Comments on: 172

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:55:44 +0000

§ 172: The new family counts more than the clan

With a marriage, a new family comes into being. It stands on its own against the families the spouses come from.

What binds them?

Blood binds the old families. Ethical love binds the new family. This weighs more. So a person’s property belongs above all with his marriage. With his wider relatives it has only a loose link.

A look at history:

Old Roman law saw this differently. There the wife often stood closer to her own relatives than to her husband and her children. In the Middle Ages, too, the glory of the whole clan counted more than the single family. This is a false relationship. The core is the spouses and their children.

And marriage settlements?

Sometimes marriage settlements lay down what happens in case of separation or death. They aim to make sure that each person then keeps his share. They reckon with the case that the community ends.

Summary: The new family of marriage and children matters more than the wider relatives. So property depends above all on marriage. Marriage settlements only give security in case of separation.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:44:37 +0000

In many legal systems the wider extent of the family is upheld, and this is regarded as the essential bond, while by contrast the other [bond], belonging to each particular family, appears of lesser [importance]. Thus in the older Roman law the wife of the free marriage stood in a closer relation to her relatives than to her children and her husband, and in the times of feudal law the preservation of the splendor familiae made it necessary that only the male members be counted as belonging to it, and that the whole of the family should count as the main thing, while the newly formed [family], by contrast, vanished [from view]. Nevertheless every new family is the more essential [element] as against the wider connection of blood relationship, and spouses and children form the proper core, as opposed to what is, in a certain sense, also called family. The property relation of individuals must therefore have a more essential connection with marriage than with the wider blood relationship.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Tue, 04 Feb 1823 08:10:32 +0000

True relation in general – community of goods. – Woman and man make up a completely independent family. The woman shall leave father and mother and cleave to the man – as [in] the Bible, this [is] true.
The Roman relation [is] bad – the falling back of the wife's property to the family – even if she already had children –
But finitude, – the possibility of separation – contingency, particularity – the husband a squanderer, husband or wife becomes isolated –