# Primary Sources on Copyright - Record Viewer
Hegel: Remarks on Intellectual Property, Berlin (1821)

Source: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz Libr.impr.c.n.mss.oct.126

Citation:
Hegel: Remarks on Intellectual Property, Berlin (1821), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org

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            Chapter 1 Page 2 of 17 total


47

First Section
Property.
______

§ 41


      A person must translate his freedom into an external sphere
in order to exist as Idea.* Personality is the first, still wholly
abstract, determination of the absolute and infinite will, and
therefore this sphere distinct from the person, the sphere capable
of embodying his freedom, is likewise determined as what is
immediately different and separable from him.

§ 42

      What is immediately different from free mind is that which,
both for mind and in itself, is the external pure and simple, a
thing, something not free, not personal, without rights.

      'Thing', like 'the objective', has two opposed
meanings.** If we say 'that's the thing' or 'the thing is what matters,
not the person', 'thing' means what is substantive. On the other
hand, when 'thing' is contrasted with 'Person' as such, not with
the particular subject, it means the opposite

________________

*) The rationale of property is to be found not in the satisfaction
of needs but in the supersession of the pure subjectivity of
personality. In his property a person exists for the first time as
reason. Even if my freedom is here realised first of all in an
external thing, and so falsely realised, nevertheless abstract
personality in its immediacy can have no other embodiment save one
characterised by immediacy.
(Addition by Eduard Gans based on the lecture notes of H. G. Hotho)

**) Since a thing lacks subjectivity, it is external not merely to
the subject but to itself. Space and time are external in this way.
As sentient, I am myself external, spatial, and temporal. As
receptive of sensuous intuitions, I receive them from something
which is external to itself. An animal can intuit, but the soul of
an animal has for its object not its soul, itself, but something
external.
(Addition by Eduard Gans based on the lecture notes of H. G. Hotho)


    

No Transcription available.

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