has posited itself in the determinacy of +A, then it is also bound to -A, and -A is something external for it and not within its power; rather, on account of the absolute connection of +A with -A, it would be, immediately through the determinacy of +A, under an alien power of -A, and the freedom that would consist in choosing to determine itself as either +A or as -A would not get outside of necessity at all. If it determines itself as +A, it has not annihilated -A; rather -A continues to exist as something external to it, absolutely necessarily so, and conversely if it determines itself as -A. It is freedom only in that it unites -A with +A, positively or negatively, and thereby ceases to be in the determinacy of +A; in the union of both determinacies, both are annihilated: +A -A = 0. If this nothing is thought only relative to +A and -A — the indifferent A itself taken as a determinacy, and a + or – as opposed to another – or + — then absolute freedom is exalted above this opposition just as much as above every other, and above all externality; and it is utterly incapable of coercion, and coercion has no reality at all for it.

But this Idea of freedom itself seems to be an abstraction, and if, for instance, one were speaking of a concrete freedom, the freedom of the individual, then that being of a determinacy — and hence mere empirical freedom as a possibility of choice, and thus also empirical necessity and the possibility of coercion in general — would posit the opposition of universality and singularity. For the individual is a singularity, and freedom is an annihilating of singularity; through singularity the individual stands immediately under determinacies, whereby something external is present for it, and thereby coercion becomes possible. But it is one thing for determinacies to be posited in the individual under the form of infinity, and another for them to be posited in it absolutely. Determinacy under the form of infinity is thereby at the same time sublated; and the individual is only as a free being — that is, in that determinacies are posited in it, it is the absolute indifference of these determinacies, and herein consists, formally, its ethical nature; just as in this — that, insofar as individuals in general, whether against themselves or against something else, are different and stand in a relation to something external, this externality itself is indifferent and a living relation — the organization consists, and thereby, since totality is present only in organization, the positive of ethical life consists. — But the indifference of the individual as a singular being is, in relation to the being of determinacies, a negative one; but where its being as singularity is actually posited — that is, a negation positively insurmountable for it, a determinacy through which externality as such holds itself fast — then nothing remains for it but the utterly negative

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