self forcing the sensuous self, and here first can we attach a meaning to the words ‘ought’ and ‘duty.’[1]
If our self were nothing beyond the series of its states, if it were nothing above and beyond these coexistent and successive phenomena, then the word ‘ought’ could have no meaning. And again, if our self were a pure, unalloyed will, realizing itself apart from a sensuous element, the word ‘ought’ would still be meaningless. It is the antagonism of the two elements in one subject which is the essence of the ought. The ought is a command; it expresses something which neither simply is or is not, but which both is and is not; something, in short, which is to be. Further, when addressed to myself, it puts before me something which is to be done, and which I am to do. A command is the doing of something by me, which doing is willed by a will, not me, and presented as such by that will to me.[2] In the ought the self is commanded, and that self is the sensuous self in me, which is ordered, and which, if I obey, is forced by the non-sensuous formal will which stands above the empirical element, and, equally with that, is myself. The ought is the command of the formal will, and duty is the obedience, or, more properly, the compulsion of the lower self by that will, or the realization of the form in and against the recalcitrant matter of the desires.
Duty must be for duty’s sake, or it is not duty. It is not enough that my acts should realize and embody the universal form, and so far be conformable thereto. It is not enough that the act commanded be done by me. The end, as we have seen, is not a result beyond and outside the activity. It is not the realizedness
- ↑ In a lower sense we can use, and do use, ‘ought’ outside the moral world. Wherever ‘law’ has a meaning, ‘ought’ has also a meaning. Where the particular phenomenon does not answer to its conception, we say ‘ought.’ ‘A man (e.g.) “ought” to have two eyes.’ ‘Ice of that thickness “ought” to have borne.’ Something has interfered in the case, so that the fact is not an exhibition of the law. But the moral ‘ought’ means much more than this. There the particular fact or phenomenon is this or that will, which, moreover, is or can be aware of its position as such in relation to the law or general conception. This makes an enormous difference.
- ↑ A command may contain a promise or threat. It is not of its essence that it should do so.
