ABSTRACT
This chapter encounters the famous—or infamous—notion that "the state is the course of God in the world". It looks at Geist by means of an analogy, specifically an analogy with mathematics. Now mathematics is, of course, a term that we use quite freely in ordinary conversation, but its reference is not entirely straightforward. The chapter suggests that the word mathematics, in fact, denotes two quite different things: first, the set of rules that constitute the practice and, second, the actual activity of following the rules. Geist denotes an individual way of life, a particular kind of activity or being-in-the-world involving, at base, a disposition to be rational. For Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, to be human is to participate in Geist—to participate in the practice of rational thought—and this means to act in a manner that is consistent with and authorized by the rules of reason.
