grundlinien.de

217

Just as, in civil society, right in itself becomes law, so too the previously immediate and abstract existence of my individual right passes over into the significance of being recognized, as an existence within the existing universal will and knowing. Acquisitions and transactions concerning property must therefore be undertaken and furnished with the form that this existence gives to them. Property now rests on contract, and on the formalities that make it capable of proof and legally valid.

|216| The original, that is, immediate, kinds and titles of acquisition (§ 54 ff.) properly fall away in civil society, and occur only as isolated contingencies or limited moments. — It is, in part, the feeling that remains fixed in the subjective, in part the reflection that holds fast to the abstraction of its own essentialities, which rejects the formalities — formalities that, for their part, dead understanding can, in turn, insist on against the matter, and multiply into the infinite. — Moreover, it lies in the course of culture, in progressing, with long and hard labour, from the sensuous and immediate form of a content to the form of its thought, and thus to a simple expression appropriate to it, that, in the condition of a legal culture that is only just beginning, solemnities and formalities are of great circumstantiality, and count for more as the matter itself than as its sign; whence, in Roman law too, a multitude of determinations, and especially of expressions, from these solemnities have been retained, rather than having been replaced by determinations of thought and their adequate expression.

DE ES

Comments

2 responses to “217”

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

    The law is right posited as what it was in itself. I possess something, have a property that I have taken as ownerless: this must now still be recognized and posited as mine. In society, therefore, formalities occur in relation to property: boundary stones are set up as a sign of recognition by others, mortgage registers and inventories of property are drawn up. Most property in civil society rests on contract, whose formalities are fixed and determinate. Now one may feel an aversion to such formalities and think that they exist only to bring money to the authorities; one may even regard them as something insulting and as a sign of distrust, inasmuch as the maxim that a man’s word is his bond no longer holds; but the essential point of the form is that what is right in itself should also be posited as such. My will is a rational one, it is valid, and this validity is to be recognized by the other. Here, then, my subjectivity and that of the other must fall away, and the will must attain a security, firmness, and objectivity that it can obtain only through form.

  2. Hegel (Simple) Avatar
    Hegel (Simple)

    § 217: Forms and documents

    In civil society, everyone also recognizes my property in public. It is no longer enough that I have something. The others must recognize it as mine.

    How does this happen?

    Through fixed forms. People set boundary stones. They enter plots of land in a land register. They make contracts before a notary. Most property now rests on such contracts.

    Do we really need this?

    Some people get angry about such formalities. They think these only help the state to make money. Or they see a sign of mistrust in them: In the old days, a man’s word was enough.

    But the form has a purpose. Through it, my right becomes firm and safe. It no longer depends on the mood or the memory of one person.

    A look back:

    At the start of the history of right, the forms were long-winded. People often took the ceremony for the thing itself. Many such old formulas remained in Roman law.

    Summary: In society, property needs fixed forms like contracts and registers. They are not a sign of mistrust. They make right safe, and they make others recognize it.

Leave a Reply