Friday, September 3, 2021

Courage and Equality

 The remarks to paragraph 328 of Hegel's Philosophy of Right conclude

The principle of the modern world--thought and the universal--has given courage a higher form, because its display now seems to be more mechanical, the act not of this particular person, but of a member of a whole. Moreover, it seems to be turned not against single persons, but against a hostile group, and hence personal bravery appears impersonal. It is for this reason that thought has invented the gun, and the invention of this weapon, which has changed the purely personal form of bravery into a more abstract one, is no accident.

(Translated by T.M. Knox)

In the American west, there was a saying running roughly

God created all men, but Samuel Colt made them equal.

That seems to put one back in the world of abstract right: but paragraph 328 is well along in the section on ethical life, nearing the end of the consideration of the state.

 

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