Jena Philosophy of Spirit

[p. 262]

|262| The election of officials, generals, belongs to the community, it is a confidence in them which, however, is justified only by success; – circumstances are always different – This is the beautiful, happy freedom of the Greeks, which has been and is so much envied¹⁴⁹⁾ – The people is at the same time dissolved into citizens, and it is at the same time the one individual, the government – it stands only in interaction with itself; – the externalization of the singularity of the will is the immediate preservation of it. – But a higher abstraction is necessary, a greater opposition and culture, a deeper spirit. It is the realm of ethical life – each is custom, immediately one with the universal; – no protesting takes place here; each knows himself immediately as universal; i.e. he renounces his particularity without knowing it as such, as this self, as the essence. – The higher diremption is thus that each completely goes back into himself, knows his self as such,¹⁵⁰⁾ as the essence, comes to this self-will of being absolute although separated from the existing universal – of possessing his absolute immediately in his knowing; – as singular he lets the universal go free, he has complete independence in himself, – he gives up his actuality, counts for himself only in his knowing.¹⁵¹⁾ b) The free universal is the point of individuality, this, thus free from the knowing of all, is one not constituted by them, – as extreme of the government thus an immediate one, a natural one, it

149) In the margin: the same will is the singular, and the same the universal

150) In the margin: his self not in the law, custom; or essence the law, – evil; – that which has gone into itself, and precisely thereby is completely externalized – which has abandoned its existence – knows an other world – as its own – In actuality only this externalization itself in general comes to light. – To this absolute universality the immediacy of being stands likewise opposed.

151) In the margin: public opinion – one is as rational as his state is

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