System of Ethical Life

[p. 358]

|358| singularity; but this form is indifferent; although it is necessary that right be present in the form of consciousness as law.

Right is directed at singularity and is the abstraction of universality, for singularity is to subsist in it; this singularity is either the living singularity of the individual, or a relative identity of it; or the livingness of the individual itself, as singularity, posited as relative identity.

So also the negation of singularity, which is one through singularity – not through the absolutely universal – is a negation of possession, purely as such; or the negation of a living singularity in the individual; or that of the wholeness of the living individual; the second an act of violence; the third murder.

Absolute government could leave the second and third estate, which in the first is in civil right, to itself in this regard, and let it have its way in its vain striving to take the absolutely posited finite of possession up into the infinite; this endeavour presents itself as completeness of the civil laws; as absolute consciousness about judicial procedure, so that the rule would be perfect in the form of the rule, and the judge would become a pure organ, the absolute abstraction of the present singularity alone, without livingness and intuition of the whole.

This false infinity must be removed through the organic element of the constitution, as that which, as organic, takes the universal absolutely up into the particular.

The organic principle is freedom, that the governing itself be the governed; but since here the government, as universal, remains opposed to the collision of singularity, this identity must first be posited thus: that the same estate, equality of birth, the constitution into a whole in a narrower circle, residence among the same citizenry, constitutes the living being-one. Then, as regards actuality in the singular pronouncing of right, not the abstraction of the law must be the absolute, but a settlement made to the satisfaction and with the conviction and assent of the parties according to equity, i.e. one which has regard to the whole of them as individuals.

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