above all vulgar ends its reveals at like time that to reach whose sight and knowledge alone makes ends of life worth following; whereas everything that serves an end is hideous, because neither its fashioner nor its [P. 108] onlooker can have aught before him save a disquieting conglomerate of fragmentary material, which is first to gain its meaning and elucidation from its employment for some vulgar need. {FEUER} None but a great nation, confiding with tranquil stateliness in its unshakable might, could ripen such a principle within itself, and bring it into application for the happiness of all the world: for it assuredly presupposes a solid ordering of every nearer, every relation that serves life’s necessary ends; and it was the duty of the political powers to found that order in this lofty, world-redeeming sense … .” [732W-{9-12/67} German Art and German Policy: PW Vol. IV, p.107-108]
[733W-{9-12/67} German Art and German Policy: PW Vol. IV, p.117-119]
[P. 117] {FEUER} The true meaning of Kinghood is expressed in the prerogative of pardon (Begnadigung). The exercise of grace (Gnade) is the only act of positive freedom conceivable within the State, whereas in every other State-relation freedom can take effect in none but its original negative sense: for the etymologic meaning of the word is a ‘being freed from,’ a ‘being rid of’; which, again, is only thinkable as the negation of a constraint and pressure of natural Want [“Noth”?], as also of Want arising from the conflict of individual and social interests – this is the principle of Expediency that lies at bottom of every organisation of the State: in the happy event of all these organisations working together in peace and harmony, we reach the point where each unit has the least to sacrifice in order to reap the utmost profit from the whole; but there always remains the relation of sacrifice and gain; and absolute freedom, i.e. emancipation from all constraint, is quite beyond our thinking: its name were Death. – {anti-FEUER} Only from quite another sphere of being, a sphere which the thoroughly realistic State must deem exclusively pertaining to an ideal order of the world, can a [P. 118] law of truly ideal expedience come into effect, as the exercise of positive, i.e. of active freedom, determined by no ordinary constraint, a freedom truly free; and thus, at the very point we have termed impassable, it decks the work of the State with the crown which is that law itself. This crowning of its edifice the State-organisation attains through the King’s being loosed, from first to last, from the principle of expedience that binds the entire State, and thus completely freed from every Want (Noth) engendered by that general principle. (…)
{anti-FEUER} Now, to the verdict of Justice the King in any case accords a full validity per se, as answering to the expedience of the State’s control in matters of right; but of pure freedom he resolves on pardon, where it seems good to him to let [P. 119] Grace prevail before Right; and in that he has to give a reason to no one, he testifies to that state of freedom, attainable by none besides, in which he is supported by the will of all. As no human resolves, not even the seemingly freest, are formed without a motive, so the King must here be guided by some aimful reason (Zweckmaessigkeitsgrund): but this reason itself resides in that quite other sphere which, in distinction from the latter’s tendences, we can only term the ideal; it remains unspoken, because unutterable, and only lets itself be seen within its work, the act of Grace, -- just as the motives of the idealistic artist spring no less from a law-of-aim, yet from a law which likewise cannot be expressed, but only gathered from the fully fashioned artwork.” [733W-{9-12/67} German Art and German Policy: PW Vol. IV, p.117-119]
