Nürnberg. The lectures are as simple as Hegel could make them—though they must have been out of the reach of schoolboys—and it is significant that he himself used the ethical approach to philosophy in this course as the most fitting for junior students. The tripartite division of the philosophy of mind, characteristic of his later work, appears here. But the final titles are not yet reached. The stages are (a) mind in its motion, (b) practical mind, and (c) mind in its pure exposition. The whole treatment of ethical mind is called practical rather than objective. The framework, however, is laid down, and the chief weakness is in the transitions.
In 1817 the first of the mature expositions of Hegel’s ethical philosophy appeared in the Encyclopaedia. This work is a complete, but brief, statement of Hegel’s philosophy as a whole—lacking, however, the approach offered in the Phenomenology—and his more specialized works are fuller statements of various positions adopted in it. In 1821 Hegel published the Outlines of the Philosophy of Right, in which the ethical and political portions of the Encyclopaedia are handled by themselves. Both of these works are authoritative. The Encyclopaedia was enlarged and revised in 1827 and in 1830. In it Hegel refers to the Philosophy of Right for details, and, conversely, one has to turn to the former work for the context in which the latter is set. From the nature of the case there is a better balance in the Encyclopaedia. The Philosophy of Right points out the way in which the principles of right realize mind and give it objectivity; and it is more concerned to show how the infinite self-contained whole which mind intrinsically is, comes to the light of day, than to display the insufficiency of the whole field of right. In consequence, the latter work speaks of the infinity of mind and the rationality of the will without further qualification, whereas the former is careful to note that this infinity is itself finite and the rationality not final. I see no reason to suppose, however,
