DISCOVERING THE COMMUNITY: THE BERNE FRAGMENTS OF 1794

Abstract

In the “Berne fragments”1 Hegel's pragmatic concern for the human spirit's satisfaction through folk-religion gives way to a philosophic engagement with the internal relationship between its natural needs, which we identified in the previous chapter as being at home in the world and virtue. This supplanting of the folk-religion project by the human-spirit project carries with it more than a change of emphasis. It marks the introduction into his thought, first, of the community as an end in itself equal to human satisfaction and, then, of the communalization of human needs. In this way, the Berne fragments mark the transformation of Hegel's original Problemstellung from one dominated by the logic of virtue or self-development to one centred on the logic of being at home in the world or participating in a community.