Comments on: 35

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:36:52 +0000

§ 35: What a person is

What does it mean to be a person?

I am definite in every way. I am this old, this tall, I live here. I have these wishes, these moods, this body. In all of this I am finite and limited.

And yet I can set all of this aside. I can know myself simply as “I”. Then I am pure relation to myself. In this knowing I am infinite, universal and free.

That is exactly what a person is. It is this I that knows itself as free amid all that is limited.

High and low at once:

To be a person is the highest thing about a human being. At the same time the word is almost an insult. If you call someone “this person”, you take away everything special about him. Both are true. The person is wholly finite and at the same time without limits. Only a human being can bear this contradiction. No animal and no thing could.

A person is more than a subject. Every living being that has an inner life is a subject. Only someone who thinks of himself as a free I is a person.

This does not come by itself. Human beings and peoples can live a long time without knowing themselves like this. Then they do not yet have personality.

Summary: A person is someone who knows himself as a free I within everything that limits him. Here lies human dignity. It takes a kind of thinking that can set aside everything particular.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:06:02 +0000

The will that is for itself, or the abstract will, is the person. The highest achievement of a human being is to be a person, and yet the mere abstraction 'person' already carries something contemptible in the very expression. The person is essentially different from the subject, for the subject is only the possibility of personality, since every living thing whatsoever is a subject. The person is thus the subject for which this subjectivity exists, for in the person I am purely and simply for myself: it is the singularity of freedom in pure being-for-self. As this person I know myself to be free within myself and can abstract from everything, since nothing stands before me but pure personality; and yet as this one I am something wholly determinate: so old, so tall, in this space, and whatever further particularities there may be. The person is thus at once the highest and the utterly lowest; there lies within it this unity of the infinite and the simply finite, of determinate limit and of what is altogether limitless. It is the loftiness of the person that can endure this contradiction, which nothing natural has within it or could bear.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Fri, 15 Nov 1822 08:06:32 +0000

[zu § 35] What is meant by 'person'?
The loftiness of the person, the highest [instance of] personality – God's personality – One may believe in God, define [him] however one wishes; if personality is lacking, that is not sufficient.
Person and subject are different – subject also individual. Self-subsistent singularity as such, in itself, ideality of the determinations –
Person, the entitlement within free will
α) I will this or that, needs, whim, notion. No one has respect for that – [it is only a] particular will.
β) That my particular will should hold good, be respected – to be entitled; – a particular will [that is] also an entitled one
αα) If the content is a matter of right, [if] I have acquired, purchased this or that title etc. in such and such a way – circumstances, determinations already established as matters of right – in general through some further concrete determination – conquered, bought in such and such a way – such determinations then occur to us – yet the question is: these determinations themselves, wherein do they have their rightfulness? All concrete conditions forgotten
ββ) The further determination of my (- particular will, indeterminate will as such, which is thus also a particular one -) will is that it wills itself, its freedom – a particular end, to be sure – but the side of it [that matters] is that it wills only itself. The determinacy is my universality.

[zu § 35 Anm.] I will – α) indeterminate – will as such, determinacy is universality, freedom – β) particular, determinate – not determinate, – universally free – a thinking [being] – my universality – this the absolute entitlement on which everything else depends – not Tituli etc. [are] the first, my will conforming to them, support in it; as limitations, a will that would have to restrict itself to such Titulos – but rather they [are] only determinations that are consequences –
The determinacy of the will by virtue of which it is right, [is] that this particular [moment]: "I will this or that," belongs to freedom – and [that] I, [being] this within it, will not to be limited in my free will.
Person – something bad, contemptible, because [it is] abstract self-consciousness – desire – also mine – but not a determination of the universal
The fruitfulness of this concept of right.