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47

As a person, I am myself immediately a single individual; in its further determination this means, first of all: I am alive in this organic body, which, as regards its content, is my universal, undivided, external existence – the real possibility of all further determinate existence. But as a person I have, at the same time, my life and body, like other things, only insofar as it is my will.

|53| That, on the side according to which I exist not as being-for-itself but as the immediate concept, I am alive and have an organic body, rests on the concept of life and that of spirit as soul – on moments taken from the philosophy of nature (Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, § 259 ff., cf. §§ 161, 164, and 298) 1 and from anthropology (ibid., § 318).
I have these limbs, this life, only insofar as I will; the animal cannot mutilate or kill itself, but the human being can.

  1. Encyclopaedia, 3rd ed. § 337 ff. ↩︎

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Comments

3 responses to “47”

  1. Hegel (Notes) Avatar
    Hegel (Notes)

    Private property as this one – and precisely as this one I am within natural life.
    a) my body
    α) in relation to myself – I find myself in possession
    Thus, too, according to needs, I appropriate external things –
    Animals have no right to their body

  2. Eduard Gans (Additions) Avatar
    Eduard Gans (Additions)

    Animals do indeed have themselves in possession: their soul is in possession of their body; but they have no right to their life, because they do not will it.

  3. Hegel (Simple) Avatar
    Hegel (Simple)

    § 47: My body

    As a person I am a single individual. First of all this means: I live in this body. It is my first existence in the world. Everything else I do and have presupposes it.

    And yet the body is not simply I.

    As a person I have my body and my life. I have them the way I have other things: because I will it. My will must first move into my body.

    A difference from the animal:

    The animal is simply at home in its body. It has itself, but it has no right to itself. For it does not will its life. It simply lives.

    The human being, by contrast, can take a stance toward his life. The animal cannot injure or kill itself. The human being can. This shows a frightening freedom. Whether he may throw his life away is a quite different question. More on this later.

    Summary: I live in a body, but as a person I have it. It is mine because I will it. In this the human being differs from the animal.

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