Comments on: 164

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:54:43 +0000

§ 164: The wedding

When does a marriage begin? When both say their “yes” in public and in a solemn way. And when the family and the community recognize this. Often the church takes part too.

Why do we need the solemn word?

Language is the most spiritual form in which something can exist. Through the spoken “yes”, the union becomes an ethical bond. The bodily union comes only after this. It is a consequence, not the ground.

What is the chief purpose of marriage?

Some people ask: Is it the children? Helping each other? Love? None of these sides alone is the whole. One of them can even be missing, and the marriage does not stop being a marriage.

A dispute:

Some people say: The wedding is an empty formality. True love needs no paper. Friedrich Schlegel held this view in his novel “Lucinde”. He even demands bodily surrender as proof of love. Such talk is not foreign to seducers either.

This view denies the ethical side of love. Shame, restraint and faithfulness belong to it. Whoever binds himself in public hands his love over to what both share. He no longer keeps his whims in reserve.

Man and woman:

A young woman who gives herself before marriage gives up her honor. For the man it is not so. For he has another field of ethical action: the state. The woman’s vocation, by contrast, lies essentially in marriage.

Summary: A marriage comes about through the public “yes” and the recognition of the community. The wedding is not an empty form. It makes love into an ethical bond.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:43:10 +0000

That the ceremony of the conclusion of marriage is superfluous, a mere formality that could be dispensed with, because love is the substantial element and even loses in value through this solemnity, has been maintained by Friedrich v. Schlegel in Lucinde, and by an imitator of his in the Letters of an Unnamed Person (Lübeck and Leipzig 1800)82) . Sensuous surrender is there represented as required as proof of the freedom and inwardness of love, an argument not unfamiliar to seducers. Concerning the relation of man and woman, it is to be noted that the girl, in sensuous surrender, gives up her honor, which is not so much the case with the man, who has another field for his ethical activity besides the family. The determination of the girl consists essentially only in the relation of marriage; the demand is therefore that love take on the form of marriage, and that the various moments contained in love attain their truly rational relation to one another.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Thu, 30 Jan 1823 08:08:32 +0000

[zu § 164] Unity of conscious beings – existence
α) in language – binding for the will
β) ethical, expressed and distinguished as spiritual through such existence.
In a simple contract it makes no difference whether there is stipulation or immediate transfer. Here, however, its spiritual character is expressed through that [act]. Spiritual unity is the first thing –

[zu § 164 Anm.] Sophistry – demands [something] as proof – love believes – spiritual consciousness – the girl gives up her honor, the man does not – for the man has yet another field of his ethical activity, in the state – the girl does not – rather, her ethical life exists essentially in the relation of marriage – unequal; on the man's side this proof is not [required]. – Love – can make different demands than marriage –
In love as such – everything is in one – undivided – sensuous and ethical. But marriage precisely fixes the relation such that the sensuous is only a consequence – In consenting to marriage, the girl concedes this too –
Lucinde