Abstract Right: Personality and Property

1. Personality

First moment of the will – abstract universality

Personality involves reflective consciousness of oneself as being independent of any determinate content

In accordance with the second moment of the will – the particularity of the will – the will must nevertheless have a determinate content

At the level of abstract right, this content is encountered as something ‘external’ to the will

The third moment of the will – individuality as unity of universality and particularity – does not, therefore, fully obtain

The concept of the will remains ‘in its abstract concept’ (§ 34), as something whose essential moments have not all be realised in the world

The will is not, therefore, ‘for itself’ and well as ‘in itself’

Why ‘abstract’ right?

Abstract or ‘formal’ in the sense of abstracting from any determinate content that may form the object of an individual’s willing:

In formal right, therefore, it is not a question of particular interests, of my advantage or welfare, and just as little of the particular ground by which my will is determined, i.e. of my insight and intention. (§37)

(Welfare, insight and intention form the object of morality, which is thus more ‘concrete’ than abstract right)

Abstract right presupposes that human beings are no longer driven by immediate (natural) desires, drives, inclinations etc.

Rather, they have developed the capacity to adopt a reflective relation to them and are thus able to objectify them, treating them as something external to themselves

And the capacity to make themselves the object of their own consciousness ‘as an object raised by thought to simple infinity and hence purely identical with itself’ (§ 35R) – abstract self-identity

This capacity presupposes that persons are able to abstract from all particular differences that serve to distinguish them from others of the same general type as themselves

Hegel implies that certain cultures or societies and individuals may therefore lack personality

Some kind of intersubjective experience or process (e.g. a ‘struggle for recognition’ or education) is needed for human beings to come to think of themselves as persons – being a person is some kind of achievement

Thus abstract right also presupposes a (historical or educational) process, whereby human beings come to think of themselves as persons:

Personality begins only at that point where the subject has not merely a consciousness of itself in general as concrete and in some way determined, but a consciousness of itself as a completely abstract ‘I’ in which all concrete limitation and validity are negated and invalidated. (§35R)

For Hegel, personality explains how it is possible to be a bearer of rights and to be recognised as such

To be the subject or bearer of rights, one must be the free and equal member of a legal and political community in which rights are generally recognised and enforced

This free and equal status presupposes that individuals, despite their differences, are able to think of themselves as belonging to the same general type as others, and can therefore recognise each other as belonging to this same general type

Personality contains in general the capacity for right and constitutes the concept and the (itself abstract) basis of abstract and hence formal right. The commandment of right is therefore: be a person and respect others as persons. (§ 36)

Thus personality – and the capacity for abstraction which it presupposes – forms the condition of all civil, legal and political forms of equality:

It is part of education, of thinking as consciousness of the individual in the form of universality, that I am apprehended as a universal person, in which [respect] all are identical. A human being counts as such because he is a human being, not because he is a Jew, Catholic, Protestant, German, Italian, etc. This consciousness, which is the aim of thought, is of infinite importance, and it is inadequate only if it adopts a fixed position – for example, as cosmopolitanism – in opposition to the concrete life of the state. (§ 209R)

Abstract right is ‘abstract’ or ‘formal’ in the sense that it abstracts from all determinate differences between individuals

This is not to say that each individual is not at the same time irreducibly different from other individuals:

It is inherent in personality that, as this person, I am completely determined in all respects (in my inner arbitrary will, drive, and desire, as well as in relation to my immediate external existence), and that I am finite, yet totally pure self-reference, and thus know myself in my finitude as infinite, universal, and free. (§ 35)

In so far as it abstracts from all desires, ends etc., abstract right concerns only negative principles of action deriving from the command: ‘not to violate personality and what ensues from personality’. (§ 38)

Abstract right concerns only prohibitions, what is permissible and what we are entitled to do

Thus the command ‘be a person and respect others as person’ generates only limiting criteria with respect to the rightness of particular actions

Abstract right does not, therefore, cover such rights as the economic right to work – such rights only become intelligible at a more concrete level, where needs and welfare are taken into consideration

‘… a livelihood is something other than possession and belongs to another sphere, that of civil society’ (§ 49)

2. Property

The will - in its abstract universality - is confronted by an external world which limits it

In order to overcome this limitation, the will must give itself existence or reality in the world

A non-consequentialist justification of property

The institution of property is not justified by appeal to the alleged benefits that it brings compared to the relative disutility of its absence

Property is justified simply in virtue of its being the most immediate way in which the free will externalises and thereby actualises itself in accordance with its concept

The rational aspect of property is to be found not in the satisfaction of needs but in the superseding of mere subjectivity of personality. Not until he has property does the person exist as reason. (§ 41A)

But the circumstance that I, as free will, am an object to myself in what I possess and only become an actual will [wirklicher Wille] by this means constitutes the genuine and rightful element in possession, the determination of property. (§ 45)

In relation to needs – if these are taken as primary – the possession of property appears as a means; but the true position is that, from the point of view of freedom, property, as the first existence of freedom, is an essential end for itself. (§ 45R)

Property (prior to contract) involves the relation of the will of a person to a thing

Thing = ‘everything external to my freedom, including even my body and my life’ (§ 40R) and ‘something unfree, impersonal and without rights’ (§ 42)

A thing cannot have personality and cannot, therefore, be a bearer of rights

This is because it lacks by its very nature the capacities (freedom and rationality) that Hegel associates with personality

Given this absence of any limiting condition, a person ‘has the right to place his will in any thing’ (§ 44)

The acquisition of property is legitimate only if

(1) Something is not already the property of another person (§ 50) – unless that person has chosen to alienate it

The point is not that someone was the first to possess an object – temporal priority

What matters is that someone has already given existence to his or her freedom through the act of ‘placing’ his or her will in this object

The act must be accompanied by some kind of external manifestation – physical seizure, formation, designation, use of object etc.

(2) That which one appropriates has the status of a thing

Self-ownership

Since even my own body, as something purely natural, lacks personality, it counts as an object which I may regard as external to myself

It is, therefore, only in so far as I will my body and my life that they are mine (§ 47)

Like other things, I take possession of my body (e.g. through education, training) by means of an act of will

Equally, I can choose to damage or destroy it (which non-human animals cannot do)

(It is not only because human beings have language that we can debate whether suicide or euthanasia is morally justified)

Asymmetry between first-person (internal) and third-person (external) viewpoints

I stand in an internal relation to myself and my will (self-consciousness)

This enables me to become aware of my capacity in principle to place my will in, or to withdraw it from, any given object, including my own body

This internal standpoint is unavailable, however, to another person for whom I form an object of consciousness

This person cannot know whether or not I have placed my will in, or withdrawn it from, my body

For this person, therefore, my will and my body must be treated as one – the latter cannot be violated without also violating the former

I can withdraw into myself from my existence and make it external to me – I can keep particular feelings outside myself and be free even if I am in chains. But this is my will; for others, I am in my body. I am free for the other only in so far as I am free in my existence. (§ 48R)

Given the capacity to place my will in, or to withdraw it form, any object and my awareness of this capacity, I can choose to alienate to another the use of my physical and mental powers (labour), but only for a limited period of time

To alienate them absolutely would be to alienate my personality, since I would then no longer be able to determine in what I placed my will (§ 67)

The Problem of Slavery

Slave = someone whose ‘entire scope of … activity has been alienated to his master’ (§ 67A)

Slavery = example of alienation of personality (§ 66R)

Hegel rejects all justifications of slavery based on contingent factors or events

Rather, he seeks to comprehend the institution of slavery in terms of what a human being is considered essentially to be

Slavery depends on conceiving a human being ‘simply as a natural being whose existence … is not in conformity with his concept’ (§ 57R)

(‘natural’ in sense of submission motivated by fear of death, of having been born with a certain particular social status, etc.)

The claim that slavery is wrong, by contrast, is based on ‘the concept of the human being as spirit, as something free in itself’ (§ 57R)

Isn’t this Hegel’s position?

Yet he criticises this viewpoint for regarding the human being ‘as by nature free, or (and this amounts to the same thing) takes the concept as such in its immediacy’. (§ 57R)

Freedom (and therefore personality) is an achievement (at both an individual and collective level), not something simply given

Emergence of personality associated with transition from ancient to modern world that begins with rise of Christianity

It must be nearly one and a half millennia since the freedom of personality began to flourish under Christianity and became a universal principle for part – if only a small part – of the human race. (§ 62R)

Is Hegel saying, then, that

(1) in other ages, cultures or societies consciousness of personality was (or is) lacking and

(2) slavery in such ages, cultures or societies cannot therefore be condemned in absolute moral terms?

Rather, criticism of this institution becomes possible only at a higher stage of consciousness and development, at which it limitations are comprehended

Slavery occurs in the transitional phase between natural human existence and the truly ethical condition; it occurs in a world where a wrong is still right. Here, the wrong is valid, so that the position it occupies is a necessary one. (§ 57A)

PR presupposes that this higher stage of consciousness and development has been reached (§ 57R)

A slave in the ancient world cannot, therefore, really be said to alienate his or her personality

In lacking personality, he or she lacks, in fact, awareness of the capacity to alienate anything understood freely placing one’s will in and then withdrawing from something external to oneself

3. Private Property

Hegel argues for private property

(1) Something from whose use or benefit someone has the unlimited right to exclude others

(2) Something which one has the (almost) unlimited right to use and to dispose of as one pleases

Since my will, as personal and hence as the will of an individual, becomes objective in property, the latter takes on the character of private property. (§ 46)

Since I give my will existence through property, property must also have the determination of being this specific entity, of being mine. This is the important doctrine of the necessity of private property. (§ 46A)

Since it is my will that obtains an external existence in property the object must be mine

It would not be mine in this sense – that I give my freedom existence in it – if it were held in common

Isn’t it possible, however, to conceive of people giving existence to their freedom under alternative forms of ownership (e.g. common or collective) in the absence of (1) and (2) above?

(Remember that Hegel is attempting to provide a non-consequentialist justification of property)

Alternative argument:

Private property inculcates in individuals the self-discipline required to become fully functioning, self-determining persons

But this does not appear to be Hegel’s argument for private property

Hegel assumes that people are already persons since property rights presuppose personality

Also susceptible to a reductio ad absurdum:

Did all people in the Soviet Union, say, lack self-discipline?

Surely there are other means of achieving self-discipline (e.g. education, having to cooperate with other people in society or at work)

How do we explain the recent financial crisis in property-owning societies?

The Problem of Inequality

What happens when property ownership results in some people not being able to give ‘existence’ to their freedom?

Since abstract right abstracts from all concrete considerations: ‘What and how much I possess is therefore purely contingent as far as right is concerned’ (§ 49)

I may, therefore, end up owning very little

When Hegel claims that ‘everyone ought to have property’ (§ 49A), mustn’t he mean enough property of the right kind to realise individual personality in a meaningful way?

If so, couldn’t one of the ways in which a higher sphere of right, such as the state, overrides or limits a lower one concern the redistribution of property or limitations on ownership?

But those determinations which concern private property may have to be subordinated to higher spheres of right, such as a community or the state … Nevertheless, such exceptions cannot be grounded in contingency, private arbitrariness, or private utility, but only in the rational organism of the state. (§ 46R)

Rights are not ‘absolute’, then, as they are for some liberals – consequentialist considerations cannot, however, override them

Hegel’s discussion of poverty and the role of the state in third part on ethical life