System of Ethical Life

[p. 283]

|283| and thus reasonless, identity, which therefore goes towards the absolute annihilation of the object, and is likewise a complete indifference of the subject, which, for the ethical, is without the bringing-out of a middle uniting the opposites within itself, and is thus not the taking-back of intuiting into itself, and thus no cognising of itself in it.

αα) need is here an absolute singularity, a feeling restricting itself to the subject, which belongs wholly to nature, and whose multiplicity and system it is not the place here to comprehend. Eating, drinking.

ββ. through this difference an inner and an outer are immediately posited, and this outer is determined absolutely according to the determinacy of the feeling (something edible, something drinkable). This outer thereby ceases to be something universal, identical, quantitative, and becomes a singular particular; the subject, notwithstanding its being-singular in this feeling and in the relation posited in the division, remains in itself something indifferent; it is the universal, the potency, the subsuming; the determinacy which the object of enjoyment receives in this potency is wholly ideal, or subjective; immediately its own opposite; the determinacy does not enter into the objectivity of intuition, so that something would arise for the subject which it would cognise as identity of the subjective and objective; – or this identity is posited solely in the individual; hence the object, since it is determined purely ideally, is absolutely annihilated.

γγ) this enjoyment, in which the object is determined purely ideally and is wholly annihilated, is the purely sensuous one; satiation, which is the restoration of the indifference and emptiness of the individual, or of its mere possibility of being ethical or rational; it is merely negative, because it goes towards the absolute singularity of the individual and thereby towards the annihilating of the objective and universal. But enjoyment remains practical according to its essence, and distinguishes itself from absolute self-feeling by the fact that it comes out of difference, and that to this extent a consciousness of the negativity of the object is in it.

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 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83