1.  In the moral world view we see consciousness itself generating its own object in full awareness.  We do not see it finding its object as something pre-existing and alien, nor does the object come into being for consciousness somehow unconsciously.  No, everywhere it proceeds according to a reason, a ground from out of which it sets up the objective essence.  Consciousness thus knows this objective essence as itself, for it knows itself to be the active agent generating it.  ²Consciousness seems here to have found its peace and satisfaction.  It can only find this were it no longer needs to go beyond its object because the object itself no longer goes beyond consciousness.  ³On the other hand, however, consciousness does indeed set its object up outside itself as something beyond itself.  ⁴Still, this being in and for itself is also established as something that is not free of self-consciousness.  Indeed, it only exists through and for self-consciousness.

2.  The moral world view is thus in fact nothing other than the development of this fundamental contradiction according to its different sides; it is, to use a Kantian expression here where it fits best, a whole nest of thoughtless contradictions [Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. B 637. M].  ²In this development consciousness proceeds by fixing a moment and immediately transiting from that on to the next, overcoming the first one; but the way consciousness asserts the second moment is duplicitous and distorts it, effectively setting up its opposite as essence.  ³Consciousness is quite well aware of its own contradiction and duplicity here, for it moves from one moment directly in relation to it over to the opposite.  Because one moment alone has no reality for it, consciousness sets that moment up as real or, what amounts to the same thing, in order to assert one moment as being in itself it claims the opposite is the being in itself.  ⁴With this it acknowledges that it is not serious about any of them.  ⁵We must now look more closely at the moments of this dizzying motion.

3.  Let us leave the assumption that there does exist a real moral consciousness [VI.C.a. Moral world view §3 M] to one side for the moment.  It is not made directly in relation to something prior.  Let us turn instead to the harmony of morality and nature, the first postulate.  ²This is supposed to be in itself [VI.C.a. Moral world view §4.7-9 M], not for actual consciousness, not present; the present is rather just the contradiction between the two.  ³In the present, morality is assumed to be available, while reality is asserted to be that with which morality is not in harmony.  ⁴Actual moral consciousness, however, is active; it is precisely in this that the actual reality of its morality lies.  ⁵In the activity, however, that position is directly distorted, for activity is nothing other than the realization of the inner moral purpose, nothing other than the production of an actual reality determined by the purpose, i.e. the harmony of the moral purpose and reality itself.  ⁶At the same time the execution of the activity is for consciousness; the execution is the presence of this unity of reality and purpose; and because consciousness realizes itself as this single individual in the completed action, i.e. it sees existence returned back into it, which is where the pleasure lies, so the actual reality of the moral purpose contains also the form of reality called pleasure and happiness.

– ⁷The action really does fulfil immediately what was not set up to actually happen and was only supposed to be a postulate, only a beyond.  ⁸Consciousness thus says it clearly in its act that it is not really serious about postulation, for the sense of the action is rather to bring that into the present which has no place there.  ⁹Now, since the harmony is postulated for the sake of the activity – i.e. what is supposed to become actual through the action must be in itself that, otherwise that reality would not be possible – hence the relation between activity and postulate is so constituted that for the sake of the activity, i.e. for the sake of the harmony of purpose and reality, this harmony is asserted to be not actual, but a beyond.

4.  Simply because action is undertaken, it is clear that there is no real concern about the mismatch between purpose and reality; although it does appear to be serious about the action itself.  ²In fact, the actual action is only action of the single, individual consciousness, i.e. itself only something single and the resulting work is a matter of chance.  ³The purpose of reason, however, the universal, all-encompassing purpose, is nothing less than the whole world, an ultimate purpose that goes far beyond the content of this single action and hence must be established completely above and beyond all actual activity.  ⁴Because the universal best should be executed, nothing good is done.  ⁵In fact, the claims that actual activity is worthless, null and void, and that only the whole purpose has reality are distorted on all sides.  ⁶Moral activity is not something contingent and limited; it has pure duty for its essence.  Pure duty constitutes the single, whole purpose, while the action is thus, as realization of pure duty, even with all the other limitations of content, the execution of the whole absolute purpose.  ⁷Put in other terms, if again we take reality as the nature that has its own laws and is opposed to pure duty, so that duty cannot realize its law in nature itself, and given that duty as such is the essence, then it is not about the execution of the pure duty that is the whole purpose; for the execution would not have pure duty but its opposite, reality, for its purpose.  ⁸Again, that it is not about actual reality is distorted, for according to the concept of moral activity, pure duty is essentially active consciousness; this means that activity should indeed be undertaken and the absolute duty should be expressed in the whole of nature; the moral law should become a natural law.

5.  Let us now accept this highest good as the essence; in this case it is clear that consciousness is not serious at all about morality.  ²For in this highest good, nature does not have another law than morality has.  ³With this moral action itself is not possible, for it is only possible when a negative is given that is to be overcome by the action.  ⁴If nature does accord with the moral law, this law would in fact be breached by the action, by the overcoming of the given existence.

– ⁵That assumption as the essential condition involves the acknowledgement that moral action is superfluous and does not happen at all.  ⁶The postulate of the harmony of morality and reality – a harmony asserted by the concept of moral action as bringing the two into agreement – is expressed from this side in the following terms: moral action is the absolute purpose, so the absolute purpose is that moral action should not exist at all.

6.  Let's bring these moments, through which consciousness has passed in its moral thinking, then it is clear that they are all mutually overcome by their opposites.  ²Consciousness starts from the assumption there that for it morality and reality are not in harmony, but it is not serious about that because for it the presence of this harmony lies in action.  ³Neither is consciousness serious about this action, being something single; for consciousness has such a high purpose, indeed, the highest good.  ⁴This again, unfortunately, is just a distortion of the situation, otherwise it would render all actin and all morality null and void.  ⁵Indeed, consciousness is not genuinely serious about moral action and it says rather that the most desirable, the absolute, is that the highest good should be carried out rendering moral action superfluous.

7.  In its contradictory motion, consciousness must push itself further along away from this result and must again distort that overcoming, elimination, of moral action.  ²Morality is the in itself.  For morality to exist at all the ultimate purpose of the world cannot have been accomplished; moral consciousness must be for itself and must find a nature opposed to it pre-existing.  ³But moral consciousness must be complete in itself.  ⁴This leads to the second postulate of the harmony of itself and the nature that is immediately there in moral consciousness, i.e. sensuousness [VI.C.a. Moral world view §5.11 ff M].  ⁵Moral self-consciousness sets up its purpose as pure, independent of inclinations and instincts, so that it has rooted out the intentions of sensuousness within it.

– ⁶Unfortunately, it once again distorts this claimed overcoming of sensuous essence.  ⁷Consciousness acts, brings its purpose into reality, while the self-conscious sensuousness, which is supposed to be overcome, is precisely the midpoint between pure consciousness and reality – it is the tool of the first for its realization, the organ and what is called instinct, inclination.  ⁸Consciousness is thus not serious about overcoming inclinations and instincts, for precisely they constitute the self-consciousness that realizes itself.  ⁹They should not be suppressed, but only conform with reason.  ¹⁰And they are in conformity with reason, for moral action is nothing other than self-realizing consciousness, i.e. consciousness giving itself the embodied form of an instinct; it is immediately the present harmony of instinct and morality.  ¹¹In fact, however, instinct is not just this empty form with a spring in it, something different from itself by which it could be driven.  ¹²Sensuousness is a kind of nature with its own laws and its own spring within it; so morality cannot be serious about being the mainspring of instincts, the angle of inclination, so to speak, of inclinations.  ¹³These have their own fixed, determinate character and peculiar content, so the consciousness with which they accord would rather accord with them.  This is an accord that moral self-consciousness forbids itself.  ¹⁴The harmony of the two is thus only in itself and postulated.

– ¹⁵We just had the present harmony of morality and sensuousness in moral action, but this is now distorted.  This harmony is beyond consciousness in a misty distance in which nothing more precise can be distinguished, nor can it be conceptually comprehended.  We just tried comprehending this unity and nothing came of it.

– ¹⁶In this in itself, however, consciousness abandons itself.  ¹⁷This in itself is its moral completion in which the struggle of morality and sensuousness has ceased and the latter is in accordance with the former in a manner that cannot be grasped.

– ¹⁸This is why this completion is again only a distortion of the situation.  In fact, it is rather the case that in it morality abandoned itself, for it is only the consciousness of the absolute purpose as the pure purpose, therefore in opposition to all other purposes.  It is just as much the activity of this pure purpose as it is elevation above sensuousness, aware of each intervening in the other and of their opposition and struggle with it.

– ¹⁹Consciousness says itself directly that it is not serious about moral perfection with its duplicity in pushing it out into infinity, i.e consciousness claims that it is never perfected.

8.  It is rather this intermediate condition of incompleteness that really counts for moral consciousness.  At least it is supposed to be a progress towards perfection.  ²In fact, that's not true either, for this progress in morality would be rather the path to its own downfall.  ³It would make of the goal the nullity mentioned above [§4.5], the overcoming of morality and consciousness itself; getting ever closer to nothingness, however, means diminishing.  ⁴Moreover, progress and diminishing involve assumptions of differences of magnitude in morality; but there can be no talk of that.  ⁵In morality as the consciousness whose customary ethical purpose is pure duty difference as such is unthinkable, least of all the superficial difference of magnitude.  There exists only one virtue, only one pure duty, only one morality.

9.  Moral perfection is not a serious issue here; the real concern is with the intermediate condition, i.e. as just discussed, with non-morality, and this brings us back to the content of the first postulate from another angle.  ²It is not at all clear how happiness can be demanded for this moral consciousness because it is supposedly worthy of it.  ³Being perfectly well aware of its imperfection, it cannot demand happiness as its due, not as something of which it is worthy; it can only demand it as a free act of grace.  It can only demand happiness in and for itself without appealing to that absolute reason or ground, but wait to receive it by chance, arbitrarily [VI.C.a. Moral world view §4.7-9 and §10.3-§11.2 M].

– ⁴The lack of morality well expresses here what it is – that it is not really concerned with morality, but with happiness in and for itself and unrelated to morality.

10.  This second side to the moral world view overcomes the other claim from the first, in which the disharmony of morality and happiness was assumed.

– ²Experience suggests here that in this present morality often does badly and immorality is the happy one.  ³In fact, however, the intermediate condition of imperfect morality, which emerged as the essential one, clearly shows that this perception and supposed experience is only a distortion of the situation.  ⁴Since morality is imperfect, i.e. morality in fact does not exist, how can there be anything to the experience that morality is having a hard time?

– ⁵It was just established that the real issue is happiness in and for itself, which shows that the judgement that immorality is doing well does not imply any injustice here.  ⁶Dubbing an individual immoral becomes inherently irrelevant if morality is inherently imperfect, which means the grounds for doing so can only be arbitrary.  ⁷Consequently, the sense and content of the judgement of experience is solely the following: there are people who should not have happiness in and for itself, and this is just envy disguised as morality.  ⁸The reason, however, why so-called happiness should fall to others is the good friendship that grants and wishes this grace, i.e. this chance, for those others and for itself.

11.  Moral consciousness leaves morality incomplete, imperfect.  This is what has now become clear.  However, morality's essence is nothing other than to be perfect purity.  Imperfect morality is thus impure, it is immorality.  ²Morality thus lies in a different essence, not in actual consciousness, but in a holy moral law-maker.

– ³The incomplete morality in consciousness, the morality that is the ground of this postulation, initially has the meaning that the morality asserted as actual in consciousness stands in relation to another, to an existence.  Morality here acquires otherness, difference, within it generating a variety of moral commandments.  ⁴At the same time, however, moral self-consciousness regards these many duties as inessential; for it is only concerned with the one pure duty, so for moral self-consciousness, to the extent that they are definite, specific, they have no truth.  ⁵They can thus can only have their truth in another, a holy law-maker, which makes them holy, something they are not for moral self-consciousness.

– ⁶Unfortunately, once again duplicity is at work here.  ⁷Moral self-consciousness is the absolute to itself and duty as such is only what moral self-consciousness know to be duty.  ⁸There is only one thing it knows to be duty and that is pure duty.  What is not holy to moral self-consciousness is in itself not holy and what is in itself not holy cannot be sanctified by the holy essence, the holy being.  ⁹Moral consciousness is not at all serious about letting something be sanctified by another consciousness, one that is not itself; for only that is holy to moral consciousness which it makes holy within it.

– ¹⁰It is thus no more serious about the other essence being holy, for in it something should reach the status of essence which for moral consciousness, i.e. in itself, is not essential at all.

12.  When it was postulated of the holy essence, the holy being, that in it duty is not pure duty, but a plurality of specific duties with their own validity, this must again have been just duplicity.  This other being can be holy only if pure duty is valid for it.  ²Pure duty has indeed validity only n another being, not in the moral consciousness.  ³Although in it pure morality alone seems to be valid, this other must also be accepted, for it is natural consciousness.  ⁴In it morality is coloured and conditioned by sensuousness and hence not in and for itself, but a contingency of free will; in this, however, as pure will, it is a contingency of knowledge.  In and for itself morality is thus in an other essence.

13.  This essence is thus here pure, perfected morality simply because in it morality does not stand in any relation to nature and sensuousness.  ²Now, the reality of pure duty is its realization in nature and sensuousness.  ³Moral consciousness asserts its imperfection in the fact that within it morality has a positive relation to nature and sensuousness, while it holds the condition that morality should have only a negative relation to them to be an essential moment.  ⁴Pure moral essence, on the other hand, because it is elevated above the struggle with nature and sensuousness, does not stand in a negative relation to them.  ⁵All that remains to it in fact is the positive relation to them, i.e. precisely that which was just declared to be imperfection itself as lacking morality.  ⁶Pure morality completely separated from actual reality, hence also without a positive relation to it, would be an unconscious, unreal abstraction in which the concept of morality, i.e. thinking pure duty and willing and doing, is overcome, eliminated.  ⁷Once again this essence, so pure and moral, is a duplicitous distortion of the matter and must be abandoned.

14.  Still, in this pure moral essence at least the moments of the contradiction come closer together.  Conflicting 'also's follow each other in the contradiction in which this synthetic thinking moves around without bringing their respective thoughts together, constantly letting one opposite replace the other, so much, indeed, that consciousness here must give up its moral world view and flee back into itself.

15.  Consciousness recognizes that its morality is not perfect because it is coloured by the sensuousness and nature opposed to it, which can darken morality itself and even create a number of responsibilities that can get it into embarrassing difficulties in concrete cases of actual activity.  Each case is the concretion of many moral relations, just as any object of perception is a thing of many properties [II. Perception – Thing and Deception §§1-6].  The determinate duty is purpose, so it has a content and its content is a part of the purpose, which means that morality is not pure.

– ²This morality thus has its reality in another essence.  ³But that reality is nothing other than the morality here that is in and for itself.  For itself, i.e. it is the morality of a consciousness; in itself means having existence and actual reality.

– ⁴In that first imperfect consciousness morality is not implemented; it is an in itself in the sense of a thing of thought.  It is associated with nature and sensuousness, with the actual reality of being and consciousness, which constitute morality's content, but nature and sensuousness are the moral zero, null.

– ⁵In the second, morality is present as perfect and not as an unimplemented thing of thought.  ⁶But this perfection lies precisely in the fact that morality has within one consciousness actual reality, and free, actual reality at that, existence as such; that it is not empty, but fulfilled and full of content.  This means that the perfection of morality is asserted in the fact that what was just called the moral zero lies in it, is present within it.  ⁷Morality here should at one time have validity simply as the unreal thing of thought, a pure abstraction, while simultaneously in just this way also have no validity at all; morality's truth should lie in being opposed to actual reality, completely free of it, empty, and again in being actual reality.

16.  The syncretic character of these contradictions revealed by the analysis of the moral world view collapses here because the difference on which it rests is of a kind that necessarily must be thought and asserted, while also being inessential.  It comes down to a difference that doesn't even lie in the words any more.  ²What in the end was asserted to be a difference, the nullity as well as the reality, is one and the same, existence and actual reality.  What was absolute only as the beyond of actual being and consciousness and simultaneously only that within it, a beyond that was a nothing, is in fact pure duty and the knowledge of it is knowledge of the essence.  ³Consciousness here draws a difference that is none of the kind.  It declares actual reality to be simultaneously null and void and real.  Pure morality is for it simultaneously the true essence and that which is devoid of essence.  Now it brings the thoughts it formerly separated together.  What it in fact expresses in all this is that it is not really serious about these terms, not serious about separating the moments of the self and the in itself.  What it declares to be absolute given being outside consciousness it in fact holds enclosed within the self of self-consciousness, while what it dubs absolute thought, absolute in itself, it in fact takes to be what has no truth at all.

– ⁴Laying these moments apart in their separation turns out for consciousness to be a distortion and it would be duplicity, hypocrisy, for it to hold on to them all.  ⁵As pure, moral self-consciousness it must flee from this incongruity of its thinking and what it regards as its essence, away from this untruth, which declares to be true what counts as untrue for it.  It flees with contempt and revulsion back into itself.  ⁶It is now pure conscience that rejects with repugnance such a moral world view.  It is in itself now simple, self-certain, spirited mind acting in good conscience without the mediation of those images and thoughts and it has its truth in this immediacy.

– ⁷If, however, this world of distortion and duplicity is nothing other than the development of moral self-consciousness in its moments and hence its reality, its essence is such that this return into itself cannot make it into anything other than that.  The return into itself means rather that it has arrived at the awareness that its truth is pre-existing, given.  ⁸It would still have to claim this to be its truth, for it would have to present itself as objective all the while knowing that it's just a distortion.  This would indeed make it hypocrisy and that contempt for the distortion would already be the first expression of its duplicity.