The Philosophy of Law: Private Right, § 5: Definition of the Conception of the External Mine and Thine
Definitions are nominal or real, A nominal Definition is sufficient merely to distinguish the object defined from all other objects, and it springs out of a complete and definite exposition of its conception. A real Definition further suffices for a Deduction of the conception defined, so as to furnish a knowledge of the reality of the object.—The nominal Definition of the external ‘Mine’ would thus be: ‘The external Mine is anything outside of myself, such that any hindrance of my use of it at will, would be doing me an injury or wrong as an infringement of that Freedom of mine which may coexist with the freedom of all others according to a universal Law.’ The real Definition of this conception may be put thus: ‘The external Mine is anything outside of myself, such that any prevention of my use of it would be a wrong, although I may not be in possession of it so as to be actually hold ing it as an object.’—I must be in some kind of posses sion of an external object, if the object is to be regarded as mine; for, otherwise, any one interfering with this object would not, in doing so, affect me; nor, consequently, would he thereby do me any wrong. Hence, according to § 4, a rational Possession (possessio nou-mcnon) must be assumed as possible, if there is to be rightly an external ‘Mine and Thine.’ Empirical Posses sion is thus only phenomenal possession or holding (detention) of the object in the sphere of sensible appearance (possessio phenomenon}, although the object which I possess is not regarded in this practical relation as itself a Phenomenon,—according to the exposition of the Transcendental Analytic in the Critique of Pure Season—but as a Thing in itself. For in the Critique of Pure Reason the interest of Reason turns upon the theoretical knowledge of the Nature of Things, and how far Reason can go in such knowledge. But here Reason has to deal with the practical determination of the action of the Will according to Laws of Freedom, whether the object is perceivable through the senses or merely think able by the pure Understanding. And Right, as under consideration, is a pure practical conception of the Reason in relation to the exercise of the Will under Laws of Freedom. And, hence, it is not quite correct to speak of ‘possessing’ a Right to this or that object, but it should rather be said that an object is possessed in a purely juridical way; for a Right is itself the rational possession of an Object, and to ‘possess a possession,’ would be an expression without meaning.