Courage is in itself a formal virtue, because it is the highest abstraction of freedom from all particular purposes, possessions, enjoyment, and life, yet [effects] this negation in an externally actual way; and because the renunciation, as accomplishment, is not in itself of a spiritual nature — its inner disposition may be this or that ground, and its actual result likewise cannot be for itself, but only for others.
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1817), § 444:
§ 444. This independence turns the conflict between them into a relation of force, a state of war, for which the universal estate determines itself, for the particular purpose of preserving the independence of the state against others, into the estate of valor.
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1827), § 546:
§ 546. This condition shows the substance of the state, in its individuality progressing toward abstract negativity, as the power in which the particular independence of individuals, and the condition of their being sunk into the external existence of possession and into natural life, feels itself as a nothing, and through which the preservation of the universal substance mediates itself with itself, by the sacrifice of this natural and particular existence in the disposition of freedom, and by the frustration of the vain.
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1830), § 546:
§ 546. This condition shows the substance of the state, in its individuality progressing toward abstract negativity, as the power in which the particular independence of individuals, and the condition of their being sunk into the external existence of possession and into natural life, feels itself as a nothing, and which mediates the preservation of the universal substance — through the sacrifice, occurring in the disposition of that substance, of this natural and particular existence — the frustration of the vain that opposes it.
The military estate is the estate of universality, to which the defense of the state falls, and which has the duty of bringing ideality into existence in its own self, that is, of sacrificing itself. Bravery, to be sure, is of different kinds. The courage of the animal, of the robber, bravery for the sake of honor, chivalric bravery — these are not yet the true forms. The true bravery of civilized peoples is the readiness for self-sacrifice in the service of the state, such that the individual constitutes only one among many. Not personal courage, but integration into the universal, is what matters here. In India five hundred men were victorious over twenty thousand who were not cowardly, but who simply lacked this disposition to act in concert, united with others.
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