The Philosophy of Law: Supplementary Explanations, III: Examples of Real-Personal Right
1. To have anything external as one’s own, means to possess it rightfully; and Possession is the condition of the possibility of using a thing. If this condition is regarded merely as physical, the possession is called detention or holding. But legal detention alone does not suffice to make an object mine, or to entitle me so to regard it. If, however, I am entitled, on any ground whatever, to press for the possession of an object which has escaped from my power or been taken from me, this conception of right is a sign in effect that I hold myself entitled to conduct myself towards it as being mine and in my rational possession, and so to use it as my object.
The ‘Mine’ in this connection does not mean that it is constituted by ownership of the Person of another; for a man cannot even be the owner of himself, and much less of another person. It means only the right of Usufruct (jus utendi fruendi) in immediate reference to this person, as if he were a thing, but without infring-ng on the right of his personality, even while using him is a means for my own ends.
Kant’s note: According to the Definition, I do not use the expression ‘to have another Person as my Person,’ but as ‘mine’ (™ meum), as if the Person were viewed in this relation as a Thing. For I can say ‘this is my father’ in indicating my natural relationship of connection with him, by which I merely state that I have a father. But I may not say ‘I have him as mine’ in this relation. However, if I say ‘my Wife,’ this indicates a special juridical relation of a possessor to an object viewed as a thing, although in this case it is a person. But physical possession is the condition of the use of a thing as such (manipulatio); although in another relation the object must at the same time be treated as a Person.
These ends, however, as conditioning the rightfulness of such use, must necessarily be moral. A man may neither desire a wife in order to enjoy her as if she were a thing by the immediate pleasure in mere physical intercourse, nor may the wife surrender herself for this purpose; for otherwise the rights of personality would be given up on both sides. In other words, it is only under the condition of a marriage having been previously concluded that there can be such a reciprocal surrender of the two persons into the possession of each other that they will not dehumanize themselves by making a corporeal use of each other.
When this condition is not respected, the carnal enjoyment referred to, is in principle, although not always in effect, on the level of cannibalism. There is merely a difference in the manner of the enjoyment between the exhaustion which may thus be produced and the consumption of bodies by the teeth and maw of the savage; and in such reciprocal use of the sexes the one is really made a res fungibilis to the other. Hence a contract that would bind any one for such mere use would be an illegal contract (pactum turpe).
2. In like manner, a husband and wife cannot produce a child as their mutual offspring (res artificialis) without both coming under the obligation towards it and towards each other to maintain it as their child. This relation accordingly involves the acquisition of a human being as if it were a thing, but it holds only in form according to the idea of a merely Personal Right of a real kind. The parents have a Right against any possessor of the child who may have taken it out of their power (jus in re), and they have likewise a Right to compel the child to perform and obey all their commands in so far as they are not opposed to any law of freedom (jus ad rein); and hence they have also a Personal Right over the child.
3. Finally, it’, on attaining the age of majority, the duty of the parents in regard to the maintenance of their children ceases, they have still the Right to use them as members of the house subjected to their authority, in order to maintain the household until they are released from parental control. This Right of the parents follows from the natural limitation of the former Right. Until the children attain maturity, they belong as members of the household to the family; but thereafter they may belong to the domestics (famulatus) as servants of the household, and they can enter into this relation only by a contract whereby they are bound to the master of the house as his domestics. In like manner, a relation of master and servant may be formed outside of the family, in accordance with a personal right of a real kind on the part of the master; and the domestics are acquired to the household by contract (famulatus domcsticus). Such a contract is not a mere letting and hiring of work (locatio conductio operce); but it further includes the giving of the person of the domestic into the possession of the master, as a letting and hiring of the person (locatio conductio personal). The latter relation is distinguished from the former in that the domestic enters the contract on the understanding that he will be available for everything that is allowable in respect of the well-being of the household, and is not merely engaged for a certain assigned and specified piece of work. On the other hand, an artisan or a day-labourer who is hired for a specific piece of work-does not give himself into the possession of another,’ nor is he therefore a member of his household. As the latter is not in the legal possession of his employer, who has bound him only to perform certain things, the employer, even though he should have him dwelling in his house (inquilmus), is not entitled to seize him as a thing (via facti), but must press for the performance of his engagement on the ground of personal right, by the legal means that are at his command (via juris).
So much, then, for the explanation and vindication of this new Title of Right in the Science of Natural Law, which may at first appear strange, but which has nevertheless been always tacitly in use.