|156| Part Three. Ethical Life
Ethical life is the Idea of freedom, as the living good, which has its knowing and willing in self-consciousness, and through the acting of self-consciousness its actuality, just as self-consciousness has in ethical being its foundation that is in and for itself and its motivating purpose — the concept of freedom that has become the existing world and the nature of self-consciousness.
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1817), § 430:
§ 430. Ethical life is the completion of objective spirit — not only the truth of right and morality, as their unity, but of subjective and objective spirit itself. It is, namely, freedom as the universal rational will, which, in the pure thought of individual subjectivity — whose opposition has been dissolved — has its knowledge of itself and its disposition, its activation and its immediate, universal actuality, at once as custom: self-conscious freedom that has become nature.
22. 1. 1823; 14. 1. 1825
Formal difference. First, the Idea. Interest of pure subjectivity and of the universal of the will.
Difference of sequence – actuality and concept – because in the concept one begins with thought – this at first abstract – in-itself, and for-itself.
Relation of right and morality to ethical life.
α) To comprehend ethical life, i.e. its moments, – as their unity
β) These moments beforehand, for themselves
αα) in their configurations
ββ) passing over in this determination –
α) System of the particularization of the good – out of the concept itself, which it is, which develops itself, not subsumption – firm foundation: the unity, § 144/5. –
β) subjectivity further is in the determination of self-consciousness – is knowledge – α) is ethical – β) as consciousness, relation to duties: αα) they are, substantial, ββ) gives testimonies for the same,
γ) custom, habit § 151.
α) spirit of a people αα) subjective, ββ) as world – γ) custom – α) empirical universality, relation of many individuals, form of the concrete subject, namely a) duty – in universal form, b) in an externally conscious manner, – as extant spirit, to which there is a relation – i.e. known in other human beings –
A. What is ethical life? That my will be posited as in accordance with the concept – that its subjectivity be sublated – thus α) right, right the object of the will, β) subjectivity, recognition of the objective, [of the] concept.
The unity (will as universal in itself) – that I – thinking – i.e. as universal – will the universal – and am this willing of the universal – In the empirical [realm] – marriage, the state – are the only great ethical wholes, – they the substances – α) unity in love, β) with feeling – free subjectivity – acting in the sense [of] such wholes, i.e. of the universal – not particular drives, interest – the being-one of those united –
Simple formal determination – freedom; – abstraction
– α) universal will, and β) infinitely identical with itself, – having itself as this within it, – thinking.
Holy is what binds spirits, were it only as light as the rush binds the wreath; holiest is what, inwardly thought, eternally unites spirits ever more –
Only two sides, forms
Threefold determination: α) concept, β) subjectivity as my will, γ) subjectivity – as universal being – nature, custom –
Substantial unity; universal will, higher than family, state – estate, condition – essence, God, Penates –
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1827), § 513:
§ 513. Ethical life is the completion of objective spirit, not only the truth of right and morality, as their unity, but of subjective and objective spirit itself. It is, namely, freedom as the universal rational will which, in the pure thought of individual subjectivity, has its knowledge of itself and its disposition, as well as its activation and immediate universal actuality, at once as custom — self-conscious freedom having become nature.
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1830), § 513:
§ 513. Ethical life is the completion of objective spirit, the truth of subjective and objective spirit itself. The one-sidedness of the latter is to have its freedom, in part, immediately in reality, hence in what is external, in the thing, and in part in the good as an abstract universal; the one-sidedness of subjective spirit is likewise to be self-determining, abstractly, against the universal, in its inner particularity. With these one-sidednesses sublated, subjective freedom, as the in-and-for-itself universal rational will which, in the consciousness of individual subjectivity, has its knowledge of itself and its disposition, as well as its activation and immediate universal actuality, at once as custom — is self-conscious freedom that has become nature.
§ 142: What ethical life is
With this section the third part of the book begins. What is ethical life?
Ethical life is the living good.
Here the good is no longer a mere thought that only ought to be. It lives in people. They know it and will it. Through their action it becomes actual.
And the other way round: People find their footing in this order. It is the foundation on which they stand. It is the purpose that moves them.
An image:
Let us think of a living language. No one invented it alone. It is simply there before we come into the world. And yet it lives only because we speak it. We are at home in it. It belongs to us, and we belong to it.
So it is with ethical life. Here freedom has become the world in which we live. And it has become our second nature.
Summary: Ethical life is the living good. It lives in the knowing and acting of people, and they live in it. Here freedom has become an actual world.
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