[p. 306]
|306| lordship and bondage, which is immediately the very concept of this relation, without transition and inference, as if some other ground had still to be shown. Lordship and bondage belong to nature because individuals stand against one another in this relation; and insofar as, with respect to the most ethical, individuals as such enter into relation, and it is a matter of the shaping of the ethical, as that which takes place through the highest individuality of genius and talent, the relation of lordship and obedience is posited; formally it is the same; the difference lies in this, that in ethical lordship and obedience the potency or power is at the same time an absolutely universal, whereas here it is only a particular; there individuality is only the external and the form, here it is the essence of the relation; and for that reason it is here a relation of bondage; for bondage is obedience towards the singular and particular; the lord is the indifference of determinacies, but merely as person, or as something formally living; he is at the same time subject, or cause; indifference is subsumed under being-subject, or the concept; and the bondsman relates to him as to formal indifference, or to the person. Because that which commands is here as person, it is not the absolute, the Idea, that is the identical of both, that which is posited in the lord in the form of indifference but in the bondsman in the form of difference; rather, it is particularity in general, in the practical, want, that constitutes the bond of both; the lord is in possession of a surplus of what is physically necessary in general, and the other in lack of it; and indeed in such a way that that surplus, like this lack, is not singular sides but the indifference of the necessary needs.
ג. This relation of bondage, or of person to person, of formal life to formal life, of which the one is under the form of indifference, the other under the form of difference, must be indifferentiated, or be subsumed under the first potency, so that the same relation of personality, of the dependence of the one on the other, remains; but so that the identity is an absolute one, though inner, not born forth; and the relation of difference only the external form. But that the identity remains an inner one is necessary because in this whole potency it is either only a formal one (right), hovering above the
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.