By resolving, the will posits itself as the will of a specific individual and as distinguishing itself outwards against another. However, apart from this finitude as consciousness (§ 8), the immediate will is formal on account of the difference between its form and its content (§ 11); only abstract resolving as such belongs to it, and the content is not yet the content and the work of its freedom.

For intelligence as thinking, the object and content remain universal, and it itself behaves as a universal activity. In the will, the universal has at the same time essentially the meaning of what is mine, as singularity; and in the immediate, i.e., formal will, as abstract singularity, not yet filled with its free universality. In the will, therefore, the proper finitude of intelligence begins, and only by the will elevating itself again to thinking and giving its purposes immanent universality does it sublate the difference between form and content and make itself into the objective, infinite will. Therefore, those understand little of the nature of thinking and willing who suppose that man is infinite in the will in general, but that in thinking he, or even reason itself, is limited. Insofar as thinking and willing are still distinguished, the reverse is rather the truth, and thinking reason, as will, is just this: to resolve itself to finitude.