Alienation as the Transition to Contract – part 1

We need to take a look at the concept of property in Hegel’s philosophy of right a bit closer. Hegel speaks about the usage of a thing, which is a consequence of property. But the most important idea perhaps is alienation, what he calls alienation.

The essence of the right to property or property law is most apparent in the idea of alienation. What is happening in alienation requires first a condition, which he expresses in his philosophy of right as follows, paragraph 65. It is possible for me to alienate my property, for it is mine only in so far as I embody my will in it. But I may abandon a thing and then that thing becomes ownerless. Anything that belongs to me I can make ownerless. Or, and that is the most important thing, I can make it over to the will of someone else.

I can make it his possession and because I am the real owner, that possession would be rightful, legitimate. So someone else will become the owner of my possession. Now that is only possible in so far as the thing is external. It has to be some external material thing. Then I can alienate my property to become someone else’s possession.

Now, true alienation is a declaration by the will that I no longer wish to regard the thing as mine. That is true alienation. Sometimes alienation occurs without an express act of my will, but true alienation requires a special act of my will. So alienation can actually be regarded as a true mode of taking possession. But taking possession not by me, but by the other.

So we have several moments now in the concept of property. The first moment in property is to take possession of something immediately. Something that I find in nature, for instance. Now usage or use is a further means of acquiring property. If I use something for a specific length of time and my possession of it is not contested, then I acquire that possession as a property. And the third element is the unity of to take possession, the first moment, and usage, the second moment. And that is taking possession of something by alienating it.

So to take possession means that someone else has alienated it so that I can now become the owner. In this idea that belongs to the characteristics of property, it’s obvious that another will, another person is actually involved. And that is one of the basic elements of the transformation of property into the idea of contract, about which we need to speak further.