The Philosophy of Law: Private Right, § 8: To Have Anything External as One’s Own Is Only Possible in a Juridical or Civil State of Society
Private Right, § 8: To Have Anything External as One’s Own Is Only Possible in a Juridical or Civil State of Society
If, by word or deed, I declare my Will that some external thing shall be mine, I make a declaration that every other person is obliged to abstain from the use of this object of my exercise of Will; and this imposes an Obligation which no one would be under, without such a juridical act on my part. But the assumption of this Act, at the same time involves the admission that I am obliged reciprocally to observe a similar abstention towards every other in respect of what is externally theirs; for the Obligation in question arises from a universal Rule regulating the external juridical relations. Hence I am not obliged to let alone what another person declares to be externally his, unless every other person likewise secures me by a guarantee that he will act in relation to what is mine, upon the same Principle. This guarantee of reciprocal and mutual abstention from what belongs to others, does not require a special juridical act for its establishment, but is already involved in the Conception of an external Obligation of Right, on account of the universality and consequently the reciprocity of the obligatoriness arising from a universal Rule.—Now a single Will, in relation to an external and consequently contingent Possession, cannot serve as a compulsory Law for all, because that would be to do violence to the Freedom which is in accordance with universal Laws. Therefore it is only a Will that binds every one, and as such a common, collective, and authoritative Will, that can furnish a guarantee of security to all. But the state of men under a universal, external, and public-Legislation, conjoined with authority and power, is called the Civil state. There can therefore be an external Mine and Thine only in the Civil state of Society.
CONSEQUENCE.—It follows, as a Corollary, that if it is juridically possible to have an external object as one’s own, the individual Subject of possession must be allowed to compel or constrain every person, with whom a dispute; as to the Mine or Thine of such a possession may arise, to enter along with himself into the relations of a Civil Constitution.