Hegel on Owning One's Own Body

7/29/2019 Hegel on Owning One's Own Body

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Hegel on Owning Ones Own Body

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The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2005) Vol. XLIII

1. Introduction

Hegels Philosophy of Right is a systematic study of the natureof human freedom.1 This study is dialectical in nature, in that

it involves a form of philosophical thinking that generatesincreasingly sophisticated and comprehensive conceptions offreedom as it proceeds, and in that this thinking is propelledforward towards these more developed conceptions solely on thebasis of the internal, logical inadequacies it uncovers in theconceptions it considers along the way (PhR 31 and 31R). Hegelbegins his study with an account of property ownership, for heconceives of the individuals right to own property as the mostbasic and primitive form in which freedom comes to assume foritself an objective, enduring, and substantial existence in itsown right. On Hegels account, it is through the actual existenceof her right to own things that an individual first comes toexperience her own agency, and her own unconditioned freedom,as having a genuine purchase and lasting expression in the

objective order of things. Since Hegels study of the forms offreedom progresses dialectically beyond the categories ofproperty ownership, however, his account of ownership can alsobe read as an internal critique of the conception of freedom thatunderlies the logic of ownership, and particularly of theseeming irreducibility and absolute character of the exclusiveproperty rights of the individual.2

This internal critique begins by treating property ownershipas an autonomous and self-articulating form of individual self-consciousness: in willing its own reality as an owner, the selfnecessarily articulates for itself a definite stance concerningboth the ultimate nature of its own freedom as a self-asserting


David CiavattaTrent University

David Ciavatta is a visiting assistant professor at Trent University

in Peterborough, Ontario. His recent research has been focused on the

intersubjective dimension of human experience and action, and he is

currently completing a manuscript on Hegels concept of the family.


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self and the ultimate nature of the things that it would claim asits own. Hegel works to identify the inner logic, or the operative

metaphysical presuppositions, of this autonomous form of self-consciousness and then proceeds to bring to light the tensionsthat plague it from within, tensions that ultimately pointtoward the need for a new form of self-consciousness and a newmetaphysical stance concerning the nature of the individualself, the world, and their relationship.3 The main dialecticaltension Hegel discovers here turns on the opposition betweenindividuality and universalitybetween the absolute exclu-sivity involved in the claim to own something, on the one hand,and the essentially intersubjective structures of recognitionthrough which alone such exclusive ownership can exist, on theother.4 It is on the basis of this tension that his account ofproperty rights develops into an account of the necessity andirreducibility ofcontractual relations; for, once contract comes to

be posited as a distinctive manifestation of freedom in its ownright, and thus as an end in itself, it is expressly acknowledgedthat individual self-assertion is established, not simply byimmediate acts of appropriation, but only in and through theintersubjective agreement of all parties involved.

Hegel also identifies a further tension that plagues the innerlogic of individual property rights, a tension that concerns theproperty owners relationship to her own body. It is this tensionthat will occupy me here. Though it is not the central focus ofHegels internal critique of property rights, the problem of theowners proprietary relation to her own body is at issuethroughout the account of ownership presented in the Philos-ophy of Right. By drawing out the implications of Hegelsdiscussion of owning ones own body, I will show that the dis-tinctive logic of ownership at work in the case of ones own bodyis ultimately in tension with the overall conception of propertyownership that forms the starting point for the Philosophy of

Right.The tension here lies in the fact that owning ones own body,

while being a necessary condition of ones capacity to realizeoneself as free and as an owner, cannot ultimately be accountedfor in terms of the implicit metaphysical stance that is em-bodied in ones claim to be an owner of things generally.5 OnHegels account, the very project of owning property necessarilyoperates under the presupposition of a rigid, dualisticmetaphysics, according to which all that exists can ultimatelybe divided up into two sorts of entity: independent and

unconditioned persons, on the one hand, and finite, externallyconditioned things, on the other (PhR 412). The persons ownbody, however, insofar as it necessarily figures into the personsproject of ownership in general, does not quite fit into either ofthese categories, for while the body is itself a conditioned thing,and thus a part of the external world that the owner would


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appropriate to itself, it is also the singular and necessarymedium through which all acts of appropriationand, under

this initial conception of freedom, all expressions of freedomtake place. In this respect, then, the owners body, with all itsdeterminate characteristics, cannot ultimately be thought of asexternal to or separable from the self-affirming will: the ownersown body is at once the object, and the concrete subject, ofappropriation and, thus, serves as a sort of bridge between theperson and the external things she would own. I will show that,if Hegel is right to construe ownership and its constitutiveproprietary stance as presupposing such a dualistic meta-physics, then the inescapable, internal demands placed on theowner by her own body can be thought of as presenting ametaphysical challenge to the ultimate legitimacy of the ownersself-understanding and, by extension, to the primacy andapparent irreducibility of the institution of property holding.

Though Hegel does not himself spell out the dialecticalimplications of this tension relating to the owners own body, Iwill be arguing that Hegel in fact goes a long way in bringingthis tension to light and that his doing so reveals somethingimportant about how he conceives of human freedom in the end:rather than being an immediately self-possessed capacity ofself-assertion that is inherently formal and thus essentiallyunconditioned by the human bodys determinate nature, Hegelimplies that freedom is essentially concrete, and is to beunderstood as something that develops precisely in and throughthe bodys concrete and gradual development of moresophisticated ways of interacting with the world. I will besuggesting, further, that if we can view the selfs relationship tothe world in general as anextension of its distinctive manner of

relating to its own body, we come to see that the world itselfmust be experienced, not merely as an indifferent manifold ofexternal, insubstantial thingsand thus as completely

vulnerable to the mastery of the free, appropriative willbutrather as a concrete pole of interaction without which the

embodied will, as the other pole, could not be what it is.

2. The Implicit Metaphysical

Stance of Ownership

Hegels account of property operates on the principle that, if weare to understand what is really at stake in ownershipwhatownership is on its own termswe need to enter into the

experience or self-consciousness of the owner qua owner, and let

this distinctive form of self-consciousness alone determine thecategories that are to structure our thinking. What is requiredof us, as we enter into and investigate this experience ofpropriety, is that we suspend our pre-existing metaphysicalcommitments in order that we might explore how reality isconstituted in and for the act of owning itself. That is, we are to


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let the experience of owningalone guide our account, not only ofthe nature of ownership, but also of the ontology of the owner

and the thing owned. While it might seem natural to think ofownership nonmetaphysically, as an insubstantial and contin-gent convention existing between two otherwise independentand substantial individuals (the owner and the thing owned),the actual experience of ownership, argues Hegel, necessarilyoperates according to a distinctive, self-articulated metaphysicalstance, one that does not accord the owned thing the same sortof ontological self-sufficiency as the owner.6

In its most basic form, the act of owning something is an actof unconditioned self-assertion whereby the self declares its ownself to be the truth, or the determining principle, of some other-wise external thing: this thing is mine; it answers to me and tome alone. This declaration can take place in words, or in thesimple and familiar act of grasping or occupying something in a

proprietary manner, but however it is enacted it necessarilyinvolves the taking up of a determinate stance on what it is tobe a being like me, on the one hand, and on what it is to be athing that can be appropriated by me, on the other. Hegelargues that, in articulating the metaphysical commitments ofthis proprietary act, we would have to say that reality consistsbasically of two ontologically distinct sorts of entity: on the onehand, there are free persons, who are immediately and essen-tially alive to their own infinite and unconditioned capacity todetermine themselves, their capacity to exist exclusively ontheir own terms7; on the other hand, there are mere things,entities whose reality is determined, not by any internal andunconditioned movement of self-affirmation, but essentially andexclusively by external forcesand, in the end, by the willitself.8 Indeed, the act of appropriation can be viewed as anattempt to establish and demonstrate concretely the truth ofthis fundamental ontological divide: it is as though the ownerexperiences the externality of things to her own person as asort of call to affirm her own ontological primacy and uncon-ditioned nature in relation to those things, and it is onlythrough an actual act of appropriation, an act ofmaking thething her own, that the person in effect becomes actual as a self-determining force vis--vis the thing.9 As Hegel says, I as freewill am an object to myself in what I possess and thereby forthe first time am an actual will.10

What the proprietary will declares, in its act of appro-priation, is that things do not matter in their own right but

come to possess weight, come to make a difference in the real,only insofar as the will claims them and thereby animates themwith meaning and value.11 The character of being mine is, forthe proprietary will, tantamount to a definition of substantialityitself. A houseplant exists for its owner most immediately interms of the way it realizes some project that its owners own


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will has initiated: the plants own intrinsic demand for waterand sufficient soil have no independent and ultimate ontological

claim, from the point of view of the owners ownership of them,but rather come to matter only insofar as the owner herselfwills to preserve the plants life; in watering the plant, she doesnot answer simply to the plant qua plant, does not heed itsdesire as such, but answers really only to the demands of herown will, insofar as she has declared the plant a site for herown self-realization.12 The pride she takes in the plantsflourishing is an indication that she experiences her ownidentity as being at issue in the plant, that she has becomeobjective to herself as free in the plant itself.

In maintaining my ultimate, ontological priority over thethings I own, and in declaring, in effect, that this thing I ownonly gets to matter in reality insofar as I let itinsofar as it ismemy proprietary will can never become so dependent on or

invested in my property that my own identity as a free willwould be jeopardized without it. Certainly my exis tence ingeneral depends on my being able to appropriate certain thingsto myselffor instance, food and shelterand, it is true, theinstitution of private property does in practice guarantee theindividuals right to such basic material resources. But thisnatural dependence is distinct from the ontological dependencethat would challenge the wills unconditioned power to affirmitself on its own account, and it is precisely this ontologicalindependence that is being affirmed in ownership.13 If I hadbecome so dependent upon my property that I could not bemyself, could not affirm myself, without it, then, it seems, Iwould not be genuinely free, would simply not be my ownperson. I would be its slave, and, just as in the case of slaveryto another will, I would have to wait upon something externalto and independent of my freedom to give me a directive and todetermine where my will is to be employed; I would be a condi-tioned being.14

Hegels distinction between mere possessionin which thewill is essentially qualified by and thus dependent upon par-ticular needs and desires, and upon the determinate characterof the objects possessedandpropertyin which the will willsits own freedom as such, or freedom in its universalityreflectsthe distinctive rational status of property as the true expressionof the wills ultimate and complete independence from othernessand externality.15 As Hegel says, property is complete as thework of the free will alone, whereas there still remains in

possession, as an external relation to an object, somethingexternal (PhR 52R). Obviously my property is still external, forinstance in the sense that it is physically separable from me asan individual; but Hegels point here is that I, in becoming theowner of the thing (and not merely its de facto possessor), havecome to relate to the thing in a manner that ultimately


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abstracts from all its particular, determinate characteristics,and so its being-mine is not ultimately conditioned by such

characteristics, or by the determinate desires or needs that mayhave drawn me to possess it in the first place. In declaring thisis mine, I am, qua property-holder, essentially engaged inwilling my own unconditioned freedom as such: that is, I amdeclaring this is mine simply because I have freely claimed it,not because I am immediately constituted in such a way as toneed it or because I am the kind of person who takes greatpleasure in having this sort of thing; my entitlement does notdefer to, is not ultimately conditioned by, the existence of suchgiven (and thus unwilled), external contingencies.16 Possession,on the other hand, as measured in terms of ones de facto andexternal control over thingsin grasping or wielding them, inshaping or using or otherwise investing them concretely withones actual willis not in itself oriented to the realization of

freedom as such but, rather, to the fulfillment of specific desiresand needs; in seeking to possess, then, I implicitly posit myselfas a being governed by such determinate and external forces.While there is good reason to think that Hegels argumentimplies one must undertake to possess something before it canbecome ones property (or at least that the thing to be claimedas property must already be determined and informed by thehuman will, whether ones own or others),17 all de facto acts ofpossession have the capacity to express the selfs genuine free-dom only insofar as the standpoint of possession is transcended,or insofar as actual possession comes to function first andforemost as a sign of ontological priority in relation to the thing,as a demonstration that the holder has come to establish herontological independence vis--vis the thing.18 Property rightsare never merely a means for securing a lasting possession, andactual possession by itselfeven access to the whole and entireuse of a thingis never sufficient to constitute ownership.19

Thus it follows from the metaphysics of freedom at work inproperty that the relationship between owner and property isessentially formal or abstract , in that the owners status asowner is ontologically indifferent both to the determinate thingsshe owns and to the determinate place they have within herlife. Though she requires some property even to realize herfreedom as an owner in the first place, her freedom does notitself depend onthat is, it is not defined bythe determinatecharacter of this property, but springs solely from her uncon-ditioned will, a will that is itself unmediated by any particular,

concrete determinations. This means that her personalinvestment in the particular things she ownsfor instance, thefact that she has come to feel so personally at home in thefurniture she has had for many years, or the fact that the deskshe built expresses her singular ability and personal style as acarpenteris ultimately a matter of indifference from the point


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of view of her right to own these things; from the point of viewof this right, all the things she owns are equal in beingequally

and immediately external to her own basic status as a person, toher own capacity to will her own freedom.20 It follows from this,that [w]hat and how much I possess, therefore, is a matter ofindifference so far as rights are concerned.21

It is precisely such considerations that underlie Hegelsdiscussion of the inherent alienability of property: as Hegelwrites, I may abandon as a res nullius anything that I have oryield it to the will of another.22 This is because everything Iown is an expression of my will only insofar as my will occupiesit freely, and as ontologically independent of my property I amessentially free to remove my will whenever I see fit. A will thatcould not take itself back from out of the thing, but that issomehow stuck in its property, is not free in its property, andis thus no owner of it. The capacity to alienate, as premised

upon the ontological independence of the owner vis--vis herproperty, is thus a basic condition ofowning this property in thefirst place. We will see that it is precisely this ontologicalindifference between the owner and the owned that will bebrought into question in the case of the owners ownership ofher own body.

3. Body as Thing and as Property

Hegel considers a persons desires, needs, impulses, and whimsto be part of what he calls the particularity or concretenessof the will, for they alone are what give particular, determinatecontent to the persons will (PhR 14 and 37). But as Hegelstipulates in his initial account of the basic features of

personhood, we are concerned only with the person as person,and therefore with the particular only insofar as it is some-thing separable from the person and immediately different fromhim (PhR 43R ).23 Persons, as free and self-determining, aredefined precisely in terms of their universal capacity to be theexclusive and ultimate masters of their own domain, and thusin terms of their universal freedomfrom all particular, externalforces, including their given desires, needs, instincts and whims;in personhood, says Hegel, particularity is not present asfreedom, and so, though the individual person is animated bysuch determinate forces, these forces are not as such mediatedby the will, and so have no normative claim in their own right. 24

Particular desires and instincts are, therefore, never theultimate determinants explaining what the person, qua person,

is and does: if I act on one of my desires or whims, it is becauseI, as an unconditioned and indeterminate power of freedom, letthis desire or whim become efficacious. What matters mostessentially from the point of view of the self-understanding ofthe free person is not what in particularshe chooses to do, butonly the fact that she freely chooses to do it, the fact that it is


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an expression of her will; only this formal capacity of self-assertion makes the action her own, her exclusive responsibility,

and so it is only this capacity that is relevant for understandingwhat is most essential to her ontologically.

In saying that the particular desires and needs constitutiveof the persons concrete life are distinct and logically separablefrom the indeterminate and formal power of will, Hegel is ineffect asserting that the ontological divide that exists betweenpersons and external things is present even within the indi-

vidual, in the form of the dualism between the self as free willand the self in its immediate status as an individual, naturalbody. For the body, taken by itself and as the source and locus ofdeterminate desires and needs, is, like an organism standingoutside the self, tantamount to a mere thing to be appropriatedby the will. The body and its concrete, particular desires areultimately external to the self-asserting free will, for, it would

seem, they themselves contribute nothing towards making itthe free, self-asserting will that it is. Just as the Cartesianmind affirms its ontological independence from the body on thebasis of its experience of being unconditioned in thought and inthe formation of beliefs, so too does the proprietary will affirmits independence from the body on the basis of its immediateexperience of being the sole and unconditioned arbiter of allthat pertains to its own reality.

In keeping with this dualistic conception of the person,Hegel construes a persons organism as well as a persons life aspossessions like other things, in that they can be possessedonly insofar as the persons will is in them.25 Hegel drawsattention to the fact that, unlike other animals, human selvescan maim or even destroy their own bodies, thus suggestingthat humans can freely remove their wills from their ownbodies, alienating their bodies from themselves as free persons(PhR 47 and 47R). The reason I can alienate my property isthat it is mine only insofar as I put my will into it (PhR 65).Because my body is essentiallyexternal to my free power of self-assertion, and is thus susceptible to being alienated at will,my body, too, must be considered first and foremost as a poten-tial object of ownership among others.

But is the exercise of this capacity for self-mutilation oroutright bodily destruction consistent with the owners freedom,or does the owners specific relationship to her own power ofself-affirmation ultimately preclude her from removing herwill from her own body in this way? Is the body in fact simply

one among many possible objects of appropriation, and is itsimply external to and ontologically separable from the willthat would own it? Indeed, how could the will actually succeedin alienating itself from its own body, if not by way ofthe actualexertions of this bodyand thus by way of an implicit endorse-ment and affirmation of this body as the legitimate organ or


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embodiment of its ends? Though humans have the actualcapacity to alienate their own bodies and their own lives, and

though this capacity is entailed precisely by the universality ofthe persons freedom, we shall see that on Hegels argumentsuch an act of alienation is ultimately counter to the veryfreedom of the person. It is in grasping this inalienable charac-ter of the body and its life, then, that we will be brought to seewhy the owners ownership of her own body poses a challenge tothe very conceptuality of ownership.

4. The Inalienability of the Selfs

Substantive Characteristics

As I argued earlier, the capacity to alienate ones property is,according to the conception of ownership Hegel lays out, anecessary condition of being its owner in the first place. Thiscondition assures that the self-asserting self is ontologicallyseparable from the things it would own, and so that the identityof the person, qua self-asserting and universally free, does notultimately depend on the determinate and particular characterof the things it possesses. Hegel does place some limits on whatthe owner can alienate, however, and it is these limits that willprove to supply determinate contents for the otherwise formaland indeterminate universality of the will.

Hegel says that the thing to be alienated must be externalby nature (PhR 65). As examples of things that are notexternal by nature, Hegel mentions the individual selfs con-science and, more broadly, the selfs general capacity toprescribe and be responsible for its own course of action. Suchsubjective powers are not really things at all, and Hegel in

fact hesitates to construe them as property in any straight-forward sense, preferring instead to call them substantivecharacteristics (substantiellen Bestimmungen)that are consti-tutive of the very personhood of the individual person (PhR 66).The only reason Hegel mentions these sorts of characteristics inthis context is that they possess a formal similarity to property,in that they are in principle susceptible to being alienated fromthe individual who would otherwise claim them for herself. ButHegels main concern here is to show that the alienation of suchconstitutive characteristicsand, correlatively, our manner ofhaving them in the first placeis different in kind than thestraightforward and voluntary alienation (or ownership) of thisor that piece of property; indeed, though the alienation of suchcharacteristics is conceivable in some sense, their very nature

as the substantive characteristics of free self-identity makestheir voluntary alienation essentially self-defeating and self-contradictory. Lets consider this case more closely, since it willprovide us with a model for asking whether the body, too, oughtto be conceived as something that is not external by nature and,thus, as a limit to ones freedom to alienate.


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Though such substantive characteristics as the freedom tomake up ones own mind and the capacity to be responsible for

ones actions are parts of the essence of personhood, it is notguaranteed that every naturally existing human individual willdevelop and claim these characteristics for himself, and so it isnot guaranteed that every individual will be his own person orthat he will possess a mind of his own. An individual whodid not develop these characteristicsfor instance, an indi-

vidual born into slavery, and who was never given the oppor-tunity to experience his own autonomywould have a concreteexistence that was external to his concept; or, we can say, hewould be alienated from himself and possessed in his own lifeby the will of another. Such an individual would always havethe potential to be freefor that is part of his inner concepteven if he were not actually free. Thus, his actual existence is infact external to his essence, but not external by nature; it is

only contingently so, and the right sort of education (Bildung)into freedom could in principle lead such an individual toassume a rightful possession of himself as a person (see PhR21R, 57R and 66R).

But once a person does come to the point of grasping hisown personhood, thereby making himself responsible for whathe is and does, Hegel argues that there is no turning back:having drunk from the cup of freedom, having apprehendedhis own self as free, the individual is no longer really in aposition to cede to someone else the ultimate authority overhis own actions and moral judgments.26 In this case, once I haveannulled my externalitynamely, my capacity to be imme-diately governed in my beliefs, plans, and actions by someoneother than myselfI cannot, whether through lapse of time orfrom any other reason drawn from my prior consent or willing-ness, relieve myself of my basic capacity for responsibility,cannot give myself over to another; I would be giving up whatas soon as I possess it, exists in essence as mine alone and notas something external (PhR 66 and 66R).

Allen Wood criticizes Hegel here for construing the act ofalienating ones own constitutive capacities as a contradiction .On Woods argument, there is nothinginconceivable about theact of barter[ing] away my capacity to barter anymore.27 Woodis right, if we are talking about a particular concrete individual,who, in his empirical finitude and blindness, does not alwaysact in ways that recognize and uphold his own freedom as aperson. However, if we are talking about the person qua person

the person understood according to the strict sense in whichHegel defines this technical term, as the individual self that isessentially alive to the infinite character of its own singular willand to the absolute normative pull it thus exerts on all thingsthat would limit it (see PhR 39)then we cannot conceive ofsuch a self as consciously willing the alienation of anything that


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is constitutive of its own singular capacity to will; it would notactually be a person if it did so. A person, qua person, is

inescapably committed to affirming the absolute normativeclaim of its own individual freedom, and it is only on thiscondition that it actually is free, and is a person, in the firstplace.28 And so if there are determinate capacities or charac-teristicslike the capacity to freely alienate ones propertythat are constitutive of ones identity as a person, then onecannot employ ones freedom as a person to barter thosecapacities or characteristics away.

The issue we must now turn to is whether the body of anowner can in fact be conceived of as external by nature, aswas implied in the previous section, or whether it, like thesubstantive characteristics discussed in the present section,must be conceived of as a constitutive feature of the owners

very personhood. Despite the remarks cited earlier concerning

the alienability of the body, we will see that Hegel does give usreason to think that the owner cannot simply extricate himselffrom his body but is, rather, constitutively committedto willinghis own body, precisely to the extent that he wills himself asfree in the first place. As Hegel says, it is only through thedevelopment of his own body and mind, essentially through hisself-consciousnesss apprehension of itself as free, that he takespossession of himself and becomes his own property and no oneelses (PhR 57, my emphasis). This would suggest that the self-conscious apprehension of oneself as free and as responsible foroneselfthe process of owning up to ones own essence, as itwere, thus becoming ones own personis just as much some-thing we do with our own body and on the basis of our bodilydevelopment as it is something we do in thought, by way of

the development of our spirit or mind (Geist). The body thusappears here, not merely as one possible object of appropriationamong others, but as something we cannot help claiming rightsto as our own, if we are to have rights at all.

5. The Inalienability of the

Owners Own Body

It is when Hegel begins to consider the body, not merely as anexternal and isolated object among others, but as the living andinternally assumed medium of individual experience and self-expressionthat is, as something that exists essentially in and

for the individual selfs own consciousness of itselfthat he isbrought to argue that there is something unique about this

thing, something that reveals it to be, not simply external bynature, but an integral part of the free selfs capacity to beitself. As Hegel writes, my body is the existence of my freedom,and it is with my body that I feel.29 The body is marked here,not merely as one among many possible manifestations of theselfs freedom, but as the very existence of it. Moreover, my


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bodily existence has the distinctive character of putting me intocontact with what is external to me; it is essentially a feeling

body.30 My bodys determinate characteristics, therefore, thoughimmediate and objectively given in one sense, also serve to openup diverse possibilities for experiential engagement with whatis other to me, and so to open up diverse possibilities for furtheractualizing my agency and freedom in relation to the world.Hegel calls the body my external existence, universal incontent and undivided, the real pre-condition of every furtherdetermined mode of existence (PhR 47, Hegels emphasis), forthe body in its determinacy mediates all aspects of the selfsrelationship to the world, but thereby opens up the possibilitythat the self can come to further determine its own existencefor instance, by coming to incorporate further things into itsfield of action, thereby extending the existence of its own willinto the realm of external possessions. The selfs body is itself

conceived, then, not merely as a self-contained thing, equallyexternal to all other things, but rather as a nexus of determin-ate powera nexus of ones potentialities of self-affirmationthrough which the world as a whole (and, in particular, theworld of possible possessions) is mediated to the self.

Indeed, we can say that, insofar as the body is what firstallows things to appear to the self in terms oftheir potentialresponsiveness to the selfs determinate powers of handlingthem, the body is what thereby constitutes the world, inadvance, as a site for the expression of the selfs practical will,a site for the further realization and externalization of itsfreedom. It is on the basis of our bodily determinacy, forinstance, that Hegel can consider bodily seizing (krperliche

Ergreifung) as a primitive actualization of the self s possessivewill: it is because we are constituted such as to have hands, forinstance, that things can appear to us as to-be-grasped in thefirst place, and so the general project of possessionof puttingones will into thingsseems to develop out of and presupposethe determinate experiential contexts that our bodies open up.31

In this sense, then, to experience some external thing as apotential site for the affirmation of ones will, is implicitly to bealready willingones own body as the determinate elementitself internal to the willthrough which alone such appro-priation can actually take place. We might call the body theproperty of all properties, then, insofar as it is the body thatfirst brings freedom into the world, first allows worldly thingsto occur in the light of freedom, first allows the self, in its

freedom, to intersect concretely with the life of things.32

Letsexplore how this non-externalized body figures into Hegelsaccount of alienatingproperty generally.

Hegel argues that a person could not alienate or give up thewhole use of his productive capacity, or the whole of hisproductive time, along with the whole of the products of his


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labor, without alienating his personhood as such (PhR 67). Wemust keep in mind that the act of alienating ones property is

here conceived as something that necessarily involves theaffirmation of oneself as a free person in ones own right. Hegelis thus claiming that the constant proprietary affirmation of atleast part of ones productive capacity, ones own time, alongwith ones own products, is a constitutive condition of being aperson in the first place; and so to alienate the whole of suchthings is essentially irrational, in that it involves a sort ofperformative contradiction: it is an act that at once both affirmsand denies the existence of ones own freedom as a person.33 OnHegels account, if I signed away the whole of my productivetime or the whole of my productive power to another, I wouldbe making into anothers property the substance of my being,my universal activity and actuality, my personhood (PhR 67).

The fact that I, as an embodied being, exist in time, means

that there is a certain externality that necessarily structuresmy life: I can treat my life as a collection of circumscribedtemporal periods (each of which is external to all the others)and so treat my productive capacities generally as divided up interms of limited periods of their employment.34 In doing so, myabilities acquire an external relation to the totality anduniversality of my being and can, in this form, be legitimatelyalienated to another person for his or her use (PhR 67). Havingthese determinate powers as ones own, however, is distinctfrom owning any particular period of their use: it is only acircumscribed period of use that can be thus made external andhanded over to another; to give up the powers themselves,Hegel says, would be tantamount to giving up ones own self.35

Based on this discussion, we can see that, for Hegel, mypowers are mine in a different sense than is their actual,externalizable employment; and, by extension, my body, as thedeterminate totality of all my concrete powers, is mine in adifferent sense than any particular, external thing I do or bringabout with it. Despite the requirement that one must dedicatesome periods of time for ones own use of ones powers, we cansee that a power is not simply reducible to the sum of its actual,external uses; it is, in its core, not something external to theself. A power is something I have all at once, and in anessentially undivided manner, and, though it is concrete andparticular in scopeconsisting, for instance, in my dexteritywith small toolsit is universal and ideal in the sense that Ihave it always, even when it is not actually being employed at

the time. It is in this sense that ones own powers constitute auniversal activity, for they are what I bring to bear in any andall situations, and they thus shape my concrete potentialities ineach case, even when I am not specifically putting them toactual use. Consider, for instance, such basic powers as that ofproducing speech: upon developing the general ability to grasp


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word-sounds and articulate them with my own mouth, I enterinto the universally extended sphere of intersubjective com-

munication in which I can at any point be called upon to speak,and I thus experience my various situations to some extent interms of my concrete capacity to put things into words. It isprecisely this ideal and universal character of my powersand,by extension, the ideal and universal character of my body,conceived as the totality of all my concrete powers, the enduringpotentiality of all my self-expressionsthat makes them aconstitutive moment of my freedom as a person, and thusinalienable.

Again we find Hegel referring to the essential inalienabilityof substantive characteristics, characteristics that are constitu-tive of the very personhoodand of the very freedomof theindividual person. However, unlike the more formal character-istics discussed abovenamely, ones ability to make up ones

own mind and ones general capacity to be responsible for onesactionswe are here considering characteristics that are inher-

ently concrete and particular in nature. My productive powers ofengaging with and transforming the objective world of natureare the powers of my person, powers that are actually orientedtowards the concrete actualization of my own freedom as such,but they are just as much the powers of my body, determinatepowers that reside in my muscles and in the dexterity of myhands, powers that express their efficacy only in the external,spatiotemporal realm of nature. Hegel is thus implying that,though this productive body is, in one sense, an external,particular thing among othersa thing that relates to otherthings in an external, natural manner, by feeling them, and bygrasping, using, and forming them so as to possess themonesown bodily particularity, understood as consisting of onesproductive powers, cannot ultimately be conceived of as whollyexternal to ones self-asserting self, for these powers are theindispensable and concrete forces through which alone the willcan actualize itself as will and as free.36 In this singular role,the body, in its concrete determinacy, is somehow interior toor perhaps we can even say identical withthe free will itselfand so must be embraced and assumed as its own, as a condi-tion of any and all expressions of its freedom. Unlike the otherobjects a person might own, then, the body has the singularcharacter of demanding categorically that it be assumed asones own; this particular demand springs from no other sourcethan ones own freedom, but it is a demand that one is not at

liberty to refuse, if one is to be a free person in the first place.If I, as the singular owner of my own body, cannot freelyalienate my body, if my concrete body, as the concrete totality ofmy powers of engaging and transforming the world, is notultimately separable from my universal power of affirmingmyself in my freedom, it would seem that my relationship to my


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body must be different in kind than my relationship to theother particular things I own. The personsparticularityhere,

in the form of her determinate powers of bodily self-expres-sionis for the first time experienced positively, by the personherself, as a constitutive feature of her very self-identity andfreedom, and so the basic abstractness of the owners willitsontological indifference to all particular thingsis overcome inprinciple. Indeed, though it may still be legitimate to conceive ofthe relationship between the self and its body according to acertain model ofownership, the bond between the self and itsbody is much more one of identification. As Hegel says, if mybody is touched or suffers violence, then, because I feel, I amtouched myself actually, here and now, for I am in my bodyor, rather, I am my bodily here and nowin a way that I amnot in my other, external things (PhR 48R).

6. Becoming an Owner ofOnes Own Body

It must be noted, however, that the body as thus owned andidentified with is no longer the merely immediate and naturallygiven body. Rather, what this account of self-ownership impliesis that the human body itself along with the distinctivelycorporeal exigencies it places on the person are not merelynatural and thus external to the selfs self-identity, but arealready implicitly oriented towards and mediated by thedevelopment of personhood and its universal freedom. Thespecial relationship between the self and its bodily powerspoints towards a metaphysics of the body that gives place, notmerely to the natural, and thus essentially external,dimension

of the body, but rather to the bodys inherent capacity toexpress, in its very corporeality and determinacy, the actualpresence of the person who owns it, the person who experi-ences this body from the inside.

A significant part of Hegels account of property is occupiedwith how the self comes to own its own body through a trans-formation of the body itself. In Hegels conception, we begin inlife by being largely locked up in the natural processes of ourbodieswe are, so to speak, possessed by its basic desires forfood and pleasure, for instancebut gradually take ownershipof our bodies, in the sense that our embodied existence is nolonger just an immediate seeking after given bodily needs butbecomes mediated by the project of realizing our own freedomas self-affirming selves. In making this otherwise external body

his own propertya body oriented essentially in terms offreedomthe agent transforms the body into the willing organand soul-endowed instrument [Mittel] of mind [Geist](PhR 48).

Hegel thereby suggests that the body itselfis transformed, inits very actualityindeed, in its very ontological statusintoone that is immediately and in itself responsive to the exigen-


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cies of free self-assertion and self-expression.37 Though wenever leave behind our natural lineage, and will continue to be

possessed by the desire for food, for instance, it is neverthelessthe case that the body itselfbecomes an organ, not merely forsuch natural functions as digestion and excretion, but for morespiritual forms of free self-assertion like speaking and dancing.Moreover, as Freud argued, even such processes as eating andexcretion are neverjust natural phenomena in the case of thehuman individual, for they inevitably play a role in theindividuals developing sense of her own identity as a free agentin her own right. Freud argued, for instance, that the so-calledanal stage of personal development, in which the infant gradu-ally learns to affirm her will over her own process of excretion,is developmentally indispensable insofar as it gives rise to aconcrete experience of the infants own centralized agency, theexperience of the power of her own will. The otherwise natural

process of excretion, happening of itself and uncontrollably,becomes for the infant a primitive and founding locus for herown free accomplishment, for her own sense of herself as beingreliably efficacious on her own account.38 On Hegels terms,such developmental phenomena are to be understood essen-tially in terms of the logic of ownership, for what is happeningis that the body is corporeally transformed into an organ ofwill, and thereby becomes one with the will, becomes more itsown.

It is not the case that there is a formal, unconditioned, andimmediately self-transparent will in place that graduallyshapes the body to its own ends from the outside, like a capablecraftsmen who transforms some wood into a table. Rather, tothe extent that my will comes to actualize itself in and throughthe transformation and possession of my body, I must beexperiencing myself immediately in and as my body, and mustthereby accept its particular powers and limits as the veryelement of my will. In learning how to swim, for instance, I amat first faced above all with my own powerlessness in the water,for I have not yet come to own my body in such a way that itcould be the willing organ of my project of getting to the otherside of the pool. Indeed, the pool itself does not yet exist for meas a place in which I can assert my freedom, as an externalthing through which I can experience my own efficacy, for asthings stand I cannot yet even keep myself afloat in it. Thrashabout as I may in an attempt to master my situation, the onlyway open to me actually to transform my body into an organ of

swimmingthat is, the only way to take ownership of my body,in relation to the wateris by letting myself be guided by mybodys own determinate characteristics, by exploring its ways ofmoving in the water until I settle on some set of movementsthat will keep me afloat.39 Far from being able to assert my willover the body in the manner of an external object, then, it is as


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though I must uncover the specific power to swim from withinmy own body, and only then can I come to own it. 40

6. Concluding Remarks:

Incorporating External Things

into Ones Own Body

In concluding, allow me to indicate one way in which the dis-tinctive logic of owning ones own body might be extended so asto form the basis of a different account of ownership altogether,one that does not operate essentially in terms of the ultimateontological divide between free persons and things, or betweenuniversality and particularity. It is impossible to separate theaccount of the bodys powers from an account of the powers ofthings, since things are the necessary conditions of the develop-ment and actualization of the bodys own powers.41 I cannotmake my body into a body that swims, cannot release thispotentiality from itcannot realize my freedom in it as aswimmerwithout at the same time building a relationship towater in its capacity to hold and respond to my powers, in itsreliable resistances to, and augmentations of, my own exertions.The same sorts of argument that reveal the inalienability oforthe incapacity to not ownones own basic powers of action,must thus involve an account of the inalienability of at leastsome sorts of things, things that are essential to the formationand expression of the selfs basic powers of action on its ownbehalf.

The idea that things that are external to the body canbecome organs or extensions of the wills own concrete relation-

ship to itself as a practical power would suggest a conception ofowning that is very different than the form of exclusive,private ownership dealt with in the account of abstract propertyrights. For instance, the sense in which the experiencedswimmer has made the water she swims in her own isobviously very different from the way that a person fences offthis or that existing lake as her own. In realizing her ownpotential in and through the water, and in carrying the water,in an ideal form, in her own bodily powerin the ways thisbody has become accustomed to glide through water, and in theways that, even on land, her body bears the trace of thisactivityshe has thereby come to own the water in a moreidealized or universal manner, and thus in a manner that doesnot require her having exclusive and possessive control over

some individual body of water in particular.Again, we are not here talking solely or even primarily aboutthose material conditionsfood, shelter, healththat areessential to the natural bodys continued functioning; rather,what is at issue are the determinate, material conditions of a

persons freedom, those specific things without which the self


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could not reproduce its own experience of itself as the free selfit is. These particular objective and external conditions, then,

are actually internal to freedom itself, and must be willed alongwith ones freedom if one is to be a person. Determining whatthese conditions are in particular instances, and according themdue recognition at the juridical level, could lead to greatcontroversy, especially given that this sort of ownership is notnecessarily established by an express and easily identifiable actof claiming a specific, self-contained object, but could arise moreor less inconspicuously, as when a person comes to be at homein a particular environment over time, and gradually comes todevelop basic powers of self-expression and self-identificationthat are indigenous to that environment. Versions of thisconception of self-determination as requiring a very particularmaterial element for its proper actualization have beenappealed to, for instance, in certain land claims cases brought

forward by Aboriginal peoples in contemporary North America.42Far from being reducible to their indifferent and abstract value,traditional lands are sometimes claimed precisely on the basisof their unique role in enabling a particular group of people tobe who they are and to express themselves on their own terms.The difficulties involved in having such particularized claimsto ownership recognized, especially in juridical systems orientedprimarily towards the formal universality of what Hegel wouldcall Abstract Right, does not in itself invalidate the underlyingprinciple at work in such claims: namely, that self-deter-mination is fundamentally rooted in the particularity of thebody and its environment, and that the claiming of suchparticularity as ones own involves, just as much, being claimedby it, insofar as this particularity comes to form the very

element of ones freedom.

Notes

1 Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,1970). Translated into English asHegels Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox(London: Oxford University Press, 1967), and hereafter citedin the text as PhR followed by the paragraph number. In referring tothe Remarks and Additions associated with Hegels paragraphs, I willgive the paragraph number directly followed by R or A. All directquotations will be given in English and will be drawn from Knoxstranslation.

2 For an exceptional account of the dialectic of property beingworked out in the Philosophy of Right, see Jay Lamperts Locke,Fichte, and Hegel on the Right to Property, in Hegel and the

Tradition: Essays in Honour of H. S. Harris , edited by Michael Baurand John Russon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 5773. Ishare Lamperts view that the concept of property is ultimately shownby Hegel to be a deliberately nave, externalist misunderstanding ofthe self-other relation (61).

3 See Adrian Pipers Property and the Limits of the Self, Political


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Theory 8, no. 1 (1980): 3944, for a valuable, metaphysically basedcritique of the acquisitive model of selfhood articulated in Hegels

account of Abstract Right. I should mention, however, that I do notshare Pipers basic assumption (see p. 40) that Hegel himself isstraightforwardly endorsing this acquisitive model as a constitutivepart of his own final view of selfhood. On my reading, Hegels study ofownership is valuable precisely because of its demonstration of theultimate untenability of the acquisitive model of the self.

4 While the individual wills direct embodiment of itself in its ownproperty is the first shape of freedom, the upshot of the account ofproperty is that the relation of will to will is the true and properground in which freedom is existent (PhR 71).

5 Cf. Angelica Nuzzos Freedom in the Body: The Body as Subjectof Rights and Object of Property in Hegels Abstract Right in Beyond

Liberalism and Communitarianism: Studies in Hegels Philosophy ofRight, edited by R. R. Williams (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001), 11123. I,like Nuzzo, am concerned to show that the free person, on Hegelsconception, is necessarily embodied, but on my account the specificlogic of embodimentof willing ones body as ones ownis essentiallyat odds with (and not just an extension of) the logic of personhood andof ownership generally.

6 See PhR 44R, where Hegel argues that, for the proprietary will,external things have only the show of independence and substan-tiality.

7 As Hegel says, personhood begins with the subjects conscious-ness of himself as a completely abstract ego in which every concreterestriction and value is negated and without validity (PhR 35R); theperson is a unit of freedom aware of its sheer independence (PhR35A). It should be mentioned that we cannot strictly speaking positthe existence ofmultiple personshere, for what most immediatelyexists, in the sheer act of claiming something as mine, is me, is myown singular and exclusive will; the distinctive experience of otherpersons, each having his or her own willand the distinctive

experience of oneself as a particular being among othershas not yetentered the picture here as a necessary moment in the selfsaffirmation of its own freedom; on this point, seePhR 49R.

8 Hegel says that the sphere distinct from the person, the spherecapable of embodying his freedom, is likewise determined as what isimmediately different from him (PhR 41), and that what isimmediately different from mind [Geist]is that which, both for mindand in itself, is the external pure and simple, a thing [Sache],something not free, not personal, without rights (PhR 42R).

9 For the idea that the activity of owning works to realize anddemonstrate the ontological divide between the self and its things, see

PhR 59. See also PhR 39, where Hegel discusses the internal,metaphysical imperative that commands the free person to give itselfreality by appropriating what would otherwise limit it.

10PhR 45. See Alan Pattens Hegels Idea of Freedom (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1999), chap. 5, for a helpful discussion of howowning ones property is related to ones ability to perceive ones ownagency in an objective form.

11 Hegel says that the subjective presence of the persons will iswhat alone constitutes the meaning and value of externalities (PhR64).


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12 We can see why Hegel would think of our drive for propertyownership as an indication of the fact that we are practically

committed to a version of philosophical idealism: The free will,therefore, is the idealism which does not take things as they are to beabsolute, while realism pronounces them to be absolute, even if theyonly exist in the form of finitude (PhR 44A). For a helpful reading ofHegels concept of property in light of some of the broad epistemo-logical themes central to Hegels philosophical idealism, see RichardTeichgraeber, Hegel on Property and Poverty,Journal of the Historyof Ideas 38, no.1 (1977): 4754.

13 On the distinction between natural ends and the free wills ownsubstantive end of being free, see PhR 45 and 45R. For the idea thatthe free will must will its own freedom as such, see, for instance, PhR27.

14 Compare here the Marxist notion of commodity fetishism and theuse of this notion, for instance, in Marcuses critique of the culture ofconsumerism; see One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).

15 For this distinction, seePhR 45 and 52R.16 See PhR 45R: If emphasis is placed on my needs, then the

possession of property appears as a means to their satisfaction, butthe true position is that, from the standpoint of freedom, property isthe first embodiment of freedom, and so is in itself a substantive end.

17 For a defense of the view that, for Hegel, the realization ofhigher forms of freedom (including property-holding) necessarily

presuppose the laborious transformation of the natural world into aworld that is shaped byand, in this way, possessed bythe humanwill, see Joachim Ritters Person and Property: On HegelsPhilosophyof Right, Paragraphs 3481, in Hegel and the French Revolution ,trans. Richard Dien Winfield (Cambridge: MIT, 1982), 1317.

18 Note that the simple act of marking the thing as my own, eventhough it is a mode of taking possession that lacks actuality anddeterminacy (in that I can put this mark on anything, and so, indistinction to what is the case in the other modes of taking possession,

I do not have to address the thing concretely in terms of its particularcharacteristics) is regarded by Hegel as the most complete form oftaking possession (PhR 58A). By extension, the actual use of the thing(which is construed as a freer, logically more sophisticated way ofrelating to the object than any of the modes of taking possessionforinstance in that the thing can actually be obliterated in the process ofbeing used) is more sophisticated, not in that the owner morethoroughly realizes her desires in the thing being used, but in thatsuch use more fully demonstrates or reveals the persons completeontological superiority over the self-less, negated thing (PhR 59).

19 Hegel claims that it would be contradictory for one individual toown a thing while another individual held rights to the complete andpermanent use of that same thing (PhR 62 and 62R). Hegels pointhere, however, is that whoever is to be the genuine owner of the thing(holding it as property) ought thereby to have the complete rights to

use and possess the thing with her own will, not that a person withcomplete de facto possession or use of the thing ought thereby to havefull property rights over it. Thus David MacGregors contention (in TheCommunist Ideal in Hegel and Marx [Toronto: University of TorontoPress, 1984], 18991), that Hegel is here arguing that the distinctionbetween property and its actual use is absurd, and that ownership


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ultimately entails nothing more than constant use, is off the mark. SeePhR 59R, where Hegel implies that actual use is not even necessary

for ownership.20 SeePhR 43 and 43R. Hegel here argues that even such things asaptitudes, erudition and artistic skills can be treated as property, butonly insofar as they can be made external to the person who possessesthem.

21PhR 49. Ritters Person and Property, 12631, is helpful forshowing how the inherent abstractness of property rights constitutes acrucial development from previous forms of property institutions. Onthis issue, see also Seyla Benhabibs Obligation, Contract andExchange: On the Significance of Hegels Abstract Right, in The Stateand Civil Society: Studies in Hegels Political Philosophy, edited by Z.

A. Pelczynski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 15977.22PhR 65. See also 65A, where Hegel construes the capacity to

alienate ones property to others as an essential part of what it is totruly take possession of it. I am here taking issue with JeremyWaldrons argument (The Right to Private Property [Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1988], 36770) that Hegels consideration of alienability isultimately extrinsic to the logic of property. On this issue, comparealso Lamperts argument that, for Hegel, the logic of taking propertyentails the need to get rid of it (Locke, Fichte, and Hegel on theRight to Property, 59).

23 For a good discussion of the logic whereby the personsparticularity is conceived as external to the essence of freedom andright, see Michael Quantes Die Persnlichkeit des Willens alsPrinzip des abstrakten Rechts, in G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der

Philosophie des Rechts, ed. Ludwig Siep (Berlin: Akademie Verlag,1997), 7393, and especially 8291.

24PhR 37A; also cf. PhR 20. In quoting passages in which Knoxuses the word personality to translate Hegels Persnlichkeit, I willconsistently substitute the less familiar (but, to my mind, moreprecise) word personhood.

25PhR 47. See also PhR 47R: I possess the members of my body,my life, only so long as I will to possess them.

26PhR 66 and 66R. See here Stephen Houlgates helpful discussionof the idea that, for Hegel, slavery, though always morally wrong, isonly an actual injustice once the slave has freely appropriated hisown self and body (inFreedom, Truth, and History [London: Routledge,1991], 849).

27Hegels Ethical Tho ught (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1990), 99.

28 For the notion that being a person is not merely a descriptivecategory, but is rather a way of recognizing the imperativeplaced onthe self by the normative reality of its own freedomto be a personand respect others as persons, see PhR 36.

29PhR 48R (I have modified Knoxs translation). Cf. HegelsPhilosophy of Subjective Spirit, Vol. 2 Anthropology, ed. and trans. by

M. J. Petry (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing, 1978), par. 411, whereHegel says that it is in its corporeity that the soul has its freeshape, in which itfeels itselfand makes itself felt (Hegels emphases).

30 For Hegel, feeling is, among other things, the most primitiveform in which a living being encounters a world that is other to it; onthis issue, see, for instance, the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit , par.


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401. For a much more comprehensive discussion of the complicatedaccount of feeling that forms the background of, and that continues to

inform, Hegels account of personhood, see Ludwig Siep, Leiblichkeit,Selbstgefhl und Personalitt in Hegels Philosophie des Geistes, inPrakti sche Philosophie im Deutschen Ideali smus (Frankfurt:Suhrkamp, 1992), 195216.

31 See PhR 55 and 55R for Hegels discussion of this most imme-diate and primitive form of taking possession.

32 Peter Stillman draws similar conclusions in his discussion ofHegels views on the ownership of ones own body; see Property,Contract, and Ethical Life in Hegels Philosophy of Right, in Hegeland Legal Theory, ed. by Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld, and DavidGray Carlson (New York: Routledge, 1991), 21012.

33 Hegel uses a version of this argument in his ultimate critique ofthe unqualified right of the person to suicide; seePhR 70.

34 Lampert notes that it is precisely the categories of property thatmake it possible for a self to conceive of itself in such external,quantitativeand thus alienatingterms in the first place (Locke,Fichte, and Hegel on the Right to Property,612). Part of the upshotof Hegels eventual critique of property, then, involves the idea thatthe temporality of self-conscious beings cannot ultimately be deter-mined simply in terms of quantity.

35 In the Remark to PhR 67, Hegel writes that the use of mypowers [differs] from the powers themselvesand hence also frommeonly insofar as it is quantitatively limited.

36 Compare Hegels discussion of the soul as that which, inembracing the corporeal in itself, comes to negate the body assomething defined by externality (with parts outside of parts) andinstead realizes the body as a unified living whole (Philosophy of

Spirit par. 403R)37 Nuzzo (Freedom in the Body, 120) also notes the ontological

distinction between the body of a living creature and the body of aperson. See also John Russons The Self and its Body in Hegels

Phenomenology of Spirit (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997)for a detailed reconstruction of the account of the human bodythatis, the body that is specific to self-conscious, self-expressive beingsthat is implicitly worked out in HegelsPhenomenology of Spirit.

38 Sigmund Freud, On Sexuality: Three Essays on Sexuality andother Works, trans. and general ed. James Strachey, volume ed. AngelaRichards (London: Penguin Books, 1987) 1024.

39 See Waldrons helpful discussion of the appropriation of onesown body as the progressive attempt to overcome clumsiness andawkwardness in bodily movement (The Right to Private Property, 3613).

40 For the notion that the human body itself implicitly contains theideality of the will locked up within it, consider Philosophy of Spiritpar. 410R, where Hegel conceives of the formation of habitswherebythe body becomes fluent in actualizing the selfs own projectsas

involving a process of making the bodys own ideality explicit.41 Compare here Hegels discussion of the way in which my bodyspowers are extended by my own property (PhR 55R). Hegel notes(PhR 55A) that external objects can extend further than I cangrasp. What I hold in my handthat magnificent tool which noanimal possessescan itself be a means to gripping something else.


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Compare also Aristotles idea that the hand is the tool of tools (DeAnima 3. 8, 432a1).

42

For a discussion of the unique features of Aboriginal land claimsin the context of Canadian law, see Patrick Macklems IndigenousDifference and the Constitution of Canada (Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 2001), 98106.


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Documents

Hegel on Owning One's Own Body