[p. 338]
|338| In this way revenge is transformed into punishment; for revenge is indeterminate, and belongs to honour and to wholeness; here it is taken over by the people, for in place of the particular offended person there enters abstract but real universality, not his living universality, that of the individual.
But the living totality for rectitude is the family; or the natural one, and a condition of property and of livelihood which is secured, as far as possible, likewise for the empirical totality of the whole of life and of the education of the children.
It is capable neither of a virtue nor of bravery; for the former is a free individuality; rectitude is, in the universality of its estate, without individuality, and in the particularity of its relations, without freedom.
The highest to which this estate rises through activity in its production is partly the contribution to the needs of the first estate; partly help to the needy; both are a partial negation of its principle; the former for the universal according to the concept; the latter in the particular according to an empirical want; that universal sacrificing is without livingness; just as this more living sacrificing is without universality.
The inner relation of the family is likewise determined according to the concept; whoever joins himself to the head through want joins himself, for all the personal character of the connection, as a servant only as an absolute person, by contract, and for a determinate time; for because each is an absolute person, each is to be able to attain to his living totality, to becoming a father of a household; – this very relation holds when the connection is less personal, only for determinate services and labours.
c. The estate of crude ethical life is the peasant estate. The shape of the potencies for it is that, while with respect to physical need it is likewise in the system of universal dependence, its labour and acquisition is, more patriarchally, a greater and more comprehensive totality.
The character of the labour itself is likewise neither wholly of the understanding nor immediately concerned with the preparation of the thing for need, but more mediate, and concerns the earth or the animal, something living, of whose potency labour takes hold, and thus determines the living, which however produces itself for itself.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.