Chapter 29 (c) Review of the rationality of the law

A difference of any kind in the simple ethical substance is a contingency for the substance, which we have seen appear in certain precepts as contingencies of various aspects of knowing, reality, and action.We have compared that simple being with a determinateness which does not correspond to it, and in this comparison the simple substance is shown as the universality of form or pure consciousness, which has no content but is opposed to it. , which is a knowledge about a certain content.In this way, this universality is still the original thing itself, but after it reaches the consciousness, it is another matter. It is no longer a species without thought and action, but is associated with the particular and constitutes a special strength and truth. —This consciousness at first seems to be making the same examination as we have done before, and it seems to act as it has done before, comparing the general and the particular, and thus pointing out their mutuality. incompatibility.But after the universal has taken on another meaning, the relation of the content to the universal is different; the universal is now a formal universality, a universality which the particular content can only have, since we consider the content only It is nothing more than examining the self-relationship of content in this universality of form.When we examined the comparison before, the universal substance that existed was on the one hand, and the determinateness that had developed into the contingency of the consciousness of the substance was on the other.Now the one side of the comparison has disappeared; the universal is no longer an existing and valid quasi-substance or a right in itself, but a simple knowing or form which, in comparing a content, only Compare it with itself, and only look at whether it is a tautology when examining a content.Laws or rules are no longer enacted, but merely reviewed; for the consciousness of review, the law has already been formulated; the consciousness of review only accepts the content of the law in its original simple state, unlike ours. In the same way as before, it examines the individuality and contingency combined with the actual content. On the contrary, the audit work of consciousness stops at the commandments themselves. Its attitude towards this commandment is simple, just like the commandments. Simply as it's own scale.

But in this way, this kind of review work cannot go deep, because since the standard of review is tautology and has nothing to do with the content, it is not only applicable to a certain positive content, but also applicable to negative content. content. —Suppose we ask the question, should private ownership of property become law unconditionally?The so-called unconditional here means regardless of whether it is useful for other purposes or not; in fact, the essentiality of ethics means that the ethical law is only identical with itself, and therefore is based on its own essence and not conditioned by other things.We see that private property in itself is not self-contradictory; it is an isolated determination, or rather, a determination posited to be equal only to itself.It is also not at all contradictory to say that property is not privately owned, that it is not owned by the owner, or that it is owned by the public.For it is a simple determination, a form of thought, to say that something belongs to no one, or to anyone who uses it, or to all according to need or the principle of equitable distribution, Just like its opposite, private property. —But if we really understand this ownerless thing as something like the necessities of life, then this ownerless thing must become the property of some individual; No Master] established as a law, it would be contradictory.The so-called ownerlessness of things, of course, does not mean absolute ownerlessness. It should still be owned by people according to the needs of individual people, but it is not for preservation, but for direct use.But such an entirely accidental satisfaction of needs is in contradiction with the nature of the conscious being in question here, since a conscious being must conceive of its needs as universal needs, must be concerned with its whole existence. , what it strives for must be a lasting property.And so it is also contradictory to think that a thing will be assigned to the self-conscious being who needs it most by chance, according to need. ——Under the public ownership of property, the needs of each person should be satisfied in a universal and permanent way, and the ration of each person should be either according to the needs of each person or according to the principle of equality; but if distribution is based on needs, then this This kind of inequality is essentially contradictory to the consciousness of the principle of individual equality; and if it is distributed equally according to the latter principle, then the ration has nothing to do with needs, and the concept of ration is precisely based on It is related to needs.

However, if viewed in this light, non-private property is clearly self-contradictory, and it is self-contradictory only because it is more than a simple stipulation.Private property, if we break it down into its moments, is equally self-contradictory.For example, if some other thing is my private property, it is said to be my private property, which means that it has the value of a universal, fixed, and lasting thing, which is consistent with its nature. Contradictory, because by its very nature it is a thing to be used, a self-disappearing thing.At the same time, my stuff is also contradictory.Saying that it belongs to me means that everything else is recognized as mine, and it excludes everything else, and it is something that others are not allowed to touch.But the fact that I am recognized by others also implies my identity with all others, and identity is the opposite of exclusion. —What I possess is always a thing, and the thing is a being for him in general, and therefore is a being for me only indeterminately and indeterminately in general; The general nature of things contradicts.Therefore private property and non-private property are equally self-contradictory in all respects, and they both have in themselves the two opposing and contradictory moments of individuality and universality.However, if private property and non-private property are simply presented as two stipulations without further development, they are also simple stipulations and are not self-contradictory. —Therefore, the measure that reason itself possesses for examining laws is equally suitable for any law, and is therefore in fact no measure at all. — Tautology, the law of contradiction, has been recognized as a purely formal criterion for the knowledge of theoretical truth, that is to say, something completely indifferent to truth and untruth, so if one says It would also be a strange thing that its knowledge of practical truths would be anything more valuable than formal standards.

In the two moments discussed above, which fill the otherwise empty spiritual essence, the attempt to establish immediate determinations in ethical entities, and the attempt to know whether these determinations are laws or not, has been superseded. Own.The consequence, therefore, seems to be that neither definite laws or laws can be produced nor knowledge of laws can be obtained.The ethical substance, however, is that self-consciousness which knows itself to be an absolute essentiality, and which can therefore neither renounce the difference in essence nor its knowledge of it.The fact that both the creation of the law and the examination of the law have superseded themselves means that both of these moments, individually and in isolation, are nothing more than an elusive ethical consciousness by which both present themselves. This process of movement has a formal meaning, because through this process of movement, the ethical entity has revealed itself as consciousness.

If these two moments are two more determinate determinations of the consciousness of the thing itself, we can regard them as two forms of honesty; honesty, which previously always devoted itself to its formal moments, now, seeks out its supposedly good and just moments of content, and examines such fixed truths, thinking that the force and efficacy of the ethical precepts lie in sound reason and intellectual insight. But without this honesty, the law would not be the essence of consciousness, nor would the examination of the law be an action within consciousness; The one signifies an ineffective existence of the actual law, the other an equally ineffective freedom or release from the actual law.Law, as definite law, always has a contingent content—that is to say, it is always a law made out of an individual consciousness of an arbitrary content.

Therefore, the legislation that appears directly is a kind of arbitrary nonsense, which regards arbitrary arbitrariness as a law, and describes ethics as a kind of obedience to those laws that are only laws and not at the same time ethical precepts.Likewise, the second moment, the examination of the law, if it occurs in isolation, is an arbitrary perception, as if immovable things are in motion, which asserts that it has escaped Absolute law, and regards the absolute law as an arbitrary arbitrariness that has nothing to do with itself. In both forms, these two moments are a negative relation to the ethical substance or to the real spiritual essence; in other words, in both forms, the ethical substance has not yet acquired its reality, It is only contained in the immediacy of consciousness itself, it is just a will and consciousness of the individual, or it is just an should and a knowledge of the universality of form in an unreal commandment. That's all.But now that these ways have been superseded, consciousness returns to the universal and the oppositions disappear.The spiritual essence is a real substance precisely because these modes are no longer individual modes of existence but only modes that have been sublated. These modes belong only as moments to a unity, which is the consciousness. Self: The conscious self is then established within the spiritual essence, making the spiritual essence actual, fulfilled, and self-conscious.

Thus, first of all, the spiritual essence is a law that exists in itself for self-consciousness; the formal universality that arises in the process of examination, which does not exist in itself, has been superseded.Secondly, the spiritual essence is an eternal law, which is not based on the will of a specific individual, it exists independently, has the form of direct existence, and is the absolute pure will shared by all individuals.And this absolute, pure will is not a law, for the law only ought to exist, it actually exists and has practical validity; it is the universal self of the category, which is immediately a reality, and the world And just this reality.But since this existing law is absolutely valid, the obedience of self-consciousness to this law cannot be regarded as the service of a master-for if it is to obey the orders of the master, the self-consciousness is in the arbitrary and arbitrary orders of the master. Consciousness cannot recognize itself.On the contrary, these laws are thoughts directly possessed by self-consciousness itself in its own absolute consciousness.Ego-consciousness does not believe in them, because belief inevitably also intuits essences, but what is intuited is always an alien essence.Ethical self-consciousness, by virtue of the universality of its self, is immediately one with essence; whereas faith begins with the individual consciousness which always tends towards this unity and never reaches it. The process of motion of its own essence. —But such individual consciousness has been sublated by itself, the mediation of this unification has been accomplished, and only because of this mediation has the individual consciousness become the immediate self-consciousness of the ethical entity.

The difference between self-consciousness and essence is therefore a completely transparent difference.And then the differences in the essence itself are not accidental determinations, but, on the contrary, due to the unity of the essence and self-consciousness (here the only place where there is any possibility of non-identity), they all come from the being. Groups (Massen) divided out of a unity through which their own life permeates, are unbroken spirits clear in themselves, unblemished celestial images that contain them in their differences The essence of innocence and harmony. — Not only the essence, but also self-consciousness is a simple transparent relation to these differences [different laws].They exist, and only exist—that is the awareness that self-consciousness has of its own relation to them.Therefore, "Antigon" written by Sofcle ① treats them as divine, though unwritten, clear and reliable laws.

① Sentences 456 and 457 in Sophokles' tragedy "Antigone". ——Hegel's original note It can be said that it is not today and yesterday, but never and forever Living there, no one knows when it began to appear. They exist.If I ask their occurrence and limit them to their origin, then I am already beyond them there, because then I am universal and they are conditioned and limited.To say that they deserve the assent of my opinion is to say that I have shaken them from their firmness in themselves and regarded them as something which may or may not be true to me.And ethical thinking lies in unswervingly adhering to the correct and right things, and avoiding any changes, shakes and changes to the legal and right things. —Let us suppose that a deposit is kept by me.This deposit is someone else's property, [or rather, it exists as someone else's property,] and I recognize it as someone else's property, because it so exists, and I maintain my This relationship with deposits.But if I take for myself the sums saved by this generation, then, according to my principle of examination, tautology, I have no contradiction at all; because by then I no longer regard it as a person and it is perfectly justified to appropriate to myself what I do not regard as the property of anyone else.A change in opinion is not a contradiction; for what is said here should not contradict itself, but refers only to objects and contents and not to opinions.Just as I can change my point of view when I give something from being mine to being someone else's without getting myself into conflict with it, so I can change my point of view from being something else in reverse. Someone else's property is changed to this is my property. —So something is right not because I find something in it that is not self-contradictory, but it is right because it is right.That something is someone else's property, or that it exists as someone else's property, is, or is, the basis of everything; I need neither discuss it nor seek various ideas about it. I need not, of course, consider the enactment of the laws, nor the examination of them; by such operations of my mind I have reversed that relation, for in fact I have been quite at will to make the opposite of the relation The same fits well with my knowledge of unregulated tautologies and thus establishes them as law.But which of this and its opposite is true is determined for itself and for itself; as far as I am concerned, I may make law whatever I please, and so may I. Saying that nothing can be made into law, and by the time I started reviewing, I was already on the path of being unethical.I dwell in the ethical substance because the right thing exists for me in itself; the ethical substance is therefore the essence of self-consciousness; and self-consciousness is the reality and actual existence of the ethical substance. , is its self and will.