priation a negation, an exclusion. In this sense not only is the definite content in contradiction with the form, but it also in itself involves contradiction.
This, however, is not the meaning of the rule of non-contradiction. The meaning of that is that you must not posit a determination and with it its own negation. You must not have an act which embodies the rule to negate anything, for that is a self-contradiction. A rule ‘negate A’ contradicts itself, for if A is negated you can not negate it. ‘Steal property’ is a contradiction, for it destroys property, and with it possibility of theft.
We have no need here to push further a metaphysical argument against this view, for it supplies us at once with a crushing instance against itself. The essence of morality was a similar contradiction.[1] ‘Negate the sensuous self.’ But if the sensuous self is negated, possibility of morality disappears. Morality is thus as inconsistent as theft. ‘Succour the poor’ both negates and presupposes (hence posits) poverty: as Blake comically says,
| Pity would be no more, If we did not make somebody poor. |
If you are to love your enemies, you must never be without them; and yet you try to get rid of them. Is that consistent? In short, every duty which presupposes something to be negated is no duty; it is an immoral rule, because self-contradictory.
No rule must be stated negatively then, but all positively; and then comes the very serious question, whether there is any rule which can not be stated positively. The canon is an empty form, ‘Let A be A’ It is a tautology; and it requires no great skill to put anything and everything into the form of a tautology, and so to moralize it. ‘Let property be,’ ‘let no-property be;’ ‘let law be,’ ‘let no-law be;’ ‘let love be,’ ‘let hate be;’ ‘be brave,’ ‘be cowardly;’ ‘be kind,’ ‘be cruel,’ ‘be indifferent;’ ‘let succour be,’ ‘let no-succour be;’ or riches, or poverty, or pleasure or pain. Where is the canon? It is nowhere. Poverty is poverty, and is an affirmative tautology. Hate is hate, as much as
- ↑ Hegel (loc. cit.) pushes this ruthlessly even against the postulate of immortality. In what immediately follows we are drawing from him very largely.
