Comments on: 216 https://grundlinien.de/en/216/ Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:56:53 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.3 By: Hegel (Simple) https://grundlinien.de/en/216/#comment-3656 Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:56:53 +0000 https://grundlinien.de/?p=900213#comment-3656 § 216: A code of laws is never quite finished

A code of laws should be simple and clear. And it should be complete. But life keeps bringing new cases. So it keeps needing new rules.

Is that a contradiction?

Only on the surface. The principles stay firm. Only their application to single cases goes on and on. An old tree grows new branches and still stays the same tree.

A German mistake:

Some people demand: A code of laws must be perfect. Otherwise we should not make one at all. That is a German illness. Whoever thinks like this never gets anything real done.

The French say: The best is the enemy of the good. Whoever waits for the perfect blocks the good.

The Ten Commandments are not complete either. Still, it would be absurd not to write down “You shall not kill” for that reason.

Summary: A code of laws has firm principles, but their application goes on and on. To demand perfection blocks the good. We should plant the tree, even if it will still grow.

]]> By: Eduard Gans (Additions) https://grundlinien.de/en/216/#comment-2199 Wed, 29 May 1833 14:01:09 +0000 https://grundlinien.de/?p=900213#comment-2199 Completeness means the finished collection of every particular that belongs to a sphere, and in this sense no science or body of knowledge can be complete. If one now says that philosophy, or any science, is incomplete, the view readily suggests itself that one must wait until it has completed itself, since the best part might still be missing. But in this way nothing is advanced, neither geometry, which seems closed and yet in which new determinations still emerge, nor philosophy, which indeed has to do with the universal Idea, but can nevertheless always be further specialized. The universal law used always to be the ten commandments; that one should not, because a code of laws cannot be complete, therefore refrain from laying down the law “Thou shalt not kill,” is at once evident as an absurdity. Every code of laws could still be better — idle reflection is entitled to assert this, for the most glorious, the highest, the most beautiful can still be thought more gloriously, more highly, more beautifully. But a great old tree branches out more and more without thereby becoming a new tree; yet it would be foolish to want to plant no tree at all for the sake of the new branches that might come.

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