Category: Paragraph

161

A. Marriage Marriage, as the immediate ethical relationship, contains, first, the moment of natural vitality — and indeed, as a substantial relationship, this vitality in its totality, namely as the actuality of the genus and its process. (See Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, § 167 ff. and § 288 ff.) But, in self-consciousness, the unity…
162

The subjective point of departure for marriage can appear, more, as the particular inclination of the two persons who enter into this relationship, or as the provision and arrangement made by parents and so on; but its objective point of departure is the free consent of the persons — and specifically, their consent to constitute…
163

The ethical [aspect] of marriage consists in the consciousness of this unity as a substantial purpose, and thus in love, trust, and the sharing of the whole of individual existence — a disposition and actuality in which the natural drive is reduced to the modality of a natural moment, one destined to be extinguished precisely…
164

Just as the stipulation of the contract already contains, for itself, the true transfer of property (§ 79), so the solemn declaration of consent to the ethical bond of marriage, and the corresponding recognition and confirmation of it by the family and the community (that the church enters in, in this respect, is a further…
165

The natural determinacy of the two sexes acquires, through their rationality, an intellectual and ethical significance. This significance is determined by the distinction into which ethical substantiality, as concept, divides itself within itself, in order to gain from it its vitality as a concrete unity.
166

The one is, accordingly, the spiritual [element] as that which divides itself into personal self-subsistence that is for itself, and into the knowing and willing of free universality — the self-consciousness of comprehending thought and the willing of the objective final purpose; the other is the spiritual [element] preserving itself in unity, as the knowing…
167

Marriage is essentially monogamy, because it is personality — immediate, exclusive singularity — that enters into and gives itself over to this relationship; its truth and inwardness (the subjective form of substantiality) therefore arise only from the reciprocal, undivided devotion of this personality. This [personality] comes into its right, of being conscious of itself in…
168

Further, because it is this infinitely self-proper personality of the two sexes from whose free devotion marriage proceeds, it must not be concluded within a circle already naturally identical, already acquainted, and, in all its particulars, familiar to itself — a circle in which the individuals do not have, over against one another, a personality…
169

The family, as a person, has its external reality in a property, in which it has the existence of its substantial personality only in the form of resources.
170

B. The Family’s Resources The family has not merely property, but, for it as a universal and continuing person, there arises the need and the determination of a permanent and secure possession — of resources. The arbitrary moment, in abstract property, of the particular need of the merely single individual, and the self-seeking of desire,…
171

The family, as a legal person against others, is to be represented by the man as its head. Further, it is he to whom acquisition from without, care for its needs, and the disposition and administration of the family’s resources chiefly belong. These resources are common property, so that no member of the family has…
172

Through a marriage a new family constitutes itself, which is something self-subsistent for itself over against the stocks or houses from which it proceeded; the connection with these has natural blood relationship as its basis, but the new family has ethical love [as its basis]. The property of an individual therefore also stands in essential…
173

C. The Upbringing of Children and the Dissolution of the Family In the children, the unity of the marriage — which, as substantial, is only inwardness and disposition, but which, as existing, is separated within the two subjects — becomes, as unity, itself an existence and an object that is for itself, one that they…
174

Children have the right to be nourished and brought up out of the family’s common resources. The parents’ right to the services of the children, as services, is grounded in, and limited by, the common concern of the family in general. Likewise, the parents’ right over the arbitrary will of the children is determined by…
175

Children are in themselves free, and their life is the immediate existence solely of this freedom; they do not, therefore, belong to others, nor to their parents, as things. Their upbringing has, with respect to the family relationship, the positive determination that the ethical be brought, within them, to an immediate feeling still free of…
176

Because marriage is, at first, only the immediate ethical Idea, and thus has its objective actuality in the inwardness of subjective disposition and feeling, there lies in this the first contingency of its existence. Just as little as compulsion can take place to enter into marriage, just as little is there otherwise a merely legal,…
177

The ethical dissolution of the family consists in this: that the children, brought up to free personality, are, upon reaching their majority, recognized as legal persons, capable, in part, of having free property of their own, and, in part, of founding families of their own — the sons as heads, the daughters as wives —…
178

The natural dissolution of the family through the death of the parents, in particular of the man, has as its consequence inheritance with respect to the resources — an entry, by its essence, into the peculiar possession of resources that were, in themselves, held in common; an entry that becomes the more indeterminate, with the…
179

Through this falling apart there arises the freedom for the arbitrary will of individuals, in part, in general, to employ their resources more according to the liking, opinions, and purposes of their own particularity, and, in part, to regard, as it were, a circle of friends, acquaintances, and so on, in place of a family,…
180

The principle that the members of the family become self-subsistent legal persons (§ 177) allows something of this arbitrariness and distinction, among the natural heirs, to enter within the circle of the family — but it can take place only within the strictest limits, so as not to violate the fundamental relationship. The merely direct…