asserted to be a truth and a reality, but also that a true Idea and a genuine principle be misconstrued as to its limit, and be posited outside the power in which it has its truth, thereby losing that truth entirely. That a principle belongs to a power is the side of its determinacy; but within the power itself, this determinacy is present in a way equally indifferentiated and really pervaded by the Idea, and is thereby a true principle; and then, as the Idea appearing in these determinacies as its shape, it is recognized only as the principle of this power, and thereby its limit and conditionedness are recognized as well. But it is torn entirely from its truth if it is made absolute within its conditionedness, or even extended over the nature of other powers. The absolute, clear unity of ethical life is absolute and living precisely in that neither a single power, nor the subsistence of the powers in general, can be fixed; rather, ethical life, even as it eternally expands them, just as absolutely strikes them together and sublates them, and enjoys itself in undeveloped unity and clarity; and in relation to the powers, secure and undivided in its inner life, it now curtails one through another, now passes over wholly into one and annihilates the others, just as, out of this movement generally, it likewise withdraws into the absolute rest in which all are sublated. Sickness and the onset of death, by contrast, are present when a part organizes itself and withdraws from the rule of the whole, and through this isolation negatively affects the whole, or even forces it to organize itself solely for the sake of this power — as when the vitality of the intestines, which normally obeys the whole, forms itself into animals of its own, or the liver makes itself the ruling organ and forces the whole organization to serve its function. So it can happen, within the universal system of ethical life, that, for example, the principle and system of civil right, which concerns possession and property, becomes so absorbed in itself, and, in the diffuseness into which it loses itself, takes itself for a totality that is in itself unconditioned and absolute. The inner negativity of this power has already been determined above, also as regards its content, which is the subsisting finite; and the reflection of indifference possible within it can all the less be taken for something absolute. Just as little can the system of acquisition and possession itself, the wealth of a people, and, within this system, in turn a single power — be it agriculture, or manufactures and factories, or trade — be made into something unconditioned.

But a single power becomes positive to an even greater degree when it and its principle so far forget their conditionedness that they encroach upon others and subjugate them to themselves. Just as the principle of mechanics has forced its way into chemistry and natural science, and that of chemistry, in turn, quite particularly into the latter, so this has been the case, at various times, with various principles in the philosophy of the ethical; but in modern times, within the inner economy

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63