The Closed Commercial State

Introduction: On the relation of the rational state to the actual state, and of pure Right of state to politics

{397} [51] Introduction On the relation of the rational state to the actual state, and of pure Right of state to politics Pure Right of state lets the rational state arise under its eyes according to the concepts of Right, by presupposing men to be without any of the relations that, resembling rightful relations, had previously existed. Yet we never find men in this state of existence. In every quarter they are already living together under constitutions that, for the most part, arose not according to concepts and through art, but rather through chance or providence.4 The actual state finds them in this latter state of existence. It cannot suddenly destroy this constitution without dispersing the men and turning them into savages, thus nullifying its true purpose of building a rational state from them. It can do no more than gradually approximate itself to the rational state. It follows that we may represent the actual state as in the process of gradually instituting the rational state. With the actual state, the question is not merely, as with a rational state, what is right, but: how much of what is right can be carried out under the given conditions? If we give the name of politics to the science of government of the actual {398} state according to the maxim just indicated, this politics would then lie halfway between the given state and the rational state: it would describe the continuous path [Linie] through which the former changes into the latter, and will itself terminate in pure Right of state. Whoever undertakes to show the particular laws under which to bring the public commerce in the state would thus first have to investigate what is right in a rational state with regard to commerce. Then he must indicate the custom of the existing actual state in this regard. And finally he must show the path by which the state can pass over from the latter state of existence to the former. I need not defend the fact that I speak of a science and art that will gradually bring about the rational state. All the good things of which man 87 should partake must be produced by his own art, guided by science. This is man’s vocation [Bestimmung]. Nature gives him nothing in advance, save the possibility of applying art. In government as elsewhere, we must subsume everything under concepts that lets itself be subsumed under them, and stop abandoning anything that should be calculated to blind chance in the hope that blind chance will make it turn out well. [52] ...