System of Ethical Life
The foregoing levels incorporate the totality of particularity in both its aspects, particularity as such and universality as an abstract unity. The former is the family, but it is a totality such that, while in it all the levels of nature are united, intuition is at the same time involved in a relation. The really objective intuition of one individual in another is afflicted with a difference; the intuition of the father in the wife, the child, and the servant is not an absolutely perfect equality; equality remains inward, unspoken, still unborn; there is an invincible aspect of involvement in nature in it.[32] In universality, however, freedom from relation, the cancellation of one side of the relation by the other, is what matters most, and the cancellation is only rational as the absolute concept, in so far as it proceeds to this negativity.
But at none of the previous levels does absolute nature occur in a spiritual shape; and for this reason it is also not present as ethical life; not even the family, far less still the subordinate levels, least of all the negative, is ethical. Ethical life must be the absolute identity of intelligence, with complete annihilation of the particularity and relative identity which is all that the natural relation is capable of; or the absolute identity of nature must be taken up into the unity of the absolute concept and be present in the form of this unity, a clear and also absolutely rich being, an imperfect self-objectification and intuition of the individual in the alien individual, and so the supersession of natural determinacy and formation, complete indifference of self-enjoyment. Only in this way is the infinite concept strictly one with the essence of the individual, and he is present in his form as true intelligence. He is truly infinite, for all his specific determinacy is annulled, and his objectivity is not apprehended by an artificial independent consciousness, nor yet by an intellectual intuition in which empirical intuition is superseded. Intellectual intuition is alone realised by and in ethical life; the eyes of the spirit and the eyes of the body completely coincide. In the course of nature the husband sees flesh of his flesh in the wife, but in ethical life alone does he see the spirit of his spirit in and through the ethical order.
Accordingly ethical life is characterised by the fact that the living individual, as life, is equal with the absolute concept, that his empirical consciousness is one with the absolute consciousness and the latter is itself empirical consciousness, i.e., an intuition distinguishable from itself, but in such a way that this distinction is throughout something superficial and ideal, and subjective being is null in reality and in this distinction. This complete equalisation is only possible through intelligence or the absolute concept, in accordance with which the living being is made the opposite of itself, i.e., an object, and this object itself is made absolute life and the absolute identity of the one and the many, not put like every other empirical intuition under a relation, made the servant of necessity, and posited as something restricted, with infinity outside itself.
Thus in ethical life the individual exists in an eternal mode; his empirical being and doing is something downright universal; for it is not his individual aspect which acts but the universal absolute spirit in him. Philosophy’s view of the world and necessity, according to which all things are in God and there is nothing singular, is perfectly realised in the eyes of the empirical consciousness, since that singularity of action or thought or being has its essence and meaning simply and solely in the whole. In so far as the ground of the singular is thought out, it is purely and simply this whole that is thought, and the individual does not know or imagine anything else. The empirical consciousness which is not ethical consists in inserting into the unity of universal and particular, where the former is the ground, some other singular thing between them as the ground. Here in ethical life, on the other hand, absolute identity, which previously was natural and something inner, has emerged into consciousness.
But the intuition [individualisation] of this Idea of ethical life, the form in which it appears in its particular aspect, is the people. The identity of this intuition with the Idea must be understood — viz., in the people the connection of a mass of individuals with one another is established generally and formally. A people is not a disconnected mass, nor a mere plurality. Not the former: a mass as such does not establish the connection present in ethical life, i.e., the domination of all by a universal which would have reality in their eyes, be one with them, and have dominion and power over them, and, so far as they proposed to be single individuals, would be identical with them in either a friendly or an hostile way; on the contrary, the mass is absolute singularity, and the concept of the mass, since they are one, is their abstraction alien to them and outside them. Also not the latter, not a mere plurality, for the universality in which they are one is absolute indifference. In a plurality, however, this absolute indifference is not established; on the contrary, plurality is not the absolute many, or the display of all differences; and it is only through this “allness” that indifference can display itself as real and be a universal indifference.
Since the people is a living indifference, and all natural difference is nullified, the individual intuits himself as himself in every other individual; he reaches supreme subject-objectivity; and this identity of all is just for this reason not an abstract one, not an equality of citizenship, but an absolute one and one that is intuited, displaying itself in empirical consciousness, in the consciousness of the particular. The universal, the spirit, is in each man and for the apprehension of each man, even so far as he is a single individual. At the same time this intuition and oneness is immediate, the intuition is not something other than thought; it is not symbolical. Between the Idea and reality there is no particularity which would first have to be destroyed by thinking, would not be already in and by itself equal to the universal. On the contrary the particular, the individual, is as a particular consciousness plainly equal to the universal, and this universality which has flatly united the particular with itself is the divinity of the people, and this universal, intuited in the ideal form of particularity, is the God of the people. He is an ideal way of intuiting it.
Consciousness is, the infinite, the absolute concept, in the form of unity, but in empirical consciousness the concept is posited only as relation: the opposites united in the concept are, and so are opposed and their unity is as such a hidden one; it appears in both as quantity, i.e., under the form of being possibly parted (in one consciousness) and the actuality of this “being parted” is precisely opposition. But in ethical life this separation is in the eyes of empirical consciousness itself an ideal determinacy. Such a consciousness recognises in its opposite, i.e., its object, absolutely the same thing that the object is, and it intuits this sameness.
This intuition is absolute because it is purely objective; in it all singular being and feeling is extinguished, and it is intuition because it is within consciousness. Its content is absolute because this content is the eternal, freed from everything subjective. The antitheses of the eternal, appearance and the empirical, fall so completely within absolute intuition itself that they display themselves as only child’s play. All connection with need and destruction is superseded, and the sphere of practice which began with the destruction of the object has passed over into its counterpart, into the destruction of what is subjective, so that what is objective is the absolute identity of both.
This totality must be treated according to the moments of its Idea and therefore: first, at rest[33] as the constitution of the state, secondly, its movement i.e., the government; first, the Idea as intuition, secondly, the Idea according to relation, but in such a way that now the essence, the totality itself, is absolute identity of intuition and concept. And the form under which this identity appears is something superficial throughout. The extremes of the relation are simply the totality itself, not abstractions which would exist only through relation.
The people as an organic totality is the absolute identity of all the specific characteristics of practical and ethical life. The moments of this totality are, as such, the form of (i) identity or indifference, (ii) difference, and finally (iii) absolute living indifference; and every one of these moments is not an abstraction but a reality.
The concept of ethical life has been put into that life’s objectivity, into the annulling of singularity. This annihilation of the subjective in the objective, the absolute assumption of the particular into the universal is
(a) Intuition: Here the universal is not something formal, opposed to consciousness and subjectivity or individual life, but simply one with that life in intuition. In every shape and expression of ethical life the antithesis of positive and negative is annulled by their integration. But the separation of particular and universal would seriously appear as a slavery of the particular, as something in subjection to the ethical law, and further as the possibility of a different subjection. In ethical life there would be no necessity. The grief would not endure, for it would not be intuited in its objectivity, would not be detached; and the ethical action would be an accident of judgment, for with separation the possibility of another consciousness is established.[35]
(b) As this living and independent spirit, which like a Briareus[36] appears with myriads of eyes, arms, and other limbs, each of which is an absolute individual, this ethical life is something absolutely universal, and in relation to the individual each part of this universality and each thing belonging to it appears as an object, as an aim and end. The object as such or as it enters his consciousness is something ideal for the individual; but “it enters his consciousness” means nothing but “it is posited as individual.” But it is different if the individual subsumes absolute ethical life under himself and it appears in him as his individuality. Here, and generally, it is not by any means meant that the will, caprice, specific things posited by the individual have dominated ethical life so that they have come to command it and make it negative as an enemy and fate. On the contrary dominion is wholly and entirely the external form of subjectivity under which ethical life appears, though without its essence being affected thereby. This appearance of ethical life is the ethical life of the single individual, or the virtues. Because the individual is single, the negative, possibility, specific determinacy, so too the virtues in their determinate character are something negative, possibilities of the universal. Here, then, there is established the difference between morality and natural law; it is not as if they were sundered, the former being excluded from the latter, for on the contrary the subject matter of morality is completely contained in natural law; the virtues appear in the absolute ethical order, but only in their evanescence.
Now ethical life is
(a) as absolute ethical life: not the sum but the indifference of all virtues. It does not appear as love for country and people and law, but as absolute life in one’s country and for the people. It is the absolute truth, for untruth lies only in the fixation of something specific; but in the eternity of the people all individuality is superseded. It is the absolute process of formation (Bildung), for in what is eternal lies the real and empirical destruction of all specific things, and the exchange of all of them. It is absolute unselfishness, for in what is eternal nothing is one’s own. Like every one of its moments, it is supreme freedom and beauty, for the real being and configuration of the eternal is its beauty. It is serene and without suffering, for in it all difference and all grief are cancelled. It is the Divine, absolute, real, existent being, and unveiled, yet not in such a way that it would first have to be lifted up into the ideality of divinity and first extracted from appearance and empirical intuition; on the contrary absolute ethical life is absolute intuition immediately.
But the movement of this absolute ethical life (as it is in the absolute concept) runs through all the virtues, but is fixed in none. In its movement ethical life enters difference and cancels it; its appearance is the transition from subjective to objective and the cancellation of this antithesis.
This activity of production does not look to a product but shatters it directly and makes the emptiness of specific things emerge. The above-mentioned difference in its appearance is specific determinacy and this is posited as something to be negatived. But this, which is to be negatived, must itself be a living totality. What is ethical must itself intuit its vitality in its difference, and it must do so here in such a way that the essence of the life standing over against it is posited as alien and to be negatived. It is otherwise in education, where the negation, subjectivity, is only the superficial aspect of the child. A difference of this sort is the enemy, and this difference, posited in its ethical bearing, exists at the same time as its counterpart, the opposite of the being of its antithesis, i.e., as the nullity of the enemy, and this nullity, commensurate on both sides, is the peril of battle. For ethical life this enemy can only be an enemy of the people and itself only a people. Because single individuality comes on the scene here, it is for the people that the single individual abandons himself to the danger of death.
But apart from this negative aspect there also appears the positive aspect of difference, and likewise as ethical life, but as ethical life in the single individual, or as the virtues. Courage is the indifference of the virtues; it is virtue as negativity, or virtue in a determinate form, but in the absoluteness of determinacy. It is thus virtue in itself, but formal virtue, since every other virtue is only one virtue. In the sphere of difference, specific determinacy appears as a multiplicity, and therefore there appears in it the whole garland of virtues. In war as the manifestation of the negative, and the multiple and its annihilation, there thus enters the multiplicity of specific relations, and in them of virtues. Those relations appear as what they are, established by empirical necessity, and therefore they quickly vanish again, and with them the existence of the virtues, which, having this speedy chasing of one another, are without any relation to a specific totality (the whole situation of a citizen) and so are just as much vices as virtues.[37]
The exigency of war brings about supreme austerity and so supreme poverty and the appearance first of avarice and then of enjoyment, which is just debauchery, because it can have no thought for tomorrow or the whole of life and livelihood. Frugality and generosity become avarice and supreme hard-heartedness against self and others (when supreme misery demands this restriction) — and then prodigality; for property is thrown to the winds since it cannot remain secure, and its disbursement is wholly disproportionate to the use and need of self and others. Likewise the reality which has not been completely taken up into indifference is the immoral aspect of the specific situation, but what is present is existence in its negativity or the highest degree of annihilation.
It is the same with labour as it was with the ethical aspect of the virtues. The exigency of war demands supreme bodily exertions and a complete formal universal unity of the spirit in mechanical labour as well as supreme subjection to an entirely external obedience. Just as the virtues are without outer and inner hypocrisy — for in the case of the former its appearance and externality would be created by the caprice of the subject, who, however, would have had something different, in his own mind and intention; this, however, cannot happen here because the ethical is the essence, the inner mind of the subject; neither can the inner hypocrisy occur, because it knows its ethical substance and through this consciousness maintains its subjectivity and is morality; (margin: in the former case there is an outward show of it, the fact that duty illuminates itself before the eyes of the individual himself) — so too, labour is without an aim, without need, and without a bearing on practical feeling, without subjectivity; neither having done one’s duty, in the latter an inner one, the consciousness has it a bearing on possession and acquisition, but with itself its aim and its product cease too.
This war is not one of families against families but of peoples against peoples, and therefore hatred itself is undifferentiated, free from all personalities. Death proceeds from and afflicts something universal and is devoid of the wrath which is sometimes created and annulled again. Firearms are the invention of a death that is universal, indifferent, and non-personal; and the moving force is national honour, not the injury of a single individual. But the injury which occasions the war comes entirely home to every individual owing to the identity of the national honour in everyone.
(b) Relative ethical life. This bears on relations and is not freely organised and moved in them but, while allowing the specific determinacy in them to subsist, brings it into equality with its opposite, i.e., into a superficial and partial determinacy which is only conceptual. Thus this form of ethical life fashions legal right and is honesty. Where it acts or is real, it clings to the right that his own shall accrue to everyone and, at that, not in accordance with written laws; on the contrary it takes the whole of the case into account and pronounces according to equity if the legal right has not been decided, and otherwise it must keep to legal right. But in equity it mitigates the objectivity of legal right according to pressing needs, whether it be a matter of empirical necessitous circumstances, or of an ignorance that is called pardonable, or of a subjective trust. The totality of relative ethical life is the empirical existence of the single individual, and the maintenance of that existence is left to devolve upon himself and others.
Honesty cares for the family in accordance with the class to which the family belongs, and so for fellow citizens; it relieves the necessities of single individuals and is enraged about a bad action. The universal and absolute aspect of ethical life and the manner in which this aspect should have been present in its reality, and in which reality should have been subjugated, is for honesty a thought. Honesty’s highest flight is to have many sorts of thoughts about this, but at the same time its rationality is that it sees how the empirical situation would be changed, and this situation lies too near its heart for it to let anything happen to it. Thus its rationality is to perceive that absolute ethical life must remain a thought.
In connection with the negative and with sacrifice, honesty offers from its acquisitions (a) to the people, for universal ends according to a universal principle, in taxes according to an equality of justice, and (b) in particular cases, for the poor and the suffering. But it may not sacrifice either a just man’s entire possessions or his life, since individuality is a fixture in it, and so person and life are not only something infinite but something absolute. Thus it cannot be courageous, neither may it go through the whole series of virtues or organise itself purely momentarily as a virtue. For purely momentary virtue is itself without aim and without connection with a totality other than the one it has in itself. The empirical totality of existence sets determinate limits to unselfishness and sacrifice and must stay under the domination of the understanding.
(g) Trust lies in the identity of the first (a) and the difference of the second (b), so that that identity of absolute ethical life is a veiled intuition, not at the same time taken up into the concept and developed outwardly, and therefore this identity in the form of its intellectuality lies outside it. For intuition’s solidity and compactness, which lacks the knowledge and form of the understanding and so also the active use of it, precisely the same intuition, when developed, is a might against which that solidity is different but also mistrustful, because singular individuality, in which that might comes in question, may seem to destroy the whole and cannot illumine for it the identity of absolute intuition and form as a singular middle term. It is not by understanding — for from that quarter it fears, as is only fair, to be betrayed — that it is to be set in movement but by the entirety of trust and necessity, by an external impulse and so one affecting the whole.
Just as trust’s ethical intuition is elemental, so is its labour. This labour does not issue from the understanding, nor is it differently parcelled out in the way characteristic of honesty, but is entire and solid. It does not proceed to the destruction and death of the object but lets utility act and produce naturally.
So too, without knowledge of the legal right, trust’s property is preserved for it, and any dispute is composed by passion and discussion. This trust is after all capable of courage because it relies on something eternal.
In the real absolute totality of ethical life these three forms of it [i.e., the three social classes] must also be real. Each must be organised independently, be an individual and assume a shape of its own; for a confusion of them is the formlessness of the naturally ethical and the absence of wisdom. Of course since each is organised, it is for that very reason a totality and carries in itself the other levels of its form, but conformably to themselves and unorganised, as they have already been exhibited in each case according to their concepts.
Individualisation, vital life, is impossible without specification or dispersal. Each principle and level must unquestionably reach its own concept, because each is real and must strive after its own self-satisfaction and independence. In its concept or in its own indifference it has completely taken into itself its relative identity with the other’s concept and has thus formed itself; to this self-formation everything which is at one level must press on; for infinity is strictly one with reality, although within infinity there is the difference of levels.
The fact that physical nature in its own way expresses the levels in their pure shape and makes each of them independently alive appears more readily acceptable only because, according to the principle of the multiplicity of nature, each single thing should be something incomplete. while in ethical life each must be something absolutely complete; and each makes for itself a plain claim to absolute real totality, because the singularity of each one is the absolute totality, or the pure concept, and so the negation of all specific determinacies. But this absolute concept and negation is precisely the highest abstraction and immediately the negative. The positive is the unity of this form with the essence, and this is the expansion of ethical life into a system of levels (and of nature), and the level of ethical life, self-organised, can only be organised in individuals as its material. The individual as such is not the true but only the formal absolute: the truth is the system of ethical life.
Therefore this system cannot be thought as if it exists in purity in the individual, i.e., as developed, completely distributing itself in its levels; for its essence is ethereal, elemental, pure, having subordinated unities to itself and dissolved them out of their inflexibility into absolute malleability. The singularity of the individual is not the first thing, but the life of ethical nature, divinity, and for the essence of divinity the singularised individual is too poor, i.e., too poor to comprise divinity’s nature in its entire reality. As formal indifference it can display all features momentarily, but as formal indifference it is the negative, time, and destroys them again. But the ethical reality must apprehend itself as nature, as the persistence of all its levels, and each of them in its living shape; it must be one with necessity and persist as relative identity, but this necessity has no reality except in so far as each level has reality, i.e., is a totality.
The levels of ethical life as it displays itself in this reality within the perfect totality are the classes, and the principle of each one of them is the specific form of ethical life as expounded above. Thus there is a class of absolute and free ethical life, a class of honesty, and a class of unfree or natural ethical life.
According to the true concept of a class, the concept is not a universality which lies outside it and is an ens nationis; on the contrary universality is real in the class. The class knows itself in its equality and constitutes itself as a universal against a universal, and the relation between the different classes is not a relation between single individuals. On the contrary by belonging to a class the single individual is something universal and so a true individual, and a person. Consequently the class of slaves, for example, is not a class, for it is only formally a universal. The slave is related as a single individual to his master.
(a) The absolute class [i.e., the military nobility] has absolute and pure ethical life as its principle, and in the above exposition of that life it has itself been set forth, for its real being and its Idea are simply one, because the Idea is absolute ethical life.
But in the real being of absolute ethical life we have only to consider how this class behaves in respect to the persistence of difference and how its practical being can be differentiated in it. In the Idea itself, as was explained above, the life of practice is purely and simply negative, and contained in its reality are the relations and the virtues connected with them which are self-motivated and committed to empirical contingency. But, for this class as the reality of ethical life, the need and use of things is an absolute necessity which dogs it, yet one which is not allowed to dog it in its above-described form, in its separatedness; for the work of this class may only be universal, while work to supply a need would be singular. The satisfaction of a need is certainly itself just something particular, but here nothing is to occur in the shape of the satisfaction of a need or the particular character of something purely practical; for this satisfaction is as such pure destruction of the object, absolute negation, not a confusion of the ideal with the object or the prolongation of the consequences of this confusion, not a partial putting of intelligence into the object, nothing practical, not a development of something lifeless, the result of which would yet be destruction. Instead the work of this class can be nothing but the waging of war or training for this work; for its immediate activity in the people is not work but something organic in itself and absolute.
The labour of this class can have no relation to its needs, but its needs cannot be satisfied without labour, and consequently it is necessary for this labour to be done by the other classes and for things to be transmitted to it which have been prepared and manufactured for it. All that is left to it is direct consumption of them in enjoying them. But this relation of this class to the other two is a relation in existing reality that has to be taken up into the indifference of the ethical totality in the only way possible. The way here is equality. And since the essence of the relation is the utility which the other classes have for the first one, so that they provide it with its necessities and it makes the goods and gains of the others its own, it must in turn, in accordance with equality, be useful to the others. But this it is first in the highest way and then, too, in their way.
In its content the tie of mutual utility is partly one of difference on both sides, whereby the first class is the absolute power over the others, and partly one of equality, whereby it is negative and so immanent for them in the way they are immanent for it.
The former utility is that the first class is the absolute and real ethical shape and so, for the other classes, the model of the self-moving and self-existent Absolute, the supreme real intuition which ethical nature demands. These classes, owing to their nature, do not get beyond this intuition. They are not in the sphere of the infinite concept whereby this intuition would only be posited for their consciousness as something external, but strictly [i.e., in their conceptual knowledge] it would be their own absolute moving spirit overcoming all their differences and determinacies. Their ethical nature’s achievement of this intuition, this utility, is provided to them by the first class. Since this, displayed in the shape of something objective, is their absolute inner essence, it remains for them something hidden, not united with their individuality and consciousness.
The latter utility, according with the mode of the other classes, lies in the negative [i.e., in labour], and on the part of the first class labour is established likewise, but it is the absolutely indifferent labour of government and courage. In its bearing for the other classes, or to them, this labour is the security of their property and possessions, and the absolute security is that they are excused from courage, or at least the second class is.
(b) The class of honesty [the bourgeoisie] lies in work for needs, in possessions, gain, and property. Since the unity involved in these relations is something purely ideal, an ens rationis, on account of the fixity of difference, it acquires reality only in the people. It is the abstract empty might in general, without wisdom[38] its content is settled by the contingency of real things and by the caprice involved in them, in gain, contracts, etc. The universal and legal element in these relations becomes a real physical control against the particularity which intends to be negative towards it. This immersion in possession and particularity ceases here to be slavery to absolute indifference; it is, as far as possible undifferentiated, or formal indifference, [i.e., what it is] to be a person, is reflected in the people, and the possessor does not lapse, owing to his difference, with his whole being and so does not lapse into personal dependence; on the contrary, his negative indifference is posited as something real, and he is thus a burgher, a bourgeois, and is recognised as something universal. In the first class all the particular character in individuality is nullified, and thus it is related as a universal to the second class, which in this way is itself determined similarly, but, owing to the fixity of its possession, it is only something formally universal, an absolute singular.
Since the labour of this class is likewise universal, the result is that, for the sake of the satisfaction of physical need a system of universal dependence is set up because labour here affects the totality of need, not materially but only conceptually. The value and price of labour and its product is determined by the universal system of all needs, and the capricious element in the value, grounded as it is on the particular needs of others, as well as the uncertainty whether a surplus is necessary for others, is completely cancelled. — The universality of labour or the indifference of all labour is posited as a middle term with which all labour is compared and into which each single piece of labour can be directly converted; this middle term, posited as something real, is money. So too the active universal exchange, the activity which adjusts particular need to particular surplus, is the commercial class, the highest point of universality in the exchange of gain. What it produces is to take over the surplus available in particular activities and thereby make it into a universal, and what it exchanges is likewise money or the universal.
Where barter or, in general, the transfer of property to another is ideal — partly owing to the universally known possession of the one, a universal recognition hindering the transfer (because property and its certainty rests in part on the transfer), partly because the two sides of the simultaneity of the barter become empirically separate — that ideality is posited in reality (by the fact that the whole might of the state hangs on it) as if that had actually happened which was to happen, and the empirical appearance of the exchange did not matter. just as the empirical appearance of possession or non-possession does not matter either, and what is important is whether the inward absolute tie between the individual and the thing is close or distant, i.e., whether the thing is his property or not. Both together constitute justice in connection with property in things.
Personal injury was infinite at the natural stage; it was a matter of honour and the whole person; in the system of reality it becomes this specific abstraction of injury; for since the indifference of the individual is here absolute indifference, i.e., the people (which, however, cannot be injured by civil wrong), nothing is left but precisely the specific and particular character of the injury. In a citizen as such the universal is as little injured, and is so little to be revenged or in jeopardy, that nothing remains but to liberate the particular by superseding it, i.e., the injurer is subjected to the very same treatment. Revenge is transformed in this way into punishment, for revenge is indeterminate and belongs to honour and the whole family. Here it is undertaken by the people, since in the place of the particular injured party there enters the abstract but real universality, not his living universality, the universality of the individual.
But, for honesty, the living totality is the family, or a natural totality, and a situation of property and livelihood which is secured, so far as possible, for the empirical totality of its life as a whole and for the education of the children.
This class is incapable either of a virtue or of courage because a virtue is a free individuality. Honesty lies in the universality of its class without individuality and, in the particularity of its relations, without freedom.
The greatest height which this class can attain by its productive activity is (a) its contribution to the needs of the first class and (b) aid to the needy. Both are a partial negation of its principle, because (a) is labour for a universal according to the concept, while (b) is devoted to something particular according to an empirical necessitous case. The former universal sacrifice is without vitality, while the latter more living sort of sacrifice is without universality.
So too the inner relation of the family is determined according to the concept. Whoever out of necessity binds himself to the head of the house does so, despite all the personal aspects of the bond of service, only as an absolute person by way of a contract and for a definite term. For since each member of the household is an absolute person, he should be able to attain a living totality and become a paterfamilias. This is precisely the relation when the bond is less personal and only for specific services and labour.
(c) The class of crude ethical life is that of the peasantry. The shape that the levels of ethical life have for it is that it is certainly involved with physical needs; it falls likewise into the system of universal dependence, though in a more patriarchal way, and its labour and gain forms a greater and more comprehensive totality.
The character of its labour is also not wholly intellectual, nor is it directly concerned with the preparation of something to meet a need; on the contrary it is more of a means, affecting the soil or an animal, something living. The peasant’s labour masters the organic potency of the living thing and so, determines it, though the thing produces itself by itself.
The ethical life of this class is trust in the absolute class, in accord with the totality of the first class, which must have every relation and every influence. The crude ethical life of this third class can only consist in trust, or, when placed under compulsion, it is open to the parcelling out of its activity.[39] On account of its totality it is also capable of courage and in this labour and in the danger of death can be associated with the first class.
In the preceding level the system of ethical life was set forth as it is at rest: the organic independently, as well as the inorganic absorbing itself in itself and forming, in its reality, a system. But this present level treats of how the organic is different from the inorganic; it knows the difference between universal and particular, and how the absolutely universal transcends this difference and everlastingly cancels and produces it; in other words, the Absolute is subsumed under the absolute concept, or we have the absolute movement or process of ethical life. This movement, spread throughout the unfolding of all levels and really first creating and producing this unfolding, must be displayed in this level. And since the essence of this level is the difference between universal and particular, but also the supersession of this difference, and since this organic movement must have reality (and the reality of the universal consists in its being a mass of individuals), this antithesis is to be so interpreted — since the universal is real or in the hands of individuals — that these are truly in the universal and undifferentiated, and in the separation of universal and particular adopt such a movement that through it the particular is subsumed under the universal and becomes purely and simply equal to it.
So far as might is concerned, the universal in its reality is superior to the particular, for, no matter at what level, the government is formal, it is the absolutely universal; the might of the whole depends on it. But the government must also be the positively and absolutely universal, and hence it is the absolute level [i.e., the first class], and the question is always about the difference that the government is the true power against everything particular, whereas individuals necessarily dwell in universal and ethical life.
This formal characterisation of the concept of a constitution, the reality of the universal in so far as it is in contrast to something particular and so enters as power [Potenz] and cause, must also be recognised as a totality in the separation of powers. And this system — determined according to the necessity in which they are separated, and as the power of the regime is framed at the same time in this separation for each of these determinate features — is the true constitution. A truly ethical totality must have proceeded to this separation, and the concept of the government must display itself as the wisdom of the constitution, so that the form and consciousness is as real as the Absolute is in the form of identity and nature. The totality exists only as the unity of essence and form: neither can be missing. Crudity, with respect to the constitution in which nothing is distinct and the whole as such is directly moved against every single determinacy, is formlessness and the destruction of freedom; for freedom exists in the form, and there in the fact that the single part, being a subordinate system in the whole organism, is independently self-active in its own specific character.
This government is therefore directly divided into absolute government and government through the single powers.
seems immediately to be the first class because that class is the absolute power for the others, the reality of absolute ethical life, the real intuited spirit of the others, while they are in the sphere of the particular. But the first class is itself one class in contrast to the others, and there must be something higher than itself and its difference from the others.
As absolute universal reality this class is, of course, the absolute government; but organic nature proceeds to the annihilation and absorption of the inorganic and the latter maintains itself by its own resources, by the inner spirit which posits organic nature and its reflection as an inorganic nature. This latter stands in the concept as something absolutely universal, and the annihilation and the empowering of it by organic nature necessarily affects its particular character. Inherently it is the particular, though assumed into the concept and infinity, and this is what its persistence means.
Similarly the absolute class is the ethical organic nature in contrast to the inorganic nature of the relative classes and it consumes the latter in its particularity, so that the relative classes must provide the absolute one with the necessaries of life and work, while the first class is individualised in intuition by this contrast, and therefore, as a class, the first class has in its consciousness the difference of the second class and the crudity of the third, and so it separates itself from them and maintains a sense of its lofty individuality or the pride which, as an inner consciousness of nobility, abjures the consciousness of the non-noble and, what is precisely the same as that consciousness, namely, the action of the non-noble.
This spiritual individualisation, like the former physical one, sets up a relation of organic to inorganic nature, and the unconscious limitation of this movement and of the annihilation of inorganic nature must be posited in ethical life as known, must emerge as the newborn and appearing middle term; it must not remain left to itself or fail to retain the form of nature; on the contrary it must be known precisely as the limit of the particularity which is to be annihilated. But such knowledge is the law.
The movement of the first class against the other two classes is assumed into the concept by reason of the fact that both of them have reality, both are limited, and the empirical freedom of the one is cancelled like that of the others. This absolute maintenance of all the classes must be the supreme government and, in accordance with its concept, this maintenance can strictly accrue to no class, because it is the indifference of all. Thus it must consist of those who have, as it were, sacrificed their real being in one class and who live purely and simply in the ideal, i.e., the Elders and the Priests, two groups who are strictly one.
In age the self-constitution of individuality vanishes. Age has lost from life the aspect of shape and reality, and at the threshold of the death which will carry the individual away entirely into the universal, it is already half dead. Owing to the loss of the real side of individuality, of its particular concerns, age alone is capable of being above everything in indifference, outside its class, which is the shape and particularity of its individuality, and of maintaining the whole in and through all its parts.
The maintenance of the whole can be linked solely to what is supremely indifferent, to God and nature, to the Priests and the Elders, for every other form of reality lies in difference. But the indifference which nature produces in the Elders, and God produces in his Priests who are dedicated to him alone, appears to be an indifference lying outside ethical life, and ethical life seems to have to take flight out of its own sphere, to nature and the unconscious. But this must be because here the question is about reality, and reality belongs to nature and necessity. What belongs to ethical life is the knowledge of nature and the linkage (a) of that level of nature which formally and explicitly expresses the specific character of an ethical level with (b) that ethical level.
Nature is here related to ethical life like a tool. It mediates between the specific Idea of ethical life and its outward appearance. As a tool it must be formally adequate to that Idea, without indeed having any independent ethical content of its own, but corresponding with the Idea according to its formal level and specific character. Or its content is nothing but precisely possibility, the negative of ethical specific character. This latter, posited ideally, requires a tool, or alternatively its subjective reality, its immediate, inherently undifferentiated body, taken up into its unity, appears, considered by itself, as its tool; and for the Idea, posited ideally, opposed to reality, this its body appears to reality as something accidental, something that finds itself, fits in, and conforms.
In nature the soul frames its body directly and one can neither be supposed, nor conceived, without the other. There is an original unity, unconscious, without separation. But in ethical life the separation of soul from body is the primitive thing, and their identity is a totality or a reconstructed identity. Thus for the ideal the body is to be sought as something present, formal, inherently negative and to be bound up with the ideal; and herein consists the essence of the construction of the government, namely, that (a) for the specific character of the soul or the specific ethical character whose reality is to be known, that shall be found which lies outside difference, in the sense that what is found is a specific ethical character; but that (b) at the same time this tool shall not be something universal, adequate for many other things, but precisely and only for this specific function. For, for one thing, the tool would otherwise be restricted against its own nature, and, for another thing, it would be, for that on account of which it is restricting, power in general, predominance, and not one with it in essence and spirit. It must have its entire shape in common with that, be one with it in respect of particularity, or, so to speak, have the same interest as it has except that the antithesis of ruler and ruled is the external form of the indifferent in contrast to the different, of the universal in contrast to the particular.
Thus age is the body of absolute indifference against all the classes. It lacks the individuality which is the form of every single person; and although the priesthood exists as the indifference not abandoned to nature but extorted from it and destructive by self-activity of what is individual, it must be noticed (a) that the Elders of the first class have led a divine [i.e., consecrated] life by belonging to it; (b) that the Elder of the first class must be a priest himself and, in the transition from an adult into a higher age, live as a priest and so must produce for himself an absolute and true age; (c) that the true priest needs the outward age as his body, that his consummation cannot be put, against nature, into an earlier age, but must await the highest one.
The preservation (the absolute relation) of the whole is consigned simply to this supreme government; it is absolute rest in the endless movement of the whole and in connection with that movement. The wisdom of this government affects the life of all the parts, and this life is the life of the whole and is only through the whole. But the life of the whole is not an abstraction from the life force but absolute identity in difference, the absolute Idea. But this identity in difference is in its absolute and supreme outward articulation nothing but the relation of the classes constructed in the first level [i.e., within the absolute class itself]. It is the Absolute as something universal, without any of the specific determinacy which occurs at the particular levels.
This indifferent Idea of the supreme government does not affect any form of the particularity and determinacy which is manifest in the ramification of the whole into its subordinate systems. The government does not have to repeat this Idea in these, for otherwise it would be a formal power over them; on the contrary once this difference of the classes is established, it proceeds to maintain it. Thus to this extent it is negative in its activity, for the maintenance of a living thing is negative. It is government and so opposed to the particular; the absolute positive soul of the living social whole lies in the entirety of the people itself. By being government, government is in the sphere of appearance and opposition. Thus as such it can only be negative.[40]
But this absolute negation of everything that could conflict with the absolute relation of the absolute Idea and that had jumbled the distinction of the classes, must have a supreme oversight of the way in which any power is determined. No ordering whatever of any such power is exempt from its control, neither in so far as such a power establishes itself, nor in so far as it proposes to uphold itself when it is restricted by the movement of a higher power, either in general, in such a way as still to remain in existence, or as to be wholly superseded for a time.
Anything that could have an influence on disturbing the relation between the classes or the free movement of a higher power is in an absolute sense organic and within the competence of the supreme government. But the government’s negative business in the field of appearance is not to be so conceived as if it behaved simply in a supervisory capacity and negatively in prohibitions by veto. On the contrary its negative activity is its essence, but it is the activity of a government, and its relation to the particular, or its appearance, is a positive activity, precisely in so far as it emerges in opposition to the particular. Thus it is legislative, establishing order where a relation is developed which intended to organise itself independently, or where some hitherto insignificant feature gradually develops itself in its previous unrestrictedness and begins to get strong. Above all it has to decide in every case where different rights of the systems [i.e., the class structures] come into collision and the present situation makes it impossible to maintain them in their positive stability.
In all systems, theoretical or actual, we come across the formal idea that an absolute government is an organic central authority, and, in particular, one which preserves the constitution. But
(a) such an idea, like Fichte’s ephorate,[41] is entirely formal and empty in its negative activity,
(b) and then there has to be ascribed to it every possible oversight in the government of every single case, and consequently this oversight involves a crude confusion of universal and individual. It is supposed to dominate everything, giving commands and operating as predominant, and yet at the same time that it dominates to be nothing nevertheless;
(g) the absolute government is only not formal because it presupposes the difference of the classes and so is truly the supreme government. Without this presupposition the whole might of reality falls into a clump (no matter how the clump might otherwise ramify internally) and this barbarian clump would have at its apex its equally barbarian power undivided and without wisdom. In the clump there cannot be any true and objective difference, and what was to hover over its internal differences is a pure nothing. For the absolute government, in order to be the absolute idea, posits absolutely the endless movement of the absolute concept. In the latter there must be differences and, because they are in the concept, universal and infinite, they must therefore be systems. And in this way alone is an absolute government and absolute living identity possible, but born into appearance and reality.
The external form of this government’s absolute might is that it belongs to no class, despite the fact that it originated in the first one. From this one it must proceed, for in reality the crude living identity, without wisdom and undifferentiated, is the third thing, the third class, while the second is the one in which difference is fixed, and although it has unity as formal universality united with itself, it still has this unity floating over it. But the first class is clear, mirror-bright identity, the spirit of the other classes, though since it is fixed in antithesis to the others, it is the infinite side, while the others are the finite one. But the infinite is nearer to the Absolute than the finite is, and so, if the expression be allowed, rising from below, the Absolute mounts up and swings forth directly out of the infinity which is its formal and negative side.
This government is absolute power for all the classes because it is above them. Its might whereby it is a power is not something external whereby it would be something particular against another particular, would have an army, or whatever else, to execute its commands. On the contrary it is entirely withdrawn from opposition; there is nothing against which it could set itself as something particular and thereby make itself into something particular. On the contrary it is absolutely and solely universality against the particular; and as this Absolute, this Ideal, this Universal, in contrast with which everything else is a particular; it is God’s appearance. Its words are his sayings, and it cannot appear or be under any other form. It is the direct Priesthood of the All Highest, in whose sanctuary it takes counsel with him and receives his revelations; everything human and all other sanction ceases here.
It is neither the declaration that such an authority is to be inviolable nor the whole people’s choice of its representatives that gives this government its sanctity; on the contrary such a sanction rather detracts from it.
Choice and declaration is an act proceeding from freedom and the will and so can just as easily be upset again. Force belongs to the empirical and conscious will and insight, and every such single act of will and judgment occurs in time, is empirical and accidental, and may, and must, be able to be retracted. A people is not bound by its word, its act, or its will, for all of these proceed from its consciousness and from the circumstances. The absolute government, on the other hand, is divine, is not made, has its sanction in itself, and is simply the universal. But any and every making of it would issue from freedom and the will.
Absolute government is the restful substance of universal movement, but universal government is this movement’s cause; or it is the universal in so far as the universal is opposed to the particular in the form of something particular; yet in its essence the universal is still the universal and, on account of its form, it is the determinant of the particular.
Now since universal government is related to movement, while movement occurs in the sphere of individuality, shape, and relation, the content and object of this government is a universal situation. For what abides absolutely is the essence of absolute government; all that can accrue to universal government is a formal universal, a universal accident, a determinate situation of the people for this period of time. For this situation must itself not be an abstraction, something belonging in its reality entirely to the particular and not being any modification or particularisation of the universal, as, for example, the fact that every man lives, has clothes, etc. Such characteristics are only abstractions as universal and are needs of the single individual. But universal government is directed on what there is in those needs which qua universal is a power and subsumes the whole under itself and makes it a power. Universal government provides for the need which is universal, and provides for it in a universal way.
The movement of the whole is a persistent separation of the universal from the particular and a subsumption of the latter under the former. But this particular is the persisting separation, and on this account there is stamped on it the form of the Absolute or its moments as mutually external to one another. And the movement is determined in ways that are similarly manifold.
The particular against which the universal moves at the level of inwardly concealed identity and outwardly revealed difference determines the movement as one proceeding to nullity; for what is flatly set down as particular and cannot bring identity to birth, and so is not absolute concept or intelligence, can only become one with the universal through nullification.
But the particular itself, as absolute concept and as organic totality, i.e., a people, is a particular; and consequently both particulars fail to recognise one another when they posit themselves as ideally negated — the aspect of negation in the absolute concept — and not as ideally persistent. The people that finds itself unrecognised must gain this recognition by war or colonies.
But self-constituting individuality is not itself at this second level a level which takes its inorganic aspect, the absolute concept confronting it, up into itself and makes it really and absolutely one with itself. War produces only a recognition, an ideal positing of equality, a true living being.
Since government is a subsumption of the particular under the universal, in this concept the moments of the universal opposed to the particular may be distinguished into two, like the subsumption itself; so this subsumption is again a double one, i.e., the real one and the ideal one — the former being the one in which it is formal universality under which the particular is posited, the latter being the true one in which the particular is posited as one with the universal. The moments in question are those which have been conceived as the different powers in the state: (i) the positing of the universal as the legislature, (ii) its ideal subsumption of the particular as the judiciary, or justice in general, and (iii) real subsumption as the executive. (Kant has conceived the real subsumption or the conclusion of the syllogism as the judicial power, but the ideal subsumption, or the minor premise as real subsuming, as the executive power.)[42]
Every real or living movement is an identity of these three moments, and in every act of government all three are united. They are abstractions to which no reality of their own can be given or which cannot be constituted or organised as authorities. Legislation, giving judgment, and executive action are something completely formal, empty, and devoid of content. A content makes them real, but by this linking of form and content each of them would immediately become an identity of universal and particular, or, as movement, a subsumption of the particular under the universal, and so a movement which has united all three moments in itself.
These abstractions may of course acquire reality; each of them may be independently linked with individuals who limit themselves to them. But in that case their true reality lies in the one which unites the three; or, since the conclusion of the syllogism, the executive, is this unification, the executive is properly always the government; and whether the others are not pure abstractions, empty activities, depends on the executive, and this is absolutely the government; and after the above-mentioned distinctions between legislature, judiciary, and executive have been made and the ineffective authorities set up, the first problem comes back again, the problem of knowing the executive, not as such, but as government.
Therefore the movement of the people is government, because movement as such is something formal, since in it it is not absolutely determinate which of the terms standing in relation in the movement is power and which is the particular, and the fact that they are related in the movement seems accidental, whereas in the movement of the people universal and particular are plainly bound together; the absolutely universal as such is plainly determined and therefore the particular is too.
Organic movement must be recognised, so far as intuition subsumes the concept and the concept intuition. But because what is self-moving is essentially organic, this distinction is formal throughout. The intuition which subsumes the concept is itself absolute concept, and the concept which subsumes intuition is itself absolute intuition. The appearance of this form of this antithesis is outside the organic itself; the antithesis lies in reflection on the movement. For the organic itself the antithesis is set up in such a way that, in so far as it is the concept which appears as subsuming, the organism is posited as an individual, as an independent single entity contrasted with other individual peoples as single entities; in so far as it is intuition which is subsuming, the organism is really and truly subsumed; it is the universal, the determinant of the particular, which is inherently nullified. In so far as the people, the totality, is directed against its own inner particular character, what is proper to the totality is this particular, because here the universal is posited as what is implicit.
This separation, as was said, is a formal one. The movement itself is nothing but an alternation of these two subsumptions. From the subsumption under the concept, where the opposites are single individuals, indifference arises and ideally intuits the single individual, which is thus posited outside the organism as what is proper to indifference, but itself still in the form of particularity, until indifference intuits the single individual as also really itself, or absolute identity is reconstructed.
Subsumption under the concept would be the abstraction of the mutual relation of the people to foreign peoples as individuals; but the organic process is directly an ideal cancellation of this difference, or the specific determinacy is directly the one belonging to the people, a difference in the people itself, and the living movement cancels it absolutely. There can thus be no absolute basis for the division of government into internal and external affairs; neither is an organic system comprehended within the universal system and subordinate, but at the same time independent and organic. But the moments of the absolute intuition, since they are known as organic, must themselves be systems in which those forms of inner and outer are subordinate. Those moments, being systems, must have difference wholly from outside, in reflection; but implicitly they must have absolute identity in themselves in such a way that it has hovered over them, not as such, but only as a form.
The first system of movement in the totality is thus this — that absolute identity is wholly concealed in it as feeling.
The second is the separation of universal from particular and thus is something duplex in its movement: either the particular remains what it is and the universal is therefore only formal, or the universal is absolute and the particular is completely absorbed in it. The first is justice and war, the second is education, culture, conquest, and colonisation.
The system of need has been conceived formally above as a system of universal physical dependence on one another. For the totality of his need no one is independent. His labour, or whatever capacity he has for satisfying his need, does not secure its satisfaction for him. Whether the surplus that he possesses gives him a totality of satisfaction depends on an alien power (Macht) over which he has no control. The value of that surplus, i.e., what expresses the bearing of the surplus on his need, is independent of him and alterable.
This value itself depends on the whole of the needs and the whole of the surplus, and this whole is a scarcely knowable, invisible, and incalculable power,[43] because this power is, with respect to its quantity, a sum of infinitely many single contributions and, with respect to quality, it is compounded out of infinitely many qualities. This reciprocal action of the single contribution on the whole, which is composed of such contributions, and of the whole in turn, as something ideal, on the single contribution, determines value and so is a perpetual wave, surging up and down, in which the contributor, determined by the whole as possessing a high value, amasses his assets and hence there comes to be in the whole a surplus included in the entirety of need. As a result of this circumstance, the indifference of the whole, regarded as a mass of the other qualities, appears as a ratio between them, and this ratio has altered. These other qualities are necessarily connected with that surplus, and this which previously had a higher value is now depreciated. Every single kind of surplus is rendered indifferent in the whole, and through its reception into the whole it is measured to fit the whole of the general need; its place and worth is appointed for it. For this reason it is just as little the single contributor who determines the value of either his surplus or his need, or who can maintain it independently of its relation to everything else, as there is anything permanent and secure in the value.
Thus in this system what rules appears as the unconscious and blind entirety of needs and the modes of their satisfaction. But the universal must be able to master this unconscious and blind fate and become a government.
This whole does not lie beyond the possibility of cognition, in the great ratios treated en masse. Because the value, the universal, must be reckoned up quite atomistically, the possibility of knowledge in respect of the different kinds of surplus thus compounded is a matter of degree. But from the value of the kind itself it is possible to know how the surplus stands in relation to need; and this relation, or the value, has its significance from two aspects: (a) whether the production of such a surplus is the possibility of meeting the totality of needs, whether a man can subsist on it, and (b) the aspect of universality, i.e., whether this value of one sort of need is not disproportionate to the totality itself, for which the need exists.
Both must be determined by intuition, in terms of the whole of what a man necessarily wants, and this is to be ascertained, partly from primitive natural conditions, according to the different climates, and partly from cultural conditions, by taking the average of what in a given people is regarded as necessary for existence. Natural influences bring it about automatically that sometimes the proper equilibrium is maintained with insignificant oscillation, while at other times, if it is disturbed more seriously by external conditions, it is restored by greater oscillations. But precisely in this last case the government must work against the nature which produces this sort of overbalancing sway through empirical accidents whose effect is sometimes more rapid — e.g., poor harvests — sometimes slower — e.g., the development of the same work in other districts and the resulting cheapness of the product which cancels elsewhere the symmetrical relation of the surplus to the whole; and since nature has cancelled the peaceful mean of the stable price system, the government must uphold that mean and the equilibrium. For the lowering of the value of one sort of surplus and the impracticability of that surplus’s meeting the entirety of need [i.e., the impossibility of making a living by producing that commodity] destroys the existence and confidence of part of the people, since that part has tied its existence to the practicability of this, with trust in the universal.[44]
The government is the real authoritative whole which, indifferent to the parts of the people, is not anything abstract and thus is indeed indifferent to the singular type of surplus to which one part links its reality, but is not indifferent to the existence of that part itself. When one sort of surplus is no longer adequate to supply the totality of needs of those who produce it, the abstraction of equilibrium is sure to restore this proportion, and so the result will be that (a) only so many people will busy themselves with that sort as can live off it and their value will rise and that (b) if there are too few of them for those to whom this surplus is a need, their value will fall.[45] But on the one hand reality and the government have a concern about a [price] value that is too low because it puts in jeopardy some part of the people whose physical existence has been made dependent on the whole economy and is now threatened with complete ruin by it; and, on the other hand, the government is concerned about values [i.e., prices] being too high, which disturbs everyone in the totality of his enjoyment and customary life. These concerns are ignored by the abstraction of equilibrium, an abstraction which in the equilibrium’s oscillation remains outside it as the passive indifference of reflective observation, while the government remains outside the oscillation as the real authoritative indifference and the determinant of difference.
But these empirical oscillations and formal non-necessary differences, to which the government is authoritatively indifferent, are accidental, not the necessary differential urge which proceeds to the destruction of the equilibrium.
The organic principle of this level is singleness, feeling, and need, and this is empirically endless. In so far as it is independent and is to remain what it is, it sets no limits to itself, and since its nature is singleness, it is empirically endless. True, enjoyment does seem to be fixedly determinate and restricted; but its endlessness is its ideality, and in this respect it is endless. As enjoyment itself it idealises itself into the purest and clearest enjoying. Civilised enjoyment volatilises the crudity of need and therefore must seek or arrange what is noblest, and the more different its impulses, the greater the labour they necessitate. For both the difference of the impulses and also their indifference and concentration, these two aspects which the reality of nature separates, should be united. The neutrality which the natural product has by being a totality in itself should be cancelled and merely its difference should remain to be enjoyed.
Moreover this ideality of enjoyment displays itself also as “being other,” as foreignness in the external connection of the product [i.e., it comes from “abroad"], and it is linked with scarcity; and this foreign sort of satisfaction, as well as the most domestic sort, the one already made most peculiarly our own by its manner of preparation, makes charges on the whole earth.
Empirically endless, the ideality of enjoyment finally displays itself in objectified restricted enjoyment, in possession, and in this respect, consequently, all limitation ceases.
Over against this infinity is the particularity of enjoyment and possession, and since possible possession — the objective element in the level of enjoyment — and labour have their limits, are determinate in quantity, it follows that with the accumulation of possession at one place, possession must diminish at another.
This inequality of wealth is absolutely necessary. Every natural inequality can express itself as inequality of wealth if what is natural turns to this aspect. The urge to increase wealth is nothing but the necessity for carrying to infinity the specific individual thing which possession is. But the business that is more universal and more ideal is that which as such secures a greater gain for itself.
This necessary inequality divides itself again within the business class (Erwerbsstand) into many particular types of business (Stände des Erwerbs), and it divides these into estates (Stände) of different wealth and enjoyment. But owing to its quantitative character, which is a matter of degree and is incapable of any definition except in degree, this inequality produces a relation of master and servant. The individual who is tremendously wealthy becomes a might; he cancels the form of thoroughgoing physical dependence, the form of dependence on a universal, not on a particular.
Next, great wealth, which is similarly bound up with the deepest poverty (for in the separation between rich and poor labour on both sides is universal and objective), produces on the one side in ideal universality, on the other side in real universality, mechanically. This purely quantitative element, the inorganic aspect of labour, which is parcelled out even in its concept, is the unmitigated extreme of barbarism. The original character of the business class, namely, its being capable of an organic absolute intuition and respect for something divine, even though posited outside it, disappears, and the bestiality of contempt for all higher things enters. The mass of wealth, the pure universal, the absence of wisdom, is the heart of the matter (das Ansich). The absolute bond of the people, namely ethical principle, has vanished, and the people is dissolved.
The government has to work as hard as possible against this inequality and the destruction of private and public life wrought by it. It can do this directly in an external way by making high gain more difficult, and if it sacrifices one part of this class to mechanical and factory labour and abandons it to barbarism, it must keep the whole people without question in the life possible for it. But this happens most necessarily, or rather immediately, through the inner constitution of the class.
The relation of physical dependence is absolute particularisation and dependence on something abstract, an ens rationis. The constitution creates a living dependence and a relation of individuals, a different and an inwardly active connection which is not one of physical dependence. To say that this class is constituted inwardly means that within its restrictedness it is a living universal. What is its universal, its law and its right, is living at the same time in the individuals, realised in them through their will and their own activity. This organic existence of this class makes every single individual, so far as there is life in him, one with the others; but the class cannot subsist in absolute unity. Thus it makes some of the individuals dependent, but ethical on the score of their trust, respect, etc., and this ethical life cancels mere mass, quantity, and the elemental, and creates a living relation. The wealthy man is directly compelled to modify his relation of mastery, and even others’ distrust for it, by permitting a more general participation in it.[46] The external inequality is diminished externally, just as the infinite does not give itself up to determinacy but exists as living activity, and thus the urge to amass wealth indefinitely is itself eradicated.
This constitution belongs rather to the nature of the class itself and its organic essence, not to the government; to the latter it is the external restrictions that belong. But this is its particular activity, i.e., provision for the subsistence of the single classes within this sphere by opposing the endless oscillations in the value of things. But the government, as the universal, itself has universal needs: (i) in general, for the first class which, exempt from property and business, lives in continual and absolute and universal need, (ii) for the formally universal class, i.e., for that which is the organ of government in the other classes and labours purely in the universal field, (iii) for the need of the community, of the entire people as a universal, e.g. for its public dwellings, etc., its temples, streets, and so forth.
The government must earn enough for these needs, but its work can only consist in taking directly into its possession without work the ripe fruits of industry or in itself working and acquiring. The latter — since it is against the nature of the universal to rest in the particular, and here the government is something formally universal — can only be a possessing and a leasing of this possession, with the result that acquiring and working affect the government not directly but in the form of utility, a result, something universal. But the former is the appropriation of the ripe fruits, and so these ripe fruits are work completed and so in the form of something universal, as money or as the most universal needs. These are themselves a possession of individuals and the cancellation of this possession must have the form of formal universality or justice.
But the system of taxes falls directly into the contradiction that while it should be absolutely just for each to contribute in proportion to the magnitude of his possessions, these possessions are not landed or immovable but, in industry, something living, infinite, and incalculable. Looked on abstractly, the calculation or estimation of the capital involved according to the income obtained is possible, but the income is something entirely particular, not something objective, knowable, and ascertainable, like landed property. So in this way private possessions cannot be taxed in accordance with justice because, by being private, they do not themselves have the form of something objective.
But the objective, i.e., landed property, can be interpreted according to the value of its possible productivity (even though here, too, particularity always has a part to play); but because at the same time possession in the form of particularity is present as skilfulness, not everything is comprised under that value; and if the products of landed property are prodigiously assessed, the value of the product is not set in equilibrium, for the mass always remains the same, being that on which the value depends, and if production diminished, the state’s revenues would diminish to the same extent; production would have to be taxed all the more in a progressive rise and its receipts would behave in the opposite way. Thus skilfulness has to be taxed at the same time, not according to its receipts, which are something particular and one’s own, but according to what it expends; for the thing it buys makes the passage through the form of universality out of its particularity, or it becomes a commodity. And on account of the same circumstance, namely that the mass either remains the same, in which case the value of the article is not altered and this working class is impoverished, or, what follows in that event, less is produced, with the result that the revenue is less, and the same is the case on whatever branch of industry the tax falls; thus the tax must extend to the maximum possible particularity of commodities. Although for this reason it likewise results that less is needed, this is precisely the best external means for restricting gain, and in the taxes the government has a means of influencing this restriction or extension of single parts of the whole economy.
In the first system the opposition of universal and particular is formal. Value, the universal, and needs and possessions, the particular do not determine the essence of the matter but are outside it. The essence remains its connection with a need. But in this system of the separation of universal and particular it is ideal determinacy which is the essence. The thing which is tied to need is, qua property, so determined that, even as this particular possession, it is essentially something universal; its connection with need — and the need is something entirely single — is something recognised. The thing is mine, and as mine has not been nullified. But the relative identity, in which I stand with it, or the ideality of nullification (i.e., possession), this objectivity is posited as a subjective one, existing in men’s minds. For this reason, as this identity, it [i.e., the property] is intuition, not a single intuition of this single thing, but absolute intuition. That connection with need has objective reality. The self is universal, established, and has being; that tie is determined as a universal one.
The middle term, the reality of this connection is the government. The fact that a tie of possession is not something ideal but is also real is the fact that all selves establish this connection, that the empirical self of the tie exists as the whole mass of selves. This mass, according to the abstraction of its quantity, is the public authority, and this public authority as thinking and conscious (sich bewusst) is the government here as the administration of justice.
As this administration, government is the entirety of all rights, but with complete indifference toward the interest of the connection of the thing with the need of this specific individual. For the government this individual is a completely indifferent universal person. All that comes in question in pure justice is simply the universal, the abstract aspect of the manner of possession and gain. But justice must itself be a living thing and have regard to the person.
Right in the form of consciousness is law, which is here related to singular cases; but this form is arbitrary, although it is necessary for right to be present, in the form of consciousness, as law.
Right concerns singular cases and is the abstraction of universality, for the singular case is to subsist in it. This singular case is either the living being of the individual or a relative identity of his [i.e., some piece of his property] or the life of the individual himself regarded as something singular or as relative identity.
So too the negation of singular individuality (a negation produced by a single individual and not by the absolutely universal) is a negation of his right of possession purely as such, or the negation of a single living aspect of the individual, or the negation of the entirety of the living individual. The second negation is a violent deed, the third is death.
Absolute government could in this matter leave the second class and the third (which through the first lies under civil law) to themselves and leave them alone in the vain endeavour to assume into the infinite the absolutely settled finitude of possession. This endeavour is displayed as the attempted completeness of the civil laws, as an absolute consciousness about judicial procedure, such that the rule would be self-sufficient in its form as rule and the judge would be purely an organ, the absolute abstraction of the singular case under discussion, without any life and intuition of the whole.
This false infinite must be set aside by the organic character of the constitution, a character which, as organic, assumes the universal absolutely into the particular.
The organic principle is freedom, the fact that the ruler is himself the ruled; but since here the government, as universal, remains opposed to the collision of rules involved in the single individual, this identity of ruler and ruled must in the first place be so established that the equality of birth typical of the same noble class, the constitution appropriate for a narrower circle of noble families, is expanded into a whole of all classes as dwelling together under the same citizenship, and this dwelling together as citizens constitutes the living unity. Secondly, in the actuality of single legal judgments the abstraction of the law must not be the absolute thing; on the contrary the whole affair must be a settlement according to equity, i.e., one that takes account of the whole situation of the parties as individuals, a settlement productive of satisfaction and reached with the conviction and assent of the parties.
This principle of freedom in its mechanical constitution is comprehended as the organisation of law courts and is an analysis of the dispute and the decision thereon.
In the administration of the civil law it is only determinacy as such that is absolutely negated in the dispute, and the living employment, work, what is personal, may become what is determinate.
But in criminal law it is not anything determinate which is negated, but individuality, the indifference of the whole, life and personality. Negation in civil law is purely ideal, but in criminal law real, for the negation that effects a totality is real for that reason. In a case of civil wrong I am in possession of someone else’s property, not by robbery or theft, but because I claim it as mine and justly so. In this way I recognise the other man’s competence to possess property; but force and theft deny this recognition. They are compulsive, affecting the whole; they cancel freedom and the reality of being universal and recognised. If crime did not give the lie to this recognition, it could equally well surrender to another, to the universal, what it accomplishes.
Justice in civil matters therefore simply affects something determinate; but penal justice must also cancel, apart from the determinate thing, both the negation of universality and also the universality put in place of the other — opposition is opposed by opposition.
This cancellation is punishment, and it is determined precisely by the determinate way in which universality has been cancelled.
1. Civil punishment. 2. Penal punishment. 3. War. Here universality and singular individuality are one, and the essence is this totality.
In 1 the essence is universality, in 2 singular individuality, in 3 identity: the people becomes the criminal who is in 2 and sacrifices the possessions of 1; it sides with the negative in 1 and 2; for the first class, 3 is appropriate.
In this system the universal is the Absolute, and purely as such the determining factor. In the first system the universal is the crude, purely quantitative, and wisdomless universal, in the second the universality of the concept, formal universality, recognition. Thus for the absolutely universal, difference exists too; this difference superseded the universal in the universal’s movement, but it is a superficial and formal difference, and the essence of the differents is absolute universality. Similarly in the first system the essence of the different is feeling, need, and enjoyment, in the second the essence of the different is to be a singular person, something formally absolute. The universal, the cause, is determined by its essence like the particular.
I. Education; II. Training (Bildung) and Discipline (Zucht); the first consists formally of talents, inventions, science. What is real is the whole, the absolutely universal, the inherently self-moving character of the people, the absolute bond, the true and absolute reality of science. Inventions affect only something singular, just as the single sciences do, and where these are absolute in the shape of philosophy, they yet are wholly ideal. Training in the truth, with the destruction of all appearance, is the self-developing and deliberating and conscious people; the other side is the police as disciplining singular cases. The great discipline consists of the universal mores, the social order, training for war, and the testing of the reliability of the single individual in war.
III. Procreation of children; the way that a people becomes objective to itself as this people; the fact that the government, the people, produces another people. Colonisation.
Possible forms of a free government: I. Democracy. II. Aristocracy. III. Monarchy.
Each is capable of becoming unfree: I. Ochlocracy. II. Oligarchy. III. Despotism. The external and mechanical element is the same. The difference is caused by the relation of ruler to ruled, i.e., whether the essence is the same and the form of opposition is only superficial.
Monarchy is the exhibition of the absolute reality of ethical life in one individual, aristocracy in several individuals. The latter is distinguished from the absolute constitution by hereditariness, still more by landed estate, and, because it has the form of the absolute constitution and not its essence, it is the worst constitution. — Democracy exhibits this absolute reality in everyone; consequently it involves confusion with possession, and there is no separation of the absolute class. For the absolute constitution the form of aristocracy or monarchy is equally good. That constitution is democracy too in the organisation of the classes.
In monarchy a religion must stand alongside the monarch. He is the identity of the whole, but in an empirical shape; and the more empirical he is, the more barbaric the people is, and the more the monarchy has authority, and the more independently it constitutes itself. The more the people becomes one with itself, with nature and ethical life, all the more does it take the Divine into itself and suffer loss [lose faith?] in this religion that resists it; and then by reconciliation with the world and itself it passes through the lack of imagination that typifies irreligion and the understanding.
This is the case also in aristocracy, but on account of its patriarchal, or pap for the children[48] character, there is little imagination or religion.
In democracy absolute religion does exist, but unstably, or rather it is a religion of nature; ethical life is bound up with nature, and the link with objective nature makes democracy easy of access for the intellect. For the positing of nature as something objective — Epicurean philosophy — the religion must be purely ethical, and so must the imagination of the absolute religion, and art, too, which has produced Jupiter, an Apollo, a Venus — not Homeric art, where Jupiter and Juno are air and Neptune is water [so that it is natural, not ethical]. This separation must be complete, the ethical movement of God absolute, not crime and weakness [as in the Homeric gods] but absolute crime — death [as in the Crucifixion].