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123

For the content of these purposes there is present here, α), only the formal activity itself — that the subject be, with its activity, engaged in what it should regard and further as its purpose; that for which human beings interest themselves, or ought to interest themselves, as being their own, for that they wish to be active. β) But the still abstract and formal freedom of subjectivity has a further determinate content only in its natural, subjective existence — needs, inclinations, passions, opinions, fancies, and so on. The satisfaction of this content is welfare, or happiness, in its particular determinations and in general — the purposes of finitude as such.

This is, as the standpoint of relation (§ 108), on which the subject is determined to its distinctness and thus counts as particular, the place where the content of the natural will (§ 11) enters; here, however, it does not enter as it is immediately, but this content, as belonging to the will reflected into itself, is raised to a universal purpose, that of welfare or happiness (Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, § 395 ff.) — the standpoint of a thinking that does not yet grasp the will in its freedom, but reflects on its content as something natural and given — as, for instance, in the time of Croesus and Solon.

DE

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2 responses to “123”

  1. Hegel (Notes) Avatar
    Hegel (Notes)

    Subject – determined in intention as something particular in itself – distinctive content
    α) Interest – that I was involved, active in it –
    Goethe: We’ve been dancing three days and nights already – and no one gave a thought to the bride –
    Napoleon’s soldiers: plunder, promotion – fame – ambition.
    β) I as concrete subject. – Have existence only as such.
    I am
    α) formal activity – but the Idea, not as such an abstraction, is what does the determining; as something inward, the determination is not only mine, but also counts as mine; in abstract right I am only personality – here, as inwardly determining myself, out of the particularity of what is mine. Here, in that the particularity is [taken] as mine, the separation begins as regards content; – distinctive content –
    β) my satisfaction – in what? absolute ends. – Pleasure – only absolute ends, end –
    Because [it is] still formally abstract subjectivity – abstract determining, merely taking up the determinations present in a natural way. This abstract subjectivity is the very same thing as Kantian practical reason. – This formal element is nothing other than interest, the activity of subjectivity as such. Autonomy is that formal self-determining. Heteronomy, drives – [it is] only practical reason insofar as it differs, in that the objective form of universality, that is, of formal identity, is the conscious determination, [namely] that what I will is to have the form of universality for me, [that I] know it as such – the determination of my interest [is] the determination e.g. of what is permitted – property – a universal, not self-contradictory.
    β) This determination – feelings – as before – has its ground in reason. Moments of its development, but not yet in the form of rationality – this only in ethical life. – This only once subjectivity has given up its one-sidedness as a particularity knowing and positing itself within itself, [and] exists [only] as a moment –
    Here, therefore, inclinations, drives, content – but not merely in a natural, raw way – letting one’s drives run their course, being determined by desire, by inclination as such – unbridled like savages, like the crude – but rather that I comport [myself] as reflected into myself – formal universality. – These drives not immediately, but related to a whole, at first their own whole – reflective thinking, well-being, happiness. – Knows of them as subordinate. Restraint of drive, of naturalness.
    It is permitted –
    α) to make one’s welfare one’s end, i.e., this content as such is not opposed to personality; – (also duty, necessary in general) – but not strict right, because at first only as particular, [belonging] merely to feeling, love – not raised to absoluteness, as ethical content [is] – rather [it] can be regarded as a particular matter of drive – (thus the state stands above strict right) – but marriage, as an ethical relation, [is] particularity, yet absolute in comparison with personality.
    β) Duty – of that, at the [treatment of the] Good – hollow winding-up – toward excellence – Stoics
    He, this one, was involved in it
    As if oppositions, in their relation to one another, had to be regarded as absolute oppositions – the strict moral view.

  2. Eduard Gans (Additions) Avatar
    Eduard Gans (Additions)

    Insofar as the determinations of happiness are [merely] found [already given], they are not true determinations of freedom, which is first truly itself in its self-purpose in the good. Here we may raise the question: does the human being have a right to set for himself such unfree ends, which rest solely on the fact that the subject is a living being? That the human being is a living being is, however, not contingent but in accordance with reason, and to that extent he has a right to make his needs into his end. There is nothing degrading in the fact that someone lives, and he faces no higher spirituality in which he might instead exist. Only the raising of what is [merely] found up to a creating-out-of-oneself yields the higher sphere of the good – a distinction which, however, involves no incompatibility between the two sides.

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