C.
AA. Reason
V. Certainty and Truth of Reason
C. Individuality in and for itself real to itself
c. Reason scrutinizing law
[1. Principle of non-contradiction – tautology]
1. A distinction in simple customary ethical substance is a chance occurrence for it, which we saw emerge clearly in the determinate commandment as contingency of knowledge, of actual reality and of action [V.C.b. Reason making law §§6 - 8].
2The comparison between simple being there and the defining terms incongruent with it fell in us. Simple substance showed itself in that to be formal universality, a pure consciousness free of the content it confronts and a knowledge of that as determinate content. 3In this way the universality here remains the same as what the matter itself was [V.C.a. Spirit/mind animal kingdom etc. §14.3-6 M]. 4In consciousness now, it is something else. In consciousness it is no longer thoughtless, inert genus; here it is the genus bound to the particular, for whose power and truth it is now responsible.
– 5This consciousness appears initially to be the same scrutinizing and testing that we were previously. It would seem that its activity can be nothing other than what has already happened, namely a comparison of the universal with the determinate particular from which their incongruence emerges, just like before. 6In fact, the relation of the content to the universal is very different here, because the universal has acquired a different meaning. It is formal universality that can encompass determinate content because it is only considered in relation to itself in that universality. 7In our scrutinizing [V.C.b. Reason making law §§6 - 10] universal, genuine substance was opposed to the determinate term, which developed into a contingency of the consciousness into which substance penetrated. 8Now one of the participants in the comparison has disappeared. The universal is no longer the given and valid substance, right in and for itself. Now it is simple knowledge or form comparing a content only with itself, scrutinizing it to determine whether it is a tautology. 9Laws are no longer made; now they are scrutinized. Now the laws are already given for scrutinizing consciousness. It accepts their content as is without getting into questions of the individual particularities and contingencies attaching to the content's reality, as we did previously. Scrutinizing consciousness stops at the commandment as commandment, relating just as directly to it as the commandment is its criterion.
2. This is why this scrutiny doesn't get very far. Precisely because the criterion is tautology and indifferent to the content, the criterion accepts one content just as well as its opposite.
– 2Consder the question: should it be a law in and for itself that property should exist? In and for itself means not on grounds of utility for other purposes. The essential quality of ethics here lies in the fact that the law should only be equal to itself, grounded in its own essence through this identity with itself, not determined by anything else. 3Property is not, in and for itself, self-contradictory. It is an isolated determinate term, only equal to itself. 4Non-property – things free of lordship, communal property – is just as free from self-contradiction. 5That something belongs to no-one, or to the next best person who takes it into his property, or to everyone together, to each according to his needs, or to all in equal parts, these formulations are simple determinate terms, formal thoughts, just like their opposite: property.
– 6When the masterless thing is fairly judged to be a necessary object of need, then it is necessary that it become the property of some particular individual, so making freedom of things into a law is what would be contradictory. 7Masterlessness of things is not intended to mean an absolute masterlessness; rather, the thing should enter into possession according to the needs of the single individual; and not to be stored away, but to be used directly. 8On the other hand, catering to one's needs by chance as the occasion arises does in fact contradict the nature of the conscious living being, which is the only one we're talking about here. For it must think of its needs in the form of universality; it must cater to its entire existence and acquire persistent, durable goods. 9In these terms the claim that a thing should fall by chance to the nearest self-conscious living being according to its needs is not really congruent with itself.
– 10Under communal property, with its general and enduring modalities for ensuring that everyone's needs are met, either everyone gets as much as he needs – which entails a contradiction between this inequality and the essence of that consciousness whose principle is the equality between single individuals. 11Or, things are distributed equally following the latter principle, in which case portion and need would not stand in that relation which alone is the concept behind the distribution.
3. In fact, if non-property appears contradictory in this way, that happens only because it was not left as a simple determinate term. 2The same goes for property when it is dismantled into moments. 3The individual thing that is my property then stands as a universal, fixed, enduring thing. This contradicts its nature, which consists in being used, consumed and vanishing. 4It is simultaneously mine and is recognized by all others as such, who exclude themselves from it. 5But the fact that I am recognized involves my equality with everyone else, which is the opposite of exclusion.
– 6What I possess is a thing, i.e. a being for another as such, completely general and not specified as being just for me. That I possess it contradicts its universal thinghood. 7For these reasons property contradicts itself on all counts just as much as non-property does. Both have these antithetical, contradictory moments of singularity and universality within them.
– 8But wait! These terms considered in such simple terms as property or non-property without further development are each as simple as the other, i.e. not self-contradictory at all.
– 9The criterion of law that reason has within itself thus serves all equally well and is consequently no criterion at all.
– 10It would be a strange situation indeed if the tautology, the principle of non-contradiction, which is accepted only as a formal criterion for the knowledge of theoretical truth, i.e. as something completely indifferent to truth and untruth, should count for something more in the case of practical truth.
4. The assertion of immediate determinate terms in customary ethical substance and the knowledge of whether they are laws are the two moments we have been considering that filled previously empty spiritual/mental essence, but now both have been overcome, eliminated. 2So the result seems to be this: that neither determinate laws nor a knowledge of them can be formulated. 3However, substance is consciousness of itself as absolute essence, which means it can abandon neither the difference within it nor the knowledge of that difference. 4Making law turned out to be as null and void as scrutinizing law and this means that taking either of them alone and in isolation makes them unstable moments of customary ethical consciousness. The motion in which these moments emerge has the formal meaning of enabling customary ethical substance to present itself as consciousness.
5. These two moments are more precise definitions of the consciousness of the matter itself, so they can be seen as forms of honesty [V.C.a. Spirit/mind animal kingdom §§15,16 M], which, as elsewhere with its formal moments, operates together with a content of what should be good and right together with a scrutiny of such fixed truth and fancies it has the force and validity of commandments in healthy reason and the insight of the understanding.
[2. Laws not commandments]
6. Without this honesty, however, the laws are not valid as essence of consciousness, neither is the scrutiny valid as an action within consciousness. Rather, just as each for itself emerges as an actual reality, the one moment expresses an invalid formulation and being of actual laws, the other a similarly invalid liberation from the same. 2When determinate, law has a contingent content and here that means it's the law of a single, individual consciousness of arbitrary content. 3That immediate law-making is then tyrannical iniquity that sets up what is arbitrary as law and reduces the customary ethical order to obedience to it, i.e. to what are only laws and not commandments too. 4Similarly, the second moment, the scrutiny of laws, when isolated, amounts to moving the immovable and the iniquity of knowledge; an iniquity that argues its way free of absolute laws, denouncing them as arbitrary and alien to it.
7. In both forms these moments represent a negative relation to substance, to the real spiritual/mental essence. Substance does not yet have its reality in these moments, for consciousness contains substance still in the form of its own immediacy making it as yet only the will and knowledge of this individual: the 'ought' of an unreal commandment and a knowledge of formal universality. 2But these modes overcame each other, rendered each other individually invalid, so consciousness returned into the universal and those oppositions disappeared. 3That's what makes spiritual/mental essence actual substance, namely that these modes are not valid on their own, but only as overcome; the unity in which they are just moments is the self of consciousness, which, now established in that spiritual/mental essence, turns it into the actual, full, self-conscious essence.
8. For self-consciousness now the spiritual/mental essence is thus initially in itself given, existing law; the universality of the scrutiny, which was the formal kind not existing in itself, is overcome, cancelled. 2It is just as much an eternal law, it doesn't have its ground in the will of this particular individual. Rather, it is in and for itself and as such absolute, pure will of all in the form of immediate being. 3It is not just a commandment that only should be, for it is and is valid. It is the universal ego, I, of the category [V. Certainty and Truth of Reason §§5 - 8] that is immediately actual reality; and the world is nothing but this actual reality. 4Since this given, existing law is simply valid as such, the obedience to it by self-consciousness is not the servility to a lord whose orders could be arbitrary and in which self-consciousness cannot recognize itself. 5Now the laws are thoughts of its own absolute consciousness, which it has immediately. 6It doesn't believe in them, for, while belief looks on the essence too, it sees it as an alien essence. 7The universality of its self makes customary ethical self-consciousness immediately one with that essence. Belief, in contrast, starts with the single, individual consciousness. Belief is the motion of individual consciousness caught up in constantly setting out for that unity without ever arriving in the presence of its own essence.
– 8That consciousness, on the other hand, overcame, went beyond, itself as single consciousness and the mediation thereby accomplished – and only because it is accomplished – establishes it as immediate self-consciousness of customary ethical substance.
[3. Antigone's unwritten laws]
9. This all makes the difference between self-consciousness and essence thoroughly transparent. 2It also means that the differences in the essence are not just contingent definition features or determinate terms. Because of the unity of essence and self-consciousness, from which latter alone the inequality could come, they are the masses of their articulation into members, sodden with their life, undivided spirits clear to themselves, unblemished, heavenly figures, which maintain the unsullied innocence and harmony of their essence within their differences.
– 3Self-consciousness is equally simple, clear relation to them. 4They are and nothing more – this is what constitutes the consciousness of its relation. 5For Sophocles' Antigone they lie in the unwritten and infallible law of the gods:
Not just now and yesteryear, but always there
It lives, and no-one here can tell from where.
[Sophocles, Antigone V, lines 456,7 M]
6They are. 7If I enquire into their original emergence and confine them to their point of origin, then I have already gone beyond that point, for that makes me into the universal, but them just something conditioned and limited. 8Where they are supposed to justify themselves to my insight, I have already moved their imperturbable being in itself, regarding them as perhaps true, but maybe not true for me. 9The customary ethical disposition consists precisely in standing hard, firm and unmoved on what is right and desisting from all movement, from rearranging it or trying to explain it by reference to something prior.
– 10Something is deposited with me. It is the property of another, but I acknowledge it because it is just that and I persist unbending in this relation. 11If I keep the deposit for myself, that does not involve any contradiction whatsoever according to the principle of my scrutiny, tautology; for I soon regard it as no longer the property of another. Keeping something that I don't regard as the property of another is perfectly consistent. 12The alteration in attitude is not a contradiction, for it's not about the attitude as such, but about the object and content, which is not supposed to contradict itself. 13Just as when I give something away I can change my perspective from saying that it is my property into saying that it is the property of another without being guilty of a contradiction, so I can also take the opposite path.
– 14Thus, it is not the case that something is right, law simply because I don't find it to be self-contradictory. No, it is right, law because it is right, correct. 15The fact of being the property of another lies at its very ground; I have not to argue with that, not to look for various thoughts, relationships, aspects or whatever, nor to bring them up if they occur to me. I have no business here making laws or scrutinizing them. It was through such motions in my mind that I dislodged that relation and was actually able to use my indeterminate tautological knowledge arbitrarily to make the opposite view into a law. 16The fact is that whether this or the opposite term is the right one is already determined in and for itself. For myself, I could take whichever I wanted, or just as well make neither of them into a law, which puts me, simply by starting to scrutinize, already on an unethical path. 17Only when I hold what is right to be in and for itself, only that places me firmly within customary ethical substance; that's what makes this substance the essence of self-consciousness and self-consciousness the actual reality, existence, self and will of substance.
