Because acting, for itself, requires a particular content and a determinate purpose, while the abstraction of duty contains as yet no such content, the question arises: what is duty? For this determination, nothing is at first available except this: to do right, and to attend to welfare — one’s own welfare, and welfare in its universal determination, the welfare of others (see § 119).
α) Formal relation – of knowledge – the good here as immediate object –
β) Content – particularity – reflection – the good not merely given – posited by the will – no external things, like natural things, – posited by the will, subject, duties of the essential will, – this my will – the essential will itself – become eternally posited things, and the question is not who the positor is – only form (indifferent as to who) – but rather the principle: the determination within the essential will. Here something particular, but within the abstract universality of the good, or of duty for duty’s sake – only the predicate of the good – is that whereby it is good, – the universal, the beautiful in Plato – the particular compared with the universal – not yet the particularity that in itself is universal.
γ) Determinations of the good – i.e. the question of particularity – impossible on the presupposition of abstract essentiality.
These two determinations already mentioned above in their dialectic – right, through which welfare [is undone, is] a wrong – welfare – heteronomy – against pure duty – a particular matter – eudaimonia
Right – formal – moral duty concerns disposition – reflection into itself – presupposes a further standpoint than immediate personality –
This is the very same question that was put to Jesus, when people wanted to know from him what was to be done in order to attain eternal life; for the universal of the good, the abstract, cannot as abstract be accomplished – it must first receive, in addition, the determination of particularity.
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