Comments on: 32

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:35:43 +0000

§ 32: Thoughts and shapes

Each step on our path is two things. It is a thought. And it is a shape that exists in the world. Property is a concept. But it is also the house that belongs to someone.

So the series of thoughts is at the same time a series of shapes.

Now comes something important. The order in thinking is not the order in time.

A comparison:

A child speaks whole sentences long before it knows what a word is. In grammar, the word comes first, then the sentence. In life, it is the other way around.

It is the same here. We speak first of property, then of contract, then of conscience. Only after that comes the family. For the family presupposes these thoughts. It is their result.

But in history, the family was there first. People lived in families and clans long before there was a state. Property, contract and conscience only exist much later as separate, clearly formed shapes. They belong to a highly developed culture.

Why, then, do we not begin with what is richest?

Because we want to understand how the rich comes about. For this, we must start with the simplest thought. The true only shows itself as a result.

Summary: Each step is both a thought and a shape. In thinking, the simple comes first. In time, the richer can be there earlier.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:03:06 +0000

The idea must always determine itself further within itself, since at the beginning it is at first only an abstract concept. This initial abstract concept, however, is never given up; rather, it only ever becomes richer within itself, and so the final determination is thus the richest. The determinations that earlier were only implicit thereby attain their free independence, but in such a way that the concept remains the soul that holds everything together and that arrives at its own distinctions only through an immanent process. One cannot therefore say that the concept arrives at something new; rather, the final determination coincides again, in unity, with the first. Even if the concept thus appears to have fallen apart in its existence, this is merely an appearance, which shows itself to be such in the course of the development, in that all the particulars finally return again into the concept of the universal. In the empirical sciences one usually analyzes what is found in representation, and when one has then traced the particular back to what is common, one then calls this the concept. We do not proceed in this way, for we want only to look on at how the concept determines itself, and we do ourselves the violence of adding nothing of our own opinion and thinking. What we obtain in this way, however, is a series of thoughts and another series of existing shapes, in which it can happen that the order of time in actual appearance is in part different from the order of the concept. Thus one cannot say, for example, that property existed before the family, and yet it is treated before it. One might then raise the question here, why we do not begin with the highest, that is, with the concretely true. The answer will be that we want to see the true precisely in the form of a result, and to this it is essential first to comprehend the abstract concept itself. That which is actual, the shape of the concept, is thus for us only what comes later and further on, even though in actuality itself it would be the first. Our progression is such that the abstract forms show themselves not as subsisting for themselves, but as untrue.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Thu, 14 Nov 1822 08:06:32 +0000

[zu § 32] Right in its immediacy is property.
Spirit not immediate – mediation. – Two things, separation,
α) I within myself β) against external existence, γ) I as particular against the concept – universal.
Immediacy is here the determination of the concept – property of spirit. Immediate is α) this single person; – immediate β) an external thing.
This freedom, which is so immediate – is the simple concept – that it is distinguished from me and is thus as a determination of mine, which is reflected into itself – difference of the particular subjectivity from this universality – morality.

[zu § 32 Anm.] If one proceeds historically – what do we encounter first – perhaps families, scattered – before [the] state – Family ethical life, – and several families in the manner of a family. – Patriarchal relation – not yet right – nor morality.