grundlinien.de

108

The subjective will, as immediately for itself and distinguished from the will existing in itself (§ 106 Remark), is therefore abstract, restricted, and formal. Subjectivity, however, is not merely formal but, as the infinite self-determining of the will, constitutes its formal element. Because, in this its first emergence in the individual will, it is not yet posited as identical with the concept of the will, the moral standpoint is the standpoint of relation and of an ought, or of a demand. — And since the difference of subjectivity likewise contains the determination as against objectivity, as external existence, the standpoint of consciousness also enters here (§ 8) — in general, the standpoint of difference, finitude, and appearance of the will.

The moral is not, at first, already determined as that which is opposed to the immoral, just as right is not immediately that which is opposed to wrong; rather, it is the general standpoint of the moral as well as of the immoral, a standpoint that rests on the subjectivity of the will.

DE

Comments

One response to “108”

  1. Eduard Gans (Additions) Avatar
    Eduard Gans (Additions)

    Self-determining is to be thought of, in morality, as the pure unrest and activity which can as yet arrive at no what is. It is only in ethical life that the will is identical with the concept of the will and has only this as its content. In morality the will still stands in relation to what is in itself; it is thus the standpoint of difference, and the process of this standpoint is the identification of the subjective will with its concept. The ought, which therefore still belongs to morality, is first attained in ethical life; and this other, to which the subjective will stands in a relation, is a twofold: on the one hand the substantial element of the concept, and on the other the externally existing. Even if the good were also posited in the subjective will, it would not yet thereby be carried out.

Leave a Reply