Hegel on Owning Ones Own Body

The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2005) Vol. XLIII

Hegel on Owning Ones Own Body

David Ciavatta Trent University

1. Introduction Hegels Philosophy of Right is a systematic study of the nature of human freedom. 1 This study is dialectical in nature, in that it involves a form of philosophical thinking that generates increasingly sophisticated and comprehensive conceptions of freedom as it proceeds, and in that this thinking is propelled forward towards these more developed conceptions solely on the basis of the internal, logical inadequacies it uncovers in the conceptions it considers along the way (PhR 31 and 31R). Hegel begins his study with an account of property ownership, for he conceives of the individuals right to own property as the most basic and primitive form in which freedom comes to assume for itself an objective, enduring, and substantial existence in its own right. On Hegels account, it is through the actual existence of her right to own things that an individual first comes to experience 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 of freedom progresses dialectically beyond the categories of property ownership, however, his account of ownership can also be read as an internal critique of the conception of freedom that underlies the logic of ownership, and particularly of the seeming irreducibility and absolute character of the exclusive property rights of the individual.2 This internal critique begins by treating property ownership as an autonomous and self-articulating form of individual selfconsciousness: in willing its own reality as an owner, the self necessarily articulates for itself a definite stance concerning both the ultimate nature of its own freedom as a self-asserting

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.

David Ciavatta

self and the ultimate nature of the things that it would claim as its own. Hegel works to identify the inner logic, or the operative metaphysical presuppositions, of this autonomous form of selfconsciousness and then proceeds to bring to light the tensions that plague it from within, tensions that ultimately point toward the need for a new form of self-consciousness and a new metaphysical stance concerning the nature of the individual self, the world, and their relationship. 3 The main dialectical tension Hegel discovers here turns on the opposition between individuality and universalitybetween the absolute exclusivity involved in the claim to own something, on the one hand, and the essentially intersubjective structures of recognition through which alone such exclusive ownership can exist, on the other. 4 It is on the basis of this tension that his account of property rights develops into an account of the necessity and irreducibility of contractual relations; for, once contract comes to be posited as a distinctive manifestation of freedom in its own right, and thus as an end in itself, it is expressly acknowledged that individual self-assertion is established, not simply by immediate acts of appropriation, but only in and through the intersubjective agreement of all parties involved. Hegel also identifies a further tension that plagues the inner logic of individual property rights, a tension that concerns the property owners relationship to her own body. It is this tension that will occupy me here. Though it is not the central focus of Hegels internal critique of property rights, the problem of the owners proprietary relation to her own body is at issue throughout the account of ownership presented in the Philosophy of Right . By drawing out the implications of Hegels discussion of owning ones own body, I will show that the distinctive logic of ownership at work in the case of ones own body is ultimately in tension with the overall conception of property ownership 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 realize oneself as free and as an owner, cannot ultimately be accounted for in terms of the implicit metaphysical stance that is embodied in ones claim to be an owner of things generally. 5 On Hegels account, the very project of owning property necessarily operates under the presupposition of a rigid, dualistic metaphysics, according to which all that exists can ultimately be divided up into two sorts of entity: independent and unconditioned persons, on the one hand, and finite, externally conditioned things , on the other (PhR 412). The persons own body, however, insofar as it necessarily figures into the persons project of ownership in general, does not quite fit into either of these categories, for while the body is itself a conditioned thing, and thus a part of the external world that the owner would 2

Hegel on Owning Ones Own Body

appropriate to itself, it is also the singular and necessary medium through which all acts of appropriationand, under this initial conception of freedom, all expressions of freedom take place. In this respect, then, the owners body, with all its determinate characteristics, cannot ultimately be thought of as external to or separable from the self-affirming will: the owners own body is at once the object, and the concrete subject, of appropriation and, thus, serves as a sort of bridge between the person and the external things she would own. I will show that, if Hegel is right to construe ownership and its constitutive proprietary stance as presupposing such a dualistic metaphysics, then the inescapable, internal demands placed on the owner by her own body can be thought of as presenting a metaphysical challenge to the ultimate legitimacy of the owners self-understanding and, by extension, to the primacy and apparent irreducibility of the institution of property holding. Though Hegel does not himself spell out the dialectical implications of this tension relating to the owners own body, I will be arguing that Hegel in fact goes a long way in bringing this tension to light and that his doing so reveals something important about how he conceives of human freedom in the end: rather than being an immediately self-possessed capacity of self-assertion that is inherently formal and thus essentially unconditioned by the human bodys determinate nature, Hegel implies that freedom is essentially concrete, and is to be understood as something that develops precisely in and through the bodys concrete and gradual development of more sophisticated ways of interacting with the world. I will be suggesting, further, that if we can view the self s relationship to the world in general as an extension of its distinctive manner of relating to its own body, we come to see that the world itself must be experienced, not merely as an indifferent manifold of external, insubstantial thingsand thus as completely vulnerable to the mastery of the free, appropriative willbut rather 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 we are to understand what is really at stake in ownershipwhat ownership 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 the categories that are to structure our thinking. What is required of us, as we enter into and investigate this experience of propriety, is that we suspend our pre-existing metaphysical commitments in order that we might explore how reality is constituted in and for the act of owning itself. That is, we are to 3

David Ciavatta

let the experience of owning alone guide our account, not only of the nature of ownership, but also of the ontology of the owner and the thing owned. While it might seem natural to think of ownership nonmetaphysically, as an insubstantial and contingent convention existing between two otherwise independent and substantial individuals (the owner and the thing owned), the actual experience of ownership, argues Hegel, necessarily operates according to a distinctive, self-articulated metaphysical stance, one that does not accord the owned thing the same sort of ontological self-sufficiency as the owner.6 In its most basic form, the act of owning something is an act of unconditioned self-assertion whereby the self declares its own self to be the truth, or the determining principle, of some otherwise external thing: this thing is mine; it answers to me and to me alone. This declaration can take place in words, or in the simple and familiar act of grasping or occupying something in a proprietary manner, but however it is enacted it necessarily involves the taking up of a determinate stance on what it is to be a being like me, on the one hand, and on what it is to be a thing that can be appropriated by me, on the other. Hegel argues that, in articulating the metaphysical commitments of this proprietary act, we would have to say that reality consists basically of two ontologically distinct sorts of entity: on the one hand, there are free persons, who are immediately and essentially alive to their own infinite and unconditioned capacity to determine themselves, their capacity to exist exclusively on their own terms 7; on the other hand, there are mere things, entities whose reality is determined, not by any internal and unconditioned movement of self-affirmation, but essentially and exclusively by external forcesand, in the end, by the will itself. 8 Indeed, the act of appropriation can be viewed as an attempt to establish and demonstrate concretely the truth of this fundamental ontological divide: it is as though the owner experiences the externality of things to her own person as a sort of call to affirm her own ontological primacy and unconditioned nature in relation to those things, and it is only through an actual act of appropriation, an act of making the thing her own, that the person in effect becomes actual as a selfdetermining force vis--vis the thing. 9 As Hegel says, I as free will am an object to myself in what I possess and thereby for the first time am an actual will.10 What the proprietary will declares, in its act of appropriation, 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 them with meaning and value.11 The character of being mine is, for the proprietary will, tantamount to a definition of substantiality itself. A houseplant exists for its owner most immediately in terms of the way it realizes some project that its owners own 4

Hegel on Owning Ones Own Body

will has initiated: the plants own intrinsic demand for water and 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 herself wills to preserve the plants life; in watering the plant, she does not answer simply to the plant qua plant, does not heed its desire as such, but answers really only to the demands of her own will, insofar as she has declared the plant a site for her own self-realization. 12 The pride she takes in the plants flourishing is an indication that she experiences her own identity as being at issue in the plant , that she has become objective to herself as free in the plant itself. In maintaining my ultimate, ontological priority over the things I own, and in declaring, in effect, that this thing I own only gets to matter in reality insofar as I let itinsofar as it is memy proprietary will can never become so dependent on or invested in my property that my own identity as a free will would be jeopardized without it. Certainly my existence in general depends on my being able to appropriate certain things to myselffor instance, food and shelterand, it is true, the institution of private property does in practice guarantee the individuals right to such basic material resources. But this natural dependence is distinct from the ontological dependence that would challenge the wills unconditioned power to affirm itself on its own account, and it is precisely this ontological independence that is being affirmed in ownership. 13 If I had become so dependent upon my property that I could not be myself, could not affirm myself, without it, then, it seems, I would not be genuinely free, would simply not be my own person. I would be its slave, and, just as in the case of slavery to another will, I would have to wait upon something external to and independent of my freedom to give me a directive and to determine where my will is to be employed; I would be a conditioned being.14 Hegels distinction between mere possession in which the will is essentially qualified by and thus dependent upon particular needs and desires, and upon the determinate character of the objects possessedand propertyin which the will wills its own freedom as such, or freedom in its universalityreflects the distinctive rational status of property as the true expression of the wills ultimate and complete independence from otherness and externality. 15 As Hegel says, property is complete as the work of the free will alone, whereas there still remains in possession, as an external relation to an object, something external (PhR 52R). Obviously my property is still external, for instance in the sense that it is physically separable from me as an individual; but Hegels point here is that I, in becoming the owner of the thing (and not merely its de facto possessor), have come to relate to the thing in a manner that ultimately 5

David Ciavatta

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 may have drawn me to possess it in the first place. In declaring this is mine, I am, qua property-holder, essentially engaged in willing my own unconditioned freedom as such : that is, I am declaring this is mine simply because I have freely claimed it, not because I am immediately constituted in such a way as to need it or because I am the kind of person who takes great pleasure in having this sort of thing; my entitlement does not defer to, is not ultimately conditioned by, the existence of such given (and thus unwilled), external contingencies.16 Possession, on the other hand, as measured in terms of ones de facto and external control over thingsin grasping or wielding them, in shaping or using or otherwise investing them concretely with ones actual willis not in itself oriented to the realization of freedom as such but, rather, to the fulfillment of specific desires and needs; in seeking to possess, then, I implicitly posit myself as a being governed by such determinate and external forces. While there is good reason to think that Hegels argument implies one must undertake to possess something before it can become ones property (or at least that the thing to be claimed as property must already be determined and informed by the human will, whether ones own or others),17 all de facto acts of possession have the capacity to express the self s genuine freedom only insofar as the standpoint of possession is transcended, or insofar as actual possession comes to function first and foremost as a sign of ontological priority in relation to the thing, as a demonstration that the holder has come to establish her ontological independence vis--vis the thing. 18 Property rights are never merely a means for securing a lasting possession, and actual possession by itselfeven access to the whole and entire use of a thingis never sufficient to constitute ownership.19 Thus it follows from the metaphysics of freedom at work in property that the relationship between owner and property is essentially formal or abstract , in that the owners status as owner is ontologically indifferent both to the determinate things she owns and to the determinate place they have within her life. Though she requires some property even to realize her freedom as an owner in the first place, her freedom does not itself depend onthat is, it is not defined bythe determinate character of this property, but springs solely from her unconditioned will, a will that is itself unmediated by any particular, concrete determinations. This means that her personal investment in the particular things she ownsfor instance, the fact that she has come to feel so personally at home in the furniture she has had for many years, or the fact that the desk she built expresses her singular ability and personal style as a carpenteris ultimately a matter of indifference from the point 6

Hegel on Owning Ones Own Body

of view of her right to own these things; from the point of view of this right, all the things she owns are equal in being equally and immediately external to her own basic status as a person, to her own capacity to will her own freedom.20 It follows from this, that [w]hat and how much I possess, therefore, is a matter of indifference so far as rights are concerned.21 It is precisely such considerations that underlie Hegels discussion of the inherent alienability of property: as Hegel writes, I may abandon as a res nullius anything that I have or yield it to the will of another. 22 This is because everything I own is an expression of my will only insofar as my will occupies it freely, and as ontologically independent of my property I am essentially free to remove my will whenever I see fit. A will that could not take itself back from out of the thing, but that is somehow stuck in its property, is not free in its property, and is thus no owner of it. The capacity to alienate, as premised upon the ontological independence of the owner vis--vis her property, is thus a basic condition of owning this property in the first place. We will see that it is precisely this ontological indifference between the owner and the owned that will be brought into question in the case of the owners ownership of her own body. 3. Body as Thing and as Property Hegel considers a persons desires, needs, impulses, and whims to be part of what he calls the particularity or concreteness of the will, for they alone are what give particular, determinate content to the persons will ( PhR 14 and 37). But as Hegel stipulates 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 something separable from the person and immediately different from him (PhR 43R ).23 Persons, as free and self-determining, are defined precisely in terms of their universal capacity to be the exclusive and ultimate masters of their own domain, and thus in terms of their universal freedom from all particular, external forces, including their given desires, needs, instincts and whims; in personhood, says Hegel, particularity is not present as freedom, and so, though the individual person is animated by such determinate forces, these forces are not as such mediated by the will, and so have no normative claim in their own right.24 Particular desires and instincts are, therefore, never the ultimate determinants explaining what the person, qua person, is and does: if I act on one of my desires or whims, it is because I, as an unconditioned and indeterminate power of freedom, let this desire or whim become efficacious. What matters most essentially from the point of view of the self-understanding of the free person is not what in particular she chooses to do, but only the fact that she freely chooses to do it, the fact that it is 7

David Ciavatta

an expression of her will; only this formal capacity of selfassertion makes the action her own, her exclusive responsibility, and so it is only this capacity that is relevant for understanding what is most essential to her ontologically. In saying that the particular desires and needs constitutive of the persons concrete life are distinct and logically separable from the indeterminate and formal power of will, Hegel is in effect asserting that the ontological divide that exists between persons and external things is present even within the individual, in the form of the dualism between the self as free will and the self in its immediate status as an individual, natural body. For the body, taken by itself and as the source and locus of determinate desires and needs, is, like an organism standing outside the self, tantamount to a mere thing to be appropriated by the will. The body and its concrete, particular desires are ultimately external to the self-asserting free will, for, it would seem, they themselves contribute nothing towards making it the free, self-asserting will that it is. Just as the Cartesian mind affirms its ontological independence from the body on the basis of its experience of being unconditioned in thought and in the formation of beliefs, so too does the proprietary will affirm its independence from the body on the basis of its immediate experience of being the sole and unconditioned arbiter of all that 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 as possessions like other things, in that they can be possessed only insofar as the persons will is in them. 25 Hegel draws attention to the fact that, unlike other animals, human selves can maim or even destroy their own bodies, thus suggesting that humans can freely remove their wills from their own bodies, alienating their bodies from themselves as free persons ( PhR 47 and 47R). The reason I can alienate my property is that it is mine only insofar as I put my will into it ( PhR 65). Because my body is essentially external to my free power of selfassertion, and is thus susceptible to being alienated at will, my body, too, must be considered first and foremost as a potential object of ownership among others. But is the exercise of this capacity for self-mutilation or outright bodily destruction consistent with the owners freedom, or does the owners specific relationship to her own power of self-affirmation ultimately preclude her from removing her will from her own body in this way? Is the body in fact simply one among many possible objects of appropriation, and is it simply external to and ontologically separable from the will that would own it? Indeed, how could the will actually succeed in alienating itself from its own body, if not by way of the actual exertions of this bodyand thus by way of an implicit endorsement and affirmation of this body as the legitimate organ or 8

Hegel on Owning Ones Own Body

embodiment of its ends? Though humans have the actual capacity to alienate their own bodies and their own lives, and though this capacity is entailed precisely by the universality of the persons freedom, we shall see that on Hegels argument such an act of alienation is ultimately counter to the very freedom of the person. It is in grasping this inalienable character of the body and its life, then, that we will be brought to see why the owners ownership of her own body poses a challenge to the 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, a necessary condition of being its owner in the first place. This condition assures that the self-asserting self is ontologically separable from the things it would own, and so that the identity of the person, qua self-asserting and universally free, does not ultimately depend on the determinate and particular character of the things it possesses. Hegel does place some limits on what the owner can alienate, however, and it is these limits that will prove to supply determinate contents for the otherwise formal and indeterminate universality of the will. Hegel says that the thing to be alienated must be external by nature ( PhR 65). As examples of things that are not external by nature, Hegel mentions the individual self s conscience and, more broadly, the self s general capacity to prescribe and be responsible for its own course of action. Such subjective powers are not really things at all, and Hegel in fact hesitates to construe them as property in any straightforward sense, preferring instead to call them substantive characteristics (substantiellen Bestimmungen) that are constitutive of the very personhood of the individual person (PhR 66). The only reason Hegel mentions these sorts of characteristics in this context is that they possess a formal similarity to property, in that they are in principle susceptible to being alienated from the individual who would otherwise claim them for herself. But Hegels main concern here is to show that the alienation of such constitutive characteristicsand, correlatively, our manner of having them in the first placeis different in kind than the straightforward and voluntary alienation (or ownership) of this or that piece of property; indeed, though the alienation of such characteristics is conceivable in some sense, their very nature as the substantive characteristics of free self-identity makes their voluntary alienation essentially self-defeating and selfcontradictory. Lets consider this case more closely, since it will provide us with a model for asking whether the body, too, ought to be conceived as something that is not external by nature and, thus, as a limit to ones freedom to alienate. 9

David Ciavatta

Though such substantive characteristics as the freedom to make up ones own mind and the capacity to be responsible for ones actions are parts of the essence of personhood, it is not guaranteed that every naturally existing human individual will develop and claim these characteristics for himself, and so it is not guaranteed that every individual will be his own person or that he will possess a mind of his own. An individual who did not develop these characteristicsfor instance, an individual born into slavery, and who was never given the opportunity to experience his own autonomywould have a concrete existence that was external to his concept; or, we can say, he would be alienated from himself and possessed in his own life by the will of another. Such an individual would always have the potential to be freefor that is part of his inner concept even if he were not actually free. Thus, his actual existence is in fact 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 to assume a rightful possession of himself as a person (see PhR 21R, 57R and 66R). But once a person does come to the point of grasping his own personhood, thereby making himself responsible for what he is and does, Hegel argues that there is no turning back: having drunk from the cup of freedom, having apprehended his own self as free, the individual is no longer really in a position to cede to someone else the ultimate authority over his own actions and moral judgments.26 In this case, once I have annulled my externalitynamely, my capacity to be immediately governed in my beliefs, plans, and actions by someone other than myselfI cannot, whether through lapse of time or from any other reason drawn from my prior consent or willingness, relieve myself of my basic capacity for responsibility, cannot give myself over to another; I would be giving up what as soon as I possess it, exists in essence as mine alone and not as something external (PhR 66 and 66R). Allen Wood criticizes Hegel here for construing the act of alienating ones own constitutive capacities as a contradiction. On Woods argument, there is nothing inconceivable about the act of barter[ing] away my capacity to barter anymore.27 Wood is right, if we are talking about a particular concrete individual, who, in his empirical finitude and blindness, does not always act in ways that recognize and uphold his own freedom as a person. However, if we are talking about the person qua person the person understood according to the strict sense in which Hegel defines this technical term, as the individual self that is essentially alive to the infinite character of its own singular will and to the absolute normative pull it thus exerts on all things that would limit it (see PhR 39)then we cannot conceive of such a self as consciously willing the alienation of anything that 10

Hegel on Owning Ones Own Body

is constitutive of its own singular capacity to will; it would not actually be a person if it did so. A person, qua person, is inescapably committed to affirming the absolute normative claim of its own individual freedom, and it is only on this condition that it actually is free, and is a person, in the first place. 28 And so if there are determinate capacities or characteristicslike the capacity to freely alienate ones property that are constitutive of ones identity as a person, then one cannot employ ones freedom as a person to barter those capacities or characteristics away. The issue we must now turn to is whether the body of an owner can in fact be conceived of as external by nature, as was implied in the previous section, or whether it, like the substantive 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 us reason to think that the owner cannot simply extricate himself from his body but is, rather, constitutively committed to willing his own body, precisely to the extent that he wills himself as free in the first place. As Hegel says, it is only through the development of his own body and mind, essentially through his self-consciousnesss apprehension of itself as free, that he takes possession of himself and becomes his own property and no one elses (PhR 57, my emphasis). This would suggest that the selfconscious apprehension of oneself as free and as responsible for oneselfthe process of owning up to ones own essence, as it were, thus becoming ones own personis just as much something we do with our own body and on the basis of our bodily development as it is something we do in thought, by way of the development of our spirit or mind ( Geist ). The body thus appears here, not merely as one possible object of appropriation among others, but as something we cannot help claiming rights to 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 an external and isolated object among others, but as the living and internally assumed medium of individual experience and selfexpressionthat is, as something that exists essentially in and for the individual self s own consciousness of itselfthat he is brought to argue that there is something unique about this thing, something that reveals it to be, not simply external by nature, but an integral part of the free self s capacity to be itself. 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 the self s freedom, but as the very existence of it. Moreover, my 11

David Ciavatta

bodily existence has the distinctive character of putting me into contact with what is external to me; it is essentially a feeling body. 30 My bodys determinate characteristics, therefore, though immediate and objectively given in one sense, also serve to open up diverse possibilities for experiential engagement with what is other to me, and so to open up diverse possibilities for further actualizing my agency and freedom in relation to the world. Hegel calls the body my external existence, universal in content and undivided, the real pre-condition of every further determined mode of existence (PhR 47, Hegels emphasis), for the body in its determinacy mediates all aspects of the self s relationship to the world, but thereby opens up the possibility that the self can come to further determine its own existence for instance, by coming to incorporate further things into its field of action, thereby extending the existence of its own will into the realm of external possessions. The self s body is itself conceived, then, not merely as a self-contained thing, equally external to all other things, but rather as a nexus of determinate powera nexus of ones potentialities of self-affirmation through which the world as a whole (and, in particular, the world of possible possessions) is mediated to the self. Indeed, we can say that, insofar as the body is what first allows things to appear to the self in terms of their potential responsiveness to the self s determinate powers of handling them, the body is what thereby constitutes the world, in advance, as a site for the expression of the self s practical will, a site for the further realization and externalization of its freedom. It is on the basis of our bodily determinacy, for instance, that Hegel can consider bodily seizing ( krperliche Ergreifung) as a primitive actualization of the self s possessive will: it is because we are constituted such as to have hands, for instance, that things can appear to us as to-be-grasped in the first place, and so the general project of possessionof putting ones will into thingsseems to develop out of and presuppose the determinate experiential contexts that our bodies open up.31 In this sense, then, to experience some external thing as a potential site for the affirmation of ones will, is implicitly to be already willing ones own body as the determinate element itself internal to the willthrough which alone such appropriation can actually take place. We might call the body the property of all properties, then, insofar as it is the body that first brings freedom into the world, first allows worldly things to occur in the light of freedom, first allows the self, in its freedom, to intersect concretely with the life of things.32 Lets explore how this non-externalized body figures into Hegels account of alienating property generally. Hegel argues that a person could not alienate or give up the whole use of his productive capacity, or the whole of his productive time, along with the whole of the products of his 12

Hegel on Owning Ones Own Body

labor, without alienating his personhood as such (PhR 67). We must keep in mind that the act of alienating ones property is here conceived as something that necessarily involves the affirmation of oneself as a free person in ones own right. Hegel is thus claiming that the constant proprietary affirmation of at least part of ones productive capacity, ones own time, along with ones own products, is a constitutive condition of being a person in the first place; and so to alienate the whole of such things is essentially irrational, in that it involves a sort of performative contradiction: it is an act that at once both affirms and denies the existence of ones own freedom as a person.33 On Hegels account, if I signed away the whole of my productive time or the whole of my productive power to another, I would be 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 structures my life: I can treat my life as a collection of circumscribed temporal periods (each of which is external to all the others) and so treat my productive capacities generally as divided up in terms of limited periods of their employment.34 In doing so, my abilities acquire an external relation to the totality and universality of my being and can, in this form, be legitimately alienated to another person for his or her use (PhR 67). Having these determinate powers as ones own, however, is distinct from owning any particular period of their use: it is only a circumscribed period of use that can be thus made external and handed 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, my powers are mine in a different sense than is their actual, externalizable employment; and, by extension, my body, as the determinate totality of all my concrete powers, is mine in a different sense than any particular, external thing I do or bring about with it. Despite the requirement that one must dedicate some periods of time for ones own use of ones powers, we can see that a power is not simply reducible to the sum of its actual, external uses; it is, in its core, not something external to the self. A power is something I have all at once, and in an essentially undivided manner, and, though it is concrete and particular in scopeconsisting, for instance, in my dexterity with small toolsit is universal and ideal in the sense that I have it always, even when it is not actually being employed at the time. It is in this sense that ones own powers constitute a universal activity, for they are what I bring to bear in any and all situations, and they thus shape my concrete potentialities in each case, even when I am not specifically putting them to actual use. Consider, for instance, such basic powers as that of producing speech: upon developing the general ability to grasp 13

David Ciavatta

word-sounds and articulate them with my own mouth, I enter into the universally extended sphere of intersubjective communication in which I can at any point be called upon to speak, and I thus experience my various situations to some extent in terms of my concrete capacity to put things into words. It is precisely 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 enduring potentiality of all my self-expressionsthat makes them a constitutive moment of my freedom as a person, and thus inalienable. Again we find Hegel referring to the essential inalienability of substantive characteristics, characteristics that are constitutive of the very personhoodand of the very freedomof the individual person. However, unlike the more formal characteristics discussed abovenamely, ones ability to make up ones own mind and ones general capacity to be responsible for ones actionswe are here considering characteristics that are inherently concrete and particular in nature. My productive powers of engaging with and transforming the objective world of nature are the powers of my person, powers that are actually oriented towards the concrete actualization of my own freedom as such, but they are just as much the powers of my body, determinate powers that reside in my muscles and in the dexterity of my hands, 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 other things in an external, natural manner, by feeling them, and by grasping, using, and forming them so as to possess themones own bodily particularity, understood as consisting of ones productive powers, cannot ultimately be conceived of as wholly external to ones self-asserting self, for these powers are the indispensable and concrete forces through which alone the will can actualize itself as will and as free. 36 In this singular role, the body, in its concrete determinacy, is somehow interior to or perhaps we can even say identical withthe free will itself and so must be embraced and assumed as its own, as a condition of any and all expressions of its freedom. Unlike the other objects a person might own, then, the body has the singular character of demanding categorically that it be assumed as ones own; this particular demand springs from no other source than 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 freely alienate my body, if my concrete body, as the concrete totality of my powers of engaging and transforming the world, is not ultimately separable from my universal power of affirming myself in my freedom, it would seem that my relationship to my 14

Hegel on Owning Ones Own Body

body must be different in kind than my relationship to the other particular things I own. The persons particularityhere, in the form of her determinate powers of bodily self-expressionis for the first time experienced positively, by the person herself, as a constitutive feature of her very self-identity and freedom, and so the basic abstractness of the owners willits ontological indifference to all particular thingsis overcome in principle. Indeed, though it may still be legitimate to conceive of the relationship between the self and its body according to a certain model of ownership, the bond between the self and its body is much more one of identification. As Hegel says, if my body is touched or suffers violence, then, because I feel, I am touched myself actually, here and now, for I am in my body or, rather, I am my bodily here and nowin a way that I am not in my other, external things (PhR 48R). 6. Becoming an Owner of Ones Own Body It must be noted, however, that the body as thus owned and identified with is no longer the merely immediate and naturally given body. Rather, what this account of self-ownership implies is that the human body itself along with the distinctively corporeal exigencies it places on the person are not merely natural and thus external to the self s self-identity, but are already implicitly oriented towards and mediated by the development of personhood and its universal freedom. The special relationship between the self and its bodily powers points towards a metaphysics of the body that gives place, not merely to the natural, and thus essentially external, dimension of the body, but rather to the bodys inherent capacity to express, in its very corporeality and determinacy, the actual presence of the person who owns it, the person who experiences this body from the inside. A significant part of Hegels account of property is occupied with how the self comes to own its own body through a transformation of the body itself. In Hegels conception, we begin in life by being largely locked up in the natural processes of our bodieswe are, so to speak, possessed by its basic desires for food and pleasure, for instancebut gradually take ownership of our bodies, in the sense that our embodied existence is no longer just an immediate seeking after given bodily needs but becomes mediated by the project of realizing our own freedom as self-affirming selves. In making this otherwise external body his own propertya body oriented essentially in terms of freedomthe agent transforms the body into the willing organ and soul-endowed instrument [Mittel] of mind [Geist] (PhR 48). Hegel thereby suggests that the body itself is transformed, in its very actualityindeed, in its very ontological statusinto one that is immediately and in itself responsive to the exigen15

David Ciavatta

cies of free self-assertion and self-expression. 37 Though we never leave behind our natural lineage, and will continue to be possessed by the desire for food, for instance, it is nevertheless the case that the body itself becomes an organ, not merely for such natural functions as digestion and excretion, but for more spiritual forms of free self-assertion like speaking and dancing. Moreover, as Freud argued, even such processes as eating and excretion are never just natural phenomena in the case of the human individual, for they inevitably play a role in the individuals developing sense of her own identity as a free agent in her own right. Freud argued, for instance, that the so-called anal stage of personal development, in which the infant gradually learns to affirm her will over her own process of excretion, is developmentally indispensable insofar as it gives rise to a concrete experience of the infants own centralized agency, the experience 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 her own free accomplishment, for her own sense of herself as being reliably efficacious on her own account. 38 On Hegels terms, such developmental phenomena are to be understood essentially in terms of the logic of ownership, for what is happening is that the body is corporeally transformed into an organ of will, and thereby becomes one with the will, becomes more its own. It is not the case that there is a formal, unconditioned, and immediately self-transparent will in place that gradually shapes the body to its own ends from the outside, like a capable craftsmen who transforms some wood into a table. Rather, to the extent that my will comes to actualize itself in and through the transformation and possession of my body, I must be experiencing myself immediately in and as my body, and must thereby accept its particular powers and limits as the very element of my will. In learning how to swim, for instance, I am at 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 it could be the willing organ of my project of getting to the other side of the pool. Indeed, the pool itself does not yet exist for me as a place in which I can assert my freedom, as an external thing through which I can experience my own efficacy, for as things stand I cannot yet even keep myself afloat in it. Thrash about as I may in an attempt to master my situation, the only way 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 my bodys own determinate characteristics, by exploring its ways of moving in the water until I settle on some set of movements that will keep me afloat.39 Far from being able to assert my will over the body in the manner of an external object, then, it is as 16

Hegel on Owning Ones Own Body

though I must uncover the specific power to swim from within my 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 distinctive logic of owning ones own body might be extended so as to form the basis of a different account of ownership altogether, one that does not operate essentially in terms of the ultimate ontological divide between free persons and things, or between universality and particularity. It is impossible to separate the account of the bodys powers from an account of the powers of things, since things are the necessary conditions of the development and actualization of the bodys own powers. 41 I cannot make my body into a body that swims, cannot release this potentiality from itcannot realize my freedom in it as a swimmerwithout at the same time building a relationship to water in its capacity to hold and respond to my powers, in its reliable resistances to, and augmentations of, my own exertions. The same sorts of argument that reveal the inalienability ofor the incapacity to not ownones own basic powers of action, must thus involve an account of the inalienability of at least some sorts of things, things that are essential to the formation and expression of the self s basic powers of action on its own behalf. The idea that things that are external to the body can become organs or extensions of the wills own concrete relationship to itself as a practical power would suggest a conception of owning that is very different than the form of exclusive, private ownership dealt with in the account of abstract property rights. For instance, the sense in which the experienced swimmer has made the water she swims in her own is obviously very different from the way that a person fences off this or that existing lake as her own. In realizing her own potential in and through the water, and in carrying the water, in an ideal form, in her own bodily powerin the ways this body has become accustomed to glide through water, and in the ways that, even on land, her body bears the trace of this activityshe has thereby come to own the water in a more idealized or universal manner, and thus in a manner that does not 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 about those material conditionsfood, shelter, healththat are essential 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 17

David Ciavatta

could not reproduce its own experience of itself as the free self it is. These particular objective and external conditions, then, are actually internal to freedom itself, and must be willed along with ones freedom if one is to be a person. Determining what these conditions are in particular instances, and according them due recognition at the juridical level, could lead to great controversy, especially given that this sort of ownership is not necessarily established by an express and easily identifiable act of claiming a specific, self-contained object, but could arise more or less inconspicuously, as when a person comes to be at home in a particular environment over time, and gradually comes to develop basic powers of self-expression and self-identification that are indigenous to that environment. Versions of this conception of self-determination as requiring a very particular material element for its proper actualization have been appealed to, for instance, in certain land claims cases brought forward by Aboriginal peoples in contemporary North America.42 Far from being reducible to their indifferent and abstract value, traditional lands are sometimes claimed precisely on the basis of their unique role in enabling a particular group of people to be who they are and to express themselves on their own terms. The difficulties involved in having such particularized claims to ownership recognized, especially in juridical systems oriented primarily towards the formal universality of what Hegel would call Abstract Right, does not in itself invalidate the underlying principle at work in such claims: namely, that self-determination is fundamentally rooted in the particularity of the body and its environment, and that the claiming of such particularity as ones own involves, just as much, being claimed by it, insofar as this particularity comes to form the very element of ones freedom. Notes
Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970). Translated into English as Hegels Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), and hereafter cited in the text as PhR followed by the paragraph number. In referring to the Remarks and Additions associated with Hegels paragraphs, I will give the paragraph number directly followed by R or A. All direct quotations will be given in English and will be drawn from Knoxs translation. 2 For an exceptional account of the dialectic of property being worked 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 Baur and John Russon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 5773. I share Lamperts view that the concept of property is ultimately shown by Hegel to be a deliberately nave, externalist misunderstanding of the self-other relation (61). 3 See Adrian Pipers Property and the Limits of the Self, Political
1

18

Hegel on Owning Ones Own Body Theory 8, no. 1 (1980): 3944, for a valuable, metaphysically based critique of the acquisitive model of selfhood articulated in Hegels account of Abstract Right. I should mention, however, that I do not share Pipers basic assumption (see p. 40) that Hegel himself is straightforwardly endorsing this acquisitive model as a constitutive part of his own final view of selfhood. On my reading, Hegels study of ownership is valuable precisely because of its demonstration of the ultimate untenability of the acquisitive model of the self. 4 While the individual wills direct embodiment of itself in its own property is the first shape of freedom, the upshot of the account of property is that the relation of will to will is the true and proper ground in which freedom is existent (PhR 71). 5 Cf. Angelica Nuzzos Freedom in the Body: The Body as Subject of Rights and Object of Property in Hegels Abstract Right in Beyond Liberalism and Communitarianism: Studies in Hegels Philosophy of Right, edited by R. R. Williams (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001), 11123. I, like Nuzzo, am concerned to show that the free person, on Hegels conception, is necessarily embodied, but on my account the specific logic of embodimentof willing ones body as ones ownis essentially at odds with (and not just an extension of) the logic of personhood and of ownership generally. 6 See PhR 44R, where Hegel argues that, for the proprietary will, external things have only the show of independence and substantiality. 7 As Hegel says, personhood begins with the subjects consciousness of himself as a completely abstract ego in which every concrete restriction and value is negated and without validity (PhR 35R); the person is a unit of freedom aware of its sheer independence ( PhR 35A). It should be mentioned that we cannot strictly speaking posit the existence of multiple persons here, for what most immediately exists, in the sheer act of claiming something as mine, is me , is my own singular and exclusive will; the distinctive experience of other persons, each having his or her own willand the distinctive experience of oneself as a particular being among othershas not yet entered the picture here as a necessary moment in the self s affirmation of its own freedom; on this point, see PhR 49R. 8 Hegel says that the sphere distinct from the person, the sphere capable of embodying his freedom, is likewise determined as what is immediately different from him ( PhR 41), and that what is immediately different from mind [Geist ] is that which, both for mind and 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 and demonstrate 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 itself reality by appropriating what would otherwise limit it. 10 PhR 45. See Alan Pattens Hegels Idea of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), chap. 5, for a helpful discussion of how owning ones property is related to ones ability to perceive ones own agency in an objective form. 11 Hegel says that the subjective presence of the persons will is what alone constitutes the meaning and value of externalities (PhR 64).

19

David Ciavatta
12 We can see why Hegel would think of our drive for property ownership 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 be absolute, while realism pronounces them to be absolute, even if they only exist in the form of finitude (PhR 44A). For a helpful reading of Hegels concept of property in light of some of the broad epistemological themes central to Hegels philosophical idealism, see Richard Teichgraeber, Hegel on Property and Poverty, Journal of the History of Ideas 38, no.1 (1977): 4754. 13 On the distinction between natural ends and the free wills own substantive end of being free, see PhR 45 and 45R. For the idea that the free will must will its own freedom as such, see, for instance, PhR 27. 14 Compare here the Marxist notion of commodity fetishism and the use of this notion, for instance, in Marcuses critique of the culture of consumerism; see One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964). 15 For this distinction, see PhR 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, but the true position is that, from the standpoint of freedom, property is the first embodiment of freedom, and so is in itself a substantive end. 17 For a defense of the view that, for Hegel, the realization of higher forms of freedom (including property-holding) necessarily presuppose the laborious transformation of the natural world into a world that is shaped byand, in this way, possessed bythe human will, see Joachim Ritters Person and Property: On Hegels Philosophy of 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, even though it is a mode of taking possession that lacks actuality and determinacy (in that I can put this mark on anything , and so, in distinction 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 particular characteristics) is regarded by Hegel as the most complete form of taking possession (PhR 58A). By extension, the actual use of the thing (which is construed as a freer, logically more sophisticated way of relating to the object than any of the modes of taking possessionfor instance in that the thing can actually be obliterated in the process of being used) is more sophisticated, not in that the owner more thoroughly realizes her desires in the thing being used, but in that such use more fully demonstrates or reveals the persons complete ontological superiority over the self-less, negated thing (PhR 59). 19 Hegel claims that it would be contradictory for one individual to own a thing while another individual held rights to the complete and permanent use of that same thing ( PhR 62 and 62R). Hegels point here, 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 with complete de facto possession or use of the thing ought thereby to have full property rights over it. Thus David MacGregors contention (in The Communist Ideal in Hegel and Marx [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984], 18991), that Hegel is here arguing that the distinction between property and its actual use is absurd, and that ownership

20

Hegel on Owning Ones Own Body ultimately entails nothing more than constant use, is off the mark. See PhR 59R, where Hegel implies that actual use is not even necessary for ownership. 20 See PhR 43 and 43R. Hegel here argues that even such things as aptitudes, erudition and artistic skills can be treated as property, but only insofar as they can be made external to the person who possesses them. 21 PhR 49. Ritters Person and Property, 12631, is helpful for showing how the inherent abstractness of property rights constitutes a crucial development from previous forms of property institutions. On this issue, see also Seyla Benhabibs Obligation, Contract and Exchange: On the Significance of Hegels Abstract Right, in The State and Civil Society: Studies in Hegels Political Philosophy, edited by Z. A. Pelczynski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 15977. 22 PhR 65. See also 65A, where Hegel construes the capacity to alienate ones property to others as an essential part of what it is to truly take possession of it. I am here taking issue with Jeremy Waldrons argument (The Right to Private Property [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988], 36770) that Hegels consideration of alienability is ultimately extrinsic to the logic of property. On this issue, compare also Lamperts argument that, for Hegel, the logic of taking property entails the need to get rid of it (Locke, Fichte, and Hegel on the Right to Property, 59). 23 For a good discussion of the logic whereby the persons particularity is conceived as external to the essence of freedom and right, see Michael Quantes Die Persnlichkeit des Willens als Prinzip des abstrakten Rechts, in G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts , ed. Ludwig Siep (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), 7393, and especially 8291. 24 PhR 37A; also cf. PhR 20. In quoting passages in which Knox uses the word personality to translate Hegels Persnlichkeit, I will consistently substitute the less familiar (but, to my mind, more precise) word personhood. 25 PhR 47. See also PhR 47R: I possess the members of my body, my life, only so long as I will to possess them. 26 PhR 66 and 66R. See here Stephen Houlgates helpful discussion of the idea that, for Hegel, slavery, though always morally wrong, is only an actual injustice once the slave has freely appropriated his own self and body (in Freedom, Truth, and History [London: Routledge, 1991], 849). 27 Hegels Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 99. 28 For the notion that being a person is not merely a descriptive category, but is rather a way of recognizing the imperativeplaced on the self by the normative reality of its own freedomto be a person and respect others as persons, see PhR 36. 29 PhR 48R (I have modified Knoxs translation). Cf. Hegels Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, Vol. 2 Anthropology, ed. and trans. by M. J. Petry (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing, 1978), par. 411, where Hegel says that it is in its corporeity that the soul has its free shape, in which it feels itself and makes itself felt (Hegels emphases). 30 For Hegel, feeling is, among other things, the most primitive form in which a living being encounters a world that is other to it; on this issue, see, for instance, the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit , par.

21

David Ciavatta 401. For a much more comprehensive discussion of the complicated account 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, in Praktische Philosophie im Deutschen Idealismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992), 195216. 31 See PhR 55 and 55R for Hegels discussion of this most immediate and primitive form of taking possession. 32 Peter Stillman draws similar conclusions in his discussion of Hegels views on the ownership of ones own body; see Property, Contract, and Ethical Life in Hegels Philosophy of Right , in Hegel and Legal Theory, ed. by Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld, and David Gray Carlson (New York: Routledge, 1991), 21012. 33 Hegel uses a version of this argument in his ultimate critique of the unqualified right of the person to suicide; see PhR 70. 34 Lampert notes that it is precisely the categories of property that make 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 upshot of Hegels eventual critique of property, then, involves the idea that the temporality of self-conscious beings cannot ultimately be determined simply in terms of quantity. 35 In the Remark to PhR 67, Hegel writes that the use of my powers [differs] from the powers themselvesand hence also from meonly insofar as it is quantitatively limited. 36 Compare Hegels discussion of the soul as that which, in embracing the corporeal in itself, comes to negate the body as something defined by externality (with parts outside of parts) and instead 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 a person. 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 bodythat is, the body that is specific to self-conscious, self-expressive beings that is implicitly worked out in Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit. 38 Sigmund Freud, On Sexuality: Three Essays on Sexuality and other Works, trans. and general ed. James Strachey, volume ed. Angela Richards (London: Penguin Books, 1987) 1024. 39 See Waldrons helpful discussion of the appropriation of ones own body as the progressive attempt to overcome clumsiness and awkwardness in bodily movement (The Right to Private Property, 361 3). 40 For the notion that the human body itself implicitly contains the ideality of the will locked up within it, consider Philosophy of Spirit par. 410R, where Hegel conceives of the formation of habitswhereby the body becomes fluent in actualizing the self s own projectsas involving a process of making the bodys own ideality explicit. 41 Compare here Hegels discussion of the way in which my bodys powers are extended by my own property ( PhR 55R). Hegel notes ( PhR 55A) that external objects can extend further than I can grasp. What I hold in my handthat magnificent tool which no animal possessescan itself be a means to gripping something else.

22

Hegel on Owning Ones Own Body Compare also Aristotles idea that the hand is the tool of tools ( De Anima 3. 8, 432a1). 42 For a discussion of the unique features of Aboriginal land claims in the context of Canadian law, see Patrick Macklems Indigenous Difference and the Constitution of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 98106.

23