Comments on: 189

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:56:09 +0000

§ 189: How we satisfy needs

Every human being has needs. He must eat, dress and have a home. How does he satisfy these needs?

Through two things. Through external things, which mostly belong to others and which others have made. And through labor, which links the two.

The wonder of order:

At first glance, chaos reigns. The soil is fertile here and poor there. The year is good or bad. One person works hard, another is lazy. Each does what he wants. And yet an order arises from this. There are laws that govern this swarm.

Political economy:

A new science looks for these laws: political economy. Thinkers such as Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say and David Ricardo founded it. In a mass of details they find simple principles. This does honor to thought. It is like the starry sky. To the eye, the planets seem to wander without any rule. And yet we know their laws.

Here reason shows itself in the world of needs too. This can reconcile us. Whoever only grumbles in a moral way misses this.

Summary: We satisfy needs through things that belong to others and through our own labor. Laws rule in the swarm of individuals. Political economy finds them out.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:50:10 +0000

There are certain universal needs, such as eating, drinking, clothing, and so on, and it depends entirely on contingent circumstances how these are satisfied. The soil here or there is more or less fertile, the years vary in their yield, one person is industrious, another lazy; but this swarming of arbitrariness generates universal determinations out of itself, and this seemingly scattered and thoughtless activity is held together by a necessity that arises of its own accord. To discover this necessity is the object of political economy, a science that does credit to thought because it finds the laws governing a mass of contingencies. It is an interesting spectacle to see how all the connections here are reciprocal, how the particular spheres group themselves, exert influence on others, and are furthered or hindered by them. This interweaving, which one does not at first believe in, since everything seems left to the arbitrary will of the individual, is above all remarkable, and bears a resemblance to the planetary system, which always shows the eye only irregular movements, yet whose laws can nonetheless be discovered.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1830)

Hegel (Encyclopedia 1830) — Sat, 18 Sep 1830 23:06:32 +0000

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1830), § 524:

§ 524. α) The particularity of persons initially comprises their needs. The possibility of satisfying these is here placed in the social nexus, which is the universal resource from which all obtain their satisfaction. The immediate taking possession (§ 488) of external objects as means to this end no longer occurs, or scarcely occurs, in the condition in which this standpoint of mediation is actualized; the objects are property. Their acquisition is conditioned and mediated, on the one hand, by the will of the possessor, who as a particular [will] has the satisfaction of manifoldly determined needs as his purpose, and, on the other hand, by the ever-renewing production of exchangeable means through one's own labor; this mediation of satisfaction through the labor of all constitutes the universal resource.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1827)

Hegel (Encyclopedia 1827) — Thu, 24 May 1827 23:06:32 +0000

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1827), § 524:

§ 524. The particularity of persons initially comprises their needs. The possibility of satisfying these is here placed in the social nexus, which is the universal resource from which all obtain this satisfaction. The immediate taking possession (§ 488) of external objects as means to this end no longer occurs, or scarcely occurs, in the condition in which this standpoint of mediation is actualized; the objects are property. Their acquisition is conditioned and mediated, on the one hand, by the will of the possessor, who as a particular [will] has the satisfaction of manifoldly determined needs as his purpose, and, on the other hand, by the ever-renewing production of exchangeable means through one's own labor.