Hegel on the Ethical Limits of Property

Abstract Hegel's theory of civil society has recently drawn renewed interest for its critical potential, yet his resolute defense of private property remains the main obstacle to its progressive appropriations. Hegel's defense of property and its necessary exclusivity in the opening part of the Philosophy of Right (“Abstract Right”) seems to align him with the tradition of “possessive individualism.” Against this background, this paper develops a Hegelian argument for restricting the scope of private property. I argue that property at the level of Abstract Right suffers from two forms of indeterminacy: it is normatively indeterminate, lacking sufficient binding force and effectiveness; and ontologically indeterminate, unable to determine what can even count as property. Both indeterminacies can be resolved only in Ethical Life, which provides a socially shared understanding of property and sustains the practices that realize it. In concretely determining property, Ethical Life must harmonize the personal freedom of Abstract Right with the social freedom of Ethical Life. This implies that anything whose privatization disrupts this harmony cannot rationally count as private property. Hegel's framework thus supplies the normative resources for rethinking the boundaries of property as well as for incorporating Marx's insight that the privatization of certain goods (such as the means of production) undermines both personal and social freedom.