Summary Of Hegel's Justification Of Private Property

In the chapter of “Hegel 's Justification of Private Property” which is from Alan Patten’s book “Hegel 's Idea of Freedom, Pattern tries to unpack Hegel’s rationale of private property. So, Pattern starts examining Hegel’s developmental thesis of the connection of private property and free personality. In §5.2 of this chapter, Pattern looks at Hegel’s conception of free personality. Then, in the §5.3, he investigates why Hegel thinks that having private property leads people to develop a free personality (p.3 Patten). In the following essay, I will focus on the self-perception” (in Pattern’s wording) of Hegel’s claims on private property, and I think that self-perception is not an necessary move for a person to realise that he is independent

In Pattern’s interpretation, he divides Hegel’s conception of property into two parts: 1) self-perception and 2) self-development. I will only explicate 1) in the following since my objection is mainly related to self-perception. Hegel claims that “in property, I, as a free will, am an object to myself… I look at myself in my property and that in property I regard myself as free” (Pattern P.9) Pattern interprets this assertion as: If one looks at himself as an object in his property; by looking oneself in property, this provides an justification for one to think that he is independent from the environment (p.11). Also, one would not think that he is dominant by the environment because one can now interact with the object (oneself), and this interaction is the performance of the supremacy over the nature (p.11). Therefore, one can make a difference in his situation, and not limited by circumstances

I think that self-perception is not a necessary move for one to realise that he can be free from the environment; there are other methods which can help us to be independent from the environment. For example, being confident to one’s ability is one of the way that to be independent from the environment; there are so many daily life examples showing that people who suffer in a very bad situation, but they have some positive qualities (confidence, determination, persistence, etc.) which help him to overcome the difficulty from the environment. During the process of overcoming, it is not necessary for them to look at themselves in property and perform the supremacy over the nature by interacting with the object; after that, they can make difference to the circumstances. Those people who suffer from the situation can simply overcome the situation by the positive qualities they have. If there are other methodologies which can replace self-perception, then the importance for one to have private property might be