Comments on: 159

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:54:36 +0000

§ 159: Right in the family

Are there rights in the family? Can a family member sue for something?

As long as the family holds together, this hardly matters. People live with one another. You cannot sue for love. It is a feeling.

When does right become important?

Only when the family breaks up. When its members turn into separate persons. Then it is about external things: property, maintenance, the costs of upbringing.

An example: As long as parents and children live together, no one keeps accounts. Only in a separation or an inheritance do people ask: Who gets what?

Summary: In an intact family, love counts, not right. Right comes forward only when the family breaks up. Then it concerns only external things like property and maintenance.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:41:37 +0000

The right of the family consists properly in this, that its substantiality is to have existence; it is thus a right against externality and against stepping out of this unity. Against this, however, love is again a feeling, something subjective, against which unity cannot assert itself. If, then, unity is demanded, it can be demanded only in relation to such things as are by their nature external and are not conditioned by feeling.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Wed, 29 Jan 1823 08:06:32 +0000

Abstract strict right – force of substantial unity – disposition – trust, discipline – right in relation to love is something other than in relation to strict right, – the latter only insofar as they are persons, and what accordingly belongs to each individually, i.e. stepping out to his share – in division – right pertains only to things or to renderings of things – the members must exist.
Marriage law – relation to, against externality – only under the presupposition – of separation; – regard for possible separation – or right against separation – dissolution – this is the right of marriage itself, not of the individual person as such –
Right [cannot] be asserted against love – because natural feeling counts as one's own disposition: – in the state, what is to be performed is also demanded in the form of strict right, – without and against disposition – i.e. because [it is a] universal purpose, universal determinations, also abstraction from particularity – cold, i.e. without feeling, sentiment – not everyone without sentiment, disposition –