Part II. Morality

§ 105. The moral standpoint is the standpoint of the will, not in its abstract or implicit existence, but in its existence for itself, an existence which is infinite (§ 104). This turning back of the will upon itself, or its actual self-identity, with its associated phases stands in contrast to its abstract implicit existence, and converts person into subject.

§ 106. Subjectivity is the conception made definite, differing therefore from the abstract, general will. Further, the will of the subject, though it still retains traces of self-involved simplicity, is the will of an individual, who is an object for himself. Hence subjectivity is the realization of the conception.—This gives freedom a higher ground. Now at last there appears in the idea the side of its real existence, the subjectivity of the will. It is only in the will as subjective that freedom, or the potentially existing will, can be actualized.

Note.—Morality, the second sphere, gives an outline of the real side of the conception of freedom. Observe the process through which morality passes. As the will has now withdrawn into itself, it appears at the outset as existing independently, having merely a potential identity with the intrinsic or universal will. Then this abstract self-dependence is superseded; and, finally, the will is made really and consciously identical with the intrinsic or universal will. Now in this movement, as I have said, is illustrated the conception of freedom. Freedom or subjectivity is at first abstract and distinct from the conception of it. Then by means of this movement the soil of freedom is so worked up, that for the conception, and necessarily also for the idea, it receives its true realization. The process ends, therefore, when the subjective will has become an objective and truly concrete will.

Addition.—In right, taken strictly, nothing depends upon my purpose or intention. The question of the self-determination, impulse, or purpose of the will arises for the first time in morality. Since a man is to be judged according to the direction he has given himself, he is in this act free, let the external features of the act be what they may. As no one can successfully assail a man’s inner conviction, and no force can reach it, the moral will is inaccessible. A man’s worth is estimated by his inner act. Hence the moral standpoint implies the realization of freedom.

§ 107. As self-determination of will is at the same time a factor of the will’s conception, subjectivity is not merely the outward reality of will, but its inner being (§ 104). This free and independent will, having now become the will of a subject, and assuming in the first instance the form of the conception, has itself a visible realization; otherwise it could not attain to the idea. The moral standpoint is in its realized form the right of the subjective will. In accordance with this right the will recognizes and is a thing, only in so far as the thing is the will’s own, and the will in it is itself and subjective.

Note.—The process of the moral standpoint (Note to preceding paragraph) also appears as the development of the right of the subjective will, or of the way in which the subjective will is realized. Thus the will accounts what in its object it recognizes to be its own as its true conception, its objective or universal reality.

Addition.—Subjectivity of will, as a complete phase, is in its turn a whole which, by its very nature, must also have objectivity. Freedom can at first realize itself only in the subject, as it is the true material for this realization. But this concrete manifestation of will, which we have called subjectivity, is different from absolute will. From this new one-sidedness of subjectivity must the will free itself, in order that it may become absolute will. In morality the interest peculiar to man is in question, and the high value of this interest consists in man’s knowing himself to be absolute, and determining himself. Uncivilized man is controlled by the forces and occurrences of nature. Children have no moral will, but are guided by their parents. Civilized man is determined from within, and wills that he shall be in all he does.

§ 108. The subjective will, in so far as it is directly its own object and distinct from the general will (§ 106, note), is abstract, limited, and formal. Subjectivity, however, is not formal merely, but, since it is the infinite self-direction of the will, is the will itself taken formally. Since this formal character, as it appears first of all in the particular will, is not as yet identical with the conception of will, the moral standpoint is the standpoint of relation, of obligation or requirement.—Since, too, subjectivity involves difference, that is to say, opposition to objectivity as to a mere external existence, there arises here also the standpoint of consciousness (§ 8), the standpoint of difference in general, of the finite and phenomenal phase of the will.

Note.—The moral is not at once opposed to the immoral, just as right is not directly opposed to wrong. The general standpoint of both the moral and the immoral depends upon the subjectivity of the will.

Addition.—In morality self-determination is to be construed as a restless activity, which cannot be satisfied with anything that is. Only in the region of established ethical principles is the will identical with the conception of it, and has only this conception for its content. In morality the will is as yet related to what is potential. This is the standpoint of difference, and the process of this standpoint is the identification of the subjective will with the conception of will. The imperative or ought, which, therefore, still is in morality, is fulfilled only in the ethical sphere. This sphere, to which the subjective will is related, has a twofold nature. It is the substance of the conception, and also external reality. If the good were established in the subjective will, it would not yet be realized.

§ 109. The formal will, by its own determining character, contains at the outset the opposition of subjectivity and objectivity, and the appropriate activity (§ 8). Of this will we have these further phases. Concrete realization and determinate character are in the conception identical. The conception of the subjective will is first to make these two phases separate and independent, and then to establish them as identical. Determinate character in the self-determined will (α) is brought about in itself by itself, the opposition which it creates within itself being a self-bestowed content. This is the first negation, whose formal limit consists in its being fixed as merely subjective. (β) Since the will returns into itself and is infinite, this limit exists for it, and it wills to transcend the limitation. Hence it strives to convert its content out of subjectivity into objectivity, i.e., some kind of directly given reality, (γ) The simple identity of the will with itself in this opposition is the content, which maintains itself amid these oppositions, and is indifferent to formal distinctions. This content is the end.

§ 110. As at the moral standpoint, freedom or self-identity of will is for the will (§ 105), the simple identity of the content or end receives a further characteristic peculiar to itself.

(a) This content becomes mine in such a way that it in its identity is not only my inner end, but also, so far as it is externally realized, contains for me my subjectivity.

Addition.—The content of the subjective or moral will has a special character. Although it has attained the form of objectivity, it is yet always to contain my subjectivity. An act shall be counted mine only so far as it is on its inner side issued by me, and was my own proposition and intention. I do not recognize as mine anything in the outward act except what lay in my subjective will, and in the outer act I desire to see my subjective consciousness repeated.

§ 111. (b) The content, though it contains something particular, from whatever source it comes, is yet the content of a self-referring will, which is also self-identical and universal. Thus it has these two features (α) It aims to be in itself adequate to the universal will, or to have the objectivity of the conception; (β) yet, since the subjective will exists for itself, and is therefore independent and formal (§ 108), its aim is only an ought and is possibly not adequate to the conception.

§ 112. (c) Though I preserve my subjectivity in accomplishing my ends (§ 110), yet in the objectification of these ends I pass beyond the simple and elementary subjectivity which is merely my own. This new external subjectivity, which is identical with me, is the will of others (§ 73). The sphere for the existence of the will is subjectivity (§ 106), and the will of others is the existence, which, though other than I, I yet give to my purpose. Hence the accomplishment of my purpose contains the identity of my will and that of others, and has to the will of others a relation which is positive.

Note.—The objectivity of the realized end has three senses, or rather contains in union the three following phases, (α) It is external direct reality (§ 109). (β) It is adequate to the conception (§ 112). (γ) It is universal subjectivity. The subjectivity which preserves itself in this objectivity implies (α) that the objective end shall be my own, so that in it I preserve myself as a particular individual (§ 110). The two phases (β) and (γ) of subjectivity concur with the phases (β) and (γ) of objectivity. At the moral standpoint these various phases are distinguished or joined merely in a contradiction. This is the superficial and finite nature of the moral sphere (§ 108). The development of the standpoint consists in the development of these contradictions and their solution, an achievement which at the present point of view is incomplete or merely relative.

Addition.—It was said that formal right contained only prohibitions, and that from the strict standpoint of legal right an act had only a negative reference to the will of others. In morals, on the contrary, the relation of my will to that of others is positive; that, which the subjective will realizes, contains the universal will. In this is present the production or alteration of some visible reality, and this has a bearing upon the will of others. The conception of morality is the internal relation of the will to itself. But there is here more than one will, since the objectification of the will implies the transcendence of the onesidedness of the separate will, and the substitution of two wills having a positive relation one to the other. In right my will is realized in property, and there is no room for any reference of the will of others to my will. But morality treats of the well-being of others also. At this point this positive relation to others first makes its appearance.

§ 113. The expression of the subjective or moral will is action. Of action it may be said that (α) I know its external fulfillment to be mine, (β) it is essentially related to the conception in its phase as the ought or imperative, and (γ) it is essentially connected with the will of others.

Note.—Firstly, the expression of the moral will is action. The embodiment achieved by the will in formal right is a mere object. This realization is direct, and has in the first instance no actual express reference to the conception. Not having as yet come into conflict with the subjective will, the conception is not yet distinguished from it, and has no positive relation to the will of others. The commands of right are, hence, fundamentally prohibitions (§ 38). In contract and wrong, indeed, there begins to be seen a relation to the will of others, but the agreement, found at this point, is based upon arbitrary choice, while the essential reference to the will of others is in right merely the negative proposal to keep my property or the worth of it, and to let others keep theirs. Crime does in a way issue from the subjective will. But the content of a crime is fixed by written instructions and is not directly imputable to me. Hence as the legal act contains only some elements of a distinctively moral act, the two kinds of action are different.

§ 114. The right of the moral will has three factors:

(a) The abstract or formal right. The act, as directly realized, is to be in its essential content mine, and embody the purpose of the subjective will.

(b) The specific side of an act or its inner content, (α) This is intention, which is for me, whose general character is fixed, the value and inner substance of the act, (β) and well-being, or the content taken as the particular end of my particular, subjective reality.

(c) The good, or the content taken as universal and exalted to universality and absolute objectivity. This is the absolute end of the will. As this is the sphere of reflection, we have the opposition of the universality, which is subjective, and hence involves in one aspect evil, and in another conscience.

Addition.—An act, to be moral, must in the first instance accord with my purpose, since the right of the moral will is to recognize as its realization nothing which is not found internally in the purpose. Purpose concerns the formal principle that the externalized will must also be internal to me. In the next place we ask after the intention, that is, the value of the act relatively to me. The third factor is not merely the relative, but the universal value of the act, the good. In the first phase of an act there is a breach between purpose and realization; in the second between what is given externally as universal will, and the particular internal character, which I give it; the third and last phase is the claim of my intention to be the universal content. The good is the intention exalted to the conception of the will.

§ 115. In the direct or immediate act the subjective will is finite, since it has to do with both an external object and its varied surroundings, all presupposed. An accomplished act makes a change in this ready-to-hand material, and the will is responsible, in so far as the changed material can be said to be mine.

Note.—An event or resultant condition is a concrete external reality, having an indefinite number of circumstances associated with it. Every particular element, shown to be in any sense a condition, ground or cause of such an event, and, therefore, to have contributed its portion, may be regarded as responsible for it, or at least as sharing in the responsibility. Hence in the case of such a richly varied event as the French Revolution, the formal understanding has to select from an untold multitude of circumstances that one to which it will attribute responsibility.

Addition.—What is contained in my purpose can be laid at my door, and this is one of the main considerations in the case of crime. But in simple responsibility there is found only the quite external judgment as to whether I have or have not done this thing. Thus merely to be responsible does not mean that the whole thing is to be imputed to me.

§ 116. It is not my deed, if things, which I own, cause injury to others through some of their many external connections; this may happen even with my body as a mechanical or living object. Yet I am not wholly free from responsibility in such a case, since these things are still mine, although by their very nature they are often only imperfectly subject to my attention and control.

§ 117. When the self-directing will proposes to act upon a given material, it has a representation of the circumstances. Since the material is supplied, the will is finite, and the results of the act are for it accidental. Hence they may contain something very different from the representation. But the right of the will in acting is to recognize as its own deed only those results which were consciously in its end and were purposed. That responsibility shall extend to the will only so far as the results were known, is the right of knowledge.

Addition.—The will has before it an outer reality, upon which it operates. But to be able to do this, it must have a representation of this reality. True responsibility is mine only in so far as the outer reality was within my consciousness. The will, because this external matter is supplied to it, is finite; or rather because it is finite, the matter is supplied. When I think and will rationally, I am not at this standpoint of finitude, nor is the object I act upon something opposed to me. The finite always has limit and boundary. There stands opposed to me that which is other than I, something accidental and externally necessary it may or may not fall into agreement with me. But I am only what relates to my freedom; and the act is the purport of my will only in so far as I am aware of it. Œdipus, who unwittingly slew his father, is not to be arraigned as a patricide. In the ancient laws, however, less value was attached to the subjective side of the act than is done to-day. Hence arose amongst the ancients asylums, where the fugitive from revenge might be received and protected.

§ 118. An act, when it has become an external reality, and is connected with a varied outer necessity, has manifold consequences. These consequences, being the visible shape, whose soul is the end of action, belong to the act. But at the same time the inner act, when realized as an end in the external world, is handed over to external forces, which attach to it something quite different from what it is in itself, and thus carry it away into strange and distant consequences. It is the right of the will to adopt only the first consequences, since they alone lie in the purpose.

Note.—The division of consequences into necessary and accidental is not accurate, because the inner necessity, involved in the finite, is realized as a necessity which is external, a necessity, that is to say, implying a relation of separate things, which are independent, indifferent to one another, and only externally connected. The principle “In acting neglect the consequences,” and the principle “Judge an act by its consequences, and make them the standard of what is right and good,” belong both alike to the abstract understanding. The consequences are the native form of the act, simply manifest its nature, and are nothing but the act itself. The act cannot scorn and disown them. Yet amongst the consequences is included that which is only externally attached to them and has no fellowship with the act itself.

The development of the contradiction involved in the necessary nature of the finite is in external reality the conversion of necessity into contingency and vice versa. An overt act must therefore conform to this law. This law it is which stands the criminal in such good stead, if his act has had but few consequences; so also must the good act be contented to have few or no consequences. But when the consequences of crime have fully developed themselves, they add to the severity of the punishment.

The self-consciousness of the heroic age, painted in the tragedy of “Œdipus,” for instance, had not risen out of its simplicity, or reflectively appreciated the difference between realized deed and inner act, between the outer occurrence and the purpose and knowledge of surroundings. Nor did it distinguish between one consequence and another, but spread responsibility over the whole area of the deed.

Addition.—In the fact that I recognize as mine only what was in my representation is to be found the transition from purpose to intention. Only what I knew of the surroundings can be imputed to me. But there are necessary results attached to even the simplest act, and they are its universal element. The consequences, which may be prevented from taking effect, I cannot indeed foresee, but I ought to know the universal nature of each separate concrete deed. The thing which’ I ought to know is the essential whole, which refers not to special details of an act, but to its real nature. The transition from purpose to intention consists in my being aware not merely of my separate act, but of the universal bound up with it. This universal, when willed by me, is my intention.

§ 119. The external embodiment of an act is composed of many parts, and may be regarded as capable of being divided into an infinite number of particulars. An act may be looked on as in the first instance coming into contact with only one of these particulars. But the truth of the particular is the universal. A definite act is not confined in its content to one isolated point of the varied external world, but is universal, including these varied relations within itself. The purpose, which is the product of thought and embraces not the particular only but also the universal side, is intention.

Note.—Intention (in German, “a looking away from”) implies, according to its etymology, an abstraction, which has in part the form of universality, and partly is the extraction of a particular side of the concrete thing. The attempt to justify oneself by the intention consists, in general, in asserting that one special isolated phase is the subjective essence of the act.—To pass judgment upon an act simply as an external deed, without qualifying it as right or wrong, imparts to it a universal predicate; it is killing, arson, etc.—When the parts of external reality are taken one by one, their connection must naturally be external. Reality may be, in the first instance, touched at only a single point. Arson, e.g., may be directly concerned with only a small piece of wood, a statement which is merely a proposition, but not a judgment. But this single point has a universal nature, which involves the extension of it. In life the separate part is not a mere part, but directly an organ, in which the universal is really present. Hence in murder it is not a separate piece of flesh, but the life itself which is destroyed. On one side subjective reflection, in its ignorance of the logical nature of the particular and the universal, permits of a dissection into mere particulars and their consequences. On the other side, the act in its finite and casual character naturally breaks up into separate parts.—-The invention of the dolus indirectus is due to this way of thinking.

Addition.—Manifestly more or fewer circumstances may be included in an act. In the case of arson, e.g., the fire may not take effect, or it may spread farther than the agent intended. Yet in neither case is the result due to good or bad fortune, since man in acting must deal with externality. An old proverb rightly enough says, “A stone flung from the hand is the devil’s.” In acting I must expose myself to misfortune; that also has a right to me, and is the manifestation of my own will.

§ 120. The right of intention is that the universal quality of the act should not only be implicitly present, but should be known by the agent, and be part and parcel of his subjective will. Conversely the right of objectivity of action, as it may be called, is to maintain that it be known and willed by a subject in his character as thinking.

Note.—This right to this insight involves that children, imbeciles, and lunatics are completely, or almost completely, irresponsible for their actions. Just as actions on the side of their external reality include accidental results, so also the subjective reality contains an indeterminate element, which depends upon the strength of self-consciousness and prudence. But this uncertain element needs to be reckoned with only in the case of imbecility, lunacy, or childhood. These are the only conditions of mind which supersede thought and free will, and permit us to take an agent otherwise than in accordance with his dignity as free and rational.

§ 121. The universal quality of action is in general the manifold content reduced to the simple form of universality. But the subject turned back into himself is particular, in opposition to the particulars of the objective world. He has in his end his own particular content, which constitutes the essential soul of his act. ( In the execution of this particular content of the act consists his subjective freedom in its concrete character.) This is the subject’s right to find in the act his satisfaction.

Addition.—I, as independent and self-referred, am particular, and opposed to the external side of the act. Its content is decided by my end. Murder and arson, e.g., are quite general and not the positive content of me, a subject. When anyone has committed a crime, we ask why he has done it. Murder is not done for the sake of murder. There must be besides a particular positive end. If delight in murder were the motive of the crime, it would be the positive content of the subject as such, and the deed would be the satisfaction of his desire. The motive of a deed contains the moral element, which has the two-fold signification of the universal in purpose and of the particular in intention In modern times we are at pains to ask after the motive. Formerly the question was merely. Is this man just? Does he do his duty? Now we scrutinize the heart, and fix a gulf between the objective side of conduct and the internal subjective side, or motive. No doubt the subject’s own determination must be considered. What he wills has its ground within him; he wills to satisfy a pleasure or gratify a passion. But right and good are also precisely such a content, due, however, not to nature but to my reason. To make my own freedom the content of my will is a pure characteristic of my freedom itself. Hence the higher moral phase is to find satisfaction in the act, not to harp upon a breech between the objectivity of the deed, and the self-consciousness of man. This defective mode of interpretation has its epochs as well in world-history as in the history of individuals.

§ 122. By virtue of the particular element the act has for me subjective value or interest. In contrast with this end, whose content is the intention, the direct act in its wider content is reduced to a means. This end, as far as it is finite, can again be reduced to a means for a wider intention, and so on indefinitely.

§ 123. The content of these ends is only (α) formal activity, that is, the subject’s interest or aim is to be effected by his agency. Men desire to be themselves actively interested in whatever is or ought to be their own. (β) Further definite content is found for the still abstract and formal freedom of subjectivity only in its natural subjective embodiment, as inclinations, passions, opinions, whims, etc. The satisfaction of this content is well-being or happiness in its particular as also in its universal features. In this satisfaction consist the ends of finitude generally.

Note.—This is the standpoint of relation (§ 108). The subject at this stage emphasizes his distinctive and particular nature. Here enters the content of the natural will (§ 11). But the will is not in its simple and direct form, since the content belongs to a will which is turned back into itself, and raised to the level of a universal end, namely, well-being or happiness.

Addition.—In so far as the elements of happiness are externally provided, they are not the true elements of freedom. Freedom truly is itself only in an end constituted by itself, i.e., the good. Here the question may be raised. Has man a right to set up for himself ends which are not free, and depend simply on his being a living thing? But life in man is not a mere accident, since it accords with reason. Man has so far a right to make his wants an end. There is nothing degrading in one’s being alive. There is open to us no more spiritual region, in which we can exist, than that of life. Only through the exaltation of what is externally provided to the level of something self-created do we enter the higher altitude of the good. But this distinction implies no intolerance of either side of man’s nature.

§ 124. Since the subjective satisfaction of the individual, the recognition for example of oneself as honoured or famous, is involved in the realization of absolutely valid ends, the demand that only subjective satisfaction should appear as willed and attained, and also the view that in action subjective and objective ends exclude each other, are empty assertions of the abstract understanding. Nay, more, the argument becomes a positive evil when it is held that, because subjective satisfaction is always found in every finished work, it must be the essential intention of the agent, the objective end being only a means to the attainment of this satisfaction. The subject is the series of his acts. If these are a series of worthless productions, the subjectivity of the will is also worthless; if the acts are substantial and sound, so likewise is the inner will of the individual.

Note.—The right of the subject’s particular being to find himself satisfied, the right, in other words, of subjective freedom, constitutes the middle or turning-point between the ancient and the modern world. This right in its infinite nature is expressed in Christianity, and has been made the universal active principle of a new form of the world. The more definite manifestations of this principle are love, romance, the hope of the eternal salvation of the individual, morality also, and conscience. It includes, moreover, various other forms, which will be, in a measure, introduced in the sequel as the principle of the civic society, and as elements of the political constitution, but partly, however, appear in history generally, especially in the history of art, the sciences, and philosophy. This principle of particularity is now, indeed, one side of the contradiction, and, in the first resort, is at least quite as much identical with the universal as distinct from it. But abstract reflection fastens upon this element in its difference from and opposition to the universal, and propounds the view that morality must carry on a continued warfare against the satisfaction of oneself, demanding of us—

“Mit Abscheu zu thun was die Pflicht gebeut.”

The same abstract standpoint lies at the root of that psychological view of history, which seeks to disparage all great deeds and persons. It emphasizes the particular side, which it has already decreed to be evil, considers as the chief factor in the act the honour and glory, which may accrue to the agent, and transforms and converts the inclinations and passions, whose satisfaction was only one element of the total result, into the agent’s main intention and active principle. This same abstract point of view asserts that because great acts, and the real result brought to pass by a series of them, have produced a great effect upon the world, and have naturally resulted to the agent in power, honour, and renown, therefore there belongs to the individual not the greatness, but merely these particular and external results. The reason assigned is that the particular consequence, since it was admittedly an end, must be the sole end. Such abstract thinking sees only the subjective side of great men, the side which constitutes its own essence. In its self-constituted vanity it overlooks their real nature. It takes the view of the “psychological valet for whom there are no heroes, not because there are no heroes, but because he is only a valet.”

Addition.—The sentence. In magnis voluisse sat est, is right, if it means that one should will something great. But he should also carry it out, otherwise his volition is vain. The laurels of mere willing are dry leaves, which have never been green.

§ 125. The subjective, whose concern is with the particular content of well-being, is, when it becomes infinite by being turned back into itself, at the same time brought into relation with implicit or general will. This new element, established, in the first instance, in particularity itself, is the well-being of others; in its complete but quite empty character it is the well-being of all. The well-being of many other particular persons is therefore an essential end or right of subjectivity. But since the absolute universal, which is distinguished from this particular content, is here defined simply as right, the ends of the particular will may or may not be in real accordance with the universal.

§ 126. My own particularity, and likewise the particularity of others are, however, a right, only in so far as I am free. They cannot maintain themselves in opposition to their real basis. An intention to further my well-being or that of others, rightly called a moral intention, cannot justify a wrong act.

Note.—It is one of the most corrupt maxims of our day which, originating in the pre-Kantian period of the good heart, and furnishing the quintessence of some well-known touching dramas, undertakes in the case of wrong acts to excite interest in the so-called moral intention. It pictures bad persons as having hearts filled with good intentions and desires for their own well-being, and perhaps for that of others as well. A heightened form of this theory has been vamped up in our own time. Inner inspiration and feeling, the very soul of particularity, have been made the criterion of what is right, reasonable, and excellent. Crime has been pronounced right, reasonable, and excellent, as also have the thoughts which led to it, merely on the ground that they proceeded from inspiration and feeling, though they may have been in fact the most hollow and commonplace whims and most foolish opinions (§ 140, note).—Observe further that here under right and well-being we are considering the formal right and particular well-being of the individual. The so-called general welfare, the well-being of the state, the right of the real, concrete spirit is quite another region, in which formal right and the particular well-being or happiness of the individual are subordinate elements. It has already been remarked that it is one of the most frequent misconceptions of the abstract intellect to set up private right and private well-being as absolutely valid in opposition to the universal principle of the state.

Addition.-—We may quote here the celebrated retort given to the libeller, who excused himself with the remark, “Il faut donc que je vive.” “Je n’en vois pas la nécessité,” was the reply. Life is not necessary against the higher fact of freedom. When the holy Crispinus steals leather to make boots for the poor, his act, though moral, is not right, and cannot be justified.

§ 127. The particular interests of the natural will, viewed as a simple whole, constitute personal reality or the life. In the final resort, life, when in collision with another’s rightful ownership, can claim the right of necessity, not on the ground of equity but of right. Observe that on the one side is placed the infinite destruction of our outer existence, and therefore the complete loss of rights; on the other side an injury to only a particular and limited embodiment of one’s freedom. A slight injury to a particular possession does not violate the injured man’s right, as such, or his capacity for right.

Note.—From this right of need flows the benefit of competence (beneficium competentiæ), by virtue of which there is allowed to the debtor some of his tools, implements, clothes, and means generally, all of which are of course the property of the creditor. The allowance covers so much as is deemed sufficient for the possible maintenance of one in the debtor’s class.

Addition.—Life, or the totality of ends, has a right against abstract right. For instance, by the theft of a loaf of bread a property is doubtless injured. Still, if the act was the means of prolonging life, it would be wrong to consider it as ordinary theft. If the man whose life is in danger were not allowed to preserve himself, he would be without rights; and, since his life is refused him, his whole freedom is denied to him also. Many things, it is true, must go to secure life, especially if we regard the future. But to live now is all that is necessary; the future is not absolute, and remains exposed to accidents. Hence only the need of the immediate present can justify a wrong act. Yet the act is justified, because the agent, abstaining from it, would commit the highest wrong, namely, the total negation of his realized freedom. The beneficium competentiæ implies the right to ask that no man shall be wholly sacrificed to mere right.

§ 128. Need reveals the finite and contingent character of both right and well-being, that is to say, of that abstract embodiment of freedom, which is not the existence of any particular person, and also of the sphere of the particular will, which excluded the universality of right. The one-sidedness or ideality of these phases is found in the conception itself. Right has already been embodied as the particular will (§ 106); and subjectivity, in the whole range of its particularity, is itself the embodiment of freedom (§ 127), and also, in its character as the infinite reference of the will to itself, is it implicitly the universal side of freedom. These two elements in their truth and identity, although, in the first instance, only in relative reference to each other, are on the one hand the good, as the fulfilled and absolutely definite universal, and, on the other hand, conscience, or an infinite subjectivity, which is aware of itself, and determines in itself its content.

§ 129. The good is the idea, or unity of the conception of the will with the particular will. Abstract right, well-being, the subjectivity of consciousness, and the contingency of external reality, are in their independent and separate existences superseded in this unity, although in their real essence they are contained in it and preserved. This unity is realized freedom, the absolute final cause of the world.

Addition.—Every stage is properly the idea, but the earlier steps contain the idea only in more abstract form. The I, as person, is already the idea, although in its most abstract guise. The good is the idea more completely determined; it is the unity of the conception of will with the particular will. It is not something abstractly right, but has a real content, whose substance constitutes both right and well-being.

§ 130. In this idea well-being has value, not independently as the realization of the separate particular will, but only as universal well-being, as universal, that is, in its essence, intrinsically or in accordance with freedom. Hence, well-being is not a good, if separated from right; nor is right a good, if separated from well-being. Fiat justitia ought not to have pereat mundus as a consequence. The good, carrying a necessity to be actualized by the particular will, and comprising the vital essence of such a will, has absolute right over the mere abstract right of property and the particular ends of well-being. If either of these elements is distinguished from the good, it has validity only in so far as it accords with the good and subordinates itself to it.

§ 131. The subjective will finds in the good the supremely essential, and has worth and merit only as its insight and intention accord with the good. In so far as the good in this place is still the abstract idea of the good, the subjective will is not yet carried up into it, and made one with it. It stands to the good in a relation of the following kind. As the good is for it what is real and substantial, it ought to make the good its end and realize it; and on the other hand it is only through the medium of the subjective will that the good can be realized.

Addition.—The good is the truth of the particular will. But the will is only that to which it sets itself. It is not inherently good, but becomes what it is only by its work. On the other side the good apart from the subjective will is only an abstraction having no reality. Reality first comes to the good through the private will. Thus the development of the good contains these three stages. (1) For me, as willing, the good should be particular will, and I should know it. (2) We should say what thing is good, and develop the particular phases of the good. (3) We determine the independent good, particularizing it as infinite and independent subjectivity. This inner determination is conscience.

§ 132. It is the right of the subjective will that it should regard as good what it recognizes as authoritative. It is the individual’s right, too, that an act, as the outer realization of an end, should be counted right or wrong, good or evil, lawful or unlawful, according to his knowledge of the worth it has when objectively realized.

Note.—The good is in general the essence of the will in its substantive and universal character, the will in its truth. It exists solely in and by means of thought. The doctrines that man cannot understand the truth but must deal with appearances only, and that thinking does harm to the good will, take away from spirit all its intellectual and ethical merit and value. The right to admit nothing, which I do not regard as reasonable, is the highest right of the subject. But because of its subjective character it is a formal right. So that on the opposite hand the right to the subject of the reasonable or objective remains.

Because of its formal nature insight may be either truth or mere opinion and error. Whether or not the individual attains to the right of his insight belongs, at least from the moral standpoint, to his particular subjective character. I can make it a claim upon myself, and regard it as a subjective right, that I should be convinced that the grounds of an obligation are good. I may even claim that I should know them in their conception and nature. But my demand for the satisfaction of my conviction as to what is good, what allowed and what not allowed, and also as to my responsibility, does not infringe upon the right of objectivity.

Right of insight into the good is different from right of insight (§ 117) with regard to action as such. The right of objectivity means that the act must be a change in the actual world, be recognized there, and in general be adequate to what has validity there. Whoso will act in this actual world has thereby submitted to its laws, and recognized the right of objectivity. Similarly in the state, which is the objectivity of the conception of reason, legal responsibility does not adapt itself to what any one person holds to be reasonable or unreasonable. It does not adhere to subjective insight into right or wrong, good or evil, or to the claims which an individual makes for the satisfaction of his conviction. In this objective field the right of insight is reckoned as insight into what is legal or illegal, or the actual law. It limits itself to its simplest meaning, namely, knowledge of or acquaintance with what is lawful and binding. Through the publicity of the laws and through general customs the state removes from the right of insight that which is for the subject its formal side. It removes also the element of chance, which at our present standpoint still clings to it.

The right of the subject to know the act as good or evil, legal or illegal, has the result of lessening or abolishing responsibility in the case of children, imbeciles, and lunatics, although the conditions of this responsibility cannot be definitely stated. But to take into consideration momentary fascination, the allurement of passion, drunkenness, or the strength of what are called sensual impulses generally, that impulse alone being excepted which forms the basis of the right of need (§ 120), to consider these things in estimating the character of a crime and its liability to punishment, or to suppose that these circumstances will remove the guilt of a criminal act, is to neglect right and the true dignity of manhood (§ 100, and § 119, note). The nature of man is essentially universal. His consciousness does not exist as a mere abstract moment of time or in isolated parts. Just as the incendiary sets on fire not a separate piece of wood an inch long, which he touches with his match, but the universal involved in it, namely the house, so he does not exist merely in one single moment, or in one isolated passion for revenge. If so, he would be an animal, which, because of its dangerous and passionate nature would have to be be killed. It is claimed that the criminal in the moment of his act must have presented clearly to himself the nature of the wrong he is doing and of his liability to punishment, if the act is to be counted to him for a crime. This claim seems to preserve to him the right of his moral subjectivity, but it really denies to him that indwelling intelligent nature, which in its active presence has no affinity with the clear images of purely animal psychology. Only in the case of lunacy is intelligence so distorted as to be separated from the consciousness of particular things and the doing of them. The sphere, in which circumstances are adduced as grounds for leniency, is not that of right but of mercy.

§ 133. Since the good is the essence of the will of the particular subject, it is his obligation. As the good is distinct from particularity, and particularity occurs in the subjective will, the good has at the outset only the character of universal abstract essence. This abstract universal is duty. Hence duty, as is required by its character, must be done for duty’s sake.

Addition.—The essence of the will is for me duty. Yet if I know no more than that the good is my duty, it is for me still abstract. Duty should be done for duty’s sake, and it is my objective nature in the truest sense which I realize in duty; in doing it I am self-centred and free. It is the signal merit of the standpoint of the Kantian philosophy of action that it has made prominent this signification of duty.

§ 134. Since an act requires its own special content and definite end, and duty in the abstract contains no such end, there arises the question. What is duty? No answer is at once forthcoming, except “To do right, and to consider one’s own well-being, and the general well-being, the well-being of others” (§ 119).

Addition.—Precisely the same question was proposed to Jesus, when it was asked of him, “What should be done to obtain eternal life?” The universal good cannot, if abstractly taken, be realized. If it is to be realized, it must be given a particular content.

§ 135. The two points of this answer, being each of them conditioned and limited, are not in fact contained in duty itself, but effect the transition into the higher sphere of the unconditioned, or duty. In so far as duty is the universal or essence of the moral consciousness, and merely refers itself to itself within itself, it is only an abstract universality, and has for its characteristic an identity without content, an abstract positive, an absence of definite character.

Note.—It is important to be clear that the pure unconditioned self-direction of the will is the root of duty. This doctrine of volition attained to a firm basis and starting-point first of all in the Kantian philosophy through the thought of the infinite autonomy of the will (§ 133). Yet if this merely moral standpoint does not pass into the conception of the ethical system, this philosophical acquisition is reduced to empty formalism, and moral science is converted into mere rhetoric about duty for duty’s sake. From such a position can be derived no inherent doctrine of duties. Materials, it is true, may be introduced from without, and in this way specific duties may be secured; but from duty, whose characteristic is an absence of contradiction or formal concord with itself, a characteristic which is no more than the establishment of abstract indefiniteness, no specific duties can be deduced. Nor, further, if any specific content of action comes up for consideration, is there in this principle any way of judging whether it is a duty or not. On the contrary, all manner of wrong and immoral acts may be by such a method justified.

The more detailed Kantian statement, the suitability of an act to be presented as a universal rule, implies indeed the more concrete notion of a condition, but really contains no other principle than absence of contradiction, or formal identity. The rule that there should be no private property contains of itself no contradiction, nor does the proposition that this or that particular nation or family should not exist, or that no one should live at all. Only if it is really fixed and assumed that private property and human life should exist and be respected, is it a contradiction to commit theft or murder. There can be no contradiction except of something that exists or of a content, which is assumed to be a fixed principle. Only such a content can an act agree with or contradict. But duty which must be willed only as such, and not for the sake of a content, is a formal identity excluding all content and specific character.

Other antinomies and developments of the Kantian position, in which is shown how the moral standpoint of relation wanders aimlessly around without being able to find a way of escape from the mere abstract imperative, I have given in the “Phänomenologie des Geistes.”

Addition.—-Although we exalted the standpoint of the Kantian philosophy, in so far as it nobly insists that duty should accord with reason, yet its weakness is that it lacks all organic filling. The proposition, “Consider if thy maxim can be set up as a universal rule” would be all right, if we already had definite rules concerning what should be done. A principle that is suitable for universal legislation already presupposes a content. If the content is present, the application of the law is an easy matter. But in the Kantian theory the rule is not to hand, and the criterion that there should be no contradiction produces nothing. Where there is nothing, there can be no contradiction.

§ 136. Owing to the abstract nature of the good, the other side of the idea, i.e., particularity in general, falls within subjectivity..This subjectivity, universalized’ by being turned back into itself, is absolute certitude of itself within itself. In this character it establishes particularity, it determines and judges. This is conscience.

Addition.—We may speak in a lofty strain of duty, and this way of speaking elevates mankind, and widens the heart. Yet if nothing definite comes of it, it at last grows tedious. Spirit demands and is entitled to a particular content. But conscience is the deepest internal solitude, from which both limit and the external have wholly disappeared. It is a thorough-going retreat into itself. Man in his conscience is no longer bound by the ends of particularity. This is a higher standpoint, the standpoint of the modern world. We have now arrived at the stage of consciousness, which involves a recoil upon itself. Earlier ages were more sensuous, and had before them something external and given, whether it was religion or law. But conscience is aware of itself as thought, and knows that my thought is for me the only thing that is binding.

§ 137. True conscience is the disposition to desire what is absolutely-good. It has therefore fixed rules, which are for it independently objective phases and duties. Distinguished from this, which is its content or truth, conscience is only the formal side of the activity of the will, and the will as particular has no content peculiarly its own. The objective system of rules and duties and the union of them with the subjective consciousness appear first in the sphere of ethical observance. But at the formal standpoint of morality, conscience is devoid of objective content. It is merely an infinite certitude of itself and is formal and abstract. It is the certitude of a particular subject.

Note.—Conscience expresses the absolute claim of the subjective self-consciousness to know in itself and from itself what right and duty are, and to recognize nothing except what it thus knows to be good. It asserts also that what it so knows and wills is right and duty in very truth. Conscience, as the unity of the subject’s will with the absolute, is a holy place which it would be sacrilege to assault. But whether the conscience of a certain individual is proportionate to this idea of conscience, in other words, whether what the individual conscience holds and gives out to be good is really good, can be ascertained only by an examination of the contents of the intended good. Right and duty, viewed as absolutely reasonable phases of will, are not in essence the particular property of an individual. Nor do they assume the form of perception or any other phase of mere individual sensuous consciousness. They are the universal products of thought, and exist in the form of laws and principles. Conscience is therefore subject to the judgment whether it is true or not, and its appeal merely to itself is directly opposed to what it wills to be, the rule, that is, of a reasonable absolutely valid way of acting. For this reason the state cannot recognize conscience in its peculiar form as subjective consciousness, just as subjective opinion, or the dogmatic appeal to a subjective opinion, can be of no avail in science.

The elements which are united in true conscience can be separated. The determining subjectivity of consciousness and will may separate itself from the true content, proceed to establish itself, and reduce the true content to a form and unreality. Thus the term conscience is ambiguous. On the one hand it is presupposed in the identity of subjective consciousness and will with the true good, and is therefore maintained and recognized to be a holy thing. On the other hand it is the mere subjective return of consciousness into itself, claiming the authority which conscience in its first form possesses solely because of its absolutely valid and rational content. Now, at the moral standpoint, distinguished as it is in this treatise from ethical observance, there occurs only the formal conscience. The true conscience is mentioned here only to emphasize the difference between the two and to remove the possibility of supposing that here, where the formal conscience alone is considered, the argument is concerned with the true. But to repeat, the true conscience looms up only in the sequel, and has to do with the properly social disposition. The religious conscience, however, does not belong to this sphere at all.

Addition.—When we speak of conscience, it may easily be supposed that because of its abstract inner form, it is already the absolutely true conscience. But conscience as true wills absolute good and absolute duty. As we must here deal with the abstract good, conscience is so far devoid of this objective content, and is at first only the infinite certitude of itself.

§ 138. Subjectivity, as abstract self-determination and pure certitude only of itself, dissolves within itself all definite realization of right and duty. It passes judgment within itself, determines solely out of itself what is good, and makes this self-produced good its content. It bestows reality upon a good which is at first only presented and intended.

Note.—The self-consciousness, which has reached absolute return into itself, is conscious of itself as something over which nothing that exists or is given to it can or ought to have any power. This tendency to look within, and know and decide from oneself what is right and good, assumes a more general form in history, appearing at epochs such as that of Socrates, the Stoics, etc., when the accepted ethical principles could not satisfy the better will. When the visible world has become untrue to freedom, the will no longer finds itself in the established morality, and is forced to seek the harmony, which the actual world has lost, in the inner ideal life. Since the right, which self-consciousness acquires in this way, is formal, everything depends upon the nature of the content, which it gives itself. ’,

In the simple conception of conscience all definite phases of will are dissolved, and must proceed out of it again. Everything that is recognized as right or duty can in the first instance be proved by thought to be worthless, limited, and merely relative. But subjectivity, though it dissolves all content, must develop it again out of itself. Everything which comes to pass in ethical observance, is to be produced by this activity of spirit. But, on the other side, this standpoint is defective, because it is merely abstract. When I am conscious of my freedom as inner substantive reality, I do no act; yet if I do act and seek principles, I must try to obtain definite characters for my act. The demand is then made that this definite context shall be deduced from the conception of the free will. Hence, if it is right to absorb right and duty into subjectivity, it is on the other hand wrong if this abstract basis of action is not again evolved. Only in times when reality is a hollow, unspiritual, and shadowy existence, can a retreat be permitted out of the actual into an inner life. Socrates appeared at the time of the decay of the Athenian democracy. He dissolved what was established, and fled back into himself, to seek there what was right and good. In our own time also it occurs more or less frequently that reverence for the established is wanting, and that man holds his own will as for himself valid and authoritative.

§ 139. Self-consciousness, affirming to be vanity all otherwise valid marks of action, and itself consisting of pure inwardness of will, may possibly convert the absolute universal into mere caprice. It may make a principle out of what is peculiar to particularity, placing it over the universal and realizing it in action. This is evil.

Note.—If conscience is taken as formal subjectivity, it is on the verge of being transformed into evil. In a self-certitude, which exists for itself, knows and decides for itself, both morality and evil have their common root.

The origin of evil in general lies in the mystery, i.e., the speculative process, of freedom, in the necessity of freedom to rise out of its natural state, and find itself within itself in opposition to the natural. In this opposition the natural will is contradictory of itself and incompatible with itself, and comes in this divided state into existence. Hence the particularity of the will itself receives the further mark of evil. Particularity has a twofold character, exhibited here in the opposition of the natural to the inner will. Through this opposition the inner phase of will gets only a relative and formal existence, and therefore has to create its content out of the elements of the natural will, such as desire, impulse, and inclination. These desires and impulses may be either good or evil. But again, owing to their mere naturalness, they are contingent, and the will, as at present constituted, takes them in their contingent character as its content and brings them under the form of particularity. It thus becomes opposed to universality, the inner objective reality or the good, which, since it involves the return of the will into itself and a consciousness aware of itself, stands at the other extreme from the direct objectivity of what is merely natural. Thus also is this inner condition of the will evil. Man is consequently evil at once by nature or of himself and through his reflection within himself. Evil is not limited solely either to nature as such, unless it were the natural condition of a will which confines itself to its particular content, or to the reflection which goes into itself and includes cognition, unless it were to adhere to an antagonism to the good.

Along with the phase, that evil of necessity is, goes inseparably the phase that evil of necessity shall not be. In other words, evil is that which is to be superseded. Nevertheless, evil from the first standpoint of disruption must make its appearance, since it constitutes the division between the unreasoning beast and man. We must not, however, remain at this standpoint, or cling to the particular as though it in contrast with the universal were essential, but must overcome it, and set it aside as null and void. Further, as to this necessity of evil, it is subjectivity, or the infinity constituted by the reflex action of consciousness, which has this opposition before itself and exists in it. If it remains there, i.e., if it is evil, it exists simply for itself, counts itself as independent, and is mere caprice. Hence the individual subject as such has the guilt of his evil.

Addition.—Abstract certitude, which is aware of itself as the basis of everything, involves the possibility of willing the universality of the conception, but also the possibility of making a principle out of a particular content and realizing it. This second possibility is evil. To evil always belongs the abstraction implied in self-certitude, and man alone, just in so far as he can be evil, is good. Good and evil are inseparable, their unity lying in this, that the conception becomes objective to itself and forthwith, as an object, involves distinction. The evil will wills something that is opposed to the universality of will; but the good will is in accordance with its true conception.

The difficulty as to how the will can be evil is due usually to our thinking of the will as in only a positive relation to itself, and to our representing it as some definite thing existing for itself, i.e., as the good. The question as to the origin of evil may be put better thus: How does the negative enter into the positive? If God in the creation of the world is supposed to be the absolutely positive, then, let man turn where he will, he cannot in the positive find the negative. The view that God permitted evil to exist, involving a passive relation of God to evil, offers no satisfactory solution of the problem. In the religious myth the origin of evil is not rationally conceived; the negative is’ not recognized to be in the positive. One is supposed to come after the other or to exist side by side with it, so that the negative comes to the positive from the outside. With this view thought cannot be satisfied. Thought desires a reason and a necessary relation, and insists that the negative and positive spring from the self-same root. The solution of the difficulty from the standing-ground of the conception is already contained in the conception. The conception, or, to speak more concretely, the idea, must in its very essence find distinctions in itself and establish itself as negative. To adhere to the positive merely, that is to say to the pure good, which shall be in its origin nothing but good, is an empty effort of the understanding, which creates difficulty by introducing one-sidedness and abstraction. But from the ground of the conception the positive phase is apprehended as an activity distinguishing itself from itself. Evil as well as good has its origin in the will, and the will in its conception is both good and evil. The natural will is, as it stands, a contradiction, implying a distinction of itself from itself, in order that it may be consciously for itself, and attain its inward nature.

The proposition, that owing to the nature of evil man is evil, in so far as his will is natural, is opposed to a current idea that it is precisely the natural will which is innocent and good. But the natural will is opposed to the content of freedom. The child, or uneducated man, possessing only the natural will, is not fully responsible. When we speak of man, we mean not children but self-conscious men. When we speak of good, we include a knowledge of it. Now, the natural or the ingenuous is of itself neither good nor evil, but when related to will, as freedom and knowledge of freedom, it is not free, and hence evil. When the natural is willed by man, it is no longer simply the natural, but the negative of the good, or the negative of the conception of the will.

If we were to say that, since evil lies in the conception, and exists of necessity, men are no longer responsible when they adopt it, it must be replied that their decision is their own deed, the act of their freedom, and therefore to be laid at their door. In religious fable it is said that man is like God in his having a knowledge of good and evil. The resemblance to God is a fact so far as the necessity is not a necessity of nature, but rather a decision transcending the state in which good and evil are involved alike. Since both good and evil confront me, I may choose either, resolve upon either, and take up either into my subjectivity. It is the nature of evil that man may will it, although he is not forced by necessity to do so.

§ 140. As every end belongs to the purpose of actual concrete action, it necessarily has a positive side (§ 130), which self-consciousness knows on occasion how to bring forward. But as self-consciousness implies a turning back into oneself, and is aware of the universal of the will, an act has also a negative side. The positive side of an act, whose negative content stands in open contrast with the universal, may be looked on as a duty and an excellent motive, and be maintained by self-consciousness to be good for others as well as for itself. To hold it good for others is hypocrisy; and to hold it good for itself is a still higher summit of the subjectivity, which maintains itself to be the absolute.

Note.—The final most abstruse form of evil, that in which evil is turned into good and good into evil, in which, too, consciousness knows itself as the transforming power, and therefore as absolute, is the very summit of subjectivity from the moral standpoint. It is the form to which evil has risen in our time, and that, too, through philosophy, or rather a shallowness of thought, which has contorted a deep conception, and presumes to give itself the name of philosophy, just as it presumes to give to evil the name of good. In this note I shall mention briefly the chief forms of this subjectivity, which are in vogue.

(a) Dissimulation, or hypocrisy. In it are contained the following elements: (α) knowledge of the true universal, whether it be in the form of the feeling of right and duty, or in the form of a thorough knowledge of them; (β) the willing of the particular, which is in open strife with the universal; and (γ) explicit comparison of the universal and particular, so that, for the willing consciousness itself, its particular will is understood to be evil. These three elements comprise the act done with evil conscience, but are not yet hypocrisy as such.—It was at one time a very, important question whether an act is evil only in as far as it is done with an evil conscience, i.e., with a developed consciousness of the elements involved in the act. Pascal (“Les Provinc.” 4e lettre) well draws out the consequences of an affirmative answer to this question. He says, “Ils seront tous damnés ces demi pécheurs, qui ont quelque amour pour la vertu. Mais pour ces francs-pécheurs, pécheurs endurcis, pécheurs sans mélange, pleins et achevés, l’enfer ne les tient pas: ils ont trompé le diable a force de s’y abandonner.”

The subjective right of self-consciousness, to know whether the act falls under the category of good or evil, must not be thought of as colliding with the absolute right of the objectivity of this category. At least, the two are not to be represented as separable, indifferent to each other, and related only casually. And yet this is just the view which lay at the basis of the old-time question about saving grace. Evil on its formal side is that which is most peculiarly the individual’s own, since it is his subjectivity setting itself up as wholly and purely its own. For it he is, therefore, responsible (§ 139 and note). On the objective side, man in his conception as spirit is rational, and has solely in himself a universality, which is aware of itself. Hence we fail to treat him in accordance with the dignity of his conception, when we separate from him either the goodness of a good act or the evil of an evil act, and refuse to impute it to him as good or evil. How definite may be the consciousness of these two distinguishable sides in man, with what degree of clearness or obscurity this consciousness may become knowledge, or how far in an evil act conscience may be formal, are questions with which we are not much concerned. They belong to the empirical side of the subject-matter.

(b) But evil and to act with evil conscience are not yet hypocrisy. We must add the formal phase of untruth, in which evil is maintained to be good and good for others. The agent represents as good, conscientious, and pious an act, which is merely an artifice for the betrayal of others. But by means of what is otherwise good and pious, namely, by good reasons generally, an evil man may find a justification of his evil, transforming evil into something good for himself. The possibility of such a transformation is found in the abstract and negative subjectivity, which is conscious that all phases must submit to and spring from it.

(c) Allied to the foregoing is what is known as probability. Its principle is that if consciousness can trump up one good reason, be it only the authority of a single theologian, whose judgment, it may be, is disapproved by others, the act is permissible, and conscience may be at ease. Such a reason or authority, it is acknowledged, gives at best only probability, but that is supposed to be enough to confirm the conscience. It is admitted also that a good reason does not exclude others, which may be quite as good. Further, in this form of subjectivity there is a touch of the objective in the concession that conduct should be based on a ground or reason. But to the many good reasons and authorities, which might be adduced in favour of a certain line of action, may be opposed just as many good reasons for an opposite course. Hence the decision is intrusted not to the objectivity of the thing, but to subjectivity; liking and caprice are made the discerners between good and evil, and ethical observance and religion are undermined. But since it is given out that some reason, and not private subjectivity, is the basis of decision, probability is so far a form of hypocrisy.

(d) The next higher stage is the assertion that the good will shall consist in willing the good; the willing of the abstract good shall be the sole requisite for a good act. Since the act, as a definite volition, has a content, while the abstract good determines nothing, it devolves upon the private individual to give the good filling and definiteness. In probability there must be obtained from some Révérend Père authority to bring a definite content under the general category of the good. But here every subject, simply as he stands, is invested with the dignity of giving a content to the abstract good, or, what is the same thing, of bringing a content under the universal. But this content is only one of several sides of a concrete act, which may, on another of its sides, be bad or criminal. And yet my subjective estimate of the good is the good as known by me in the act; it is my good intention (§ 111). Thus arises an opposition between different phases, in accordance with one of which the act is good, but in accordance with another, criminal. Here, too, would seem to come up the question, if, in the actual act, the intention is really good. But at this standpoint, at which abstract good is the deter- - mining motive, the good not only may but must be the I real intention. And, however bad and criminal they may be in other directions, the results of an act, which completes a good intention, are also good. We seem forced to ask which of these sides is essential. But this objective question cannot here be put; or rather the only objective is the decision of the subjective consciousness itself. Besides, at this standpoint the terms essential and good have the same meaning. Both are abstractions. Good is that which in regard to the will is essential; and the essential in regard to the will is that an act shall be for me good. But here one may place any pleasurable content he likes under the abstract good, because this good, having no content of its own, is reduced to mean merely a bare positive, something, that is, which may have value from some point of view, and also in its direct phase may be made to count as an essential end. Such a positive action might be, e.g., to do good to the poor, or to provide for myself, my life, or my family. Further, as the good is abstract, the bad also must be without content, and must receive definiteness from my subjectivity. Hence arises the moral end to hate and root out the bad.

Theft, cowardice, murder, as acts of a subjective will, imply at the very outset the satisfaction of this will, and are therefore something positive. Now, that the act may be good, I simply need to know this positive side of it as my intention. Hence the act is at once decided to be good, because to know it as good is involved in my intention. Theft for the benefit of the poor, theft or flight from battle, in order to fulfil the duty of caring for one’s life or one’s family, which may be poor, murder through hate and revenge, i.e., to satisfy a sense of right, or of my right, or of the wickedness of another, or to satisfy a sense of the wrong done by him to me or others, or the world, or people generally, by extirpating him as thoroughly bad, and thus contributing something to the extermination of evil,—all these acts are on their positive side good in intention and so good in act. There is needed a superlatively small effort of the understanding to discover, as did the learned divines aforesaid, for every act a positive side, and a good reason or intention.—Hence it has been said that there are no evil men, because no one wills evil for evil’s sake, an act which would be purely negative. He always wills something positive, and therefore, from this point of vision, good. In this abstract good the distinction between good and evil, and all real duties also, have disappeared. Accordingly, merely to will the good, merely to have a good intention when we act, is evil because the willed good is an abstraction, and the ascertainment of what is good is left to the caprice of the subject.

To this place belongs the famous sentence, “The end justifies the means.” This expression, as it stands, is trivial, because one could as vaguely reply that a just end justifies the means, but an unjust end does not. The expression would then be tautological, since the means, if they are real means, are nothing of themselves but are only for the sake of something else, from which they derive their worth.—But this saying is not meant in a merely formal and indefinite sense. It justifies the use for a good end of something not strictly a means at all. It justifies and inculcates as a duty even crime and the violation of what is of itself just, as means for effecting a good end. In this saying there floats a general consciousness of the dialectic of the positive element, alluded to above, as it bears upon right and ethics, and upon such indefinite propositions as “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt care for thy own well-being and that of thy family.” In law and war, to kill is not only a right but a duty; but in these cases there is an accurate description of the circumstances under which, and also of the kind of men whom it is permitted or enjoined to kill. In the same way my well-being and the well-being of my family must yield to higher ends, and be reduced to means. But a crime is not an indistinct generality, which has to undergo a process of dialectic, but something definitely and objectively limited. Yet the end which is to oppose this crime and deprive it of its nature, the holy and just end, is only the subjective opinion of what is good or better. Thus, here again the will holds to the abstract good; and every absolutely valid mark of the good and bad, of right and wrong, is superseded by and handed over to the feeling, opinion, and liking of the individual.

(e) Subjective opinion is openly pronounced to be the rule of right and duty, when the conviction that a thing is right is declared to be the criterion of the ethical character of an act. As the good, which is here willed, is still without content, the principle of conviction implies that it is simply for the subject to decide whether the act is good or not. Thus here also all semblance of ethical objectivity has vanished. Such a theory has direct affinity with the so-called philosophy, already repeatedly alluded to, which denies the possibility of knowing the truth, and, in so doing, denies also the moral laws, which are the truth and reason of spirit as will. Such philosophizing, as it proclaims a knowledge of the truth to be vanity, and the circle of knowledge to be mere appearance, must obviously make appearance the principle of action also. Thus ethical principles are decided by the individual’s peculiar view of life and his private conviction. This degradation of philosophy appears, indeed, to outsiders as of supremely small importance, and to be confined merely to the idle talk of the school. But the view necessarily makes its way into ethics, which is an essential part of philosophy. The real world sees the meaning of these views only when they have become a reality.

By the spread of the view that subjective conviction alone decides the ethical value of an act, it has come to pass that hypocrisy, formerly much discussed, is now hardly spoken of at all. To mark hypocrisy as evil is to believe that certain acts are beyond all question trespasses, vices, and crimes; that also, he who commits them must know what they are, knowing and recognizing, as he does, the principles and outward acts of piety and right, even in the false guise under which he misuses them. Or, perhaps, with regard to evil, it was assumed that it is a duty to know the good and to distinguish it from evil. In any case it was unconditionally claimed that men should do nothing vicious or criminal, and that if they did, they must, just so far as they are men, not cattle, be held responsible. But when the good heart, good intentions, and subjective conviction are said to decide the value of action, there is no longer any hypocrisy, or, for that matter, evil at all. Since whatever an individual does he can convert into good by the reflective intervention of good intentions and motives; and by virtue of his conviction his act is good. There is no longer any absolute vice or crime. Instead of frank and free, hardened and untroubled transgression appears the consciousness of complete justification through intention and conviction; my good intention and my conviction that the act is good make it good. To pass sentence upon an act is merely to judge of the intention, conviction, or faith of the agent. Faith is not used here in the sense in which Christ demands faith in objective truth. In that sense, if a man has a bad faith, i.e., a conviction which is in its content evil, he must accordingly be condemned. But faith here means simply fidelity to conviction. When we ask if a man has remained true to his conviction, we refer to the merely formal subjective faith, which is supposed of itself to contain his duty.

Because the principle of conviction is subjective, there is forced upon us the thought of the possibility of error, and in this thought is the implication of an absolute law. But a law does not act; it is only a real human being who acts. If we are to estimate the worth of his acts according to this subjective principle, we can ask merely how far he has embodied the law in his conviction. Thus, if the acts are not to be judged and measured according to the law, it is not easy to perceive what purpose the law subserves. It is degraded to a mere external letter or empty word; and inevitably, since it is made a binding law and obligation only by my conviction.

Such a law may have the authority of God, of the state, and of centuries, in which it united men and gave substance to their acts and destiny. It may thus include the convictions of an untold number of individuals. And yet to it I oppose the authority of my private conviction—a conviction which has no other footing than authority. This, to all appearance, stupendous presumption is ignored by the principle which makes subjective conviction to be the rule.

Although reason and conscience, never wholly driven away by shallow science and sophistry, with bad logic but a higher insight concede the possibility of error, they yet’ reduce crime and evil to a minimum by calling them errors. To err is human. Who has not often erred with regard to one thing and another, whether yesterday at dinner he had fresh or pickled cabbage, and in numberless other things of greater or less importance? And yet the distinction between important and unimportant vanishes, if we cling obstinately to mere subjective conviction. But the natural, though illogical, admission of the possibility of error, when it allows that a bad conviction is only an error, is turned into another defect of logic, that, namely, of dishonesty. At one time it is said that upon subjective conviction rests the ethical structure and the highest worth of man, and this conviction is declared to be most high and holy. At another time we are dealing with a mere error, and my conviction has become trivial, contingent, and accidental. In point of fact my conviction is of trifling moment if I cannot know the truth. In such a case it is also a matter of indifference how I think, and there remains for my thought merely that empty good, which is an abstraction of the understanding.

The principle of justification on the ground of conviction bears also upon others in their treatment of my action. They are quite right to hold my acts to be crimes, if this is in accordance with their belief and conviction. Thus I not only cannot anticipate any favourable treatment, but, on the contrary, am reduced from a position of freedom and honour to one of dishonour and slavery. And this happens through that very justice which I have adopted as my own, by the exercise of which I experience only an alien subjective conviction, and the working of a merely external force.

(f) Finally, the highest form in which this subjectivity fully grasps and expresses itself, is that which we, borrowing the name from Plato, have called irony. But it is only the name which is taken from Plato, who, like Socrates, used it in personal conversation against the opinions of the ordinary and of the sophistic consciousness, in order to bring out the idea of truth and justice; but in treating the superficial consciousness in this way he expressly excepts the idea. Irony is employed by him in conversation, only against persons; otherwise the essential movement of his thought is dialectic. So far was Plato from supposing the conversational process to be complete in itself, or irony to be the idea or ultimate form of thought, that he, on the contrary, terminated the backward and forward motion of thought, which prevails in subjective opinion, by sinking it in the substantive idea.

The summit of the subjectivity, which apprehends itself as ultimate, consists in a consciousness of itself as judge of truth, right, and duty. It is aware, indeed, of the objective ethical principle, but does not forget or renounce itself, or make any earnest effort to sink itself in this principle and act from it. Although it is in relation to this principle, it holds itself free from it, and is conscious of itself as willing and deciding in a certain way, and as being able quite as well to will and decide otherwise.—You, let us suppose, honestly take a law to be something absolute; but, as for me, I too have a share in it, but a much grander one than you, for I have gone through and beyond it, and can turn it as I please. It is not the subject-matter which is excellent, but I am the excellent thing, and am master of law and fact. I toy with them at my pleasure, and can enjoy myself only when I ironically know and permit the highest to be submerged. This form, indeed, makes vain the whole ethical content of right, duty, and law, being an evil and in itself a wholly universal evil. Yet to it we must add the subjective vanity of knowing itself as empty of all content, and yet of knowing this empty self as the absolute.

This absolute self-complacency may in some cases pass beyond a solitary worship of itself, and frame some kind of community, the bond and essence of which would be the mutual asseveration of conscientiousness, good intentions, and reciprocal delight in purity. The members of this union would disport themselves in the luxury of self-knowledge and self-utterance, and would cherish themselves to their heart’s content. In those persons, who have been called beautiful souls, we find even a more sublime subjectivity, making void all that is objective and shining by the light of its own unreality. These and other phases, which are in some measure connected with the foregoing forms of subjectivity, I have treated in the “Phänomenologie des Geistes.” In that work the whole section on Conscience, especially the paragraphs dealing under a different heading with the transition into a higher stage, may be compared with the present discussion.

Addition.—Imagination may go further and convert the evil will into the pretence of the good. Though it cannot alter the substance of evil, it can lend to it the outer form and semblance of good. Every act contains something positive, and the demonstration that a thing is good, as opposed to evil, is effected by eliminating all but this positive. Thus I can maintain an act to be good in respect of my intention. Moreover, not only in consciousness, but also on the positive practical side of action, evil is connected with good. If self-consciousness gives out that the act is good only for others, it assumes the form of hypocrisy. But if it ventures to maintain that the act is good for itself, it rises to the still higher summit of a subjectivity, which is conscious of itself as absolute. For it good and evil, as they are in and of themselves, have wholly disappeared, and it can, therefore, give itself out for what it pleases. This is the standpoint of absolute sophistry, which itself assumes the style of lawgiver, and refers the distinction between good and evil to caprice. Most pronounced in hypocrisy are the religious dissemblers, the Tartuffes, who perform all kinds of ceremonies, and are in their own eyes pious, although doing what they please. To-day we seldom speak of hypocrites, partly because the accusation seems too strong, but also because hypocrisy in its direct form has disappeared. Direct falsehood and complete cloaking of the good have become too transparent. Nor is the total severance of good and evil any longer so simple and available, since their limits have been made uncertain by growing culture.

The more subtle form of hypocrisy now is that of probability, by which one seeks to represent a transgression as something good for his own conscience. This occurs only where morals and the good are fixed by authority, so that the reasons for maintaining the evil to be the good are as numerous as the authorities. Casuistic theologians, especially Jesuits, have worked up these cases of conscience, and multiplied them ad infinitum. Owing to this over-subtlety, good and evil come into collision, and are subject to such fluctuations that they seem to the individual to run into each other. The chief desideratum is only what is probable, an approximate good, for which a single reason or authority can be secured. Another peculiarity of this standpoint is that it contains only what is abstract, while the concrete filling is represented as unessential, or rather is left to mere opinion. Thus anyone may have committed a crime and yet willed the good. When, for instance, a wicked person is murdered, the positive side of the act may be asserted to be a desire to oppose and diminish evil.

The next stage of probability is reached when the subject depends not upon the authority and assertion of another, but upon himself. He relies upon his own conviction, and his belief that only through his conviction can a thing be good. The defect of this attitude is the determination to refer to nothing but the conviction itself, involving a rejection of the substance of absolute right, and a retention of the mere form. It is, of course, not a matter of indifference whether I do something through use and wont, or through the force of its truth. Yet objective truth is different from my conviction. Conviction holds no distinction at all between good and evil, for it is always only conviction; the bad would be only that of which I am not convinced. This highest standpoint, in extinguishing good and evil, is admittedly exposed to error, and is cast down from its high estate to mere contingency and disregard. This is irony, the consciousness that the highest criterion, the principle of conviction, is ruled by caprice, and is, therefore, ineffective. For this view the philosophy of Fichte is chiefly responsible, as it claims that the I is absolute. At least it maintains that absolute certitude marks the general condition of the I, which by a further development passes into objectivity. Of Fichte, however, it cannot properly be said that in the practical realm he has made the caprice of the subject a principle. But after him the particular, interpreted as the condition of the individual subject, and applied by Friedrich v. Schlegel to the good and beautiful, has been set up as God. Hence the objective good is only an image formed by my conviction, receiving its substance only through me, and appearing and vanishing at the pleasure of me, its lord and master. The objective, to which I am related, is brought to naught, and thus I hover over a dim and monstrous space, calling up phantoms and dispersing them at will. This last extreme of subjectivity arises only at a time of high culture, where serious faith has crumbled away, and all things have become vanity.

§ 141. In behalf of conscience, or the mere abstract principle of determination, it is demanded that its phases shall be universal and objective. In the same way in behalf of the good which, though it is the essential universal of freedom, is still abstract, are also required definite phases; and for these phases is further demanded a principle which must, however, be identical with the good. The good and conscience, when each is raised into a separate totality, are void of all definiteness, and yet claim to be made definite. Still, the construction of these two relative totalities into an absolute identity is already accomplished in germ, since even the subjectivity or pure self-certitude, which vanishes by degrees in its own vacuity, is identical with the abstract universality of the good. But the concrete identity of the good and the subjective will, the truth of these two, is completed only in the ethical system.

Note.—A more detailed account of the transition of the conception is to be found in the “Logic.” Here it is enough to say that the limited and finite by its very nature contains the opposite in itself. Such a finite thing is either the abstract good, which is as yet unrealized, or the abstract subjectivity, which is good only in intention. Abstract good implicitly contains its opposite, i.e., its realization, and abstract subjectivity, or the element in which the ethical is realized, implicitly contains its opposite, i.e., the good. Thus, when either of these two is taken in a one-sided way, it has not yet positively realized all that it is capable of being. The good, apart from all subjectivity and definite character, and the determining subjectivity, apart from anything that it may become, arrive at a higher actuality by a negative process. Each clings at first to its one-sided form, and resolves not to accept what it possesses potentially, thus constituting itself an abstract whole. Then it annuls itself in that capacity, and thereby reduces itself to the level of one element in a whole. Each of them becomes one element of the conception. The conception, in turn, is manifested as their unity, and, having received reality through the establishment of its elements, now exists as idea. The idea is the conception, when it has fashioned its elements into reality, and at the same time exists in their identity as their dynamic essence.

The simplest realization of freedom is right. When self-consciousness is turned back upon itself, freedom is realized as the good. The third stage, which is here in its transition exhibited as the truth of the good and of subjectivity, is likewise quite as much the truth of right. The ethical is subjective disposition, and yet contains right implicitly. But that this idea is the truth of the conception of freedom must not be an assumption derived from such a source as feeling, but must in philosophy be demonstrated. This demonstration is made only when right and the moral self-consciousness are proved to exhibit of themselves the tendency to run back into this idea as their result. Those who believe that proof and demonstration can be dispensed with in philosophy, show that they are still a long distance from the first thought of what philosophy is. They may speak of other things indeed, but they have no right to discuss philosophy, if they have not understood the conception.

Addition.—The two principles which we have so far considered, both the abstract good and conscience, are as yet without their opposing principles. The abstract good is etherealized into something wholly devoid of power, something into which I can introduce any content at all. And the subjectivity of spirit is equally without content, since it has no objective significance. Hence there may arise a longing after objectivity. Man would debase himself to the complete dependence of a serf, in order to escape the torment of sheer inanity and negativity. Many Protestants recently passed over to the Catholic church, simply because they found no substance in their own inner life. They were willing to accept any fixed and tangible authority, even though it had not the security which comes from thought. The social order is the unity, and according to the conception the reconciliation also of the subjective good with the objective absolute good. Morality is the general form of the will as subjective; but the ethical order is not simply the subjective form and the self-determination of the will, but contains their conception, namely, freedom. Neither right nor morality can exists independently, but must have the ethical as its pillar and support. In right is wanting the element of subjectivity, and in morality is wanting the objective, so that neither by itself has any actuality.

Only the infinite, the idea is actual. Right exists only as a branch of a whole, or as a vine twining itself about a firmly rooted tree.