By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 11:00:43 +0000

§ 315: A school for citizens

Public proceedings have a great effect.

What do the people learn?

Only in this way does public opinion arrive at real thoughts. It learns how things stand with the state. It becomes able to judge more rationally. And it learns to respect the work, the talents and the virtues of the officials.

What do capable people gain?

Here talents find a stage and high honor.

A remedy:

Publicity cures the self-conceit of individuals and of the crowd. People often think that everyone already knows what is good. The opposite is true. At home, with wife and friends, a person imagines many things. In a large assembly one cleverness eats up the other.

For the ministers this is hard work. They need wit and eloquence against the attacks. But publicity is one of the greatest means of education.

Summary: Public proceedings educate the citizens. They get to know the state and learn to respect its servants. At the same time publicity cures self-conceit.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 14:24:40 +0000

The publicity of the assemblies of the estates is a great spectacle, one that educates the citizens above all, and it is from this that the people learns best to know the true character of its interests. There generally prevails the notion that everyone already knows what is good for the state, and that in the assembly of the estates this is merely given voice, but in fact just the opposite takes place: it is only here that virtues, talents, and skills develop that are to serve as models. To be sure, such assemblies are burdensome for the ministers, who must themselves be equipped with wit and eloquence in order to meet the attacks directed against them here; but nevertheless publicity is the greatest means of education for the interests of the state in general. In a people among whom this takes place, a quite different vitality shows itself in relation to the state than where the assembly of the estates is lacking or is not public. Only through this becoming known of each of its steps do the chambers stand in connection with the wider realm of public opinion, and it becomes apparent that what someone imagines at home with his wife or his friends is one thing, and what happens in a large assembly, where one cleverness devours another, is quite another.

Comments on: 315

By: Hegel (Simple)

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)