Comments on: 203

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:56:35 +0000

§ 203: The farmers’ estate

The farmer lives from the soil he works. The soil belongs to him alone. He must tend it and shape it, not only use it.

How does the farmer live?

He depends on nature. On the weather, on the season, on the harvest. So he must provide for the future. But his life depends less on his own planning than the lives of others do. He trusts. He lives in the family and in simple loyalty. What he receives is a gift of nature. He is grateful and hopes it will stay that way.

Agriculture and states:

People have rightly linked the beginning of states with agriculture. And with marriage. Agriculture brings settled property. The wandering life of the savages ends. People settle down. Marriage and care for the family belong to this. That is why the ancient peoples celebrated agriculture as a gift of the gods.

Today:

Today people run farming more like a factory too. Still, the farmers’ estate will keep its simple, trusting way.

Summary: The farmers’ estate lives from its own soil and from nature. Its attitude is trust and loyalty. States begin with agriculture and marriage.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:57:51 +0000

In our time, husbandry too is conducted in a reflective manner, like a factory, and then takes on a character of the second estate that runs counter to its natural character. Nonetheless, this first estate will retain, all the more, the manner of patriarchal life and its substantial disposition. Here the human being takes up, with immediate feeling, what is given and received, is grateful to God for it, and lives in the trusting confidence that this goodness will continue. What he receives suffices for him; he uses it up, for it comes to him again. This is the simple disposition, not directed toward the acquisition of wealth; one can also call it the old-noble [disposition], which consumes what is there. In this estate nature does the main thing, and one's own diligence is, by contrast, the subordinate factor, whereas in the second estate it is precisely the understanding that is the essential thing, and the natural product can only be regarded as material.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1830)

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

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1830), § 528:

§ 528. The substantial, natural estate has, in the fertile ground and soil, a natural and fixed resource; its activity receives its direction and content through natural determinations, and its ethical life is grounded in faith and trust. The second, the reflected estate is dependent on the resources of society, on the element placed within mediation, representation, and a conjunction of contingencies, and the individual is dependent on their subjective skill, talent, understanding, and industry. The third, thinking estate has the universal interests as its business; like the second, it has a subsistence mediated through its own skill, and, like the first, one secured through the whole of society.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1827)

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

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1827), § 528:

§ 528. The substantial estate has, in the soil, a natural and fixed resource; its activity receives its direction and content through natural determinations, and its ethical life is grounded in faith and trust. The second estate is dependent on the resources of society, on the element placed within mediation, representation, and a conjunction of contingencies, and the individual is dependent on their subjective skill, talent, understanding, and industry. The third estate has the universal interests as its business, and, like the second, has a subsistence mediated through its own skill, and, like the first, one secured through the whole of society.