Gentlemen,

Since today marks my first appearance at this university in that official capacity as a teacher of philosophy to which I was graciously appointed by His Majesty the King, permit me to say by way of introduction that I considered it particularly desirable and gratifying to take up a position of wider academic influence both at this particular moment and in this particular place.

As far as the particular moment is concerned, those circumstances appear to have arisen in which philosophy may once again expect to receive attention and love, and in which this science, which had almost fallen silent, may once more lift up its voice. For not long ago, the urgency of the times on the one hand conferred such great importance on the petty interests of everyday life, and on the other hand, the high interests of actuality, the interest and conflicts involved simply in restoring and salvaging the political totality of national life and of the state, placed such great demands on all [our] mental faculties and on the powers of all [social] classes [Stände] – as well as on external resources – that the inner life of the spirit could not attain peace and leisure; and the world spirit was so bound up with actuality and forced to turn outwards that it was prevented from turning inwards upon itself and enjoying and indulging itself in its proper home.

It is true that the science of natural law, like other sciences such as mechanics and physics, has long been recognised as an essentially philosophical science and – since philosophy must have parts – as an essential part of philosophy. But it has shared the fate of the other sciences in that the philosophical element in philosophy has been assigned exclusively to metaphysics, and the sciences have been allowed little share in it; instead, they have been kept completely independent of the Idea, within their own special principle. The sciences cited as examples have finally been compelled more or less to confess their remoteness from philosophy. They consequently acknowledge as their scientific principle what is commonly called experience, thereby renouncing their claim to be genuine sciences; they are content to consist of a collection of empirical knowledge [Kenntnisse] and to make use of the concepts of the understanding as postulates [bittweise], without claiming to make any objective assertion. If whatever has called itself a philosophical science has been excluded from philosophy and from the category of science in general, at first against its will but in eventual acceptance of this situation, the reason for this exclusion is not that these so-called sciences did not originate in philosophy itself and did not maintain a conscious connection with it. For every part of philosophy is individually capable of being an independent science and attaining complete inner necessity, because it is the absolute which makes it a genuine science.

Although this volume has been a joint endeavour from the beginning, each of the editors had special tasks to perform in assembling the volume. The translation was the work of H. B. Nisbet, who has also used the translator's preface and the glossary to explain some of the finer points of rendering Hegel's difficult German into English. The general introduction was written by Laurence Dickey, who was also responsible for the chronology of Hegel's life and career and the editorial notes. Laurence Dickey, however, is greatly indebted to H. B. Nisbet for the many contributions he generously made to each of these parts of the book. Indeed, H. B. Nisbet not only provided suggestions and information that considerably improved the editorial notes but also commented extensively on various drafts of the general introduction. His observations on these drafts – as to style and to the structural balance of the argument – proved immensely helpful.

Laurence Dickey and H. B. Nisbet would respectively like to express their thanks to two colleagues for their friendship and support over many years: they accordingly dedicate this volume to Marc Raeff and Hans Reiss.

Most excellent, illustrious, reverend men, most learned and congenial colleagues, most honourable companions in study, most esteemed listeners of every rank!

The most venerable Senate has instructed me to comment on the occasion and cause of the celebration with which the King has authorised this university to mark today's festival. Since that immortal act which we now commemorate concerned the profession and establishment of religious doctrine, it appears fitting that our admirable Theological Faculty should play the leading part in this festivity. Its estimable Dean will accordingly give us a fitting and learned account of the event in question and profoundly impress its significance upon us. But what happened at Augsburg was not enacted by an assembly of Doctors of Theology and leaders of the Church; nor did they embark on a learned disputation in order to determine the truth and to require the lay community to accept it as certain and observe it with dutiful obedience. On the contrary, the main significance of that day was that the princes of the [German] states and the burgomasters of the Imperial Cities publicly declared that the Protestant [evangelicam] doctrine, freed at last from a mass of superstitions, errors, lies, and all kinds of injustices and abuses, was now finally perfected and elevated above the uncertain outcome of disputations, above the arbitrary will, and above all worldly authority, and that they [i.e. the princes and burgomasters] had now taken up the cause of religion.

1. The state is the true mode [wahrhafte Weise] of actuality; in it, the true ethical will attains actuality and the spirit lives in its true form [Wahrhaftigkeit]. Religion is divine knowledge, the knowledge which human beings have of God and of themselves in God. This is divine wisdom and the field of absolute truth. But there is a second wisdom, the wisdom of the world, and the question arises as to its relationship to the former, divine wisdom.

In general, religion and the foundation of the state are one and the same thing – they are identical in and for themselves.

[On the recent internal affairs of Württemberg, in particular the inadequacies of the municipal constitution]

(1798)

To the people of Württemberg

It is time that the people of Württemberg ceased to vacillate between hope and fear, to alternate between expectancy and frustrated expectations. I will not say that it is also time for everyone who, in the midst of change or in preserving the old, seeks only his own limited advantage or the advantage of his class [seines Standes] and consults only his own vanity, to renounce these paltry desires, to cast aside these petty concerns, and to fill his soul with concern for the general [good]. For men of nobler aspirations and purer zeal, it is time above all to focus their undirected [unbestimmten] will on those parts of the constitution which are founded on injustice, and to apply their efforts to the necessary change which such parts require.

Peaceful satisfaction with the present [dem Wirklichen], hopelessness, and patient acceptance of an all-too-vast and omnipotent fate have given way to hope, expectation, and courage to face the new. A vision of better, juster times has come to life in the souls of men, and a longing and yearning for a purer and freer destiny has moved all hearts and alienated them from the present reality [der Wirklichkeit]. The urge to break down paltry barriers has fixed its hopes on every event, every glimmering [of change] – even on criminal actions.

In 1964, T. M. Knox and Z. A. Pelczynski published their well-known edition of what they called Hegel's ‘minor’ political writings. They claimed that these writings were ‘a most valuable supplement’ to Hegel's major political work, the Philosophy of Right (henceforth PR). In addition, they saw the minor works as in some ways providing ‘a clearer insight into Hegel's basic political ideas’ than PR, a work which, they noted, was filled with metaphysical arguments, esoteric vocabulary, and obscurities associated with Hegel's life-long commitment to the ideals of speculative philosophy. By contrast, the minor writings were ‘relatively free’ from the jargon of metaphysics and addressed in plain language ‘topical political issues’ of the day. The down-to-earth quality of these works, in turn, prompted Knox and Pelczynski to present them as journalistic pieces that showcased Hegel's talents as a ‘publicist’. If, in that capacity, Hegel could be seen struggling with practical rather than metaphysical problems, then so much the better for appreciating his realistic political outlook.

On a deeper level, though, Knox and Pelczynski wished to use the writings in their edition to introduce students to a more ‘liberal’ Hegel, one whose ideas were more in line with the mainstream of western political thinking. This Hegel, they argued, while certainly not absent from PR, is clearly on display in the minor political writings, for in these, he reveals himself as a supporter of constitutional government and as a critic of absolutism, autocracy, and reaction.

Hegel's writings, particularly his more abstract and systematic works, confront the translator with numerous problems. The principles which I have followed in translating the more abstract texts in this collection – especially On the Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law, but also The Relationship of Religion to the State and parts of the extract from the Lectures on the Philosophy of History – are identical with those which I followed in my translation of Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Cambridge, 1991; published in the same series as the present volume) and which I described in detail in my preface to that translation (pp. xxxv–xliv). The most important of these principles is the need to adopt consistent renderings of key expressions in Hegel's system and to avoid confusion between similar or related terms with different nuances of meaning; the English equivalents for all such terms are listed, with explanatory comments where necessary, in the glossary towards the end of this volume.

One of the main difficulties in translating the present collection was due to the fact that the texts included in it vary considerably in form and subject matter and were written at widely separated stages of Hegel's career, from his earliest phase as a writer to the last year of his life.