Jena Philosophy of Spirit

[p. 268]

|268| this form; – he for his part then also brings his peasant understanding to light, shows that he is not so stupid, says something at random, some maxim or other, and against the power, that one should need to snap at him, he will do it all right; and in thus reserving the right of his understanding and of his will, he obeys – It is the formal side of speaking and of insight – This formalism of knowing passes over into abstract knowing, just as concrete labouring passes over into abstract labouring.

Concrete labour is the elementary, [the] substantial preserving, the crude ground of the whole, like trust; – in war the estate makes up the crude mass; – a crude blind animal which in its dullness is content with itself, which, when its right is not done it, reflects itself only into its singularity, and becomes spiteful, – and when it breaks loose, rages as a blind mad element, like a flood of water, which only destroys,¹⁶⁰⁾ at most deposits universal fertilising mud, but runs off without having brought a work about.

160) In the margin: feudal system, freedom from the soil, – this animal freedom that goes beyond the life of plants.

b) this substantiality passes over into the abstraction of labour and of knowing of the universal, – estate of trade and of right – The labour of the burgher estate is the abstract labour, that of the single craft; – its disposition is rectitude – It has taken labour from nature and lifted forming out of unconsciousness; – the self has stepped forth out of the earth; the form, the self of the work, is the self of man – the natural has died – it comes into consideration only as mere capacity for a use and labour.

Trust is a closer, more determinate one in consciousness; the burgher estate looks to the state of livelihood of its town; to the number of the fellows of its labour; – its activity and skill is the contingency which has returned into it out of the contingency of nature, and which belongs to it. – It knows itself determinately as

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