absoluteness, or infinity: the absolute negation of both -A and +A, that is, that it absolutely takes up this singular being into the concept. Insofar as -A is something external opposed to the determinacy +A of the subject, it is, through this relation, in an alien power; but in that it can equally negatively posit, sublate, and divest itself of its +A as a determinacy, it remains utterly free both with regard to the possibility and to the actuality of alien power. In negating both +A and -A, it is subdued, but not coerced; it would only have to suffer coercion if +A were absolutely fixed in it, whereby an infinite chain of other determinacies could be fettered to it, as to a determinacy. This possibility of abstracting from determinacies is without limit — that is, there is no determinacy that is absolute, for this would contradict itself immediately; rather, freedom itself, or infinity, is indeed the negative, but the absolute, and its singular being is a singularity absolutely taken up into the concept, negatively absolute infinity, pure freedom; this negatively absolute, pure freedom, is in its appearance death, and through its capacity for death the subject proves itself free and utterly exalted above all coercion. It is the absolute subjugation; and because it is absolute, or because in it singularity becomes purely and simply pure singularity — namely, not the positing of a +A with the exclusion of -A, an exclusion which would be no true negation but merely the positing of -A as something external, and at the same time of +A as a determinacy — but rather the sublation of both the + and the -, it is thus the concept of itself, hence infinite, and the opposite of itself, or absolute liberation, and the pure singularity that is in death is its own opposite, universality. In subduing, then, freedom consists in this: that it goes purely to the sublation of a determinacy, both insofar as it is posited positively and insofar as it is posited negatively, subjectively and objectively, not merely to one side of it, and thus, considered in itself, holds itself purely negative — or, since the sublating itself can also be grasped and expressed positively by reflection, the sublation of both sides of the determinacy then appears as the perfectly equal positing of the determinate thing according to both its sides. — Applied, for instance, to punishment: in it alone is retribution rational, for through it the crime is subdued — a determinacy +A, which the crime has posited, is completed through the positing of -A, and thus both are annihilated; or, viewed positively: to the determinacy +A there is joined, for the criminal, the opposed -A, and both are posited equally, whereas the crime had posited only one; thus punishment is the restoration of freedom, and the criminal has remained free — or rather has been made free — just as the

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