Comments on: 42

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:37:02 +0000

§ 42: What a thing is

What is it that I can own?

It is what differs from the free spirit. It is external. We call it a thing. A thing is unfree. It is not a person, and it has no rights.

A word with two meanings:

The word “thing” can also mean the opposite. We say: “It is the thing that matters, not the person.” Then “thing” means what is important, what is essential. But here the thing stands against the person. Then it is the merely external, which has no worth of its own.

External in itself:

The thing is not only external for me. It is external to itself. It has no inner side that relates to itself. A stone knows nothing about itself. Even the animal only perceives other things, never itself. All of nature is like this: It is the external as such.

Summary: A thing is the external, which has no freedom and no rights. Next to the person it is what is not essential. That is why it can become property.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:07:47 +0000

Since subjectivity is lacking in the thing, it is external not merely to the subject but to itself as well. Space and time are external in this way. I, as sensuous, am myself external, spatial and temporal. I, in having sensuous intuitions, have them of something that is external to itself. The animal can intuit, but the soul of the animal does not have the soul, does not have itself as an object, but rather something external.

By: Hegel (Notes)

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

[zu § 42] Externality – nature – manifold ways of the same – here particular matter – already application. Positive science has to go through these particular kinds – according to which side.

[zu § 42 Anm.] Thing that is property – α) that which as external is mine – of the person – is – β) of spirit – as not external – but rather precisely [with] externality sublated and appropriated by me inwardly –
Thing that it is immediately; – in this first relation properly three kinds of thing – kinds of the external
α) Such [things as are] immediately only externally abstract, being external to me;
β) my natural existence, external and at the same time belonging to me without opposition
γ) The spiritual, – reduced by me to externality. The latter I make external only in order to alienate it.
Here [is the] relation. Acquisition of property – making the external into mine.