Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/206

 as those which belong to philosophy. It contains ideality, negativity, subjectivity, and all this is, considered in itself, a true and essential moment of freedom and of the Idea. Further, it contains the unity of the finite and infinite; and this is true also of the Idea. It is undoubtedly subjectivity, which develops all objectivity out of itself, and consequently transmutes itself as form into content, and only becomes true form by means of its true content. Notwithstanding this, what thus seems to approach most nearly to the Idea is furthest off from it. This ideality, this fire in which all determinations consume themselves, is at this point of view still uncompleted negativity. “I,” as immediate, as this unit, am the sole reality; all remaining determinations are posited as ideal, are burnt up. I alone maintain myself, and all determinations are valid, only if I will it so. The only determination which possesses validity is that of myself, and that everything is posited and exists only through me. The Ideality is not thoroughly carried through; this last culminating point still contains what must be negated; it must be shown that I, as this unit, am not possessed of truth, of reality. I myself alone remain positive, notwithstanding that everything is to become affirmative through negation only. And thus this position contradicts itself, for it posits ideality as a principle, and that which brings about the ideality is itself not ideal.

The unity of the finite and infinite, which is made explicit in reflection, is undoubtedly a definition of the Idea, but of such a kind that the infinite is the positing of itself as what is finite, while the finite is the finite of itself, and is owing to this abrogation, the negation of its negation. Consequently, it is the infinite, but it is this infinite only as the positing of itself within itself as the finite, and the abrogation of this finiteness as such. From the subjective point of view, on the contrary, this unity is still posited in one-sidedness, for it is posited by the finite itself, and is still under the form of finiteness. I, this finite unit, am the