Chapter 25 (c) Virtue and the course of the world

Ⅰ.Self-awareness and the universal connection In the first form of active reason, self-consciousness perceives itself as a pure individuality against which there is an empty universality.In the second form, the two opposing aspects each have the two links of law and individuality; but the opposite of mind is the direct unity of the two links, and the other opposite is the opposition between the two.But now, in the relationship between virtue and the process of the world, each of the two relations is at the same time the unity and opposition of these two links, or in other words, both are movements between law and individuality, but they are two Opposite movement.

For the consciousness of virtue, law is the essential thing, and individuality is something to be superseded, and it must be superseded not only in the consciousness of virtue itself but also in the process of the world.In the consciousness of virtue, each person's private individuality must be subject to the universal and free training of truth and goodness.But it is still a private consciousness only if it accepts training constraints; only the sacrifice and abandonment of the whole personality is the real training constraints, which is enough to ensure that self-consciousness is no longer attached to individuality.And through this individual renunciation, individuality is at the same time purged from the world-process, since individuality is also a simple, shared moment. —The attitude of individuality in the world-process is exactly the opposite of its attitude in the virtue-consciousness, which now submits to itself the good and the true in itself as an essence. ——

And, likewise, for virtue, the process of the world is not only this universal order reversed by individuality, but also the absolute order is also a common link; only, in this common link, the world does not exist in consciousness. It is not the reality that exists outside, but the inner nature of consciousness.In truth, therefore, the absolute order is not revealed through virtue, for revealing, as an act, is the consciousness of individuality, and individuality is what is to be superseded.But only through the sublation of individuality does the noumenon or the in-itself of the world-process seem to have room for action in its own right and for itself into actual existence.

The general content of the actual world process has revealed itself; If you examine it carefully, it is nothing more than the movement of the previous two kinds of self-consciousness.It is from those two movements that the form of virtue develops; Since they are the source of virtue, they are prior to it; but the end of virtue is to supersede its source and realize itself, or to become for-itself.Thus the world process is, on the one hand, the individual individuality seeking pleasure and enjoyment in which it finds its own annihilation and thereby satisfies the universal.But this satisfaction itself, as well as the rest of the relation, is an inverted shape and movement of the universal.Reality is only the individuality of pleasure and enjoyment, and the universal is opposed to this individuality, it is a necessity;

And this necessity is only the empty form of the universal, a passive reaction and action without content. —On the other hand, the other moment in the world process is that individuality which wants to be the law for itself and which by this delusion destroys the existing effective order.The universal law actually succeeds, so to speak, in avoiding the destruction of this arrogance, because it no longer appears as something opposed and empty to consciousness, it no longer appears as a necessity of death, but, on the contrary, it Appears as a necessity in consciousness itself.But when it exists as an absolutely contradictory actual relation in consciousness, it is madness; when it exists as an objective reality, it is a general inversion.

In both cases, therefore, the universal presents itself as the power which causes them to move, but the form in which this power manifests or exists is only a universal inversion. Ⅱ.The world process is universal reality in individuality The universal must now derive its true reality from virtue, that is, through the sublation of individuality, that is, through the sublation of the principle of inversion.The purpose of virtue is to reverse the reversed course of the world through this sublation, and thereby reveal its true nature.This true essence is only potential in the world process, it is not yet actual, and therefore virtue has only a belief in this true essence.Virtue raises this belief to intuition, without enjoying the fruits of its own labor and sacrifice.For virtue, when it is individual, is its act of struggle against the process of the world, but its end and true essence consists in overcoming the reality of the world process; Acquiring its actual existence, this at the same time brings to a cessation the virtuous action or the consciousness of individuality. —What will be the result of this struggle, what experience virtue will gain in the struggle, whether the world process will be defeated and virtue won because virtue has sacrificed, all this must be a living weapon wielded by both sides of the struggle. nature to decide.For the weapon is nothing but the essence of the fighter himself; and this essence is only present to each other.The nature of their weapons, therefore, emerges from the nature of the struggle itself.

For the consciousness of virtue, the universal is true only in belief or potentially, but it is not yet a real universal, but an abstract universal.It exists as an end in this sense of virtue itself, and as an immanence in the world-process.Precisely because of its determinate character, the universal shows itself, even in virtue, to exist for the world process; for virtue has only just tried to practice the good, and it has not yet considered the good to be actual.This determination can also be considered in the following way: the good, since it emerges in the struggle for the world process, presents itself as another good existing, it presents itself as a A thing that does not exist in itself or for itself, for otherwise it would not seek to establish its own truth through its overcoming of its opposite.When we say that the good is first of all only for the other, we mean the same as the conclusion reached earlier when the good was considered in the opposite direction, that it is first of all an abstraction which There is no reality in and for itself, only in relation.

The good or universal, as it presently appears, is that which is called endowment, talent, power.It is the spiritual in a manner in which the spiritual is represented as a universal which needs the principle of individuality in order to take life for itself, to be able to move, and obtains its reality in the principle of individuality.But the universal is rightly applied by the principle when it is in the virtue consciousness, and wrongly applied by the principle when it is in the world-process;—the universal It is a passive instrument, held in the hands of free individuality, which is indifferent and indifferent to whatever individuality uses it for, so much so that it can be misused to create a The reality of destruction; it is an inanimate matter, devoid of its own independence, which can be made into one form or another, or even into a form.

Since this universal is equally at the disposal of the sense of virtue and the course of the world, it cannot be predicted whether virtue thus armed will triumph over vice.The weapons are all the same; they are all these talents and abilities.It is true that in virtue of its belief in the primordial unity of its purpose and the nature of the world process, virtue has indeed concealed its belief in this unity, so that it may strike from behind enemy lines during battle and make it One's own ends are freely accomplished; but then, to the virtuous warrior, his own actions and struggles are really but a feigned battle.He cannot take this feigned battle seriously, because he bases his real strength on: his belief that the good is and is for itself, that is, that it completes itself.

Nor can he allow this feigned battle to be false, for the same thing with which he throws his enemy and finds that he throws himself, is likely to be worn out and damaged both by himself and by the enemy. That which he loses should not be the good itself; for he fights precisely to preserve and to accomplish the good. It is only those talents and abilities that he has impartiality that are used in battle at the risk of damage.But in fact these talents and abilities are nothing but the impersonal universal which is to be preserved and realized by fighting. —— But this universal is at the same time directly realized through the concept of combat itself; it is latent, universal; and its realization only means that it is simultaneously universal for the other.The two aspects mentioned above, in which the universal has separately become an abstraction, are no longer separate, and now, in and through the battle, the good is at the same time It is established in two ways. —But when virtue becomes conscious and begins to fight the world-process, it regards the world-process as something opposed to the good, and in the course of the fight it finds that the world-process is a universal and not merely abstract Universal, and it is a universal that has gained life due to individuality and exists for the other party, or in other words, it is the real good.Thus, when virtue goes to struggle against the world process, it encounters everywhere the concrete existence of the good itself; the good, as latent in the world process, is indissolubly interwoven in all its phenomena. , and acquires its own actual existence in the reality of the world process.Virtue thus finds the course of the world invulnerable.

And such concrete existences and various inviolable relations of the good are just all the links that virtue itself must desperately sacrifice and abandon.Therefore, this kind of battle can only swing between preservation and sacrifice, or more precisely, this kind of battle can neither sacrifice oneself nor injure the enemy.Virtue is not only like a fighter whose only concern in a duel is to keep his sword bright, but virtue enters into a duel precisely in order to preserve it; Arms, it must also keep the enemy's arms intact and defend the enemy from its own attack, for all these are noble parts of the good for which it fights. The enemy, on the contrary, has individuality as its essence, not potentiality.The power of this enemy is thus a negative principle, for which nothing is eternal, nothing absolutely sacred, and which can risk everything and bear any risk of everything. loss.Thus its victory is certain, and it will surely win, both from its own nature and from the contradictions with which its enemies entangle it.What is in-itself (or potential) in virtue is only for-itself or actual in the case of the world-process; the world-process is freed from all fixed moments with which virtue is intimately bound.Only one moment is held under its power by the world process, and that is only because such a moment is for it to be sublated as well as to be preserved; The moral warrior is likewise held under its power.The moral warrior cannot undo this link like a coat to gain his own freedom, because this link is its essence that cannot be discarded. Finally, let’s talk about ambush.It is said that the free (or latent) good will come out of ambush cunningly to attack the back of the world process, but the hope itself is empty.The world-process is the awakened consciousness that knows itself, that never allows an attack from behind it, but faces its enemies everywhere; for the world-process is such that all is for it, and all rests upon it. in front of.But the latent good, if it exists for its enemies, exists in that struggle of which we have already spoken; but when it is not for its enemies but is latent, it is Passive instrument of talent and power, material without reality.And if it is conceived as a concrete existence, then it should be a kind of sleepy consciousness that stays behind no one knows where. Ⅲ.individuality is universal reality Virtue is then overcome by the process of the world, because in fact its aim is an abstract, unreal essence, and because its actions are grounded in reality on distinctions that appear only in words.Virtue originally wanted to abandon individuality and make goodness actuality, but actuality is nothing else at all, it is individuality itself.Goodness is originally regarded as something in itself or potential, which is opposed to what exists, but in terms of its reality and truth, it is rather existence itself.Potency is above all essential abstraction as opposed to actuality; but abstraction is precisely that which does not really exist but exists only for consciousness, and that is to say, it is itself actual, because actuality The thing that exists is that which exists essentially for something else, or rather, it is being.But the consciousness of virtue is based on this distinction between in-itself and being, and this distinction has no truth. —The world process is supposed to be the opposite of the good, since it has individuality as its principle; but individuality is the principle of actuality, since it is precisely that consciousness through which being-in-itself What is there is also what exists for him.The process of the world reverses or transforms the immutable, but in fact it reverses it from abstract nothing to actual being or being. The world process thus overcomes the virtue which is opposed to itself, the virtue whose essence is abstraction without essence.However, it did not overcome anything real, on the contrary, it only defeated the difference fiction that was not a difference at all, and defeated some grandiose arguments: such as what is the best of human beings, what is the suppression of human nature, what is sacrifice for good, what is wrong. use of talents, and so on;—ideals and purposes like these are, after all, mere words, which ennoble the heart and empty the intellect, which they strive to construct, but accomplish nothing; Says something like this: the individual who thinks his actions are in line with such noble purposes, and indulges in the use of such beautiful words, regards himself as a superior essence;--this is a boast, which makes Both myself and others are carried away by it, and it always comes from an empty arrogance. —— Virtue in antiquity originally had a definite and secure meaning, because it had its rich foundation in the substance of the people, and had as its end a real good, a good that actually existed; Not against actuality, not against actuality as a general inversion, nor against a world process.But the virtue under consideration is different from this, it has been divorced from substance, it is a virtue without essence, it is a virtue that belongs only to ideas and words devoid of any content. —The emptiness of these discourses, which struggle with the world process, is revealed at once if they are asked to say what their words really mean; and that is why these meanings are always assumed to be known.The way to deal with the request to say what you know is to either come up with a new batch of words, or in turn ask everyone to appeal to their own hearts, saying that the heart will say it in an inner way. Their meaning; both of these approaches are really tantamount to saying that they have confessed their incapacity to act or to actually say meaning. —The educated minds of our time have evidently, if not consciously, been convinced that all this talk is empty, since no one is interested in the content of this whole pile of words or in the way in which they are delivered; The loss of interest in them manifests itself in the fact that they become merely boring. What follows from this opposition, then, is that consciousness sheds its idea of ​​a latent good which has not yet attained actuality, just as it sheds a cloak.Consciousness has gained experience in its struggle that the world process is not as bad as it first appears; for the reality of the world process is the reality of the universal.At the same time, this experience shows that it is impossible to seek the manifestation of the good by sacrificing individuality; for individuality is the actualization of what is latent or universal; An inversion of humanism, for this inversion is precisely the transformation of the good from a mere purpose into actuality; the movement of the individual is the realization of the universal. But in fact, in this way, that which, as a world process, was at first opposed to the consciousness of being-in-itself, that is, virtue, is likewise overcome and disappears.The individual being-for-itself was originally there in opposition to the essence or the universal and appeared as an actuality separate from being-in-itself.But since it has now been shown that actuality and the universal are in an inseparable unity, the being-for-itself of the world-process proves itself to be only one aspect (Ansicht) of the [unity], just as virtue does Potency or being-in-itself (Ansich) is only one aspect.The individuality of the world-process is likely to think that its actions are for itself or selfish; but it is better than it thinks it is, because its actions are at the same time actions of the universal that exists in itself.If it acts selfishly, it is only that it does not know what it is doing; and if it affirms that all men act selfishly, it only affirms that all men are ignorant of what they are doing That's all. —and if it acts for itself, it is precisely that which only exists for itself. Thus, the purpose of being-for-itself (which considers itself to be opposed to being-in-itself), its ingenious artifices, and the elaborate explanations it uses everywhere to show that all men are selfish, are like that of being-in-itself. Like the grandiose talk of purpose and being-in-itself, it all comes to an end. Therefore, individual actions and deeds are their own goals; through the exertion and utilization of power and outward expression, self-sufficiency or potentiality is not dead, but alive and alive.In-itself is not an undeveloped abstract universal without concrete existence; it is itself immediately the present and reality of the course of individuality.