Author: wbauer

Distress reveals both the finitude, and hence the contingency, of right as well as of welfare — of the abstract existence of freedom, without its being the existence of the particular person, and of the sphere of the particular will without the universality of right. Their one-sidedness and ideality are thereby posited, just as this…

Third Section. The Good and Conscience The good is the Idea, as the unity of the concept of the will and the particular will, in which abstract right, as well as welfare and the subjectivity of knowing and the contingency of external existence, are sublated as self-subsistent for themselves, yet at the same time, according…

Welfare has, in this Idea, no validity for itself as the existence of the single, particular will, but only as universal welfare, and essentially as universal in itself, that is, according to freedom — welfare is not a good without right. Just as little is right the good without welfare (fiat iustitia ought not to…

For the subjective will, the good is likewise the absolutely essential thing, and the subjective will has value and dignity only insofar as its insight and intention are in accordance with the good. Insofar as the good is here still this abstract Idea of the good, the subjective will is not yet taken up into…

The right of the subjective will is that what it is to recognize as valid should be seen by it as good, and that an action, as the purpose entering into external objectivity, should be imputed to it as right or wrong, good or evil, lawful or unlawful, according to its knowledge of the value…

The good stands to the particular subject in the relation of being the essential element of its will, so that the subject has, quite simply, its obligation therein. Since particularity is distinguished from the good and falls within the subjective will, the good at first has only the determination of universal, abstract essentiality — duty.…

Because acting, for itself, requires a particular content and a determinate purpose, while the abstraction of duty contains as yet no such content, the question arises: what is duty? For this determination, nothing is at first available except this: to do right, and to attend to welfare — one’s own welfare, and welfare in its…

These determinations, however, are not contained in the determination of duty itself; rather, since both are conditioned and limited, they thereby bring about the very transition into the higher sphere of the unconditioned — duty. To duty itself, insofar as it is, in moral self-consciousness, the essential or universal element of that self-consciousness, as it…

For the sake of the abstract character of the good, the other moment of the Idea — particularity in general — falls into subjectivity, which, in its universality reflected into itself, is the absolute certainty of itself within itself, the positing of particularity, the determining and deciding element — conscience.

The true conscience is the disposition to will what is good in and for itself; it therefore has firm principles, and these are, for it, the objective determinations and duties that are valid for themselves. Distinguished from this its content, the truth, conscience is only the formal side of the activity of the will, which,…

This subjectivity, as abstract self-determination and pure certainty of itself alone, volatilizes, within itself, every determinacy of right, duty, and existence, inasmuch as it is the judging power that determines, from itself alone, what is good with respect to a content, and at the same time the power to which the good — at first…

Self-consciousness, in the vanity of every otherwise valid determination and in the pure inwardness of the will, is just as much the possibility of making the universal in and for itself its principle, as it is the possibility of making arbitrariness — its own particularity — its principle above the universal, and of realizing this…

Since self-consciousness knows how to bring out, in its purpose, a positive side (§ 135), which it necessarily has because it belongs to the purpose of concrete, actual acting, it is able, for the sake of such a positive side, as a duty and an excellent intention, to maintain the action — whose negative, essential…

Third Part: Ethical Life ETHICAL LIFE is the Idea of freedom in that on the one hand it isthe good become alive — the good endowed in self-consciousnesswith knowing and willing and actualised by self-conscious action —while on the other hand self-consciousness has in the ethical realm itsabsolute foundation and the end which actuates its…

Since this unity of the concept of the will and its existence, which is the particular will, is knowing, the consciousness of the distinction of these moments of the Idea is present, but in such a way that now each is, for itself, the totality of the Idea and has it for its ground and…

Third Part. Ethical Life α) The objective ethical, which takes the place of the abstract good, is the substance made concrete through subjectivity as infinite form. It therefore posits distinctions within itself, which are thereby determined through the concept and through which the ethical has a firm content, one that is necessary for itself and…

That the ethical is the system of these determinations of the Idea constitutes its rationality. In this way it is freedom, or the will that is in and for itself, as the objective, a circle of necessity whose moments are the ethical powers that govern the life of individuals, and which have, in these individuals…

β) The substance, in this its actual self-consciousness, knows itself, and is thereby an object of knowing. For the subject, the ethical substance, its laws and powers, have, on the one hand, the relation of an object, in this sense: that they are, in the highest sense of self-subsistence — an absolute authority and power…