Comments on: 59

By: Hegel (Simple)

Hegel (Simple) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:37:36 +0000

§ 59: The thing serves me

Now the thing belongs to me. What do I do with it? I use it.

In use it shows what a thing is. It has no end of its own. It is there to serve a need. I eat an apple, and it is gone. I wear shoes until they have holes. I change the thing, wear it out or use it up. In this way it fulfills its purpose.

When I and the thing meet, one side must give way. I am alive, I want something. The thing is mere nature. So it perishes, and I preserve myself. That is the privilege of all living things.

Is unused property dead?

Many people think so. A house has stood empty for years. Someone moves in and says: “No one was using it anyway.” There is something right in this. Use is the real side of property.

But it is not the first side. The basis is the will of the owner. The thing belongs to him because he wills it. Use is only the way this shows itself outwardly. It only comes after.

Summary: In use, property becomes real. The thing serves my need and gets used up in it. But the ground of property remains my will, not use.

By: Eduard Gans (Additions)

Eduard Gans (Additions) — Wed, 29 May 1833 13:13:18 +0000

When, in the sign, I take possession of the thing in general, in a universal manner, then in use there lies a still more universal relation, in that the thing is then not acknowledged in its particularity, but is negated by me. The thing is reduced to a means for the satisfaction of my need. When I and the thing come together, then, in order for us to become identical, one of the two must lose its quality. I, however, am living, the one who wills and is truly affirmative, whereas the thing, by contrast, is the natural. This must therefore perish, and I preserve myself, which is in general the prerogative and the rationality of the organic.

By: Hegel (Notes)

Hegel (Notes) — Tue, 26 Nov 1822 08:10:32 +0000

The determination of the thing is to be used – the carrying-out of my property in it – the realization of the fact that it is mine.
Servitus (Hein[eccius] § 391 ff.) belongs in general among the res incorporales –
Usufructus, too, is servitus, –
The use of the thing has two kinds of significance in the legal sense (apart from the third [meaning], the satisfaction of my needs) – namely α) physical, immediate seizing and consuming, and β) being a seizing of the universal – sign –
§ 59. The relation divides into an affirmative one – the thing [as] whole, universality – and a negative one – empty singularity, as [in] my possession α) of the whole, β) through a sign on the singular [part].
Use – opposition of the singularity of the thing – and of it as substance, [as] enduring. Utilization expresses more precisely the preservation of the thing.