By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:56:02 +0000

§ 185: Excess and misery

When the particular unfolds with full freedom, this has a dark side.

Which one?

Human wishes know no limit. An animal has a fixed circle of needs. A human being, by contrast, keeps inventing new ones. Whoever only follows his pleasures destroys himself in the end. And at the same time, each person depends on chance and on others. Whether someone gets what he needs is uncertain.

So civil society offers a double spectacle. On one side, excess and waste. On the other side, misery and want. And both lead to bodily and ethical corruption.

A look at history:

The ancient states of the Greeks perished by this principle. They rested on a simple ethical life. When the individual demanded his own right, they could not bear it.

Plato wanted to prevent this. In his state he shut out everything of one’s own: private property, the family, the free choice of a profession. There is a great truth in this. But there is also a lack. For the freedom of the individual has an infinite right. It only came into history with Christianity and the Roman world.

The task:

A state must be strong enough to let the particular go free. And it must still reconcile it with the whole.

Summary: Free particularity leads to excess and misery at once. The ancient states perished by it. A modern state must let it go free and yet reconcile it with the whole.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:49:10 +0000

Particularity for itself is what is excessive and without measure, and the forms of this excess are themselves without measure. Through his representations and reflections, the human being expands his desires, which are not a closed circle like the instinct of the animal, and carries them into the spurious infinite. But equally, on the other side, deprivation and need are something without measure, and the confusion of this condition can be brought into harmony only through the state that masters it. If the Platonic state wished to exclude particularity, that is no remedy, for such a remedy would contradict the infinite right of the Idea to let particularity be free. In the Christian religion, above all, the right of subjectivity has come to fruition, as has the infinity of being-for-itself, and here the whole must at the same time acquire the strength to set particularity in harmony with ethical unity.

Comments on: 185

By: Hegel (Simple)

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)