[p. 321]
|321| remains, but within it the relation is now transformed into its opposite; what subsumes is subsumed; it is this form alone which changes.
γγ. The totality of this relation is the rational, and makes the middle come forth; the indifference of justice, which is in revenge but as something material and external, enters into the individuals as equal consciousness of the negation in the process of becoming, and thereby the reality of this becoming itself becomes equal. An injustice seems to prevail here, in that he who made the attack, the first unequal, one-sided subsumption – and in appearance the two opposite subsumptions must also present themselves as following upon each other – is supposed to be in the wrong, yet through consciousness would come only into equality of danger. When revenge is in question, then absolutely only he who was the murderer must in his turn be subsumed in a sure manner; and the avengers must therefore avoid equality of strength, and exercise revenge either through superior power against force, or through cunning, i.e. through circumventing strength altogether. But here, in the totality of the relation, it is otherwise; for it immediately excludes singularity in such a way that for revenge the avenger is not something alien, nor something singular, any more than the assailant is; rather he is a member of a family, not an abstraction; but in that this is so, the murder is not an absolute negation; the spirit has lost only a member of the body, and revenge can just as little be absolute negation. In the totality of revenge the form must be posited as absolute consciousness, and so the injured party himself, and no stranger, must be the avenger; this, however, is only the family; likewise the offender is not something singular; he has not offended as a singular individual, but as a member of a whole; he is not posited in the totality as an abstraction. Hereby the middle is immediately posited at the same time; namely, negatively, the sublation of the superior power and unconsciousness of the one, and the equality of danger for both, the struggle; the difference for the relation lies, with complete external equality, in what is inner (hence the struggle is a judgement of God); the one side is only defending, the other at the same time attacking; on the offended
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