Only that will is good which wills itself as not-particular, as without content or matter, in a word, which wills itself as form.
The good will, then, is the will which is determined by the form only, which realizes itself as the bare form of the will. And this formal will is now seen to be the true expression for all the foregoing characteristics, of universality, freedom, and autonomy. In formality we see they are all one. I am autonomous only because I am free, free only because I am universal, universal only because not particular, and not particular only when formal.
That the good must be formal we might have seen by considering its character of an universal standard or test. Such a standard is a form or it is nothing. It is to be above every possible this and that, and hence can not be any this or that. It is by being not this or that, that it succeeds in having nothing which is not common to every this and that. Otherwise there would be something which would fall without its sphere; it would be only one thing among others, and so would no longer be a standard. But that which can be common to everything is not matter or content, but form only. As no material test of truth, so no material test of morality is possible.
The good will, then, is the bare form of the will, and this is the end. This is what I have to realize, and realize in myself. But I am not a mere form; I have an ‘empirical’ nature, a series of particular states of the ‘this me,’ a mass of desires, aversions, inclinations, passions, pleasures, and pains, what we may call a sensuous self. It is in this self that all content, all matter, all possible filling of the form must be sought; for all matter must come from ‘experience,’ must be given in and through the perception of the outer world or of the series of my own internal states, and is in either case sensuous, and the opposite of the insensible form.
The ‘empirical’ self, the this me, is, no less than the self which is formal will, an element of the moral subject. These elements are antithetical the one to the other; and hence the realization of the form is possible only through an antagonism, an opposition which has to be overcome. It is this conflict and this victory in which the essence of morality lies. Morality is the activity of the formal
