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Unit 10: George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

... rulers who have given a national law to their people in the form of a well-arranged Notes
and clear cut legal code ... have been the greatest benefactors of their peoples, [and
that] to hang the laws so high that no citizen could read them ... is injustice of one and
the same kind as to bury them in row upon row of learned towns, collections of
dissenting judgements and opinions, records of custom, etc., and in a dead language
too, so that knowledge of the law of the land is accessible only to those who have
made it to their professional study.
The Universal Class
One of the most important components of the Hegelian state was the class of civil servants or the
bureaucracy. This class became the universal class because of its commitment to impartiality.
Unlike the other groups of civil society, which were primarily interested in their own progression
or business, the civil service performed the stupendous service of supervising the entire societal
apparatus, which Hegel called the public business. This class of people would not be recruited
from the nobility, but from the modern middle classes, which symbolized “the consciousness of
right and the developed intelligence of the mass of people”. For this reason, it becomes “the pillar
of the state so far as honesty and intelligence are concerned”. Not heredity, but “knowledge and
proof of ability” were the criteria for recruitment.
Hegel, in developing this philosophy of the civil service, differentiated the modern constitutional
state from the polis and oriental despotism, and pointed to the relative impersonality of the
bureaucracy. The constitutional state retained its independence from its ruling groups by the
mechanisms of free institutions and a civil service. The state was not the personal property of an
individual or a group. It placed more emphasis on institutional constraints, defining and limiting
the power of government rather than depending on virtues of statesmen or citizens. This was
because modern constitutionalism was suspicious of the abilities of men in power to control their
passions, and prevent abuse of power by the rulers. The rule of law and not rule of men reflected
the concern of modern societies. The modern constitutional state could not act in a partisan manner.
The civil service, like Plato’s Guardians, had the interests of the commonwealth in mind. Hegel
was categorical that the bureaucracy should be open to all citizens on the basis of ability and
citizenship. Civil servants should have fixed salaries so that they could resist the temptations of
civil society. Unlike Plato’s guardians, the universal class functioned within a framework where
the special interests expressed themselves legitimately within the Assembly of Estates and
autonomous corporations.
The indispensability of the state was demonstrated by the fact that the individual qualities and
potentialities of good life could be realized only through the state. It was the destiny of the
individual to identify with the universal and the truth, and not with incorrect notions of
individuality that rejected social values and championed the cause of individual eccentricities.
The state, in Hegelian terms, was the divine will, “in the sense that it is mind present on earth,
unfolding itself to be the actual shape and organization of a world”. The state was the most
sublime of all human institutions, the final culmination which embodied both mind and spirit. Its
strength was in providing the mechanism for the realization of the ideal—the synthesis of the
individual interest with that of the state. In case of conflict between the individual interests and
those of the large whole, the citizen would identify with those of the state, rather than pursue
one’s own interests. The state was the individual writ large.
The Monarchy
The monarchy, for Hegel, was a functional requirement of the modern constitution. This modern
constitution accepted separation and division of powers. He went to the extent of saying that
division of power guaranteed freedom. Hegel differentiated between the doctrines of the separation
of powers from his own innovative theory of inward differentiation of constitutional powers.

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