Comments on: 41

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:37:00 +0000

§ 41: Why we need property

Now the path through property begins.

The person is free. But at first this freedom is wholly inside. If you are free only in your head, you have nothing in your hand yet. Freedom must make a space for itself outside. Only then is it really there.

At first this space is a thing. That is something different from me. I can separate it from myself and give it away again.

What property is really for:

People often think property is there to satisfy needs. That is not the most important thing. In property the person stops being merely inward. It steps out into the world. Only in this way is it there as reason.

Granted: An external thing is a poor existence for freedom. But at the start there is no other way. The person itself is still quite simple. That is why its first existence is quite simple too: a thing.

Summary: Freedom needs a space in the world. Its first space is property. Property serves freedom first, not need.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 17:08:53 +0000

The rational element of property lies not in the satisfaction of needs, but rather in the fact that the mere subjectivity of personality is thereby sublated. Only in property is the person as reason. Even though this first reality of my freedom in an external thing is thus a poor reality, abstract personality, precisely in its immediacy, can have no other existence than one in the determination of immediacy.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1830)

Hegel (Encyclopedia 1830) — Sat, 18 Sep 1830 23:06:32 +0000

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1830), § 488:

§ 488. Spirit in the immediacy of its freedom being for itself is individual, but one who knows his individuality as absolutely free will; he is person, the self-knowing of this freedom which, being in itself abstract and empty, does not yet have its particularity and fulfillment in itself, but in an external thing. This, as against the subjectivity of intelligence and arbitrary will, is something will-less and without right, and is made by it into its accident, the external sphere of its freedom, - possession.

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1827)

Hegel (Encyclopedia 1827) — Thu, 24 May 1827 23:06:32 +0000

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1827), § 488:

§ 488. Spirit in the immediacy of its freedom being for itself is an individual, but one who knows his individuality as absolutely free will; he is person, the self-knowing of this freedom, which, being wholly abstract and empty, does not yet have its particularity, determinacy, and fulfillment in itself, but in an external thing. This, as against the subjectivity of intelligence and of arbitrary will, is something will-less, without right, and is made by it into its accident, the external sphere of its freedom—possession.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Tue, 19 Nov 1822 08:06:32 +0000

Property in general – person and thing, the relation of the two to one another.
a) Taking possession – mine; lasting, universal predicate in general.
b) Use of the thing – process of the thing, insofar as it is mine.
c) Alienation – removal of the thing

By: Hegel (Encyclopedia 1817)

Hegel (Encyclopedia 1817) — Wed, 30 Apr 1817 23:06:32 +0000

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1817), § 402:

§ 402. Spirit in the immediacy of its absolute freedom is an individual, but one who knows his individuality as absolutely free will; he is 1) person, the abstract and, in this respect, subjective self-knowing of this freedom.