The Philosophy of Law: Private Right, § 7: Application of the Principle of the Possibility of an External Mine and Thine to Objects of Experience
Private Right, § 7: Application of the Principle of the Possibility of an External Mine and Thine to Objects of Experience
The conception of a purely juridical Possession, is an empirical conception dependent on conditions of Space and Time, and yet it lias practical reality. As such it must be applicable to objects of experience, the knowledge of which is independent of the conditions Space and Time. The rational process by which the conception of Right is brought into relation to such so as to constitute a possible external Mine and s as follows. The Conception of Right, being contained merely in Reason, cannot be immediately applied to objects of experience, so as to give the conception of an empirical Possession, but must be applied by to the mediating conception in the Under-’Possession in general; so that, instead of ] lysical holding (Detcntio) as an empirical representation asion, the formal conception or thought of abstracted from all conditions of Space and Time, is conceived by the mind, and only as implying that an object is in my power and at my disposal (in potcstate mea positum esse). In this relation, the term ‘external’ does not signify existence in another place, than where I am, nor my resolution and acceptance at another time than the moment in which I have the ofler of a thing: it signifies only an object different from or other than myself. Now the practical Reason by its Law of Right wills, that I shall think the Mine and Thine in application to objects, not according to sensible conditions, but apart from these and from the Possession they indicate; because they refer to determinations of the activity of the Will that are in accordance with the Laws of Freedom. For it is only a conception of the, Understanding that can be brought under the rational Conception of Right. I may therefore say that I possess a field, although it is in quite a different place from that on which I actually find myself. For the question here is not concerning an intellectual relation to the object, but I have the thing practically in my power and at my disposal, which is a conception of Possession realized by the Understanding and independent of relations of space; and it is mine, because my Will in determining itself to any particular use of it, is not in conflict with the Law of external Freedom. Now it is just in abstraction from physical possession of the object of my free-will in the sphere of sense, that the Practical Reason wills that a rational possession of it shall be thought, according to intellectual conceptions which are not empirical, but contain & priori the conditions of rational possession.
Hence it is in this fact, that we found the ground of the validity of such a rational conception of possession (posscssio noumcnon) as the principle of a universally valid Legislation. For such a Legislation is implied and contained in the expression, ‘This external object is mi tie’ because an Obligation is thereby imposed upon all others in respect of it, who would otherwise not have been obliged to abstain from the use of this object.
The mode, then, of having something External to myself as Mine, consists in a specially juridical connection of the Will of the Subject with that object, independently of the empirical relations to it in Space and in Time, and in accordance with the conception of a rational possession.—A particular spot on the earth is not externally Mine because I occupy it with my body; for the question here discussed refers only to my external Freedom, and consequently it affects only the possession of myself, which is not a thing external to me, and therefore only involves an internal Right. But if I continue to bein possession of the spot, although I have taken myself away from it and gone to another place, only under that condition is my external Right concerned in connection with it. And to make the continuous possession of this spot by my person a condition of having it as mine, must either be to assert that it is not possible at all to have anything External as one’s own, which is contrary to the Postulate in § 2, or to require, in order that this external Possession may be possible, that I shall be in two places at the same time. But this amounts to say ing that I must be in a place and also not in it, which is contradictory and absurd.
This position may be applied to the case in which I have accepted a promise; for my Having and Possession in respect of what has been promised, become established on the ground of external Right. This Right is not to be annulled by the fact that the promiser having said at one time, ‘This thing shall be yours/ again at a subsequent time says,’ My will now is that the thing shall not be yours.’ In such relations of rational Right the conditions hold just the same as if the promiser had, without any interval of time between them, made the two declarations of his Will, ‘This shall be yours,’ and also ‘This shall not be yours;’ which manifestly contradicts itself.
The same thing holds, in like manner, of the Conception of the juridical possession of a Person as belong ing to the ‘Having’ of a subject, whether it be a Wife, a Child, or a Servant. The relations of Right involved in a household, and the reciprocal possession of all its members, are not annulled by the capability of separating from each other in space; because it is by juridical relations that they are connected, and the external ‘Mine’ and ‘Thine,’ as in the former cases, rests entirely upon the assumption of the possibility of a purely rational possession, without the accompaniment of physical detention or holding of the object.
Reason is forced to a Critique of its juridically Practical Function in special reference to the conception of the external Mine and Thine, by the Antinomy of the propositions enunciated regarding the possibility of such a form of Possession. For these give rise to an inevitable Dialectic, in which a Thesis and an Antithesis set up equal claims to the validity of two conflicting Conditions. Reason is thus compelled, in its practical function in relation to Right,-—as it was in its theoretical function,—to make a distinction between Possession as a phenomenal appear ance presented to the senses, and that Possession which is rational and thinkable only by the Understanding.
THESIS.—The Thesis, in this case, is, l It is _ to have something external as mine, although I am not in possession of it.’
ANTITHESIS.—The Antithesis is, ‘It is not possible to have anything external as mine, if I am not in possession of it.’
SOLUTION.—The Solution is, ‘Both Propositions are true;’ the former when I mean empirical Posses sion (possessio phenomenon), the latter when I under stand by the same term, a purely rational Possession (possessio noumenon).
But the possibility of a rational possession, and consequently of an external Mine and Thine, cannot be comprehended by direct insight, but must be deduced from the Practical Reason. And in this relation it is specially noteworthy that the Practical Reason without intuitional perceptions, and even without requiring such an element a priori, can extend its range by the mere elimination of empirical conditions, as justified by the law of Freedom, and can thus establish synthetical Propositions a priori. The proof of this in the practical connection, as will be shown afterwards, can be adduced in an analytical manner.