By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:36:59 +0000

§ 40: Three questions

The first right unfolds in three steps. You can read them as three questions.

First: How does something become mine?

Freedom gives itself an existence in a very direct way. I take possession of something, and it becomes my property. Here the person stands alone before its things.

Second: How does someone else’s property become mine?

Now two persons meet. Each counts for the other as an owner. They agree, and a thing changes owners. That is the contract. In it, for the first time, a common will arises.

Third: What happens if someone violates my right?

Now the will comes into conflict with itself. The particular will of the single person sets itself against what is right in itself. That is wrong and crime. The question then is: How does right restore itself?

Against the old divisions:

The Romans divided right into the law of persons and the law of things. Kant followed them in this. Neither holds up when you test it. Roman law of persons deals with a human being’s status: free or slave, father or child. So it is about particular persons, not about the person as such. Besides, the family belongs to a much later stage.

In truth it is the other way around. Only the person has rights to things at all. That is why every right of the person is a right to things. Here “thing” means everything that is external to freedom, even my body. Even a contract gives me no right to a human being. It gives me a right to something he should do for me.

Summary: The first right asks three times: How does something become mine? How does what belongs to another become mine? How do we restore a right someone has violated? Property, contract and wrong give the answers.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Mon, 18 Nov 1822 08:10:32 +0000

[zu § 40] These are the basic determinations – abstract – the fruitfulness of this concept in what follows – results only through it – without it nothing can be determined in what follows – even the concrete – a consequence of them.
a) How does something become mine? How do I acquire property at all? b) how [does] the property of another — how does the property of another become mine? c) how does my property become mine again, how do I recover my violated right – or rather, how is the violated right restored? Reacquisition of property, but also of [the] right as right.
ad a) Freedom gives itself existence in a natural, immediate way – b) By means of, namely, the will of another. c) By means of wrong – against the particular will, here separation of the particular will and its concept – Free[:] the universal thus emerges for itself.
The point is to give the concept reality and at the same time to purify it of immediacy and singularity – a universal that is actual – or an actuality that is itself a universal one: a) universal b) actual sublated. This is the meaning of the a) b) c) questions, though at their most immediate sense one thinks of something quite different –
a) Singularity – and against singularity only negative. Becoming broader – difference, precisely thereby, unity of the same.
b) Relation of individuals*) to one another, insofar as [it is] a positive relation, identity – I act with regard to others; α) identical in itself,
β) posited identity of the will concerning the particular property of each – only posited, and yet each bound for himself, in unity with the freedom of the other –
c) Identity of right with itself – mediated through the negation of right.
α) Relation no longer to externality as abstract things, but as the property of another.
β) Identity herein – and isolation of the personal.
The universal, the free for itself, positing itself in distinction (not [as] abstract thought) actually – in distinction from its immediate actuality – is intention, purpose – the good – in morality.
Wrong, crime, contains a being-within-itself, that is, an inwardness differentiated within itself, – likewise punishment, revenge for the crime, – right as universal asserts itself, gives itself reality in and against a particular will
Right becomes here a universal [one] – because opposed to the particular will –
α) Property is what runs through a, b, c.
β) Immediacy must wear itself away, disappear; – be negated, – and the result [is] that it is right as such to which existence is given – (criminal law – not external property)
γ) a) Objectively my immediate, singular will is in the thing, b) my will as confirmed through the will of another; unity of two wills, ref[lection], universality. c) Existence of the free will as such; right as right, as existence of a communal will.
a. is right; in c. this right becomes an object and I, [the] person – not [invested] with a particular interest, but with the interest of right; or the subjective side is itself universally determined as right.
Likewise in b. I, subjectively, will not only my will, but also the will of the other.

[zu § 40 Anm., (a)] It is presupposed in Roman law (one might say): who is capable of [holding] property? The citizen. Not slaves, not children in general. – With us too, not children, nor women either – yet more so [they] have no possession – and no disposition over it
But this determination and restriction of the right of property is dependent on a higher relation – that only later – and is also not a right of persons, – but rather [the] child – not yet [a] person.
In children the moment of impersonality, incapacity for rights, is for itself, isolated, objective – Also in the state, the surrender of the abstract right of property; a higher [power] that disposes over my property.
*) [interlined:] W[ill]

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By: Hegel (Simple)

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