ABSTRACT
An origin of the Ought in the real world must not be sought for in the carrier of the Ought, for the Ought originates beyond existence; the carrier is only the point of its manifestation in the real, the point of its metaphysical transformation from a merely ideal into a real power. The metaphysic of the Ought is exactly this, that in its unfoldment in real existence, in its actuality, it is necessarily directed to a real subject. The weakness of the nexus is the subordination of the Ought to the existential principle: the determining power of the Ought depends upon an intermediate element which it does not itself dominate. A moral subject, who of all real entities stands alone en rapport with the ideal world of values and who alone has the metaphysical tendency to communicate them to reality which lacks them—only such a subject is a "person".
