1.  In its simple being spiritual/mental essence is pure consciousness and this self-consciousness.  ²The originally determinate nature of the individual has lost its positive meaning of being in itself element and purpose of his activity, [V. C. a. Spiritual/mental animal kingdom §2.3 ff. M].  That nature is now just a moment overcome and the individual is now a self, a universal self.   ³Conversely, the formal matter itself now has its filling, its fulfilment, in active individuality differentiating itself within itself, for the differences generated by this individuality make up the content of that universal, that universal self.  ⁴The category [V. Certainty and Truth of Reason §§5 - 8] is in itself as the universal of pure consciousness; the category is equally for itself, since the self of consciousness is no less its moment.  ⁵The category is absolute being, for its universality is the simple self-identity of being.

2.  The object of consciousness thus has the significance of being what is true.  It is and has force in the sense that it is, and as such is valid, in and for itself.  It is the absolute matter in that it no longer suffers from the antitheses of certainty and truth, universal and individual, goal and its reality.  Now its existence, its presence, is the actual reality, and the action, of self-consciousness.  This matter is thus customary ethical substance and the consciousness of it is customary ethical consciousness.  ²Binding self-consciousness and being into just one unity, this consciousness too takes its object to be what is true.  Indeed, as the absolute, for self-consciousness cannot, and does not want to, go beyond this object because it is at home with itself therein.  It cannot: simply because this object is all being and power; it does not want to: because the object is the self or the will of this self.  ³As object, it is inherently the real object because it has the difference of consciousness within it.  It divides itself into masses, which are the specific laws of absolute essence.  ⁴But these masses do not cloud up the concept, for it holds the moments of being, pure consciousness, and self bound within it – a unity that constitutes the essence of those masses and which no longer lets these moments separate from each other in terms of this difference.

3.  These laws, or masses, of customary ethical substance are immediately recognized.  Their origin and justification cannot be questioned, nor is it possible to look for alternatives; an other to essence in and for itself would be nothing other than self-consciousness itself.  But there is nothing other than this essence, for it is itself the being for itself of this essence, which is the truth precisely because it is just as much the self of consciousness as its in itself, pure consciousness.

4.  Knowing itself to be this substance's moment of being for itself, self-consciousness expresses the existence of the law within it in such a way that healthy reason immediately knows what is right and good.  ²And just as immediately it has authority for that healthy reason; it says emphatically: this is right and good.  ³That means specific laws, the matter itself literally brimming with content.

6.  "Everyone should tell the truth."

– ²Confronted with this as an absolute duty, the condition will be readily accepted: if one knows the truth.  ³The commandment now reads like this: "Everyone should speak the truth as he sees it in each case according to his knowledge and conviction."  ⁴Healthy reason, this customary ethical consciousness that knows implicitly what is right and good, will declare that this condition is so deeply bound to its own statement that this is how it meant the commandment in the first place.  ⁵In fact, with this it acknowledges that even in uttering the commandment, it already transgressed against it.  It said: "Everyone should tell the truth," but what it meant was: everyone should do that according to their knowledge and conviction of the truth.  Clearly, healthy reason spoke differently from what it meant and saying something different from what one means amounts to not speaking the truth at all.  ⁶The improved untruth, or awkward expression, now looks like this: Everyone should tell the truth in each case according to his knowledge and conviction of it.

– ⁷Now, however, what was universally necessary and valid in itself that the sentence wanted to express has turned into a complete contingency.  ⁸Whether the truth is actually uttered or not is left to chance: whether I know it and can convince myself it is the truth.  In fact, nothing more is said than that a mix of truth and falsity, just as they come, should be uttered as the speaker knows, means, or understands them.  ⁹This contingency of content only has universality in the sentence form in which it is expressed.  A statement of customary ethics, it promises something universal and necessary, but with this chance content it contradicts itself.

– ¹⁰What happens now, finally, if the sentence is corrected to read thus: no more of chance in the knowledge and conviction of the truth; now the truth should be known?  This would be a commandment contradicting the original one!  ¹¹Healthy reason should be capable of immediately uttering the truth right from the start.  In the latest formulation, however, that it should know the truth, this amounts to a confession that it does not know how to express it immediately.

– ¹²As for the content, that's gone once the demand is accepted that one should know the truth, which refers to knowledge as such: one should know.  What is demanded here is what is free of all determinate content.  ¹³But we started out talking about a determinate content, about a difference in customary ethical substance.  ¹⁴Unfortunately, that immediate defining characteristic in it turned out to be a content that is pure chance; elevated into universality and necessity in order to express knowledge as law, in fact the content completely disappears.

7.  "Love thy neighbour as thyself."  Another famous commandment [e.g. Leviticus 19,18; Matthew 22,39].  ²It is directed at the individual in relation to other individuals and asserts the commandment AS a relationship of one individual to another, as a relationship of feeling.  ³Active love – an inactive love has no being, so that's not what's meant – works to keep bad things away from someone and to bring good things to him.  ⁴To this end distinctions have to be made as to what would be bad for him; what would be good and effective against the bad; and generally on his well-being.  So I have to love him with understanding; love without understanding could harm him, perhaps even more than hate.  ⁵Doing what is essentially good with understanding we find in its most abundant and most important form in the general action with understanding of the state.  Compared with such action of the state, that of the individual is so negligible that it's almost not worth the effort to even speak of it.  ⁶State action is of such great power that if the individual opposes it as explicitly as in crime, or if he wanted, for the sake of another, to cheat the general interest out of its right and share in the individual's activity, that would all be quite useless and he would be utterly destroyed.  ⁷All that remains to the good act, which is feeling, sentiment, is the status of a single, individual act, a help in need, which is as contingent as it is transitory.  ⁸Chance determines not only its occasion, but also whether it is a good work at all, whether it is not immediately rendered irrelevant and even turned into a bad deed.  ⁹Activity for the good of others, declared to be necessary, is thus so constituted that it can perhaps exist, but also perhaps not; when an occasion arises for something substantial to be done it may be good, but it may not be.  ¹⁰This law thus has no more of a universal content than the first one we considered and does not express something that is in and for itself, as an absolute law of ethics should.  ¹¹Such so-called laws don't get beyond 'should' and don't have any actual reality.  They are not laws, but commandments.

9.  What remains to law-making is thus the pure form of universality: consciousness' tautology confronting content and this pure form of universality is a kind of knowledge.  Knowledge not of given or genuine content, but knowledge of that content's essence, i.e. of its self-identity.

10.  Customary ethical essence is consequently not directly itself a content, but only a criterion for determining whether a content qualifies as a law or not simply in terms of the principle that it does not contradict itself.  ²Law-making reason is downgraded to a merely scrutinizing reason.