System of Ethical Life

[p. 352]

|352| in other regions, and cheapness, which in others sublates the even relation of the surplus to the whole, – and, since nature has sublated the tranquil middle, must assert this middle and the equilibrium. For the sinking of the value of a kind of surplus, and its incapacity to represent the totality of need, destroys this existence, since a part of the people, in trust in the universal, has tied its existence to this capacity, and betrays its trust. The government is the real whole holding power, which, indifferent towards the parts, is not an abstraction, and is thus indeed indifferent towards the singular kind of surplus to which a part binds its reality, but not towards the existence of this part itself. The abstraction of equilibrium is indeed certain that a kind of surplus which no longer has adequacy to the totality of needs will regain it, thus that it will follow, on the one hand, that only as many will occupy themselves with it as can live from it, that its value will rise, on the other hand, that if there are too few of them for those to whom this surplus is a need, its value will fall; but for reality, and for the government, [partly] the too low value, because it concerns a part whose physical existence has made itself dependent on the whole and is now completely ruined through this whole, partly the too high value, through which all are disturbed in their totality of enjoyment and of the habitual, has an interest which is disregarded by the abstraction of equilibrium, which, in the fluctuation of the latter, remains outside it as the idle indifference of contemplation; but the government has it as the real power-holding and difference-determining one.

But these empirical fluctuations and formal, non-necessary differences, towards which the government, holding power, is indifferent, are contingent, not the necessary drive of difference which goes into the destruction of equilibrium. The organic principle of this potency is singularity, feeling, need, and this is empirically infinite; insofar as it is for itself and is to remain what it is, it posits itself as limitless, and, since its nature is singularity, as empirically infinite. Enjoyment does seem to be something firmly determined and limited, but its infinity is its ideality, and in this it is infinite. As

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