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31 15 Will The meaning of human life consists in the realization of freedom, or, what is the same thing, in the holistic disclosure of the rational and good will. This is accomplished by the human soul gradually overcoming the empirical and finite form of existence, grasping its own universality, and committing itself to the life of the one Substance. However, speculative power and substantial life don’t come to the human from without; they are present within it from the very beginning, from time immemorial constituting its deepest essence. The path to the rational will and further, to non-substantial freedom is a path of self-deepening, accomplished by the human soul. This path of “speculative metamorphosis” originates, as always, from a poverty of content, from an immediate simplicity and abstract singularity , ascending to a wealth of content, to a simplicity which is mediated and rendered complex, and a concrete universality. None of the lower states of soul disappears without a trace, or is left behind, but is rather preserved as a moment at a higher phase of development.1 The rational will as a higher phase of subjective spirit is a deepened state, concrete and at the same time holistically simple: the lower states are collected, concentrated in it and form not a patchwork aggregate of empirical determinations , but a classically simple modus vivendi of spirit. Soul, in the aspect of will, is rational and whole, and with all its infinite power is directed to a single object—God, or absolute freedom. It matures in the form of subjective spirit and gradually forms that level at which its states— termed “right,” “morality,” “ethical life,” and “state”—are revealed. Thus the sphere of objektive spirit is revealed in the element of human will, saturated by reason and having developed to the state of free selfdetermination . Such a will is the result of a previous speculative process, the outcome of which coincides with the commencement of psychic life, ignited in the depth of the “natural organism.” This is how Hegel sees the process of the development of subjective will. The “natural soul,” immediately immersed in the simple processes of its natural existence,2 is the lowest phase of subjective spirit. It lives dissolved in those contents which nature forces upon it and is subjected to nature’s influences and determinations: soul is determined by climate,3 1. Enc. III 12–13. 2. Comp.: Enc. III 54–55. 3. Enc. III 57. 32 T H E D O C T R I N E O F T H E M E A N I N G O F H U M A N L I F E age,1 race,2 heredity, temperament,3 sexual attraction,4 and the power of sleep.5 It gives itself over to “simple pulsation,”6 to a “confused weaving ,”7 to unconscious and unthinking life.8 It does not transcend its fully personal and subjective distinctiveness9 and doesn’t even distinguish the subjective from the objektive;10 the most of which it is capable is sensation (Empfindung) of that which forces its way into it from without, and of that which discharges itself within it. This sensation forces it to attribute some contents to “its own body,” others, conversely, to the interior, “to itself,” and to experience itself as a “totality of its sensations.”11 In this experience is already the beginning of reflection into itself, the return to itself: the soul becomes sentient soul.12 In feeling (Fühlen) the soul found itself as the subject of its sensations .13 Its sensations are its sensations, and it is their “inner individuality ”;14 the soul is “particular,”15 an enclosed world of its “inner determinations”16 —a monad.17 Sensations of feeling don’t hold it a prisoner ;18 on the contrary, the soul distinguishes them19 and isolates itself from them.20 At the beginning it is still passive, dissolved in the process of sensation, and doesn’t identify itself with the “genius” concealed within it, its selfhood;21 feeling, not restrained by thought and will,22 leads it along its obscure23 paths, transforming it into a somnambulist.24 Then it wakes up, separates itself from its feelings, passing in turn from one affect to another, affirms its subjective unity: the soul becomes self-feeling.25 However , it still does not possess power over its contents; the affects lead a psychophysiological existence, escape from subordination, lose their fluidity , and entice the soul to all kinds...

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