grundlinien.de

255

Together with the family, the corporation constitutes the second, ethical root of the state, one grounded in civil society. The former contains the moments of subjective particularity and objective universality in substantial unity; the latter, however, unites in an inward manner these same moments — which in civil society are initially divided into the self-reflected particularity of need and enjoyment on the one hand, and abstract legal universality on the other — so that in this union particular welfare exists as right, and is actualized as such.

The sanctity of marriage and honor within the corporation are the two moments around which the disorganization of civil society revolves.

DE

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

    If in more recent times the corporations have been abolished, this has the sense that the individual should provide for himself. But even if this may be granted, the obligation of the individual to create his own livelihood is not thereby altered by the corporation. In our modern states the citizens have only limited participation in the universal affairs of the state; but it is necessary to grant the ethical human being, besides his private purpose, a universal activity as well. This universal element, which the modern state does not always afford him, he finds in the corporation. We saw earlier that the individual, in providing for himself within civil society, also acts for others. But this unconscious necessity is not enough: it becomes a known and thinking ethical life only in the corporation. Of course, the higher oversight of the state must stand over it, for otherwise it would ossify, wall itself up within itself, and sink down into a wretched guild-system. But in and for itself the corporation is no closed guild: it is rather the ethical shaping of the isolated trade and its elevation into a circle in which it gains strength and honor.

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