[p. 259]
|259| conclusion – his fatherland trodden to the ground by foreigners, devastated, without independence, every nobleman, leader, [every] city140) asserted itself as sovereign; the only means to found the state, to exterminate these sovereignties, and indeed, since they want to count as sovereign precisely as immediate singulars, against the crudeness only the death of the leaders is the means, and the terror of death for the rest – The Germans have abhorred such doctrines the most, and Machiavellism expresses what is most evil, precisely because they lie prostrate with the same sickness, and have died of it. – Indifference of the subjects towards their princes, however, and of these, on the other hand, towards being princes, i.e. behaving as princes, – makes that tyranny superfluous – for the self-will of the princes has thereby become powerless.
140) In the margin: Elaboration of the Nordic self-will of the Germans, because they could not bear a tyrant they have vanished as a people; – were only nation – brought the principle of absolute singularity into the world – the existence of thought in the south of the Christian religion –
Thus the universal, against the singulars as such who want to know their immediate positive will absolutely asserted, is lord, tyrant, pure power, – for it is something alien to them, and the power of the state, which knows what it is, must have the courage, in every emergency where the existence of the whole is compromised, to proceed wholly tyrannically – Through tyranny the immediate externalization of the actual singular will has come about;141) this [is] cultivation to obedience. – Through this cultivation to obedience – to know the universal rather than the actual wills – tyranny has become superfluous, and the rule of law has set in – The power which the tyrant exercises is the power of the law, in itself; through obedience it is itself
141) In the margin: Sublated immediate thises
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