System of Ethical Life

[p. 341]

|341| what is particular in it; it is in itself the particular, but taken up into the concept and infinity, and this is what its subsistence means. Likewise the absolute estate is the ethical organic nature against the inorganic, and consumes it in particularity, so that the latter must procure for the former the needs of life, labour, so that the former individualises itself in intuition against this opposition, and, through being an estate, has the difference of the second and the crudeness of the third in its consciousness, posits itself as separated from them, and obtains the feeling of its high individuality, or pride, which, as consciousness of the noble within, keeps off the consciousness of the ignoble, and the doing of the ignoble, which is the very same thing. This spiritual, as well as that physical, individualisation posits a relation of organic to inorganic nature, and the unconscious limitation of this movement and of the annihilation of the latter must in the ethical be posited consciously, must come forth as a middle that is born forth and appears, not remain left to itself, or not retain the form of nature, but rather the boundary of the particularity to be annihilated must be precisely recognised. Such a cognition, however, is law.

The movement of the first estate against the others taken up into the concept, through both having reality, both [being] limited, and the empirical freedom of the one as well as of the other [being] annihilated; – this absolute preservation of all the estates must be the highest government, and according to its concept it can properly belong to no estate, since it is the indifference of all. It must therefore consist of those who have, as it were, given up real being in an estate and live absolutely in the ideal, the old and the priests, who are both properly one. From old age the self-constituting of individuality disappears; of life it has lost the side of shape and of reality, and on the threshold of death, which will take the individual absolutely up into the universal, it has already half died; but through the loss of the real element of individuality, of the particular, it alone is capable, outside its estate, which is the shape and particularity of its individuality, of being above all in indifference

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