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190

a. The Kind of Need and Satisfaction

The animal has a limited circle of means and ways of satisfying its likewise limited needs. The human being proves, even within this dependence, at the same time his going-beyond it, and his universality — at first through the multiplication of needs and means, and then through the division and differentiation of the concrete need into individual parts and aspects, which become various, particularized, and thereby more abstract needs.

In right, the object is the person; on the moral standpoint, the subject; in the family, the family member; in civil society in general, the citizen (as bourgeois) — here, on the standpoint of needs (compare § 123, Remark), it is the concretum of representation that one calls human being; it is, therefore, only here, and, properly speaking, only here, that there is talk of the human being in this sense.

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  1. Eduard Gans (Additions) Avatar
    Eduard Gans (Additions)

    The animal is something particular; it has its instinct and the bounded, insurmountable means of satisfaction. There are insects bound to a particular plant, other animals that have a wider range and can live in various climates; but there is always something limited set against the range that belongs to the human being. The need for dwelling and clothing, the necessity of no longer leaving food raw but making it adequate to oneself and destroying its natural immediacy, means that the human being does not have it as easy as the animal, and as spirit ought not to have it that easy either. The understanding, which grasps distinctions, brings multiplication into these needs, and since taste and utility become criteria of judgment, the needs themselves are also seized by this. In the end it is no longer need but opinion that must be satisfied, and it belongs precisely to education to break down the concrete into its particularities. In the multiplication of needs lies precisely a check on desire, for when people make use of many things, the urge toward any one thing they might need is not so strong, and this is a sign that need in general is not so overpowering.

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