By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:56:50 +0000

§ 214: How much exactly?

In the end, we must apply a law to the single case. And there it is often about numbers.

An example:

How long should a thief go to prison? One year? One year and one day? 364 days? How high should a fine be? Five thalers, or a little less?

We cannot derive this from reasons. Reason only gives a frame. Inside this frame, there is room to move. And yet every day too many or too few is really a wrong.

What follows from this?

At some point, someone simply has to decide. You take a round number. That is a matter of chance. But it has to happen. For it matters more that someone decides than that the number is perfect. Reason itself recognizes that chance has its limited right here.

The law may give the judge only a lowest and a highest measure. That changes nothing. These limits are round numbers too.

Summary: When we apply a law to the single case, exact measures matter. We cannot derive them from reasons. Here we must fix them by chance, but with a firm decision.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 14:00:28 +0000

There is essentially one side to the laws and to the administration of justice which contains a contingency, and which lies in the fact that the law is a universal determination that is to be applied to the individual case. Were one to declare oneself against this contingency, one would only be voicing an abstraction. The quantitative measure of a punishment, for example, cannot be made adequate to any determination of the concept, and whatever is decided is, from this side, always to some degree arbitrary. But this contingency is itself necessary; and if one argues from it against a code of law in general, that it is not perfect, one thereby overlooks precisely the side on which a completion is not to be attained, and which must therefore be taken as it stands.

Comments on: 214

By: Hegel (Simple)

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)