Hegel states two moments of love whose main consequence is the foundation of a family. The first moment constitutes an essential evolution of the will, which leaves the sphere of the abstract rights and, in general, the subjective, to wish a contact with other with other will.

The second moment of love is that in which this wish is accomplished by finding another will; in this other will I recognise myself, and at the same time the other will recognises itself in me. What Hegel is trying to explain is the crucial step of the will to the realm of the objective. This step is contradictory, because it is a way of the self-consciousness negating itself and, nevertheless, finding its completion and affirmation in another consciousness. That is why this contradiction is impossible to resolve at a level of mere understanding. We need to achieve the level of dialectic thinking to find the mediation between these two wills in contact: love.

Hegel described the two principles which define civil society: particularity and universality. The first one relates to the individual, looking for his/her subjective needs and ends. The second principle is the whole system formed and produced by the interaction between these individuals. In this system we find that the own satisfaction  of each person’s needs leads to the satisfaction of the totality. Hegel draws a basic outline of the liberal system. The “invisible hand” which was first mentioned by Adam Smith is now redefined as a mediation between these two essential principles of civil society: a mediation that possesses two aspects, the external things (properties, products), that make us think in Marx’s capital, and the activity and work (Marx’s labour).

Nevertheless, Hegel is suggesting that these double-sided mediation does not seem to be complete, since the resultant of the mediation (the resolution of the contradiction) is in the sphere of the understanding, a low philosophical level where it is not possible to discern the positive outcome of the interaction between the two principles.

Hegel emphasises the importance of the state in the search of freedom. Nevertheless, he recognises that the actual form of the states in his contemporary reality may not attain the sphere of objectiveness and rationality that approaches to absolute freedom. In spite of that, he keeps on reassuring us regarding the superiority of law as the constitutive element of the state and the pure actualisation of the objective.

If a concrete state does not achieve the resolution of those contradictions mentioned in the bosom of civil society, it is not because of its inadequacy to exist, but because of its inadequacy to rule for the universal. Therefore Hegel is not only stressing here the possible defects of a state as a form in the real world; he is dismantling the arguments of some scholars who consider Hegel’s theory of the state as authoritarian.

So, for Hegel, the the state is always subordinated to the “world spirit”, which means that above the state it is necessary to take into account international law and, as he would explain later on, the very World History. Through this open way to universality Hegel hopes to meet the absolute freedom, and it is thus plainly evident that it will occur beyond the state.