[p. 305]
|305| determinacy; in this freedom, therefore, the possibility of non-recognition, and of unfreedom, is just as well posited. All things likewise are, through their concept, the possibility of being the opposite of themselves, but they are in absolute determinacy, or lower potencies of necessity; not the indifference of all, but in absolute difference against others; but intelligence, or the life of man, is the indifference of all determinacies.
3. This formal, relationless recognising, in relation and in difference, or according to the concept. In this, living individual stands against living individual, but with unequal power of life; the one is therefore the power or potency for the other; it is the indifference, while the other is in difference; the former therefore relates to the latter as cause; it is as its indifference, its life, its soul or spirit. Greater strength or weakness is nothing other than that the one is caught up in a difference, is fixed and determined in some way, according to which the other is not, but is free; the indifference of the unfree is its inner, formal, not brought out, and difference-annihilating element; but it must absolutely be for it; it is its hidden inner, and therefore it intuits it as the opposite, namely as something external, and the identity is a relative one, not an absolute one, nor middle. This relation, in which the indifferent and free is the powerful against the different, is the relation of lordship and bondage. This relation is posited immediately and absolutely with the inequality of the power of life; there is no thought here of any right or any necessary equality. Equality is nothing other than the abstraction and the formal thought of life, of the first potency, which is merely ideal and without reality; in reality, on the other hand, the inequality of life is posited, and with it the relation [of lordship] and bondage; for in reality there is shape and individuality and appearance, thus diversity of potencies or of power; or the relative identity according to which the one individual is posited as indifferent, but the other as different.
Plurality here is the plurality of individuals, for in the first potency, in the formality of life, absolute singularity was posited as the form of the inner, since life is the form of outer indifference. And where there is plurality of individuals, there is a relation of them; and this relation is
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.