[p. 330]
|330| the whole garland of the virtues also appears in it. In war, as the presentation of the negative and of the manifold, and of its annihilation, there enters therefore the manifoldness of determinate relations, and in them the virtues; the former appear as what they are, posited through empirical necessity, and just as quickly they vanish again, and with them the existence of the virtues, which, because they have this headlong haste, are equally without any relation to a determinate totality (the whole condition of a citizen), and are thus equally vices. The necessity of war posits the highest abstinence, and likewise the highest wretchedness and appearance of avarice, and then of enjoyment, which is equally debauchery, because it can take no thought for the morrow or for the whole of life and livelihood; thrift and liberality become avarice, and the highest hard-heartedness towards oneself and others, when the highest need demands this restriction; – and extravagance, for property is thrown away, since it can have no permanence, and the expenditure is wholly inappropriate to one’s own or others’ use and need. Likewise there is present in the highest degree reality that is completely not taken up into indifference, the not-becoming-virtue of determinacy, but rather being in its negativity, or annihilating; as with the ethical element of the virtues, so with labour. The necessity of war demands the highest exertions of the body, and complete formal unity of concept of the spirit in mechanical labour, just as much as the highest bondage of a wholly external obedience. As the virtues are without outer and inner hypocrisy, according to the former their appearance and externality would be posited by the arbitrary will of the subject, which inwardly, however, would have something else in its intention – which, however, cannot happen here, because the ethical is the essence, the inner; any more than the inner hypocrisy, which, conscious of its ethical life, holds fast to its subjectivity through this consciousness, and is morality; there the outer semblance, here the inner semblance, the consciousness of having done one’s duty, so that it shines before the individual himself. – Likewise labour is without purpose, without need, and without relation to practical
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