amazing how incomprehensible one can be even when using relatively simple language.
I’m reading Hegel’s the Philosophy of Right for my sustainable development class (don’t ask), and am currently in possession of two translations–I thought that somehow if I didn’t understand one, the other could help (hmm, sort of like civil code translations?).
ahem. kinda getting stuck on Morality.
Knox edition, ¶106:
The second sphere, Morality, therefore throughout portrays the real aspect of the concept of freedom, and the movement of this sphere is as follows: the will, which at the start is aware only of its independence and which before it is mediated is only implicitly identical with the universal will or the principle of the will, is raised beyond its [explicit] difference from the universal will, beyond this situation in which it sinks deeper and deeper into itself, and is established as explicitly identical with the principle of the will. This process is accordingly the cultivation of the ground in which freedom is now set, i.e. subjectivity. What happens is that subjectivity, which is abstract at the start, i.e. distinct from the concept, becomes likened to it, and thereby the Idea acquires its genuine realization. The result is that the subjective will determines itself as objective too and so as truly concrete.
White edition, ¶106:
The second sphere, morality, therefore exhibits in its entirety the real aspect of the concept of freedom, and the process of this sphere is as follows: the will, which at the start is only as itself and therefore immediately only in itself identical with the universal will–the will that is in itself–must submerge itself within itself in accordance with this distinction; it thereby suspends itself and the distinction, positing itself, as itself, as identical with the will that is in itself. This movement is thus the working over of freedom’s new ground, subjectivity. What happens is that subjectivity, which begins as abstract–i.e., as distinct from the concept–becomes equal to it, thereby attaining for the idea its true realization: the subjective will determines itself as one that is likewise objective, and thus truly concrete.
Right.