[p. 233]
|233| harm or loss that someone suffers in goods of fortune, whose good condition is indeed desirable but not necessary in itself, does indeed concern me, yet I cannot say that it absolutely should not have happened; 2. such conditions belong to the particularity of the human being. For all our sympathy we separate misfortunes from ourselves and regard them as something foreign. On the other hand, at the injury of another’s right everyone feels himself immediately struck, because right is something universal. Thus we cannot regard a violation of right as something foreign. Because right is necessary, we feel ourselves the more severely injured by it.
§ 4
Insofar as everyone is recognised as a free being, he is a person. The proposition of right can therefore also be expressed thus: everyone ought to be treated by the other as a person.
Explanation. The concept of personality includes in itself I-hood or individuality, which is something free or universal. Human beings have personality through their spiritual nature.
§ 5
It follows from this that no human being can be coerced except to sublate the coercion which he has inflicted on others.
Explanation. There are restrictions of freedom and laws which permit human beings to be treated not as persons but as a thing, e.g. the laws which permit slavery. These, however, are only positive laws, rights, and indeed such as are opposed to reason or to absolute right.
§ 6
That action which restricts the freedom of another, or does not recognise and let him count as a free will, is contrary to right.
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