as a comparison.> But in the case of bread and wine (as in the case of the mystical
pieces of the ring) these become mystical objects; and Jesus calls them his body and
blood, <at the same time they are consumed and felt directly; He broke the bread,
gave it to his friends, take, eat; This is my body given for you; The same goes for the
chalice, all of you drink from it; This is my blood, the blood of the new Covenant,
shed on many for the forgiveness of sins. Not only wine is blood, blood is also spirit;
the common cup, the common drink, the spirit of a new Covenant that invades many,
from which many drink life, rising above their sins; and of this fruit of the vine I will
no longer drink until the day when everything is fulfilled, then I will drink it with you
new, a new life in the Kingdom of my Father. The connection between the shed blood
and the friends of Jesus is not that it is something objective, useful, shed for their
good, but (as in the expression: he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood) it is about
the connection, the relationship with them of the wine that they are all drinking from
the same chalice, one and the same for all; They all drink and share the same feeling;
They are all filled with the same spirit of love; If what arose from the delivery of the
body and the shed blood were an advantage, if what equalized them were a common
favor, it would be nothing more than that, a concept, which unites them; But, as they
eat the bread and drink the wine, the body and blood of Jesus enters them, he is in
everyone and I have penetrated their being, like love, divinely. Thus, bread and wine
are not only objects for the understanding, nor is the act of eating and drinking
reduced to union with oneself through the annihilation of them, nor is it the mere
taste of food and drink that it feels; The spirit of Jesus, who has united his disciples,
has become present in the senses as an object, as something real. But, once love has
been objectified, the subjective that has become a thing returns to its natural state,
becoming subjective when consumed;CXXX In this sense, such a return can be compared
to the thought that has become a thing in writing, a thought that recovers its
subjectivity in reading after having become a dead object. The comparison would be
more appropriate if the understanding, upon absorbing the written word, made it
disappear as a thing; It is the same thing that happens when consuming bread and
wine, which not only makes these mystical objects feel, reviving the spirit, but even
makes them disappear. That is why the action that seems purest, most in accordance
with its purpose, is the one that only grants spirit, emotions, at the same time that it
takes over what the understanding considers its own, annihilating matter, the
inanimate. When lovers sacrifice before the altar of the goddess of love, and the pious
outpouring of their love inflames their feelings into the brightest flame, it is because
the goddess herself has entered their hearts; but the stone image remains before
them, while in agape the corporeal disappears and there is only an emotion full of
life.>

CXXX The 1st version follows: what is subjective in itself, what, arising from itself, becomes,
is [now] objective; and then it merges with us as something objective, which is foreign to
us.
 2
1
But precisely this total elimination of objectivity, while on the other
1 hand
emotion remains; This communion, which is rather an objective mixture, a visibility of
love linked to something that must be annihilated, is what prevented the action from
becoming religious; Eating the bread and drinking the wine cannot be divine in and of
themselves; They have a positive aspect: that the emotion that accompanies them
returns, so to speak, from its objectivity to its own nature, the mystical object
becomes purely subjective again; but this positive aspect is lost precisely because it
does not sufficiently objectify love. Something divine<, 1

Precisely because it is so, it cannot occur in the figure of something that is eaten or
drunk;CXXXI <in the parable it is not required that the various things being compared
constitute a unity; here, however, the thing and the feeling must be united; In
symbolic action, eating and drinking must be confused with the feeling of unity in the
spirit of Jesus; but the thing and the feeling, the spirit and the not really
HE
they mix; the fantasy is incapable ofsynthesize them into something beautiful; bread
and the wine seen
and consumed they will never be able to awaken the feeling of love, it is impossible to
find such a feeling in what that show these objects, well [it] HE
contradicts with the feelingthat produces its effective assimilation: the
transformation of eating and drinking into something subjective;> there never ceases
to be two different things: faith and the thing, devotion and sight <or taste>; what is
present in faith is the spirit; in sight <and taste>, bread and wine; They will always be
different. <[U]nderstanding contradicts sensitivity, sensitivity contradicts
understanding; The imagination, in which both are present as soon as they disappear,
cannot do anything, since it lacks an image in which to unify sensation and feeling.>
Surely in an Apollo, in a Venus, we must forget the marble, the brittle stone, and, not
Seeing in them more than the figure of the immortals, we are filled with the feeling of
their eternal youth and love. [B]ut reduce the Venus, the Apollo, to dust and say: this
is Apollo, this is Venus; then I will have before me the dust and in me the images of
the gods, but the dust and the divine will never coincide. The dust was valuable for its
form, which has disappeared, and it is now what matters; Bread was valuable for its
mystical meaning, while in veneration it must also continue to be valuable as bread,

CXXXI The 1st version continued: divinity could only last for a moment, just enough for
fantasy to accomplish the difficult task of retaining love in the thing;
 2
1
as edible. Apollo continues to be venerated, even reduced to dust, but veneration
2
cannot be directed to dust; dust can remind us of veneration, but not direct it towards
it ; What awakens is sorrow, the feeling of this bankruptcy, of this contradiction, like
sadness due to the incompatibility between the corpse and the memory of living
forces. The disciples' dinner was followed by sadness for the imminent loss of their
teacher, while after an authentic religious action the entire soul is satisfied; Today's
Christians also feel after communion / a devout rapture <without joy, or else a
peaceful sadness, since the tense division of sensitivity and understanding was
unsatisfactory, the devotion lacked something; > what was promised was divine and
was has melted in the mouth.

HGW 2.24 5

[3] CXXXII CXXXIII

There is nothing more interesting than contemplating Jesus' <frontal> attack

against <the principle of submission under> the infinite Lord of the Jews and what
opposes him; Here, in the very marrow of the spirit of the Jews, is where the combat
had to be most fierce, because in it everything was attacked with a single blow; Of
course, the attack on any <branch of the spirit of the Jews> also affects it at its roots,
but that does not mean that there is awareness that this is what is affected; The
resentment does not arise until under the fight over a detail, a dispute that reaches
even to the principles is increasingly perceived; It did not take long for the opposition
between the Jews and Jesus to become explicit about what was most sublime for
them.
The idea that the Jews had of God as their lord and sovereign Jesus is opposed
by a relationship between God and humans 1 like that of a father with his children. 2

CXXXII
I thank Jorge Fernández –Universidad San Martín, Buenos Aires- for reviewing with me this brief
text and the following one, both of which were complex reworkings by Hegel. They have usually
been presented until now, along with a third below, as a single text.
1
1st version of the previous words: a relationship of divinity with him and with the world
CXXXIII
2
The 1st version continues: Jesus himself is called both the son of God and the son of man; In
the relationship between a father and his son, we normally only see the latter's
relationship with the latter, who is his parent, in front of whom he takes on his own
existence and from whom he receives external training and sustenance; But that does not
mean that they are two perfectly different beings, with watertight identities: Jesus feels
much more intimately united with his father. Could it not be that the son shares the same
nature with the father?
 2
1
<In the various areas of what is accessible to consciousness> morality 3puts an
end to domination, while love breaks down the barriers <of the area> of morality;
butCXXXIV also <nature> itself <d>love is <still incomplete>; happy love leaves no
loopholes for objectivity; but any

CXXXIV The 1st version continues : love itself can be happy or unhappy
 2
1
reflection takes <it>CXXXV , <restores objectivity> and with it the field of limitations
4
reappears. <(The union of reflection and love, / the thought that unites both, in a
word: the religious, is <therefore> the TAnpoua of love.)> The intuition of love <seems
to fulfill the demand for plenitude,> but a contradiction remains: what intuits, what
represents, limits, <at the same time it only captures the limited>, while the object
would be infinite: impossible to contain the infinite in this container.

HGW 2.2 48

[4]

<What you have to do is think about the pure life,> 1 dispense with all acts, with
everything that the human being was or will be; The character of a person simply
abstracts from the activity, [since] it expresses something general common to his
concrete actions; <the consciousness of pure life would be> 2
consciousness of what
the human being is: in it there is no developed, that is, real, diversity or plurality.
This simplicity is not negative, it is not the unity of an abstraction 3
<(since in the
unity of abstraction either it is only a concretion, and all other predicates are
dispensed with, [or] that pure unity is limited to stating the demand to abstract from
everything determined: negative indeterminacy. Pure life is being), plurality is not
something absolute. From that purity arise all / lives <singular, impulses> and all
action; It certainly emerges in the consciousness 4 <of those who believe in it and that
is how it stays alive in the human being;> but in part it is found outside of this, since,
since consciousness is a limitation, it does not manage to become completely a with
infinity. There is only one way to believe in God: abstracting from every action, from
everything determined, while retaining <purely> the soul of each action, from
everything determined; where there is no soul, where there is no spirit, there is
nothing divine; who always feels determined,

CXXXV The 1st version continues: it takes these moments

1
Beginning of the paragraph in the 1st version: Pure self-awareness is
2
1st version of this subsection : pure self-consciousness is
3
The 1st version follows: but something alive, an entity,
4
The 1st version follows: who feels it, thinks it
 2
1
always doing or suffering this or that, acting like this or that, 1 <in abstracting,
5
instead of purifying the spirit of everything limited, it only sees in the permanent
something opposite to the living, the domination of the general; all qualities
eliminated, / the only thing that remains above the consciousness of them is the
empty unity of the totality of objects as a dominating being over them. Only the pure
feeling of life can be opposed to this infinity of dominating and being dominated,
[since] it has its justification and its authority in itself; but <, upon entering into this
opposition, > appears as something concrete in a concrete person 2 and > is incapable
of generating the intuition of purity in a profaned gaze, tied to realities; Within this
limit the only thing that the human being can do is refer to his origin, to the source
from which every figure of limited life flows; 3 impossible for the human being to take
the whole that he is now as an absolute, he has to appeal to something higher, to the
Father, who lives and endures immutably in the midst of all transformations.
( HGW 2.25 2 ) Jesus declares and repeats many times that what he does is not his work, that
What he says are not his thoughts, that all his strength and his teaching have been
given to him by the Father; that neither in his dispute against Judaism nor in favor of
its doctrine does he have any other legitimation than this firm conviction that what
speaks for him in him is, at the same time, above the present here, who here teaches
and speaks; That is why he is never called God, but rather the son of God, since it is
not God who is man; but as a man he is also a son of God, he belongs to a higher rank,
there is also a nature found in him superior to his involvement in limitations; If he
expects faith from the Jews it is exclusively because and in the way in which his
Father has revealed to them that they too come from God; When Peter confessed to
him that he was begotten by God and son of Life, Jesus said to him: This was not
revealed to you by your finitude but by my Father.

1
of hi
1
The 1st version continued: incapable of any other divinity than that which feels
turns
consciousness above all - the whole of its objects and its sovereign -, a divinity that
the more it rises above everything, every living force. To the infinite void and the infinite
mass of qualities
2
2
1st version: in the dispute over the qualitative, each one presents himself as a
determined being
3
The 1st version continued: but in these figures of limited life there is something that is
foreign to the pure and, once imprisoned in this limit,
<As the divine is pure life, when talking about it, whatever it may be, in no case
can an opposition be attributed to it; likewise / all expressions of reflection on
objective relationships or those relating to the activity, [however] directed [they may
be] against its objective treatment, must be avoided; and the only effectiveness of
the divine consists in the unification of spirits; only the spirit captures and includes
the spirit in itself. Expressions such as command, teach, learn, see, know, do, want,
 2
1
access (the Kingdom of Heaven), go only express relationships of the objective,
6 trying
to assume something objective in a spirit. That is why one can only speak of the divine
in the enthusiasm of inspiration. Jewish culture shows us that only a realm of living
relationships had accessed their consciousness, and this even more in the form of
concepts than in that of virtues and qualities; This is all the more natural because
they had to express above all the mere relationships between alien, diverse beings,
such as compassion or kindness. Among the evangelists John is the one who speaks the
most about the divine and the union of Jesus with him; but Jewish culture, so poor in
spiritual relationships, forced it to use, for the most spiritual, objective connections,
a language of reality; That's why / sounds many times harsher than if you had to
express emotions in a banking style. [T]he Kingdom of Heaven, entering the kingdom
of Heaven, I am the door, I am the true delicacy, whoever eats my flesh, etc.: this is
how prosaic are the realistic connections to which the spiritual is subjected .> 1

HGW 2.25 4

[5]

HGW 2.25 3 1
THE 1ST VERSION ENDS LIKE THIS: / Certainly the link between the infinite and the finite is a
sacred
mystery, since it is life and therefore the very mystery of life; It is true that we speak of a
duplicity, of a divine and a human nature, between which there is no room for union,
since, whatever this may be, in any case they will continue to be two, once they have
been established as absolutely distinct. This relationship of a man with God - that of being
a son of God as a trunk is the father of the branches, the foliage and the fruits - had to
extremely outrage the Jews, who had established an unbridgeable abyss between the
human and the divine, denying our nature any participation in the divine.
<The state in which Jewish culture was found cannot be called childish, nor can it be
said that its language was childish and underdeveloped; Some deep, childish sounds
still remain in it – or rather have been restored; but the rest, the heavy, forced way of
expressing itself, comes more from the maximum deformation of that people; It is
with this that a purer being has to fight and what makes him suffer when he must
express himself in his forms, which are also essential, since at the end of the day he
belongs to this people.
<The gospel of John begins with a series of theses that deal with God and the
 2
1
divine in more appropriate language; It belongs to the simplest language of 7reflection
to say: In the beginning was the Logos, the Logos was in God and God was the Logos,
in him was [the] life. But these phrases only have the deceptive appearance of
judgments, since their predicates are not concepts, something general as the
expression of a reflection in judgments necessarily contains, but the predicates
themselves are in turn something that is, living; Nor is this simple reflection adequate
to express the spiritual with spirit. As nowhere else, in the communication of the
divine the receiver is required to grasp it with a deep spirit of his own, nothing is
more impossible to learn, to assimilate passively, since everything that is said about
the divine in the form of reflection It is directly absurd; and the passive and inert
assimilation of the divine, in addition to leaving a deeper spirit empty, thus destroys
the understanding that receives it and for which it represents a contradiction; That is
why this always objective language only gains meaning and weight in the spirit of the
reader, which will be as different as the relationships of life are different and as the
opposition between the living and the dead has become conscious.
<The beginning of the gospel of John can be understood in two extreme ways;
the most objective understands the VerbCXXXVI As something real, an individual, the
most subjective understands it as reason; the former as a particular, the latter as the
generality, there the most unique and exclusive reality, here a mere being of reason.
If God and Logos are distinguished it is because the entity must be considered from
two points of view; In effect, reflection supposes that what it gives the form of being
reflected upon is not reflected at the same time; On the one hand it is one, without
division or opposition, at the same time that separation, the infinite division of what
is one, is possible; The only difference between God and the Logos is that the former
is matter in the form of the Logos, the same Logos is within God, both are one. The
diversity, the infinity of the real is the infinite real division, everything is for the
Logos; the world is not an emanation of divinity, because then the real would be
completely divine; but, as reality, it is an emanation, part of the infinite division; but
at the same time [it is] life in the part (almost better to refer ■ 8v XUTO to the
neighbor ovs SV or y8yovsv ) or in what is infinitely divided (referring SV XUTO to
Aoyog); 2 the singular limited, in opposition, dead is at the same time a branch of the
infinite tree of life; each of the parts, outside of which is the whole, is at the same

CXXXVI Hegel consistently uses the term “Lógos”, which in this case is replaced by
“Word”, our usual equivalent biblical translation. This entire paragraph by Hegel can be
understood as a very personal commentary on the first fourteen verses of the Gospel of
Saint John.
 2
1
time a whole, one life; and this life in turn - also insofar as it is reflected,8also with
regard to the division, to the relationship between subject and predicate - is life (on)
and captured life (pog). The limited has opposition; for the light there is darkness.
John the Baptist was not the light, he only testified to it; He felt the One, but, since
he only became conscious in certain situations, that consciousness was not pure; he
believed in the One, but his consciousness was not equal to life; Only when
consciousness is equal to life and the only difference between the two is that the
latter is the entity, the former the entity as reflected [, only then is consciousness]
dog [light]. Although John was not himself a dog, however, that light was in every
human being who comes to the world of humans (koGuoG: the whole of human
relationships and human life, more limited than – v. 3- TAVTG i y8yovsv ). It is not
only that the human being is povousvog [enlightened] from the moment he enters the
world; the light (pog) is also in the world itself, this is one[,] all its relations,
concretions are the work of the aveponov (O toG, of the developing human being,
without the world in which these relations live recognizing him). he, [which is] the
entire nature accessing consciousness, without that [nature] making its way into the
consciousness of the world, to which nothing is more its own (tSiov), more familiar
than the 2

2
Hegel refers here to a classic exegetical doubt about how to punctuate the passage
between verses 3 and 4 at the beginning of the Gospel of Saint John:
Possibility 1: (v.3) “Everything was through him and without him nothing was generated.
(v.4) In him was life and the life was the light.”
Possibility 2: “Everything was through him and without him nothing was generated in
him. Life was and life was the light”, etc. This option, less common, which fits together
the two verses, is for Hegel “almost better.”
human world; and it is they who do not accept him, who treat him as a foreigner. But
those who recognize themselves in it receive a power that does not express a new
force, something living, but only the degree, the equality or inequality in life; they do
not become something else, but they know God and recognize themselves as his
children, weaker than him, but of the same nature, since they become aware of that
relationship ( ovoua ) of the avepoTov [human being] as dotousvov (POTI a?neivo
[illuminated by the true light], which does not find its being in something foreign, but
in God.
<Until now it had only been about the truth itself and the human being in
general, aveponog spxousvog sig TO koouov [human being come into this world] (there
is no other possible antecedent of the AUTOV of verse 10 and following); [on the other
hand] in verse 14 the Logos is also presented in its modification as an individual, a
 2
1
figure in which it has also been shown to us; John not only testified of9the light
(verses. 7), but also of the individual (v. 15).
HGW 2.25 7 <No matter how much the idea of God is sublimed, the principle will always
remain
Jewish of the opposition between thought and reality, between the rational and the
sensible, the tearing apart of life, a dead cohesion / between God and the world,
when that connection can only be taken as living cohesion and from it – from the
relationship between their references - can only be spoken mystically.
<The most frequent and significant expression that Jesus uses for his relationship
with God is that of son of God, as opposed to son of man. The term for this
relationship is one of the few natural voices that happened to be preserved in the
Hebrew of that time and that is why it is among its happy expressions. The
relationship of a son with his father is not a unity, a concept - let's put unity or
agreement in convictions, equality of principles, etc. -, it is not a merely thought
unity, abstracted from the living, but a living relationship. between the living, the
same life; It is only a question of its modalities, not of essential opposition nor of a
multiplicity of absolute substantialities; Therefore the son of God is one being with
the Father, although it is something particular for each act of reflection, although
only for him. Also in the expression "a son of the Koresch lineage", for example, - as
the Arabs call the singular, an individual - it is implicit that this singular is not only a
part of the whole, that the whole, therefore, is not found outside of him, but
precisely he is the whole, that is, the entire lineage.
It is the same thing that is evident in the consequence it has on the way of war of a
people this natural and compact, and that is that each individual is subjected to the
cruelest death; On the contrary, in today's Europe, in which it is not the individual
who sustains the entire State - since the link is only a matter of thought, equal rights
for all - the war is not directed against the individual, but against / the whole, which
is outside each one; As in all truly free people, among the Arabs each one is a part,
but at the same time they are the whole. Only with objects, only with something
dead, is it true that the whole is different from the parts; On the other hand, in the
living the part is as whole as the whole and the same one as the whole; When
particular objects form a set of substances, each one numbered in its individual
quality, what is common in them, their unity, is only a concept, not an essence, an
entity; However, living beings are different essences, while their unity is one essence.
 2
2
What is contradiction in the kingdom of the dead is not contradiction in the
0 kingdom
of life. A tree with three branches constitutes with them a single tree; but any shoot
from each branch (as well as its other children: leaves and flowers) is itself a tree;
The ducts that carry the sap from the trunk to the branch are of the same nature as
the roots; If an inverted tree is planted, it will grow leaves from its roots and the
branches will take root in the earth: in short, it is exactly as true that here there is
One tree, as there are three trees.
<This essential unity of the Father and the son in divinity was also perceived by
the Jews in the relationship that Jesus attributed to himself with God, they
understood (Jn 5, 18) that Jesus becomes equal to God by calling him his Father.
Certainly Jesus could oppose human needs to the Jewish principle of the sovereign
God (for example the need to satisfy hunger versus the observance of the Sabbath);
but this was also only in general, since a deeper development of this opposition – such
as the primacy of practical reason – did not correspond to the culture of those times;
for the others his opposition was that of an individual; to counteract this notion of
individuality Jesus, / especially in [the gospel of] John, invokes again and again his
unity with God, who has given the son to have life in himself as the Father has; that
he and the Father are one, he is the bread that came down from heaven, etc.: strong
expressions (OkAnpoi Aoyo) that are not softened by declaring them metaphorical and
reducing them to conceptual units, instead of understanding them with spirit as life;
Of course, if the concepts of understanding are opposed to images, assuming that
these are dominant, then every image can only be a game, an imaginative appendage
lacking truth that must be eliminated; Instead of the life of the image, only the
objective remains.>

HGW 2.26 0 / Jesus <, however,> is not only called the son of God, but he is also called
himself son of man;CXXXVII <if the expression son of God means a modality of the divine,
then the son of man would also be a modality of the human; but the human being is
not a nature, a being, like divinity, but a concept, something thought; and son of man

CXXXVII
From here the 1st version continues: / The consciousness of having escaped the yoke of
realities and of being driven by God is called by Jesus the spirit of God. The figure in which
everything divine must appear, the theophany that challenges the real, must have a form;
and although this activity is opposed to the limited, it itself appears in a form, however
free it may be; This is the reason that in its appearance we can continue to distinguish
between figure and essence; The essence is what drives, what activates, and that is why
 2
2
means here a subsumption under the concept of human being; “Jesus is human”
1 is a
judgment properly speaking, the predicate is not a being but a generality(aveponog,
the being human; vlo

THE YOUNG HEGEL. WRITINGS AND SKETCHES 1

TEXT SELECTION 1
INDEX: 1
TEXT 1: 4
Excursion 1: The question of authorship 6
Tübingen 8
Bern 14
Excursion 2: Was Hegel anti-Semitic? 20
Frankfurt 23
Excursion 3: Hegel and politics 26
Epilogue 31
TEXT 2 36
[P. 165 to 265] 36
[Positivity concept] 36
[23] [ Main manuscript ] 41
1 [ Fragment about the miracle ] 124
“Fragments of historical studies” 126
Spirit of the orientals 126
[Closing on page. 265]. 145
TEXT 3 146
[P. 291 to 309] 146
[ OUTLINES and notes on positive religion ] 146
TEXT 4 168
[P. 384 to 462] 168
Jesus and his destiny 168
TEXT 5 242
[P. 472 to 483] 242
[ The positivity of the Christian religion ] 242
 2
2
limitation, the finite considered by itself, makes the concept of the human
2 being
opposed to the divine; outside / of reflection, in truth, that [limitation] does not
occur. 1 This meaning of son of man stands out most clearly

1
In the 1st version, a paragraph followed, apparently discarded with a vertical line : in the unity,
indivision or infinite articulation of the living, a member can be separated as a part among
others; This life thus modulated is found as pure life in the pure everything of life, [at the
same time that] as modulation it is opposed to the others; The Father has life in himself
and has equally given the son to have it in himself; and since this is the son of man, he has
given him power and jurisdiction; what is one lacks power, since it lacks an enemy, an
opponent, while what is real - like the human being - can be attacked by hostile forces and
enter into battle with them; Only he can also come across something foreign to him, which
on the one hand leaves him in peace, but he is not willing to live and enjoy with it, once it
has been separated and is different from him; Only he can be in legal relations with
others, setting the peaceful limits of their separation and caring for them, only he can rule
on them.

when the son of man opposes the son of God, as in Jn 5, 26 f.: “As the Father has life
in himself, so he granted the son life in himself and also gave him the power to judge,
since He is the son of man.” Then v. 22: “The Father judges no one, but has given to
the Son to judge.” On the other hand, Jn 3:17 (Mt 18:11) says: “God / has not sent his
son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world may be saved through
him.” Judging is not an act of the divine, since the law that resides in the judge is the
general opposite of the judged and to judge is to pronounce a judgment in the sense
of establishing agreement and difference, recognizing a unity in thought or an
opposition of incompatibles. ; the son of God / does not judge or distinguish or
separate or retain in his opposition what is opposed; the divine moves by manifesting
itself and not by legislating or establishing laws or affirming the dominion of the law,
on the contrary: the world must be saved by the divine [-neither] save

Jesus can continue talking about a spirit of God; and if in the human being the son of man
- the individuality - and the son of God - the one in whom the spirit of God dwells - are
distinguished, then the modality, that which is only vivified by God, is vulnerable and
improperly sacred, so that, if individuality is offended, the divine is not properly violated;
a sin against the son of man / can be forgiven, but not against the holy spirit; Above the
competing individualities there is something higher; One can achieve forgiveness in love,
another, by sinning against love, has sinned against herself and is stripped of all rights, of
all part in the divine. While Jesus was with his disciples, they were governed by faith in
him, the faith that in him, a human being, the divine dwells; This faith was not yet the
holy spirit, because, although they - lacking the feeling of their own divinity - could not
have that faith, in addition that feeling of self and their individuality were separated,
since the individuality depended on that of another human being; the divine in them was
not yet one with themselves; That is why Jesus, after he left, which would leave them
without outside support, promised them the holy spirit, which would be poured out on
 2
2
them; * their dependence on him will cease with his death, they will find in themselves
3 the
guide for all truth / and they will be children of God; Later it will be seen to what extent
this hope of his teacher could be fulfilled. ** CXXXVIII CXXXIX CXL
It is an expression of the spirit, since it indicates the absolute helplessness of those
who are faced with danger, and in this sense salvation is the action of a stranger on
another stranger; That is why the effectiveness of the divine can only be understood
as salvation in the sense that the saved person moves away only from his previous
situation, not from his being. - The Father does not judge; neither does the son, who
has life in himself as he is one with the Father; but at the same time he has received
the authority and the power to judge, because he is the son of man; and the modality
as such, being limited in itself, / lends itself to the opposition and separation between
the general and the particular; In the [limited] is where the comparison relative to
matter takes place, the comparison of forces, that is, power, and, with/with respect
to form, the activity of comparing, the concept, the law, its separation or agreement
with an individual, understanding it and pronouncing the verdict. On the other hand,
man could not judge if he were not divine, because only then can he have the
criterion to judge: separation. Its power to bind and loose is based on the divine. The
verdict itself can be of two types: dominating the non-divine merely in representation
or in reality. Jesus says (Jn 3, 18ff.): “Whoever believes in the Son of God is not
condemned; but whoever does not believe in him is already condemned”, for not
having recognized this relationship of the human being with God, his divinity; and
“their condemnation is that they loved darkness more than truth.” Therefore his
condemnation consists precisely in his disbelief. The divine human does not approach
evil with a dominating, oppressive violence, because, although the divine son of man
has received power, it is not violent, it does not deal with the world, it does not fight
it in reality nor does it instill in it its verdict. like the consciousness of a

CXXXVIII ADDED TO THE MARGIN IN SMALL PRINT: Love a) limited to a few

b) of work – not among Christians
Elimination of property, community of women, eating and drinking, praying[:] are not [an]
activity - so only in concept are Christians united, they love others[, but] they are not vitally united
in your God
CXXXIX REMAINS CROSSED OUT: Jesus calls the Light the consciousness of divine freedom and harmony,
the vivification of all the figures of life solely and exclusively through divinity, while he understands
by the Kingdom of God the divine life of humans, their harmony through while its diversity; It speaks
of kingdom, of domination, because what other harmony could the Jews understand, if not the
harmony of domination? Speaking like this introduces something heterogeneous into the divine
harmony of humanity, since it continues to show something separate and conflictive, which cannot
but be very far away, as if from pure human alliance, from beauty and divine life ***
CXL Added under the beginning of this paragraph: DESTINY OF JESUS – RENUNCIATION OF THE RELATIONSHIPS
OF LIFE – A) CIVIL PERSON, B) CITIZEN, C) COEXISTENCE WITH OTHERS – FAMILY, RELATIVES, FOOD
Jesus' relationship with the world, part flight, part reaction, fights with it. As long as Jesus
had not changed the world, he had to avoid it.
 2
2
punishment; / in those who are incapable of sharing their life and enjoyment
4 with
him, in those who have isolated themselves and separated from him, he recognizes as
limitations the limits that he has imposed on himself; Although such limitations may
mean his greatest pride in the world and are not felt as limitations, although the
world may not recognize his illness in the express form of suffering, at least it does
not have the form of an offense that violates a law; It is his disbelief that places the
[world] in an inferior realm, which constitutes his own condemnation, even though, in
his unconsciousness of the divine, he is comfortable with his own misery.
<The filial relationship of Jesus with God could be understood in two ways,
depending on whether or not the divine was placed absolutely beyond the human: as
knowledge or as faith. Knowledge considers this relationship as two natures, one
divine and the other human, a divine being and a human being, each with its
personality, its substantiality, but always two, since they are conceived absolutely
separate. Those who affirm this absolute diversity, but at the same time demand / to
think of the absolutes in the most intimate relationship as one, break with the
understanding not because they announce something that would exceed its
competence, but because they require it to conceive absolutely different substances,
which at the same time they are in absolute unity; thus they destroy it in the act of
affirming it. More consistent are those who assume the diversity of substances, while
denying their unity; The assumption is justified, since what is required is to think
about God and the human being; and with this the denial is also justified, since
eliminating the separation between God and the human being would go against the
first assumption. In this way they will save their understanding; but, by remaining in
this absolute disparity of essences, they elevate understanding, absolute separation,
immolation to the summit of the spirit. This is how the Jews understood Jesus.>
When Jesus said: the Father is in me and I in the Father, whoever has seen me
has seen the Father, whoever knows the Father knows that my word is true, I and the
Father are, the Jews accused him of being a blasphemer, because he , / human by
birth, becomes God. How could they, the miserable ones, recognize something divine
in a human being, if the only consciousness they had was that of their misery and their
profound servitude, that of their contrast with the divine, that of an unbridgeable
abyss between a human being and be divine>? Only the spirit recognizes the spirit;
They saw in Jesus nothing more than the human being, the Nazarene, the carpenter's
son, whose brothers and relatives lived among them; That's as far as it went and it's
not like it could be more, because it was just one like them and they felt that they
 2
2
were nothing. Faced with the mob of Jews, his attempt to make them 5aware of
something divine had to fail; and the fact is that faith in something divine, in
something great, cannot dwell among the feces, the lion does not fit in a nut, nor the
infinite spirit in the ergastulo of a Jewish soul, nor the whole of life in a withered
leaf. ; The mountain and the eye that sees it are subject and object, but between the
human being and God, between spirit and spirit, this abyss of objectivity does not
exist. / [And] just by the fact that one knows the other, it is one and another for the
other.
<A variant of the objective conception of the relationship between the son and the
Father - or, rather, the form it takes with regard to the will - is to find in that connection
between the separate natures, the human and the divine, that It is conceived and
venerated in Jesus, a connection with God also for oneself, expecting a love between
totally dissimilar ones, of God towards humans, when at most it could be compassion.>
The relationship of Jesus with his Father is a filial relationship. , because the son feels
one in essence and spirit with the Father who lives in him CXLI ; and it has nothing to do
with the childish relationship <that a human would like to establish with the rich supreme
ruler of the world, whose life he feels totally alien and to whom he is only united by the
gifts he grants him, crumbs that fall from his opulent table.>

HGW 2.2 69

[6]

CXLIThe 1st version added : and speaks for him

 2
2
Only with faith can we conceive the true being of Jesus: his filial relationship
6 with
the Father; and faith in him is what Jesus demanded of his people. This faith is
characterized by its object, the divine; Faith in something real is knowledge of an object,
of something limited; and just as an object is distinct from God, so this knowledge is
distinct from faith in the divine. “God is Spirit and his worshipers must worship him in
spirit and truth.” How could a spirit recognize what was not itself a spirit? The
relationship between spirits is a feeling of harmony, their unification, how would the
heterogeneous be united? If it is possible to believe in the divine, this is exclusively due to
the fact that the divine is in the believer himself, who, by believing, finds himself again,
his authentic nature, no matter how hidden his awareness may be that what he found was
his own. nature. In fact, light and life are found in every human being, he is the property
of light; And it is not that it is illuminated by a light like an opaque body, which is only
dressed in another's splendor, but rather it is its own fuel that ignites in its own flame.
Faith in the divine is the intermediate state between darkness – the distance from the
divine, captivity under reality – and a totally divine own life, a self-confidence; [faith] is
presentiment, it is knowledge of the divine and desire to unite with it, desire for equal
life; but it is not yet the force of the divine that has permeated all the fibers of your
consciousness, has redirected all your relationships with the world and / inspires your
entire being. So faith in the divine proceeds from the divinity of nature itself; only that
which is a modality of the divine can know it. When Jesus asked his disciples: who do men
say that I, the son of man, am?, his friends told him what the Jews said, who, also when
they lent him an aura, placing him above the reality of the human world, they were still
unable to get out of reality; They only saw in him an individual that they identified with
him in a preternatural way [Mt 16, 13 f.]. But once Peter had expressed his faith in the
son of man, recognizing in him the son of God, then Jesus declared him, Simon, son of
Jonah, as they called him, blessed, the son of man, because the Father in Heaven has
revealed it to him. A revelation that he did not need, at least simply to know his divine
nature, [although] a large part of Christianity comes to this knowledge by learning it -
children are taught to conclude from miracles, etc. that Jesus is God-, without this
acceptance of faith being called divine revelation; It is orders and sticks that achieve it.
“My Father in Heaven has revealed it to you”; The divine that is in you has recognized me
as divine; You have understood what I am and it has resonated in who you are. Who was
commonly known as Simon, son of Jonah, he turns into Petrus, the rock on which he will
found his community; He then transmits to him his own power to bind and untie, a power
that can only belong to a nature that bears pure divinity and is therefore capable of
 2
2
distinguishing any departure from it; From now on there is no other judgment 7in Heaven
than yours, what you recognize as free or as bound, is also so in the eyes of Heaven. It is
only then that Jesus dares to tell his disciples about his imminent destiny; but it is
immediately seen that Petrus' awareness of his master's divinity does not go beyond faith;
He has certainly felt the divine, but he has not yet completely passed through it, he has
not yet received the holy spirit.
It is a common representation [in the gospels] that his friends' faith in Jesus comes
from God; especially in Jn 17 [Jesus] often calls her given by God; Also according to Jn
6:65, believing in him is the work of God, a divine influence – [however] a divine influence
is something completely different from learning and being indoctrinated. Jn 6:65: No one
can come to me unless it has been given to him by my Father.
But this faith is only the first level of the relationship with Jesus, a relationship that
is represented as so intimate in its fullness that his friends feel one with him. “Until they
themselves have the light they must believe in the light, so that they may become
children of the light.” (Jn 12, 36) The difference between those who still only have faith
in the light and those who are themselves children of the light is like that between John
the Baptist, who only testified of the light, and Jesus, an individualized light . Just as
Jesus has eternal life in himself, those who believe in him will also achieve infinite life (Jn
6:40). It is above all in their last conversations, as told by John, where the living union
with Jesus is most clearly exposed; they in him and he in them, all one; he the vine, they
the branches; in the parts the same nature, the same life as in the whole. It is this
culmination that Jesus asks the Father for his friends and promises them for when he
leaves them. As long as he lived among them, they would only have faith, for they did not
rely on themselves; Jesus was their teacher, an individual center on which they
depended; They did not yet have their own, independent life, they were governed by the
spirit of Jesus; But after their departure, this objectivity, this barrier between them and
God, also disappeared, the spirit of God could vivify their entire being. / When Jesus (Jn
7, 38ff.) says: rivers of life will flow from the body of whoever believes in me, John warns
that this was referring to a future total vivification by the Holy Spirit, which they had not
yet received, because Jesus He had not yet been glorified. We must guard against
establishing a difference between the nature of Jesus and that of those whose faith in him
has become life and are divine in themselves; If Jesus presents himself so many times as
an eminent nature, it is in opposition to the Jews, it is by distancing himself from them
that he takes on an individual figure also with regard to the divine. I am the truth and the
life; who believes in me : this constant, monotonous emphasis of John on the self is surely
 2
2
intended to distance the personality of Jesus from the Jewish character; But 8the same
thing that highlights his individuality against this spirit also annuls all divine personality,
all divine individuality in front of his friends, with whom he only wants to be one, who
must be one in him. John (2, 25) says of Jesus that he knew what was in the human being;
and there is no more faithful mirror of his beautiful faith in nature than his words when
seeing an uncorrupted nature. Mat 18, 1 ff.; 19, 13: If you do not become like children,
you will not enter the divine Kingdom; the smallest of children is the greatest in the
heavenly world; and whoever receives that child in my name, receives me, whoever is
capable of feeling his pure life in him, of knowing the sacredness of his nature, has felt
my being; It would be better for anyone who defiles this sacred purity to have a millstone
tied around his neck and then drown in the depths of the sea. What pain that such /
sacrileges are inevitable! The deepest, holiest sorrow of a beautiful soul, its most
incomprehensible enigma [is] that nature has to be devastated, the holy defiled. Just as
for the understanding there is nothing more incomprehensible than the divine and unity
with God, the most incomprehensible for a noble disposition is the distance from God:
Beware of despising one of these little ones, because I tell you that their angels in Heaven
contemplate constantly the face of my Father in Heaven. It is not a question of
understanding objective beings by the angels of children, since (to use an ad hominem
argument) we would have to think in that case that the angels of other human beings also
live in the contemplation of God. In the angelic contemplation of God many things happily
coincide; the unconscious, virtual harmony, that being and living in God are separated
from him, since it must be represented in real children as a divine modality; but its being,
its action is an eternal intuition of God. To speak of the spirit - of the divine without its
limitation -, as well as of the continuity of the limited with the living, Plato separates the
pure living from the limited by putting them in different times: the pure spirits would
have lived completely in the contemplation of the divine and then they would remain the
same in earthly life, only their consciousness of the heavenly would be obscured. Here is
another way in which Jesus separates and unites the nature of the spirit, its divinity, and
limitation: he presents the infantile spirit in the form of angels; But it is not that they
lack all reality and existence in God, but at the same time they are children of God,
particulars. The opposition between the one who intuits and the intuited, the fact that
they are subject and object, even disappears in contemplation, their diversity is only a
possibility of separation; A human who was totally immersed in the contemplation of the
Sun would be nothing more than the perception of light, his being a sensation of light. /
Whoever lived absorbed in the intuition of another human being would be identical with
 2
2
this other, only he would have the possibility of being different from him. But what
9 is lost,
what has been divided, is recovered by the return to harmony, becoming like a child; On
the other hand, what this reunification rejects, what it sets before itself, that has already
been separated; May that thing with which you have nothing in common and whose
community with you you have denounced be foreign to you; What you declare to be linked
to their separation is also linked to Heaven; but what you release, that is, what you
declare free and therefore united, is also in Heaven, it does not contemplate divinity,
[but] it is One in [Heaven]. Jesus presents this harmony under another figure (v. 19):
where two of you agree to ask for something, the Father will make it happen for you. The
expressions ask, grant properly refer to agreements on objects (TpAyuATa), since the
realism of the Hebrew language does not have other expressions. But in this case the
object can only be the mere reflected agreement (la ovudovIa TOV 8voiv n Tpiov[: the
agreement between two or three])[;] seen as an object is something beautiful, [but]
unification is something subjective, for spirits cannot be united in objects properly such.
The beautiful, an agreement between the two or three of you, is also beautiful in the
harmony of the whole, it is a sound, a chord in it / and it comes from it, it is because it is
in it, because it is something divine; and this community with the divine is what makes
those who agree also belong to the community of Jesus; where two or three agree in my
spirit (s TO ovoua uov, Mt [18, 20], as 10, 41), I am among them in the sense in which it
belongs to me to be and eternal life, in which I am , such is my spirit. This is how
determined Jesus speaks out against personalism, against an individuality of his being
opposed to his friends[, even after they had] reached their perfection, against the thought
of a personal God, whose foundation would be the absolute particularity of his being
compared to them. / An expression relating to the unification of lovers (Mt 19, 5) also
corresponds to this context: both, man and woman, will be one, so that from then on they
cease to be two; Therefore, let no human being separate what God has united; If this
unification only meant that the man and the woman were basically devoted to each other,
it would not serve as an argument against the dissolution of marriage, since separation
does not eliminate that determination, the unification of the concept, which would last
even after the separation of a marriage. alive; This is what is said to be produced by God,
which is something divine.
Since Jesus entered into struggle with the entire genius of his people and had
completely broken with his world, his destiny could not be fulfilled except by being
crushed by the hostile genius of his people; The glory of the son of man thus succumbing
does not consist in the negative of having abandoned all relations with the world, but in
 2
3
the positive of having refused his nature to the unnatural world, preferring to 0save it in
struggle and death rather than consciously bowing before the corruption, or, once
infiltrated without knowing it, being carried away by it. Jesus was aware that as an
individual he was condemned to perish and he also tried to convince his disciples of this.
But these could not separate their being from the person of Jesus, they were still only
believers; precisely when Peter had recognized the divine in the son of man, Jesus
believed that his friends could become aware of their separation from him and bear that
thought; so he began to speak to them about it immediately after having heard Peter's
profession of faith; but Peter's stupor revealed the distance between faith and its
fulfillment. The dependence of the individual Jesus on his friends could only cease with
the disappearance of that individual, so that a spirit of their own, or the divine spirit,
would be based on themselves; “It is good for you that I go away – says Jesus in Jn 16:7 –
otherwise / the Comforter would not come to you, the spirit of truth (Jn 14, 16 ff.), which
the world is incapable of receiving.” , because he does not recognize it; so that I do not
leave you orphans, I will come to you and you will see me, that I live and you also live.” If
you stop seeing the divine only outside of you, only in me, but, on the contrary, you
yourself have life in you, then the consciousness will also awaken in you that you are with
me from the beginning, that our natures are one in love and in God. The spirit will lead
you into all truth (Jn 16, 13) and will remind you of everything I told you; He is your
consolation, if consoling means opening the perspective of a good equal to or greater than
the lost good; Therefore you are not left orphaned, because, although you believe that
you lose much with me, you will receive the same in yourselves.
Also in Mt 12, 31 ff. Jesus opposes the individual to the spirit of the whole; Whoever
blasphemes against someone (against me as a son of man) can achieve forgiveness of this
sin; But whoever blasphemes against the spirit itself will not be forgiven for that sin either
in this age or in the age to come. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (v.
34), whoever is good, out of the wealth of a good spirit gives good; whoever is evil, gives
evil from the evil spirit. Whoever blasphemes a singular person, of me as an individual, is
only excluded from me, not from love; But when someone separates himself from the
divine by blaspheming nature itself, the spirit that is in it, his spirit has by itself destroyed
the sacred that is in him; That is why he is unable to overcome his separation and unite
with love, with the sacred. A sign could shake you; but that would not mean that the lost
nature would be restored in you; the eumenides of your being could be driven away; but
the void left in you by the expelled demons would not be filled / with love, but would
once again attract the furies, which would then complete your destruction, only now
 2
3
strengthened by your very awareness that they are infernal furies. 1
The fullness of faith, the return to the divinity from which the human being comes
closes the cycle of its development. Everything lives in divinity, all living beings are his
children; Now, the child has concord, cohesion, consonance in total harmony intact, but
undeveloped; He begins by believing in gods outside of himself, with fear; it continues
with its own increasing activity and separation; but at the same time it unifies until
returning to the original harmony, only now developed, produced by oneself, felt; and he
knows divinity, that is, that the spirit of God is in him, he abandons his limitations, leaves
behind his modality and restores the whole. God, the Son, the holy Spirit! Teach all
people (these are the last words of the glorious Jesus, Mt 28, 19), immersing them in
these relationships of divinity, in the relationship of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit.
The very placement of the words indicates that immersion does not mean in water,
what is called a baptism, in which certain words would have to be pronounced, like a kind
of magical formula; the addition to uasTeusiv makes it lose its proper meaning, to teach;
God cannot be taught or learned, since he is life and only with life can he be grasped. Fill
them with the relationship ( ovoua as in Mt 10:41: he who welcomes a prophet because he
is a prophet, sg ovoua Tpoapntou) of what one is, of the modality (separation) and of the
final reunification in life and spirit ( not in concept). In Mt 21, 25 / Jesus asks: Where did
John's antoua come from? From heaven, or from humans? BantouA, the entire consecration
of the spirit and character, something that is compatible with its interpretation as
immersion in water, although this would be secondary; but in Mark 1, 4 the possibility of
interpreting the entry into the union of spirits advocated by John in this way completely
disappears; John would announce the conversion in order to forgive sins; in the V. 8 John
says: I baptize you in water; but he will immerse you in holy spirit and fire (Lk 3, 6: 8v
TVSOuXTI because I am one with God; he will urge you and fill you with fire and divine
spirit, for whoever, himself filled with spirit - sv TVEUuRTI, Mc 1, 8 - consecrates others,
also consecrates them sig TvevuX, sig ovoua (Mt 28, 19); what they receive, what becomes
in them is nothing but what is in him.
John's habit (nothing similar is known of Jesus) of immersing initiates in his spirit in
water is symbolically significant. There is no feeling that would be as similar to the desire
for the infinite, to the aspiration to pour oneself into it, as the desire to immerse oneself
in a great mass of water; Whoever sinks into it faces something foreign that immediately
embraces him, making itself felt in every point of his body; He has been left outside the
 2
3
world and the world of it; He is a mere feeling of the water that touches him where
2 he is,
and he is only where he feels it; There is no gap in the body of water, no limitation, no
plurality, no determination; feel that mass as the most compact and simple; He rises to
the surface again and leaves the body of water, although, once separated from it, it still
drips all over his body; but, as soon as the water leaves it, the world once again takes on
precise contours and returns strengthened to the multiplicity of consciousness. When
contemplating the clean blue and monotonous surface of an eastern horizon / you do not
feel the air around you and the course of your thoughts is somewhat dissociated from that
look outside. Whoever is submerged only feels one thing and the oblivion of the world, a
loneliness that has gotten rid of everything, stripped of everything. As a similar
abandonment of the entire past, an exciting initiation into a new world that makes reality
oscillate before the new spirit, undecided between reality and dream, this is how the
baptism of / Jesus appears in Mark 1, 9 ff.: John baptized him in the Jordan and as soon
as he came out of the water Jesus saw the sky open, while the spirit descended like a
dove upon him; and a voice was heard from heaven: you are my beloved son in whom I am
well pleased. And immediately the spirit threw him into the desert; and he spent forty
days there, he was tempted by Satan and he had animals for company and angels served
him. When he comes out of the water he is filled with the highest enthusiasm, which does
not allow him to stay in the world, but drives him into the desert; The work of his spirit
has not yet been purified of the awareness of reality, a purification to which he does not
fully awaken until after 40 days, to enter firmly into the world, but also in decided
opposition to it.
<Hence the deep meaning of the expression ucenTEUORTs antOvTe [teach by
baptizing]. All power has been given to me in Heaven and on earth (according to Jn 13:31,
this is how Jesus speaks of his glorification at the same moment in which Judas had
abandoned his company to betray him to the Jews, when he saw himself about to return
to his Father, who is greater than him, when he is represented as already above
everything that the world could demand of him, of every part that it could have in it). I
have been given all power in Heaven and on earth; Therefore go to all peoples making
disciples so that you initiate them into the relationship of the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit, so that this relationship embraces them and makes itself felt in all points of
their being; and truly I am with you until the end of the world. At this moment, when
Jesus is presented above all reality and personality, it is when one can least think of an
 2
3
individuality, personality of his being. He is with those whose being is permeated
3 with
divine spirit, initiated into the divine, whose being lives in the divine, which has now been
fulfilled in him.
The immersion in the relationship of Father, Son and Spirit is expressed much more
weakly by Luke (24, 27) as a preaching in the name of Christ of conversion and forgiveness
of sins, a preaching that has to begin in Jerusalem and from which they would be
witnesses; He will send them the promise of their Father and they must not begin their
task outside Jerusalem before being invested with strength from above. A mere doctrine
can be announced without its own holy spirit, supported by the testimony of things that
have occurred; but such a doctrine would not be an initiation, an immersion of the spirit.
In Mark this farewell to Jesus is expressed much more objectively – even if the last
chapter was not entirely authentic, its tone is undoubtedly characteristic; The spiritual
appears there rather as an ordinary formula; The expressions are habitual words, cooled
by the routine of a Church: proclaim the gospel (without further clarification, a kind of
terminus technicus ), the believer and the baptized are saved, those who do not believe
will be condemned; “the believer and the baptized” already have the appearance of /
inert, precise words, which serve to designate a sect or community and presuppose its
complete concepts. Instead of the spiritual fullness of I am with you every day, of the
intoxication of believers with the spirit of God and the glorified Jesus, instead of
conveying the elevation of enthusiasm by the breath of the spirit, Mark speaks dryly - and
with as much objectivity as one can speak of actions without mentioning their soul - of
wonderful actions that subdue reality, of expulsions of demons and other similar actions
of which believers will be capable.
Jesus calls the Kingdom of God the living harmony between human beings, their
community with God; That name refers to the development of the divine in human beings,
to the filial relationship they establish with God when they are filled with the Holy Spirit
and live in the harmony of their entire being and humanity, of their developed plurality;
That harmony not only makes your diversified consciousness resonate in a single spirit, the
many figures of life in a single life, but also eliminates barriers with other beings of divine
resemblance; The same living spirit animates the different beings, which, consequently,
are not only equal, but in harmony, they do not constitute an assembly, but a community,
since what unites them is not something general, a concept - say, that of being a
believer-, but life and love. It was the Hebrew language that offered Jesus the expression
Kingdom of God, which introduces a heterogeneous element in the divine unification of
humanity; and as it designates the mere unity of domination by the power of the alien
 2
3
over the alien, / it cannot be confused at all with the beauty and divine life 4of a pure
alliance between humans, the freest there can be. This idea of a Kingdom of God
completes as well as encompasses the entire religion as founded by Jesus, and what
remains to be considered is whether it completely satisfies nature or what need has driven
Jesus' disciples to go further. there. In the Kingdom of God what everyone has in common
is that they are living in God; The community that unites believers does not reside in a
concept, since it is love, the living bond, this emotion, the unity of life, in which all
oppositions have been eliminated - which, as such, are enmities - and even the
unifications of the given oppositions, the rights (a new commandment I give you - says
Jesus -, that you love one another, in that it must be recognized that you are my
disciples); This friendship of souls, expressed for reflection as essence, as spirit, is the
divine spirit, God, who governs the community. Is there a more beautiful idea than a
people whose reciprocal relationship is love, a more stimulating idea than belonging to a
whole that, as such, one, is the spirit of God, and each and every one is his children?
Would there even be room for an imperfection in this idea, giving a destiny power over it?
Or would this destiny be the nemesis that is cruel to an aspiration that is too beautiful,
that of leaping over nature?
<In love the human being has rediscovered himself in another; Since it is a
unification of life, it would presuppose a prior separation and development, the formation
of a multilaterality; and the more life consists of living figures, the more points it can be
joined and felt, the more intimate it can be [in each of them]. The greater the
multiplicity of the lovers' relationships and feelings, the more intimately the love is
concentrated, the more exclusive it becomes, the more indifferent to other forms of life;
His joy mixes with all other life, he recognizes it; but it retreats to the feeling of an
individuality and the more isolated each one is with regard to his training and interests,
his relationship with the world, the more genius and figure he is, the more he limits love
to himself; and to enjoy their happiness, to give it to oneself - as one likes to make love -
it is inevitable that they separate, that they even generate enmities ([Georg Keate, News
from the Pellew Islands, Foreword by [Georg] Forster [a its German translation]). That is
why a love among many only allows a certain degree of intensity, of intimacy, and
requires equality of spirit, of interest, of many vital situations, limitation of the
individual; But since this shared life, this equality of spirit, is not love, it can only become
conscious in highly characterized concrete manifestations; one cannot speak of shared
knowledge, of equality of opinions; The union of many is due to the common need, it is
manifested in objects that can be common, in the relationships that arise around them, as
 2
3
well as in the common effort they require and in the common activity and occupation;
5 It
can link with a thousand objects of common possession and enjoyment and equal culture,
and recognize itself in them. Many equal ends, the entire scope of physical necessity, may
be the object of common activity; The same spirit is expressed in it, and this common
spirit in turn likes to make itself known quietly and to rejoice in its unification, enjoying
itself in the party and the game. Jesus' friends remained united after his death, they ate
and drank together, some of their brotherhoods eliminated any property rights among
them, others did so in part with great alms and contributions to the community; They
talked together about their lost friend and teacher, prayed together and comforted each
other in faith and spirit; Their enemies also accused some of their communities of
practicing the community of women, an accusation that they did not have the courage
and cleanliness to deserve or not to be ashamed of. Many left together to share their faith
and hopes with other people; and since this is the only activity of the Christian
community, proselytism is constitutive of it. Apart from this common enjoyment of
prayer, food, celebration, faith and hope, plus the sole activity of spreading the faith,
expanding the pious community, there is still immense scope for the objectivity imposed
by a destiny of extremely complex dimensions. and formidable power, demanding
multiple activities. In the task of love, the commune despises any union that is not the
most intimate, any spirit that is not the highest. Not to mention that magnificent, but
artificial and hollow, idea of universal philanthropy, because that is not what the
commune aspires to, it has to stick to love itself; Outside of the relationship of community
faith and the manifestations of this community in religious actions that refer to that
[love], any other form of coincidence in something objective to achieve an end, the
development of another, is alien to the commune. aspect of life, some common activity,
as any spirit is foreign to it
that collaborates in something apart from the propagation of the faith and manifests itself
in [the form of] games in other modalities and partial figures of life: the commune would
not recognize itself in such a spirit, since that would be abandoning love to a singularized
spirit , incurring infidelity towards his God; Furthermore / not only would he have
abandoned love, but he would have destroyed it; In fact, the members of the community
risk their individualities clashing with each other, something that is inevitable, given their
differences in training; In this way they would find themselves on the terrain of their
particular natures and would surrender themselves into the hands of their respective
destinies, so that for a minor interest, for a slight difference in nuance, love would be
reversed into hate with the apostasy of God. as a result. There is no other resource to
 2
3
avoid this danger than a love without works, without developing, so that 6love, the
supreme life, remains inert. The artificial expansion of the scope of love thus becomes
entangled in a contradiction, in a false aspiration, which could only generate the most
terrible fanaticism through action or passion. This closing of love in itself, its escape from
any form, even if its spirit already inspired it or came from it, this avoidance of all destiny
is precisely its greatest destiny; and here is the point at which Jesus is linked to destiny
and, although in a sublime way, suffered it.

HGW 2.28 6

[7]

Jesus emerged from the midst of the Jewish <people> with the courage and faith of
a man <inspired by God>,CXLII a fool according to sensible people; <he arose from new
things with his own spirit, he saw how the world had to become and his first contact with
it was to order him to change,> exhorting everyone: convert, for the Kingdom of God is at
hand;CXLIII <if a spark of life had throbbed in the Jews, a breath would have been enough
for the flame to jump out and consume all their miserable titles and pretensions; If in the
midst of their unease and discontent with reality they had felt the need for something
purer, Jesus' call would have been accepted with faith. a faith that would have instantly
produced what was believed.> Their faith would have brought about the Kingdom of God.
<Jesus would only have made explicit to them what their hearts already had in germ
without knowing it; and by giving it voice, by becoming conscious of the need, the ties
would have been released, only its last death rattles would have remained of the old
destiny and the new would already be there. But, although the Jews wanted something
different from what there was, they were too proud of their servitude to find what they
were looking for in what Jesus offered them.> Their reaction<, the response that their
genius gave to the call of Jesus,> consisted of very impure / attention; a few <pure souls>

CXLII
1
The 1st version followed: which takes on the noble task of a great object,
CXLIII
2
1st version of the following lines: If the Jews had harbored the ideal of the Kingdom of God that
Jesus carried within them, they would have immediately responded with faith to this
exhortation; Their hearts would have confirmed their faith in the imminence of the Kingdom of
God, they would have been suddenly liberated and with it the Kingdom of God would have
arrived.
 2
3
joined him in search of training; With great kindness, with the faith of a pure idealist,
7 he
welcomed his longing for a peaceful mind, his desire for perfection, his renunciation of
certain established relationships <(most of them not very brilliant)> in exchange for
freedom and healing or defeat of destiny; In fact, shortly after meeting them, believing
them capable of proceeding to a broader announcement of the Kingdom of God and his
people mature to follow it, he sent them two by two through the country, to make their
voice resonate multiplied; but it was not the divine spirit who spoke in their preaching,
even after a fairly long interaction [with Jesus] they often revealed a petty or at least
impure soul, of which only some branches were penetrated by God. <Their only
instructions were, apart from their negative content, to announce the imminence of the
Kingdom of God,> They immediately returned with Jesus, without any perceived effect of
Jesus' hopes or of his / apostolate. The indifference with which his call was received
quickly turned into hatred against him, which caused him to grow resentful against his
time and his people, especially against those in whom the spirit of the Jewish nation
resided most strongly and passionately: the Pharisees and the ruling class<; The tone he
used against them does not indicate any attempt to reconcile them or disagree with their
spirit, on the contrary: They are very violent explosions of his resentment towards
them, the
unmasking of his spirit hostile to him; Their actions against this spirit do not even begin
with the possibility of it changing. If their character was such that they were entirely
opposed to Jesus, he could not pretend to refute them or teach them on the occasion of
conversations on religious topics; he simply closes their mouths with arguments ad
hominem ; When he opposes what is true to them, it is other present interlocutors who he
is addressing. [A]ccording to it, after the return of his disciples (Mt 11) he renounces his
people and has felt (v. 25) that God only reveals himself to simple people; Since then he
limits himself to influencing only individuals and ignores the destiny of his nation,
distancing himself and having his friends take it; While Jesus does not see the world
change, he flees from it and avoids all relationships with it; The same thing that clashes
with the entire destiny of his people, remains passive before it, even if his [own] conduct
seems contradictory in the eyes of [his people]. Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, he
says, when the Jews reproached him for the aspect of his destiny which was to pay taxes
to the Romans; and when it seemed contradictory to him and his friends to pay the tribute
imposed on the Jews, he told Peter to pay it, so as not to cause a scandal. His only
 2
3
relationship with the State was that he lived under its jurisdiction and submitted
8 to the
consequences of this power with resistance of his spirit, consciously suffering. The
Kingdom of God is not of this world, only / there is a big difference between this world
existing as the opposite of the Kingdom of God or not existing, but only being possible.
Since the first is the case and Jesus consciously suffered from the State, with this
relationship the possible field of living unification is already greatly amputated, an
important link for the members of the Kingdom of God is cut off, a part of freedom, of the
negative nature of an alliance in beauty, a multitude of opportunities for action, of living
relationships; The citizens of the Kingdom of God become private people opposed to a
hostile State, from which they exclude themselves. Moreover, for those who were never
active members of that union, nor have they ever enjoyed this alliance and this freedom -
especially given that / the civil relationship is limited above all to property -, this
restriction of life appears more as the sovereignty of a foreign dominating power over
external things - which can even be freely renounced - than as a kidnapping of life. What
is gained in isolated individuality and the petty priority of personal peculiarities displaces
many relationships, a whole diversity of joyful and beautiful bonds. Certainly the idea of
the Kingdom of God excludes all relations based on the State, infinitely inferior to the
living relations of the divine alliance, which cannot but despise them; but, once the State
existed and neither Jesus nor the community could eliminate it, their destiny - in this the
community was faithful to Jesus - led them to a loss of freedom, to a limited life, to
passivity under the rule of an alien power, despised, yes, but that ultimately guaranteed
the little that Jesus needed from him: to live among his people. / Apart from this aspect
of life – more than life, it should be called only the possibility of life – the spirit [of the
Jews] had not only taken over all the modalities of life, but had become its law as a State,
disfiguring the purest direct forms of nature into regulated legalities. In the Kingdom of
God there can be no other relationship than that arising from the most radical love and
the highest freedom, which receives exclusively from beauty its sensitive figure and its
relationship with the world.>CXLIV Given the contamination of life, Jesus could not bring the

CXLIV 1st version (various fragments of the passage below appear scattered in this same paragraph of
the final wording): Since all forms of life, even the most beautiful, were corrupted, Jesus could
not assume any of them, unless he proceeded of beauty and freedom themselves; In his people
the relationships of life were under the slavery of the laws and a selfish spirit. He apparently
did not expect his Jewish contemporaries to cast off their yoke on a general basis; That is why
he foresaw a struggle between the holy and the impious, whose atrocious cruelty he feared. I
did not come, he said, to bring peace to the earth but the sword; I came to antagonize the son
against the father, the daughter against the mother, the bride against the mother-in-law; He
who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Jesus was able to directly
confront the cruel tearing of all natural bonds, because these beautiful relationships were both
 2
3
Kingdom of God except in his intimacy; He could only enter into a relationship with
9 others
to train them, to develop the good spirit that he believed he perceived in some, beginning
by training those who could share his world; but in his real world he had to flee from all
living relationships, since they were all subject to the law of death, people imprisoned
under the power of the Jewish; another relationship with them, without reservations on
both sides, would have made him an ally / with the web of Jewish legalisms; and in order
not to profane or tear apart a relationship that had begun, he would have had to allow
himself to become entangled in its skein<; so, once every modality of life bound him, he
could only find freedom in the void>; That is why Jesus isolated himself from his mother,
his brothers and relatives; He could not love a woman or father children, nor become a
1
father of a family or a fellow citizen, nor enjoy coexistence with others. Jesus' destiny
was to suffer the destiny of his nation: he could make it his own, endure its imposition
and enjoy what was pleasant about it, uniting his own spirit with it - but in this way he
would sacrifice his own beauty, his divine filiation; or he could reject the destiny of his
people, but then his life would become stagnant and he would not be able to enjoy it; In
both cases nature would not be complete: in the first I would only feel fragments of it,
and even these impure; In the second he would enjoy full consciousness, but his figure
would be for knowledge nothing more than a resplendent shadow, whose essence is the
utmost truth, although in this one neither its vitality of work nor its reality can be felt.
Jesus chose the second destiny, separating himself from his nature and the world, and
demanded the same from his friends: > whoever loves father or mother, son or daughter
more than me, is not worthy of me; <but as he felt this separation more and more deeply,
the less he could bear it calmly and his activity was the fierce reaction of his nature
against the world; and his fight was pure and noble, because he had recognized destiny in
all its dimensions and had stood before it. His resistance, and that of the community he
founded, against corruption could only be made conscious - to them and to a spirit still
quite free of it - and to tear themselves away from the destiny of that corruption; > the
struggle of the pure with the impure < It is a sublime spectacle; but it immediately
becomes atrocious, once the holy / has suffered under the impious, and an amalgamation
of both, which claims to be pure, rages against destiny, being, as it still is, a prisoner of
it.> Jesus foresaw all the atrocity of this destructive commotion: I did not come, he said,
to bring peace to the earth but the sword; I came to antagonize the son against his father,

chains that bound the ungodly and were braided with tyranny; Only spirits of total purity can
discern the pure and the impure without suffering or pain; less pure spirits adhere to both;
Now, this amalgamation of pure and impure cannot be destroyed without also damaging the
pure and trampling it together with the impure.
 2
4
the daughter against her mother, the bride against her mother-in-law. <What 0
has partly
renounced destiny, but on the other hand remains allied with it - whether conscious or
unconscious of this mixture - has to tear itself and nature much more terribly; and > once
nature is mixed with the unnatural, the attack on it has to affect it <, the wheat will be
trampled with the weeds and the most sacred of nature itself will be violated, since it is
intertwined with the impious. Despite foreseeing the consequences, it did not occur to
Jesus to restrain the effects of his activity, to spare the world its fate, soften its shocks
and leave it in its sinking the consoling faith in its innocence.

1
The 1st version continues: only by renouncing all these forms of life could he remain pure, once
all of them were desecrated; and since his Kingdom of God could not yet find a place on earth,
he had to locate it in Heaven.
<The existence of Jesus was, therefore, separation from the world and flight from it
to heaven, restoration of life defrauded of ideality and, in every conflict, memory of God
looking up to him; But, if in part the divine was activated fighting against destiny, either
by announcing the Kingdom of God - with whose presentation the kingdom of this world
collapsed and vanished - or by reacting directly to singular aspects of destiny as they were
presented to him, Instead he behaved passively against the part of destiny - of which
Jesus was also aware - which had the direct form of the State.
<The destiny of Jesus was not entirely the destiny of his community; Since there
were many people in this one, although they lived equally separated from the world, each
one could find others with a similar attitude, they stayed together and in reality they
could stay further away from the world; This meant that they had fewer contacts and
clashes with it, which altered them less, they lived less in the negative activity of the
struggle and they had to / feel more the need to live positively: the community in the
negative is not happy, no It's beauty. The elimination of property, the introduction of
community property, common banquets correspond more to the negative side of the union
than to a positive unification. The essence of their alliance was the isolation of human
beings and mutual love, both necessarily united; This mutual love could not and should
not unite individualities, but rather unite in God and only in God: in faith only that which
opposes a reality and is separated from it can be united; With this, that contrast was
established and an essential part of the principle of the alliance; and love always had to
maintain the form of love, of faith in God without becoming alive or exposing itself in
figures of life, since the understanding can oppose every figure of life as its object and
turn it into a reality. ; and opposition to the world could not but lead to apprehension of
contact with it, to fear of every form of life, since there is none in which, given that it
 2
4
will always be only a partial figure, its defect cannot be discovered: that of be part
1 of the
world. So the alliance of the community found the Jewish spirit at the opposite extreme,
not the reconciliation of destiny nor the center between extremes, beauty. The Jewish
spirit had petrified the modalities of nature, the relations of life, turning them into
realities; But not only was he not ashamed of their misery, as gifts that were from his
master, but his pride and his life consisted of possessing realities.
Also the spirit of the Christian community saw realities in each relationship where life
developed and expanded; but since the greatest enemy of his loving emotion was
objectivity, he remained as poor as the Jewish spirit, except that he despised the wealth,
for which the Jew submitted.

<The enthusiasm that despises life easily turns into fanaticism; And the fact is that,
to maintain his isolation, he is forced to destroy what destroys him, as well as what - no
matter how pure - / he considers impure, destroying its content: often the most beautiful
relationships. Later, the contempt of the enthusiasts for all forms of life, since they are
contaminated, has reduced them to a radical void of all figuration and has declared war
on every impulse of nature, only because it tries to give itself external form; and the
effect of these suicide attempts, of this clinging to empty unity, was all the more
frightening the more the spirits were chained to plurality; In fact, since there were only
limited forms in their consciousness, they had no other way out than an escape into the
void in the midst of atrocities and devastation. (But as the destiny of the world became
immense and imposed itself on the environment of the Church and on itself despite their
incompatibility, it became impossible to think of escaping it.) This explains why great
hypocrites in the face of nature have attempted to find and maintain an unnatural union
of the plurality of the world, as well as of the inert unity between all the limited legal
relations and/or human virtues with the simple spirit [of the human]; For each civil
action, for each manifestation of pleasure and desire, they invented a corner in the unity,
trying with this deception to guarantee and enjoy each limitation, while escaping from
it.>
Since Jesus disdained living with the Jews, but at the same time always fought with
his ideal against their realities, it could not be otherwise: he had to succumb under those
realities; He did not avoid this evolution of his destiny, but he certainly did not seek it
either; Death is welcome to every idealist who lives for his own enthusiasm; But whoever
is enthusiastic about a great plan cannot painlessly abandon the stage in which it was
going to take place; Jesus died confident that his plan would not be lost.
 2
4
<The destiny of the Christian community has a negative face - its opposition
2 with the
world, which, seeing the modalities of life as qualities, turns relationships with them into
crimes - and another / positive: the bond of love. The extension of love to an entire
community alters its nature, which is no longer the living unification of individualities,
since reciprocal enjoyment is limited to the shared awareness that they love each other.
The absence of destiny based on taking refuge in a frustrated life was something that the
members of the community had easier due to the fact of constituting a community; This
either deprived itself in its reciprocal relations of all forms of life, or determined them
exclusively by the general spirit of love, that is, it did not live in them. This love is a
divine spirit, but it is not yet religion; To become one, he also had to expose himself in an
objective way; She, a feeling, something subjective, had to merge with what was
represented, the general, to thus gain the form of a being capable of adoration and
worthy of it. This demand to / unite in something beautiful, in a god, the subjective and
the objective, sensation and its demand for objects, the understanding of fantasy; This
demand, I say, is the highest of the human spirit, the love of religion. Faith in God could
not satisfy this impulse of the Christian community; and in his God he could not find more
than his community feeling; In the god of the world all beings are united; The members of
the community as such do not belong to that god, their harmony is not the harmony of the
whole, otherwise they would not form a separate community, they would not be united
mutually by love; The divinity of the world does not represent the love of the community,
its divinity. Jesus' need for religion was satisfied in the God of all, since his elevation to
Him was in each of his constant clashes with the world, in his escape from it; the only
thing he needed was that which opposed the world, that on which his own opposition was
based: his Father, with whom he was one. But the constant clash with the world was
declining in the community, which lived without actively fighting with the world and in
this sense was happy not to be constantly irritated by it and not to have to flee as the
only resource to the opposite, to God, / On the contrary: in his community, in his love, he
found pleasure, something real, a kind of living relationship; only that, as every
relationship is opposed to relatum, as reality continues to be opposed to sensation -
expressed subjectively: its faculty, understanding -, its lack has to be completed thanks to
a third party that unites them; The community needs a god, its god, who precisely
represents exclusive love, its nature, its reciprocal relationship, but not as a symbol or an
allegory, not as a personification of something subjective, who would make conscious the
separation between the subjective and its representation. , because at the same time it is
in its heart a feeling and an object: a feeling like a spirit that blows through everything
 2
4
without ceasing to be one, even though each individual is aware of his feeling as3his own.>
A circle of love, an emotional circle, which within makes us forget all reciprocal
rights, all united only by common faith and hope, whose only pleasure and joy / is this
pure unanimity of love, a Kingdom of God in miniature ; but their love is not religion,
because concord, the love of humans does not also contain its explanation. Love unites
them; but lovers do not recognize this union, because where they know it, they find that
it is dissociated. For the divine to appear, the invisible spirit CXLV It has to be united with
something visible, all in one, <know and feel,> a synthesis without remainder, a harmony
fulfilled, so that there is no difference between harmony and the harmonious. Otherwise,
in the whole <of divisible nature> there remains an impulse CXLVI which is too small for the
infinity of the world, too large for its objectivity and / impossible to satisfy: the thirst for
God remains unsatisfied, unquenchable.
After the death of Jesus, his disciples were like sheep without a shepherd; A friend
had died, but they had also hoped that he would be the one to liberate Israel (Lk 24, 21)
and this hope had vanished with his death, he had taken everything with him to the grave;
CXLVII
His spirit had not stayed with them. <Their religion,> their faith in the pure life had
depended on the individual Jesus;CXLVIII <he was their living link and the figure in which the
divine was revealed, in fact in him God had been revealed to them; The individual Jesus
represented for them the union of the indeterminate in harmony with the determined in a
living being. His death had returned them to the separation between the visible and the
invisible, the spirit and the real.> They would certainly have preserved the memory of this
divine being, although now distant from them: once the impression made on them by his
death, the dead person would no longer seem simply dead to them[, but, on the
contrary,] the contemplation of his divinity would have gradually displaced the pain
through the decomposing body and from his grave the imperishable spirit would have risen
CXLV The 1st version said instead of “the invisible spirit”: the invisible force
CXLVI
2
1st version of the previous sentence: If not, love remains as what it is in everything, an impulse. .
.
CXLVII The 1st version continued: Two days later Jesus rose from the dead and faith returned to
his community and soon the holy spirit came upon them and the resurrection became the
foundation of their faith and salvation. If the effect of this resurrection was so remarkable, if
this fact became the central point of their faith, it is because they undoubtedly had a great
need for it.
The first half of this paragraph presents in the 1st version, in addition to the indicated variants,
differences in wording and, in part, another order; The second half of the paragraph is more of an
expansion of the 1st version.
CXLVIII The 1st version continued: in it they had learned to recognize the truly divine; his death
had taken him completely away from him;
 2
4
before them and the image of a purer humanity; However, <the veneration of this
4 spirit,
the joyful contemplation of this image would be accompanied by the memory of its [past]
life;> this <sublime spirit would always have had its counterpart in its disappeared
existence, and its presence in fantasy would go accompanied by a nostalgia, which would
have indicated nothing more than the need for religion; but the community would still
lack its own God. / For the image to be <beautiful,> divine, it lacked life; The divine in
the community of love, its life, lacked image and figure. But in the resurrected and then
elevated to Heaven the image rediscovered life and love the representation of its
harmony; In these new espousals of the spirit and the body <the opposition between the
living and the dead has disappeared and> has been united in a god; CXLIX <Nostalgic love has
found itself to be a living being and, now that its veneration is the religion of the
community, it can enjoy itself; The need for religion is satisfied in this resurrected Jesus,
in this embodied love. < –Seeing the resurrection of Jesus as a / data constitutes the point
of view of the historian, who is totally alien to religion; Mere faith or disbelief in the mere
reality of the resurrection regardless of what interests religion is a matter of the
understanding, whose work, the establishment of objective reality, is precisely the death
of religion; basing it on it means abstracting from religion.- On the other hand, the
understanding seems to have the right to intervene, since the objective side / of the god
is not only a figure of love, but has its own entity and, as a reality that is , affirms its
place in the world of realities. and that is why it is difficult to retain the religious aspect
of the resurrected Jesus, the love embodied in his beauty; and he has only become God
through an apotheosis, his divinity is the deification <of something given as reality>; his
life had been that of a human individual, killed on the cross and buried. This blemish of
humanity is completely different from the characteristic figure of a god; <what is
objective in the god, his figure, is only objective insofar as he makes present the love that
unifies the community, insofar as it is its pure opposition and does not contain anything
that is not already in love - only here as merely opposite-, that was not at the same time
a feeling. But in this way, to the image of the resurrected one, of the unification made
into being, a fully objective, individual supplement is added, which must be attached to
love, but must remain fixed in the understanding as individual, as opposed:> a reality that
at the same time deified hangs from his feet like lead, pulling him towards the ground,
CXLIX In the 1st version there follows an editorial variant: ; in it the different ones who love each
other are one; the image of the god is once again imperishably animated; the love of lovers has
found an image and a central point in the [resurrected]; now is when they have religion;
 2
4
while the god should hover in the middle between the infinite, unlimited Heaven
5 and
Earth, the set of mere limitations. There is no way to get the duplicity of natures out of
your head. If Hercules was elevated to hero by the funerary font, the deified one owes it
merely to a tomb; but in that case the altars and the prayers are directed <only to the
personified value, to the hero who – now that he neither fights nor serves – has become a
god, while in this case> it is not only the resurrected one who is the salvation of sinners
and the rapture of his faith: the teacher and pilgrim and crucified are also worshiped.
Because of this formidable combination, millions of souls in search of God have been
consumed and tormented for so many centuries.
<The impulse of religion would not have to be shocked by the servile figure, the
same humiliation, if reality were content to be a passing veil; but in this case it must be
firm and lasting and belong to the essence of the god, and the individuality must be an
object of worship; and the envelope of reality laid down in the grave has reemerged from
it and has / adhered to the resurrected one as god. This sad need that the community felt
for something real has a lot to do with its spirit and its destiny. His love turned every
figure of life into the consciousness of an object, and that made him despise it; It was
certainly in the resurrected figure that she had recognized herself, but for her the
resurrected person was not only love; in fact, since his love, separated from the world as
it was, was not present in the development of life nor in its beautiful relationships nor in
the exercise of natural relationships – love did not have to live, but only be - had to
include some criterion to recognize it, thus facilitating reciprocal faith. Since love by
itself did not guarantee total unification, another link was needed to unite the community
and give it the certainty of love: it had to be recognized in a reality. This then was
equality in faith, equality of having received a doctrine, / of having the same teacher and
the same teaching. Such is a distinctive feature of the spirit of the community: that the
divine, that which unites it, has for it the form of something given. [But] to the spirit, to
life there is nothing that is given; What the spirit has received has become itself, has
passed into it, so that it is now its own modality, its life. Now, in the lifeless love of the
community the spirit of his love was in such destitution, he felt so empty that he was
neither able to fully welcome, nor to vitally recognize in himself the spirit that challenged
him and that followed him. being strange. The link with an alien spirit and felt as such
means the awareness of a dependence on it; On the one hand, the love of the community
had transcended itself, extending to a large number of people; but, once thus filled with
ideal content, on the other hand it lost life; The empty ideal of love then became
 2
4
something positive that he recognized as opposed to the community, and the community
6
as dependent on him; the spirit of the [community] was occupied by a consciousness of a
disciple with a lord and teacher; the figure of love did not well manifest the spirit of the
[community]; The aspect of the spirit consisting of having received and learning and being
below the master was not found represented in the figure of love until it had a reality
independent of the community. This superior, contrasting [reality] is not the excellency of
the god – an excellency that necessarily belongs to him, since the individual does not
recognize himself as equal to it, since the entire spirit of all those united is contained in it
– but it is something positive, objective, that contains so much foreignness, as much
domination as there is dependence in the spirit of the community. In this community of
dependence, in the community that arose from a founder, in this intrusion into its life of
something historical, real, the community recognized its real bond, the security of
unification that it could not feel in its lifeless love. . This is the point at which destiny
reached the community, which seemed to have escaped all destiny in a love that
remained intact, oblivious to any alliance with the world; / The core of that destiny was
the extension to the community of a love that shuns all relationships, a destiny that
developed all the more in the propagation of the community itself, since at the same time
this propagation coincided more and more with the destiny of the world: on the one hand
he assumed many aspects of it, on the other he fought it, but became increasingly
contaminated with it.
The objective, prosaic, that must be worshiped, never becomes divine, no matter
how much halo it is that transfigures it.> It is true that heavenly apparitions also surround
the human Jesus, superior beings bustle around his birth, on one occasion he himself
transfigures into a brilliant luminous imageCL <. But these celestial forms are also outside
reality, and the more divine beings that surround the individual only serve to further
highlight the contrast. / Even less than that occasional aureole can the actions that,
coming from himself, are considered divine, elevate him to the superior figure; The
miracles, which not only surround him, but arise from his inner strength, seem to be
attributes worthy of a god, which characterize him, <in them the divine seems united in
the most intimate way with the objective, the harsh opposition and mere link of opposites
would disappear; It is the human being who creates these wonderful effects, he and the
divine seem inseparable. Only, the more closely they are intertwined -without thereby
becoming one-, the more striking is the unnatural nature of this union of opposites.
CL The 1st version follows: ; but God's favorite does not cease to be human, and goes from here
to there in a humble figure,
 2
4
In what the miracle has of action, the understanding is offered a connection
7 of cause
and effect, and/the scope of its concepts is recognized; but at the same time that scope
is destroyed, making the cause not as determined as the effect, but infinite; Since the
connection of cause and effect in the understanding is qualitative equality, while their
opposition is reduced to the fact that in one this quality is activity, in the other passivity,
the consequence can only be in the action itself an infinite whose activity is infinite is
going to have an extremely limited effect. What is unnatural is not the elimination of the
realm of understanding, but rather its affirmation and elimination at the same time. If on
the one hand supposing an infinite cause contradicts the supposition of a finite effect, on
the other hand the infinite annuls the determination in the effect. In the first case, for
the understanding, the infinite is merely negative, / indeterminate, and something
determined is added to it; In the second case, for the part of the infinite taken as an
entity, there is a spirit that acts and qualitatively the effectiveness of a spirit is its
negative side; only from another point of view, in comparison, can its action seem
determined; In itself, according to its being, this consists in suppressing a quality and is in
itself infinite;> when a God acts, he does so only from spirit to spirit; effectiveness
presupposes an object on which one acts; but <the effect of the spirit is the destruction of
the [object].> [W]hen the divine comes out of itself, only a process is generated in which
the divine<, while eliminating the opposite,> manifests itself in the 1 unification; On the
other hand, in miracles the spirit appears working on bodies;

<the cause would not be a spirit with a figure, which, only if it is considered in its
opposition as a body - as equal to another as it is opposable - / could enter> in the
context of cause and effect; In this case it would be a community of the spirit that is only
spirit because it has nothing to do with the body, or [a community] of the body, which is a
body; but spirit and bodyCLICLII They have nothing in common, they are absolute opposites.
<The unification that puts an end to their opposition is a life that is, spirit with figure;
and when it acts as divine, undivided, its action links it with related beings, with the
divine, at the same time that [it is] generation, development of something new, of the
epiphany of its unification; On the other hand, when the spirit acts hostile and dominating

CLI The 1st version continues: this way of acting presupposes precisely a separation in the divine
itself, which does not disappear even with unification;
From here until the end of the paragraph, the wording of the common text of the versions has
also undergone reworking and reordering.
CLII The 1st version continues: , because it has nothing to do with the spirit; but spirit and body,
the living and the dead, they do not have, etc.
 2
4
in a figure opposed to another, it is because it has forgotten its divinity. That's
8 why
miracles represent the least divine thing there can be, CLIII <for they are the most unnatural
and contain the harshest opposition of spirit and body, linked in all their monstrous
brutality. The divine acts by restoring and 1

making unity present; the miracle, the ultimate heartbreak.

HGW 2.32 0 / <Therefore the lively expectation that the [human] reality associated
that a transfigured, deified Jesus would in turn be deified through marvelous activities of
that same reality, was not fulfilled at all, on the contrary: it only accentuated the violence of this
supplement of reality. But for us this [violence] is even much greater than for the members of the
primitive Christian community, because among us the understanding is much stronger; Among them,
inspired by the oriental spirit, the separation between the spirit and the body was less developed,
they had given them less to the understanding as objects. Often where we know with understanding
precise reality, historical objectivity, they see spirit; and where we put the pure spirit, for them the
spirit still has a bodily form. An example of this mentality is the way in which they conceive what we
call immortality, specifically the immortality of the soul, which they understand as a resurrection of
the body; Both conceptions are the extremes, with the Greek spirit in the middle; [ours] opposes all
understanding and its object, the dead body, the negative extreme of reason, the one soul; the
[oriental is], / so to speak, the extreme of a positive faculty of reason that feels the body as
something alive, at the same time that it considered it dead; while for the Greeks body and soul
constitute a single living figure, however in the two extreme positions death is a separation between
the body and the soul: in one of them the soul is no longer in the body, in the other the body
remains, even lifeless. In that, ours - in which we limit ourselves to knowing what is real with our
understanding or (what, let's say, comes to the same thing) with a spirit foreign to us -, the first
Christians introduce their spirit. In the writings of the Jews we see stories from the past, individual
situations and the spirit of a past humanity; In the actions of the Jewish cult we find actions, an
imposed task whose spirit, purpose and thoughts are no longer for us, they no longer have truth; For
them all this still had truth and spirit, but they did not let their own truth, their own spirit gain
objectivity. The spirit they lend to passages from the prophets and other Jewish books is not in the
sense of believing that in the prophets / predictions of future realities are found nor, as far as they

CLIII The 1st version follows: the dominion of the dead, not a free union of related beings and
the generation of new ones,
1
The 1st version of the paragraph concludes as follows : The degradation of the divine to a cause
did not elevate the human being to it; A miracle is a true creatio ex nihilo and no thought is as
incompatible with the divine as this one, since it implies the annihilation or creation of a
completely alien force, the true actio in distans ; and just as in the truly divine there is
harmony and peace is found, the divine miracle is the most complete shattering.
 2
4
are concerned, any application to reality. What there is is an indecisive, shapeless floating9 between
reality and spirit; On the one hand, in reality only the spirit is attended to, on the other hand,
reality is taken into account, but only vaguely. To cite an example, John (ch. 12, 14 ff.) refers to the
circumstance that Jesus entered Jerusalem mounted on a donkey, according to an expression of the
prophet, who saw that procession at his abduction, the truth of which John sees reflected in the
entrance of Jesus. The evidence that similar passages from the Jewish books are actually cited
against the literal meaning of the original text or have been explained against the meaning given to
them by their context, or refer to other completely different realities, circumstances and people
contemporary with the prophets, or they come from an occasional enthusiasm of the prophet, all
these tests in short, affect only the reality of the relationship that the apostles propose between
themselves and the circumstances of Jesus' life; but they do not affect the truth and spirit of [the
apostles], a truth that, by the way, is not perceptible in the strict objective assumption that the real
sayings and deeds of the prophets are the anticipated expression of later realities. It would be very
insufficient to interpret the spirit of the relationship that the friends of Christ find between the
stories of the prophets and the circumstances of Jesus' life, reducing that relationship to the
comparison of similar situations, as we often do, when the exposition of In a situation we add a
quote from an ancient author. In the example cited above John expressly says that Jesus' friends
were not aware of this relationship until Jesus was glorified and the spirit had descended upon them;
If Juan had seen in it a mere idea, a mere similarity between different things, he would not have
needed this observation; but, as they are, that vision of the prophet and this circumstance of an
action of Jesus are one and the same thing in the spirit; and since the relationship only occurs in the
spirit, it is out of place to consider it as an objective coincidence / of the real, of the individual.
Also in Jn 11, 51, this spirit is especially well appreciated, which objectifies the real so little or
leaves it indeterminate, without perceiving anything that is individual in it, but only something
spiritual: when about the maxim of Caiaphas and its application - which is It is preferable for a single
human being to die for the people than for the entire people to be in danger - John remembers that
Caiaphas has not said this for himself as an individual, but as a high priest in prophetic enthusiasm
(nposepntevosv). In what we, for example, would see from the perspective of an instrument of
divine Providence, John saw something filled with spirit; and nothing could be more incompatible
with the nature of [his] vision of Jesus and his friends than the point of view that takes everything as
a machine, tool, instrument; His was the opposite: supreme faith in the spirit; And John sees the
unity of the spirit where unity is seen through the coincidence of actions, each of which lacks this
unity, the intention of the total effect; and / [where] these actions (like that of Caiaphas) are
 2
5
considered as realities and instruments, [they see them] subject to the [unity], dominated,
0 guided
by it in its unconscious relationship with the unity, and in this same action [Caiaphas] sees the spirit
of the total effect to the work; For John Caiaphas himself is filled with the spirit that contained the
implacable destiny of Jesus.
<This is how the miracles, even seen with the soul of the apostles, lose much of the
harshness that their opposition between the spirit and the body has for us; They evidently
lacked the European understanding that strips of all spirit what accesses consciousness,
fixing it in absolute objectivities, in realities totally opposed to the spirit; Obviously this
knowledge is rather an indeterminate oscillation between reality and spirit that, despite
continuing to separate them, did not do so so irrevocably; For the rest [that oscillation]
did not merge into pure nature either, since it already offered the clear contrast that a
later development could only convert into a pairing of the living and the dead, of the
divine and the real; but the aggregation of the real Jesus to the glorious, deified Jesus,
although it exemplified the satisfaction of the deepest religious impulse, did not give it,
thus turning it into an infinite, inextinguishable and unsatisfied nostalgia; and it is that at
the apex of its enthusiasm, in the tremors of the most exquisite souls, which breathe the
most sublime love, nostalgia always finds in front of the individual, that objective,
personal something with which all the depths of their souls aspire to unite. beautiful
feelings; but that union is forever impossible, since it is an individual, forever confronted
[as an object] in his conscience and forever preventing religion from accessing full life. All
forms of the Christian religion that have developed over a secular destiny are based on
this fundamental feature of opposition within the divine itself, a divinity that must only
occur in consciousness, never in life. At one extreme, the states of union experienced in
the ecstasies of the enthusiast who renounces all the variety of life - even the purest, in
which the spirit enjoys itself - and only attends to God, then only with the death could
remove the opposition [with him] from the personality; at the other extreme the reality of
the most plural consciousness, of unification with the destiny of the world, but also of the
opposition of God with this destiny: an opposition felt in all actions and manifestations of
life, justified at the price of a sensation of servitude and nullity in its opposition -as in the
Catholic Church-, or -as in the Protestant Church- opposition of God felt in mere more or
less devout thoughts; [This last] opposition, in turn, [can take the form] of a God who – in
some Protestant sects – hates life as if it were a shame and a crime, or [that] of a God
who is benevolent towards life. and his joys, from whom they only come as his favors and
gifts, as mere reality; and over this / also hovers the idea of a divine human, of the
 2
5
prophets, etc., as a form of the spirit degraded to an objective, [merely] 1historical
perspective-[. Between those extremes of consciousness, sometimes dispersed, sometimes
withdrawn, of friendship, hatred or indifference towards the world, before those
extremes that constitute the opposition between God and the world, between the divine
and life, The Church has traveled the circle in both directions; but it goes against its very
nature to find the point of rest in an impersonal, living beauty; and it is their destiny that
Church and State, worship and life, piety and virtue, spiritual action and worldly action
can never merge.
 2
5
2
TEXT 5

[P. 472 to 483]

HGW 2.35 1
[49]
[ The positivity of the Christian religion ]
1
[New beginning]

September 24, 1800

The concept of positivity of the Christian religion dates back to recent times
and has gained importance in them; When a positive religion is contrasted with
natural religion, it is assumed that there is only one natural religion as there is only
one human nature, while there can be many positive religions. From this contrast it
can be deduced that a positive religion would be unnatural or supernatural, since it
contains concepts and knowledge that overflow understanding and reason, while at
the same time it requires feelings and actions inappropriate for the natural man:
feelings induced with forced measures, actions carried out in obedience to orders and
not out of interest in it.
As seen from this generic explanation, in order to declare a religion or a part of
it positive, a prior definition of the concept of human nature, as well as its
relationship with divinity, is required. This concept has been given a lot of thought
recently; it was believed that they had achieved sufficient clarity with the concept of
the human condition, to the point that it could serve as a measure for a critical
examination of religion.
It took a long process of formation over centuries to reach a time in which
concepts were so abstract that the conviction reigned / that the infinite phenomenal
variety of human nature had been recapitulated in the unity of a few concepts.
general.

1
This second beginning, unlike the 1795 version, vigorously criticizes in the Enlightenment the
extreme conceptualism, still characteristic of the History of Jesus itself, which reduced religion to
mere ethical principles. On the other hand, it intensifies the attention to the concrete and
historical, also typical of the Enlightenment; The acceptance of the historical, which in the sketches
of 1795 began to take shape, is now very decisive. The result is a radical revision of the very notion
of positivity.
 2
5
3 and
The generality of these simple concepts makes them both necessary
characteristic of humanity; and once these characteristics are established, all other
varieties of uses [and] customs, as well as the opinions of people, or of individuals,
become nothingness, prejudices and errors; In this way, the religion that
corresponded to them is a positive religion and their relationship with nothingness is
another nothingness, except that, because it belongs to religion, it constitutes at the
same time a divine mandate.
The Christian religion has been the object of both reproach and praise for
having adapted to the most varied codes of conduct, idiosyncrasies and/or
constitutions. The corruption of the Roman State was his crib; the religion
Christianity became hegemonic when this empire was in decline, and it does not seem
to have stopped its drop; On the contrary, it allows you to extend
your
territory, presenting himself to the time like the religion of
exquisite Romans and
Greeks, immersed in vices further abject and enslaved for them, and that of
the
most ignorant, savage barbarians, but also the most free. It was the religion of the
Italian States in the most beautiful moments of their arrogant freedom in the Middle
Ages and of the austere free republics of the Swiss, of the monarchies of recent
Europe, with their different levels of moderation, as well as the common religion of
the most oppressed servants of the land and their lords: all of them visit the same
church. In America the Spanish have exterminated entire generations under the sign of
the cross, the English have sung thanksgiving for the devastation of India. Within the
Christian religion, the plastic arts reached their peak and the imposing buildings of
science arose, at the same time that the beauty of art was banished and the
development of science was considered impious. There is no climate in which the tree
of the Cross has not prospered, taken root and fructified. / Entire peoples have linked
the joys of life with the Christian religion, while the most absolute desolation has
found justification and nourishment in it.
The general concept of human nature is capable of infinite modifications, and
it is not a subterfuge to resort to experience to affirm that there must be
modifications, on the contrary: it can be demonstrated apodictically that pure human
nature has never existed; it is enough to try to specify what pure human nature would
 2
5
then be[. This expression cannot have any other content than adaptation4 to the
general concept. But living nature will never coincide with its concept, which is why
what for the concept was mere modification, pure contingency, something
superfluous, [becomes] what is necessary, living, perhaps even the only natural and
beautiful thing.
Consequently, the criterion initially established for the positivity of religion
changes radically. The general concept of human nature will no longer suffice; Their
free will becomes an insufficient criterion, since the codes of conduct, the diverse
nature of the people and the religion that corresponds to them do not depend on a
conceptual definition; Whatever the type of training achieved, there should be
awareness of a higher power and, consequently, representations that overflow both
understanding and reason; When the feelings that should exist in human nature do not
occur in ordinary life, forced measures are required to produce them, even if they
inevitably involve some violence; Likewise, the actions that natural religion requires –
but which would also disappear in times when nothing is natural anymore – are carried
out only because they are commanded, with blind obedience. There is no doubt that
this is how a religion has become positive; but it has only become, it was not
originally; Now religion has to be positive, otherwise there would not be one. Religion
has remained an alien inheritance from times past, whose demands are still respected
and perhaps even more respected and feared the more unknown its essence is. It can
also be natural to tremble in the face of the unknown, to renounce one's own will in
one's behavior and/to submit entirely, like a machine, to pre-established rules, to
become lethargic, renouncing - by action and omission, in words and in silence - one's
own understanding, in the penumbra - temporary or permanent - of a feeling; And
that does not mean that a religion that breathes that spirit would be positive, since it
would be appropriate to the nature of its time. Certainly a nature that required such a
religion would be a miserable nature; but religion would fulfill its supreme end, giving
that nature something superior in the only way in which it could assimilate it and find
satisfaction. Only when another spirit awakens, when that [nature], gaining a sense of
itself, demands freedom for itself and does not place it only in its overwhelming
Being, only then can the religion that it had until then seem positive to it. The general
concepts of human nature are too empty to be able to provide a criterion for the
needs of religiosity in its particularity and its necessary diversity.
It would be a misunderstanding to see in what has been said so far a
 2
5
5 of all
justification of all the pretensions of established religions, of all superstition,
ecclesiastical despotism, of all the brutalization produced or encouraged by false
religious dispositions. No! There is nothing positive about the stupidest, crudest
superstition for a being with a human figure, but without a soul; Now, as soon as a
soul awakens in him, even if he continues to feel the imperative of superstition, it
becomes positive in his eyes, and whoever until then submitted spontaneously to it,
would now consider it positive; But if this cannot be otherwise, it is because his
judgment harbors the presentiment of an ideal of humanity. An ideal of human nature
is, however, something completely different from general concepts about the human
condition and about the relationship of the human being with God. The ideal is
perfectly compatible with particularity, with the possibility of determinations, it even
demands actions, feelings, uses, the superfluous, an overabundance of superfluous
elements that only in the pale light of general concepts seems like ice and stone. Only
when the superfluous stifles freedom does it become / positive, that is, when it
becomes pretentious with understanding and reason opposing its necessary laws. The
generality of this criterion must be limited in the sense that understanding and reason
can only be judges when appealed to them; When something does not claim to be
reasonable or rational, it is not under its jurisdiction either. And here lies a capital
point, which, if not taken into account, provokes radically opposite judgments. There
is nothing and no one who cannot be summoned by understanding and reason before
their court under the obvious pretense that everything must be reasonable and
rational, so it is easy for them to find positivity and they do not stop crying out
against the slavery of the spirit, the pressure on conscience, superstition. This is how
the most spontaneous actions, the most innocent feelings, the most beautiful
representations of fantasy are mistreated. But this improper action also generates the
corresponding effect. Reasonable people believe they are telling the truth when they
speak reasonably to feelings, to imagination, to religious needs, and are incapable of
understanding why there is resistance to their truth or why they preach to deaf ears;
The failure is to offer stones to the child who asks for bread; Their merchandise is
useful, if you are going to build a house. But also, if bread were intended to be a valid
material for building houses, [reasonable people] would rightly object.
In a religion there may be certain actions, people, memories that are
considered sacred; Reason shows that they are something occasional, while at the
same time it demands that the sacred be eternal, imperishable. But that does not
 2
5
mean that it has demonstrated the positivity of these religious elements, since6 human
beings can link what is imperishable and sacred to something contingent and has to do
so; When thinking about the eternal, he links it with the contingency of his own
thought. Another thing is that the contingent as such - as what it is for the
understanding - claims the character of imperishable and sacred, demanding
veneration. That is when the right of reason to speak of positivity intervenes.
HGW 2,358 / The question of whether a religion is positive has much less to do with the
content of its doctrine and its commandments than with its way of legitimizing its
doctrine and demanding the practice of its precepts; Any doctrine, any precept can
become positive, since any can be proclaimed in a violent way oppressing freedom,
and there is no doctrine that would not be true in certain circumstances nor a precept
that in certain circumstances would not be a duty; Furthermore, what in general may
count as the purest truth requires, by its own generality, limitation when applied in
particular circumstances, that is, it does not have absolute truth in all circumstances.
That is why it is not the intention of the following essay to examine whether
there are positive doctrines and commandments in the Christian religion; The answer
to this question based on general concepts of human nature and divine attributes is
too empty, a horrible nonsense whose expansion to infinity and its lack of content
have ended up making it too boring; and it has lost any interest to such an extent that
perhaps what [this] time needs was rather to listen to the contrary demonstration to
that enlightened application of general concepts; Of course, assuming that this
opposite demonstration is not carried out with the principles and methods that the
ancient dogmatics extracted from the culture of its time, but rather by deducing that
already repudiated dogmatics from what we currently recognize as a necessity of
human nature, so that it showed its naturalness and necessity. Such an attempt
presupposed the faith that the conviction of many centuries, what millions lived and
died for in these centuries, considering it a duty and a holy truth, has not been - at
least as far as beliefs are concerned - pure nonsense and even immorality. Once,
according to the fashionable method based on general concepts / the entire edifice of
dogmatics, a remnant of dark centuries, has been declared unsustainable in
enlightened times, humanity will still have to ask itself how it could have been built. a
building so opposed to human reason and so absolutely erroneous. It is shown in the
History of the Church how the simple truths on which it was based have been covered
by that pile of errors due to passion and ignorance, how in this gradual fixation of
 2
5
7
dogmas, continued for centuries, they have not always It was knowledge, moderation
and reason that have guided the Fathers of the Church, how in the very adoption of
the Christian religion not only the pure love of truth influenced, but also very complex
motives, very profane considerations, dirty passions and many times only needs of the
spirit derived from mere superstition, how totally external circumstances, foreign to
religion, interested intentions, violence and cunning shaped the faith of nations
according to their purposes. Now, explanations of this type are based on a deep
contempt for human beings and a clearly superstitious faith in one's own
understanding, while at the same time they ignore the main issue, which consists of
showing the adequacy of religion. to nature [and] how it changed over the centuries;
In other words: when asking about the truth of religion with respect to the customs
and nature of people and times, the answer is that it is pure and empty superstition,
deception and stupidity. The blame for everything is most often attributed to the
senses; But no matter how great its predominance is, the human being does not stop
being rational; In other words, his nature always has higher, inexcusable needs for
religiosity, and the way of satisfying them - that is, the system of his faith, his
worship, his obligations - cannot have been mere stupidity, nor a stupidity. so impure
as to give rise to all immoralities.
Although it is the express purpose of this dissertation to inquire, not whether
Christianity contains doctrines that are positive, / but only whether it is a positive
religion in general terms, both perspectives can coincide in the sense that, whatever
the answer, with all its Consequently, Christianity could find a place in the very
doctrine of religion, where the positivity of each singular doctrine would effectively
be examined. There is no doubt that any way of conceiving the whole can in turn be
isolated and juxtaposed to the whole, thereby becoming a part; However, its content
will always refer to the whole. Furthermore, as already said, the question of positivity
does not refer so much to the content as to the way in which religion[,] either has to
be received passively or, as free, is something that must be given and received freely.
Furthermore, this dissertation ignores the infinitely varied forms that the
Christian religion has adopted in different times and in different peoples, as well as
what can currently be understood by the Christian religion: nothing is more equivocal
than this concept, both its essence and its particular doctrines and its relationship
with the whole, and [even] its importance. What it intends, instead, is to investigate
in the very beginnings of the Christian faith, in the way it emerged from the word and
 2
5
life of Jesus, if there are already circumstances that could have directly given8 rise to
positivity, so that something contingent as such would be taken as eternal and the
Christian religion would be based simply on that contingency, despite the fact that
reason disapproved of it and freedom rejected it.
Authority is the generic name for something perishable from which a need
supposedly arises, for the perishable on which human consciousness of something
eternal, as well as the relationship to it in feeling, thinking and acting, is supposed to
be based.
Two opinions agree that the Christian religion is based on authority; It would
certainly be based on the natural feeling or aspiration of the human being for the
good, which of course / presupposes the elevation of his gaze to God; But Jesus would
demand something more so that we can trust in having achieved divine approval: not
only pure and free obedience to the infinite God - as the purely religious soul will
demand of itself - but also obedience to certain precepts and commandments. that
prescribe actions, feelings, convictions. Both opinions, although they agree on this,
differ in that for one of them what is positive about a religion is accessory and even
reprehensible, which is why they refuse to grant the religion of Jesus the rank of a
free religion. as a religion of [pure] virtue; On the other hand, the other opinion sees
the merit of the religion of Jesus precisely in that positivity, which he proclaims as
what is truly sacred and base of everything community ethics. This
opinion not
cannot even consider how the religion of Jesus became positive, since he maintains
that this is how came out of the lips of Jesus,
that based
Exclusively on his authority – accredited with miracles, etc. – is how Jesus has
demanded faith in all his teachings, in the laws of virtue, in God's relationship with
humans; and he does not regard as a reproach what Sittah says of the Christians in
Nathan [ the Wise ]:

...what from its very founder has seasoned faith with

humanity, they love, not because it is human, but because
Christ teaches it, because Christ has done it.

According to this opinion, a positive religion is possible because in human nature

 2
5
there are needs that it itself is incapable of satisfying, and this type is also its9highest
needs; and since it is incapable of resolving the contradictions that thus arise in it,
that resolution has to / come from a merciful outside. [Now,] consider as positive not
only the religious doctrines and commandments, but also all the laws of virtue given
by Jesus; [Likewise,] finding its validity and the possibility of its knowledge only in the
fact that Jesus has commanded it, certainly testifies to a humble modesty and a
resignation that renounces everything that is good, noble and great in human nature. ;
But, simply trying to understand oneself, the minimum is to presuppose that the
human being has a natural feeling or awareness of a supernatural world and its
commitment to the divine; If a request for virtue and religion coming from outside
had absolutely nothing to do with our hearts, if it did not strike the chords of our
nature within us, Jesus' design of enthusing humans with a better religion and virtue
would have been of the same type and would have had the same success as the zeal of
Saint Anthony of Padua preaching to the fish; although the saint could have trusted
that what was unattainable both for his preaching and for the nature of the fish could
be achieved in them by an assistance from above. This way of understanding the
relationship of the Christian religion with the human being does not deserve to be
described as positive in itself - it is based on the certainly beautiful presupposition
that everything that is superior, noble and beautiful in the being Human comes from
God, it is his spirit, it proceeds from him. But this perspective becomes crudely
positive as soon as human nature is absolutely separated from divine nature, as soon
as any mediation between them is rejected - if not only in a single individual -; With
this, any human consciousness of what is good and divine is degraded to the marasmus
and annihilation typical of a faith in something alien and overwhelming.
Evidently, an in-depth conceptual investigation of this topic would end up
leading to a metaphysical meditation on the relationship between the finite and the
infinite. But this is not the intention of this essay, since it is based on the inevitable
recognition that our very nature feels the need for a being superior to what human
action is in our consciousness[; It is also based] on converting the intuition of the
perfection of that superior being into the life-giving spirit of life, and on directly
dedicating time, actions and feelings to this intuition without taking into account
other purposes. This general need for a religion contains many other needs of human
nature. To what extent does their satisfaction correspond to nature? To what extent is
it capable of resolving by itself the contradictions it incurs? Does the only possible
 2
6
solution to these contradictions lie in the Christian religion? And is that 0solution
completely beyond the reach of nature? Is the passivity of faith the only way to
achieve this solution? These are questions that may find another occasion to examine
their true meaning and develop their content. When / reason - after a superficial
examination, due to external appearance - perceives the contingency that affects the
solution proposed by the Christian religion to those tasks of the human heart or, if you
prefer, of practical reason - since it is about a concrete act, of a precise doctrine-, in
general terms it is necessary to keep in mind something that should not be forgotten:
that the contingent is only one side of what counts as sacred. When a religion has
linked what is eternal to something perishable, and reason, focusing only on what is
perishable, begins to cry: Superstition!, it is its fault, for having proceeded
superficially, ignoring what is eternal.
Next, doctrines or precepts of the Christian religion will not be measured by
general concepts, nor will it be ruled whether these doctrines and precepts coincide
with such concepts or contradict them, or at least are something superfluous and
therefore irrational and dispensable; Consequently, such contingencies that, as it
turns out that something eternal is linked to them, lose their contingent character,
cannot but have two faces and it is reason that separates them, not religion itself; or,
rather, general concepts do not apply to religion, since religion itself is not a concept.
It is not such contingencies produced by reflection itself that we are going to deal
with here, but rather those that supposedly subsist as such contingencies as an object
of religion itself, which must have a high meaning as contingents, be sacred insofar as
they are limited and worthy of veneration; More specifically, our inquiry is limited to
whether these contingencies already existed at the time of the founding of the
Christian religion with the teachings, actions, destinies of Jesus himself, whether
these contingencies appear in the form of his speeches, in his relationship with other
human beings. , friends or enemies, [to later] gain, by itself or by circumstances, an
importance that was not found in its origin; In other words, it is about whether in the
very emergence of the Christian religion there were reasons for it to become a positive
religion.
HGW 2,365
State of the Jewish religion
The Jewish people, who absolutely hated and despised all the peoples around
them, wanted to stick to themselves, far above the others, unique in their nature, in
 2
6
their customs, in their arrogance; Any comparison or contamination with the 1customs
of others seemed to him a horrible abomination, and yet the situation of his small
country, its commercial connections, the unification of the peoples promoted by the
Romans put him in multiple relationships with others; The Jewish mania for isolation
had to give in to the pressure of the people for unification and in fact succumbed
after struggles that were both 1

Here Hegel refers with a mark to the parallel passage of the 1st version (p. 1,282 of this
translation), marked marginally as “ State of the Jewish religion”; This mark now becomes the
subtitle of the new passage.
more frightening the more closed this town was; Finally, the submission of his State
under a foreign power mortified and exasperated [that mania] to the core. All the
more fiercely did these people continue to adhere to the legal commandments of
their religion; His legislation was derived directly from an exclusive God; The exercise
of countless meaningless actions was essential to their religion, and the spirit of the
nation, pedantically enslaved, had prescribed a rule for even the most trivial action of
each day, lending to the entire nation the appearance of a / monastic order: the
service of God and virtue was a life imposed under dead formalities, the spirit had
nothing left but the stubborn pride of this obedience of slaves to laws that they had
not given themselves. But this obstinacy could not stop the increasingly precipitous
fall of his heavy destiny, to which new weights were added day by day. Everything had
been broken once and for all. The [Jewish] frenzy of segregation had not been able to
resist political dependence and the influences brought by union with strangers. [T]he
state of the Jewish nation had to awaken in better-off people - incapable of degrading
what they felt about themselves to the level of a dead machine and of lowering
themselves to servile frenzy - the need for freer activity and a purer autarky than
living an existence without self-consciousness with the monastic diligence of an
obtuse and empty mechanism consisting of petty and petty uses[; that is,] the need
for a freer pleasure than that of believing oneself someone in this delirious need for
slaves. Nature rebelled against this state of things, producing the most varied
reactions: the emergence of many gangs of criminals, many messiahs, the strictest
and most monastic Judaism of the Pharisees, its combination with finesse and politics
in Sadduceism, the fraternal heremitic life. from the Essenes, far from the passions
and concerns of their people, the luminosity that gave Judaism the most beautiful
flowering of a human nature in Platonism; Finally John [the Baptist] arose, preaching
openly to all the people. And finally Jesus appeared, who attacked the root of the evil
 2
6
of his people, namely: their arrogant and hostile segregation from all nations; 2Nothing
else means that I would like to lead you to the God of all human beings, to His
universal love, to renounce the mechanism of a divine service without love or
spirit; /precisely for this reason his new doctrine became the religion of the world
rather than that of his people, which shows how deeply he had understood the needs
of his time and how sunk the Jews were in an irremediable absence of good and in the
frenzy of his slavery of spirit. We have not received any news about the interesting
question of how Jesus grew up to maturity; He does not enter the scene until he
reaches his virile age, free of Jewish mentality, free of petty inertia - whose only
activity refers to the vulgar needs and comforts of life - as well as of ambition and
other passions whose satisfaction would have forced to join common prejudices and
vices. His whole way of being suggests that, although he was educated among his
people, his enthusiasm as a reformer took hold of him when he was away - and surely
for more than 40 days -; On the other hand, his way of acting and speaking does not
show traces of any other culture or religion of the people of his time. It comes
suddenly youthfully with all the joyful hope and confidence in success that knows no
doubt; Apparently he does not expect the resistance that the deep-rooted prejudices
of his people oppose him; he seemed to have forgotten that the spirit of free
religiosity had died, that his nation was possessed of an obstinate and frantic servility.
He plans to convert the hardened hearts of his people with simple words, with
itinerant preaching to the masses; he believes that the twelve friends – whom he has
only recently met – are capable of achieving this effect; He believes that his nation is
ripe to be shaken and transformed by sending such immature people, who will later
commit so many stupidities and suddenly be barely capable of more than repeating
the words of Jesus. The spontaneous youth is extinguished only by the bitter
experience of the failure of its efforts and then it speaks with bitter violence, with a
spirit irritated by hostile resistance.
While the Jews expected the fullness of the theocracy, a Kingdom of God, in the
future, Jesus told them: it has arrived, it is present. Faith in it makes it real and
makes any citizen of it real. The parochial arrogance of the Jews was inextricably
linked with the feeling of their own nullity, which slavery under their laws could only
eternally stoke in them. Making them believe that they, that the son of a carpenter,
could, in their miserable reality, be members of the Kingdom of God, giving them this
feeling of self was the only task, certainly difficult; freedom from the yoke of the law
 2
6
3 dead
[was] the negative characteristic of that faith. Hence Jesus attacks the
mechanism of his religious life from all sides; Jewish law was so corrupt that a lot of
subterfuges had even been invented to avoid the best of it. Certainly Jesus could do
little against the united force of a deep-rooted national pride, of the hypocrisy and
pretense that permeated his entire public life, and against the domination of the
leaders of the people, based on all this. Jesus suffered the sadness of seeing the
complete failure of his zeal to introduce freedom and morality into the religiosity of
his nation and that even his efforts to awaken better hopes and a better faith in at
least some men and to train them to support his efforts had had a rather ambiguous
and unfinished effect (see. in Mt 20, 20, an episode that John and James starred in
after several years of dealing with Jesus, [the case of] Judas, even in the last
moments of his stay on Earth, shortly before his, so-called, Ascension, followed
showing Jewish hope in all its dimension, since he was going to restore the State of
Israel: Acts 1,6). / Jesus himself ended up being a victim of the hatred that he had
aroused in the clergy and in the offended national vanity of his people.
It is only very natural that the new doctrine of Jesus, however free it was itself -
and apart from that it was only polemical -, had to become something positive once
received by Jewish heads; These would turn her, no matter what, into something they
could serve as slaves. The religion that Jesus carried within him was clearly clean of
the spirit of his people; What in his words tastes like superstition - for example the
dominion of demons over human beings - has been condemned by some as
frighteningly absurd, while others suppose that it is fixed through the concepts of
accommodation, ideas of the time, etc. ; For our part, what must be said about those
things that we cannot but consider superstitious is that they do not belong to religion.
For the rest, the soul of Jesus was free, independent of contingent obligations; the
only thing necessary, the love of God and neighbor, to be holy as God is. True, this
religious purity is extremely admirable in a Jew; On the other hand, his followers,
although we see that they abandon Jewish contingencies, are not free at all from the
spirit of dependence on them; From the words of Jesus, from what has happened to
him personally, they immediately draw rules and obligations, and the free imitation of
their teacher is transformed into servile service of their mentor.
What then is contingent in the way of acting and speaking of Jesus, who, being in
itself contingent, could be taken as something sacred and worshiped as such?