[p. 320]
|320| αα) the raw totality, the absolute indifference of negation, without relation and ideality, is the transformation of determinacy into personality, and the immediate positing of the reality of the negation, or simple murder; it excludes the recognition of this relation, the other’s knowing of it; it does not let equality of danger precede, just as the insult is, as regards its matter, completely unequal.
ββ. the second potency must be formal indifference, according to which the subsuming and the reversal are according to the law of equality, but in such a way that this equality, as form, as consciousness, hovers above the opposition of the individuals and is not a consciousness and recognition of it; thus the form of equality is lacking, and the equality of danger; for danger is nothing other than negation in the process of becoming, but the knowing of it, indifference, is here not in it, but is only material; the relation is subsumed under the concept. In this equality lies the true real reversal of the subsumption, and it is revenge; that which has been killed must itself effect the reversal; but as something killed [it] is only something ideal; from its life, which is its blood, only its spirit can rise up avenging, and either this spirit hunts the murderer about until, in whatever way it may be, he sets up a reality over against himself and himself procures a body for the spirit of the slain, which, because it is no longer the same external appearance of the slain, appears as something more universal in general, and the spirit as fate procures its revenge for itself. – Or else its own real vitality, belonging to the spirit, has remained; it has kept its body, and the murder has destroyed only a single member and organ; then this still living body, the family, assumes the revenge. – Revenge is the absolute relation against murder, and against the singular murderer; it is nothing other than the reversal of what the murderer has posited; this can be sublated and made rational in no other way; it cannot be abstracted from; for an actuality has been posited which as such must have its right, namely that according to reason the opposite of what has been set up is set up; the determinacy of the relation
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