Hegel and the Property section of Philosophy of Right
We have looked at Rousseau’s argument for the moral self, and Kant’s argument for the moral self. This week and next week we will explore Hegel’s argument for the moral self as we encounter it in Philosophy of Right.
Hegel takes quite a different strategy than the other two. Rousseau and Kant (following Rousseau) seek to show what is presupposed by the empirical approach—an active self or a self as the source of the categories that must also be a unified self—in order to show the limits of empiricism and make a space philosophically where we can comprehend the moral self to reside. Hegel on the other hand takes up a strategy of “immanent critique”. He takes up the more limited standpoint of empiricism and its concept of freedom, and tries to show logically from within that standpoint how it meets its own limit (through experience) and it necessarily must expand itself and incorporate a larger concept of self and freedom in order to make sense of itself. Hence the argument is not made from the outside, as a challenge, but emerges from within. (immanent as indwelling). Furthermore it seeks to incorporate the more limited perspective within the larger emerging perspective, so it is not a case of refuting something and leaving it behind, but seeing its limitations from within, and expanding it.
This is what we encounter when we examine the section on property and the shift into morality. Hegel is trying to get to Kant’s and Rousseau’s conclusions by a different path.
Some background on the book:
-Hegel’s positive political thought
-philosophy of “Right”—Recht. Means right not only in the sense of what is enshrined and established as rights (positive law), but also what is right in the normative sense
–a theory of human freedom. Hegel’s starting point is the “concept” or “notion” of freedom. Starts with the most abstract conception of the human will or human freedom (akin to the Lockean conception), and its enshrinement as “Abstract Right”, and unfolds it logically until we get to his fully developed conception at the end of the book in “ethical life.” The middle section is “morality” which is akin to Kantian philosophy, and which is a higher conception than Locke’s. Hence Hegel seeks to put Locke and Kant together in terms of their conceptions of freedom and go beyond them to what he considers to be a more fully developed (communal) conception
-terminology: “the universal”—what is right, what is true, what is enshrined, the basic principles of a society and how they are embodied (as laws and institutions)
-“the particular”—what is peculiar to the individual. My particular desires. My particular characteristics—female, ethnicity, age, tastes, etc.
Let’s look in more detail then at this initial section on “abstract right” and Hegel’s argument for, and critique of, a self that expresses its freedom chiefly in private property.
-historically, the modern concept of freedom or will emerges with the Romans, according to Hegel, and this is one of the historical bases of the text. This is the first society that bases itself on a concept of the individual as something distinct from the community, on the individual as a bearer of rights. But the concept of the individual is very abstract, bare “personhood.” That is, what is recognized is nothing particular about the person—what context they come from, what their desires are—but only the fact that they’re a universal subject, a rights-bearer (affinity with Hobbes’ and Locke’s conception of the subject). Existentially, this is the individual who has torn themselves free from the bonds of a traditional community, and their roots in nature, who has become capable intellectually of abstracting from every aspect of their individuality and their nature. Hence the other concept here that abstract right refers to is “abstract ego”. The ego is abstract in precisely this sense of its departure from the pre-modern subjectivity. Freedom thus starts out as a negative and abstract concept—freedom from. I am no longer determined by my community, the customs of my community, my social role in that community. Rather I have reflected away from all of these things, I have turned into myself and made myself the author of my actions. I am a modern self-reflective individual. I don’t just follow customs and traditions but think of myself as independent and refer to myself as the source of authority. Furthermore, it is based upon this capacity and this movement that I am a rights bearer, that I am accorded any worth, and recognized as an individual. Thus “Abstract Right” is the first positive legal expression of individual freedom. It is the basis of much of our legal code (much of which descends from the Romans). And it is the basis of most neo-conservative politics today, as we shall see.
If I reflect into myself in this way, what do I find in myself? This is precisely the Hobbesian standpoint (and implicitly also much of Locke’s). I find my appetites and my aversions. The substance of my freedom (if it is no longer the community and my social role), is my desires. What do I do with these desires? I express them. Why does this end up entailing a right to property?
Locke justifies property in terms of self-preservation. While anthropologically incorrect, from the standpoint of the new abstract ego, this actually makes sense. If I am torn free from the community, I must make my way in the world on my own. I am independent, and free. But I am also now not taken care of. My fate becomes separate from the fate of the community. So I must take things from nature in order to survive. I must build my own basis of survival. As Hegel says in the section on possession, the abstract ego doesn’t at this point have any relationships or obligations towards others, beyond that of mutual respect. “Be a person and respect others as persons.”
Hegel goes beyond and renders more philosophical this account of Locke’s. Private property is justified not in terms of self-preservation (for we could always go back to a communal orientation to survive). Rather private property is the *first* expression of my freedom. It is the most primitive expression of my freedom. But what drives the will forward towards taking things, and exchanging things, and labouring on things (all aspects or manifestations of the concept of property), is not some innate need per se to have things or to be free but because if we think of ourselves now as the real truth of the world, and not nature and the community and the universe, then the world from which we have abstracted ourselves seems to threaten that new sense of certainty that we are the truth. For the world confronts it as an apparently independent object, making my ego appear as a subjective truth. I must show the world that I am the truth of the world. The whole motivation for the movement of logic in the section on Abstract Right is driven by this conviction that I am the truth of things and that the world is there *for me*. Or as Locke says, God put the earth there for humans to subdue, to take from it. Animals are to serve man and his self-preservation. Everything is to be directed by our will. [various statements from American Republicans. The whole totally utilitarian perspective on the environment]
So the will must in Hegel’s terminology “objectify” its certainty of itself in nature. It must show itself as the power over nature and things. “it struggles to lift itself above this restriction and to give itself reality, or in other words to claim that external world as its own” (39). The first expression of this is “possession”. (the simplest expression of property—merely taking things and having them).
Contract is a higher expression of property than possession and use, or as Hegel says, is more adequate to “the concept of freedom.” (see text).
