[p. 485]
|485| it is decided and determined, that is the essential. But it is something wholly other that decision be made in this way according to true total justice and ethical life, which is impossible precisely through the fixing and absolute holding fast to the determinacies, possible only in the confusion of them, and actual through immediate ethical intuition, which subjugates the determinacies posited as absolute and alone holds fast the whole. – It is – says Plato, in his simple language, about the two sides of the endless determining, of the infinite taking-up of the qualities into the concept, and of the contradiction of their individuality against intuition and, in this, among themselves – it is clear that the art of legislation belongs to the kingly art; but the best is not that the laws hold, but the man who is wise and kingly, because the law is not able to prescribe perfectly that which, most exactly and quite universally, would be the most excellent and the most just; because the inequalities of human beings and of actions and the never-keeping-at-rest of human affairs permit nothing self-identical to be presented in regard to any matter, over all sides of it and for all time, in any art. But the law we see directing itself precisely to one and the same thing, like an obstinate and crude man who lets nothing happen contrary to his ordinance, nor lets himself be questioned about it by anyone, when something other, something better, occurs to someone against the relation which he has fixed; – it is therefore impossible that for what is never self-identical what is throughout self-identical should be good.5)
5) Editors: Politikos, Steph. 294
That the thought is held fast to, that in this sphere of human affairs an in-itself-being and absolute determinate right and duty is possible, comes from the formal indifference, or the negatively absolute, which alone has a place in the fixed reality of this sphere and which
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