Hegel and Respect for Persons

: This essay discusses Hegel ’ s theory of “ abstract ” respect for “ abstract ” personhood and its relation to the fuller, concrete account of human personhood. Hegel defines (abstract) personhood as an abstract, formal category with the help of his account of free will. For Hegel, personhood is defined in terms of powers, relations to self and to others. After analyzing what according to the first part of Philosophy of Right it is to (abstractly) respect someone as a person, the essay discusses the implications for private property and market. Then the paper turns to discuss pathologies of ideologies that stress these aspects only. Finally, the essay discusses the way in which Hegel ’ s full social theory aims to overcome such pathological tendencies; most notably in his theory of Family and the State.

tive mask, and moral subjectivity as as et of inner capacities -they bothf all short of the concreteness and detail of actual ethical life, which is analyzed in the third part of Philosophyo fR ight.
Thirdly, Sittlichkeit or ethical life concerns humans in particularc oncrete roles,a sm embers of family, civil society and the state. In contrast to mere negative liberty or the reflective freedom, they constitute forms of "social freedom" (Honneth 2014. Each of these aspects of ethical life is constituted by relations of recognition: loveisconstitutive of family, arguablyakind of respect is constitutive of market relations, bonds of solidarity and social esteem are constitutive of division of social labor,a nd further universal concern -and for contemporary Hegelians, respect for democratic participation -is constitutive of the state (see Honneth 1992, Knowles 2002. It is thereforei mportant to distinguish the abstract personal respect -presented in the section of Abstract Right -not onlyf rom other "thicker" forms of recognition such as esteem, love,o rs olidarity,b ut alsof rom other forms of recognition that can appropriatelybec alled "respect":r espect for moral subjectivity,and respect for each other as democratic members in collective self-determination (which is not part of Hegel'sstory,but is stressed e. g. by Honneth 2014 andHabermas 1996). Further,t he pre-institutionalized form of respect in Abstract Right,taken in abstraction from institutional structures,r esembles forms of respect in concrete market relations as realized by economic institutions.
It is well understood that the main specificityofHegel'sethical and political philosophyi st he wayt hat Sittlichkeit supersedes Moralität,e choed in the communitarian criticism of atomistic tendencies in liberalism.A nother much discussed topic in the debates on mutual recognition is Hegel'sd efenseo ft he sociality of self-consciousness in Phenomenology of Spirit,interms of astruggle for recognition. Hegel'sa ccount of abstract personhood in abstract right has been less discussed but is worth serious attention, together with Hegel'sa nalysis of moralitya nd recognition of moralr esponsibility.
This essayw ill focus on Hegel's "abstract" respect for "abstract" personhood, and its relation to the fuller,c oncrete account of human personhood. Hegel defines (abstract) personhood as an abstract,f ormal category with the help of his account of free will. Like Rawls (1972Rawls ( , 1993, for whom persons have two powers,f or Hegel personhood is defined in terms of powers,b ut Hegel differs in also holding relations to self and to others as constitutive: mere capacities do not suffice (presented in sections 1-2i nt his essay).² After  Further,f or Hegel "personhood" has metaphysical significance: it is one layeri nt he realiza-that this essaywill analyze what accordingtothe first part of PhilosophyofRight it is to (abstractly) respect someone as aperson (section 3), and what the implicationso ft his for privatep roperty and market are (section 4). Then it turns to discuss the pathologies of an ideologyofaroughlyNeo-Liberal kind that stresses these aspects only(section 5) and also the wayt hat Hegel'sf ull social theory of Sittlichkeit and Social Freedom aims to overcome such pathological tendencies; most notablyi nh is theory of Familya nd the State (section 6).
It is in the context of this fuller theory that we can understand whyHegel in TheP hilosophyo fR ight ( § 35 A) claims thatb eing ap erson is "the highest achievement of ah uman being" and yeti nh is Phenomenology of Spirit writes that "to describe an individual as a 'person' is an expression of contempt".³ We have other identities than (abstract) personhood that captureo ur being more fully, but nonetheless respect for (abstract) personhood constitutes asignificant protective masko rs hell for our existence.

1T he Structureo fF reeW ill
As for Rawls (1972Rawls ( , 1993, for whom persons have two powers,f or Hegelt he capacity for personhood can be said to be defined first of all in terms of certain powers. As outlined in §5-7ofPhilosophyofRight,freewillhas three moments. The first moment resembles 20 th -centurye xistentialism in its uncompromising emphasis on the capacity to negateany inclination or traditional injunction. Unlike anyo thern atural beings, we are radicallyf ree, not necessitatedb yo ur natural inclinations. As argued e. g. by Yeomans (2012), Hegel'sview on freedom and determinism preserves the libertarian insight that alternate possibilities and genuine control are needed for freedom. It is not enough thato ne is recognizeda sa free agent,orh as as elf-relationa saf ree agent; there are also metaphysical aspects of freedom that need to be taken into account.F reea gents are able to say "no" to anya lternative.E venw hen being coerced, being held at gunpoint,a n agent with free will can in principle refuse the offer.A nd indeed, coercion by threats is onlyp ossible in the case of persons. tion of the concept -but Iwill hereignore the metaphysical setting. ForHegel, it is not merely a historical construction, therei saspeculative justification for it.  Hegel1977, §480;quoted in Poole 1996.Poole (1996) also notes "that aderogatory sense of the French 'personne' is alive and well is indicated by Simone Weil'sd iscussion in 'Human Personality' in Weil 1986. That on its own does not yetsuffice. The second aspect of freewill is the capacity to set apositive end to oneself. The capacity to say "yes" to agoal, set it as one'saim, is equallyimportant -otherwise one would not be able to act at all. It would be am isguidedc onception of freedom that would see anyp ositive content,evencommitments to self-determinedends, as athreat to freedom. The capacity or power to set oneself an end is thus an ecessary second aspect of free will.
Thirdly, what completes the analysis of the structure of the will is the capacity to still see the end as "mine" once it is realized in the external world: the capacity to find oneself in externalized deeds. Hegel has adevelopmental account about "finding oneself":asexplainede.g.byCharles Taylor (1975), for Hegelone gains self-understanding in acting -one grasps more fullywhat one is once one sees the results. The paradigm for such gains in self-understanding via self-expression is that of an artistw ho proceeds via different drafts and versions. In the process of acting,a nd pursuing means, the agent'se nds are specified and reformulated, so that she can retrospectively take external deeds to express her will.
This analysis of the capacity of free will forms one aspect of the background of Hegel'stheory. That one can freelyset ends to oneself will be relevant to moral and legal respect,whereas what ends to set rather is at stake in concrete ethical life.
2C onditions of ResponsibleA gency: Capacities, Self-Relations,R ecognition Mark Alznauer's( 2015) recent studydiscusses responsible agency from the illuminatingv iewpoint of "innocence" in the sense of not being fit to be held responsible.⁴ Ar esponsible, non-innocent,a gent must meet three conditions: first,h eo rs he must have the required psychological capacities;s econd, he or she must have the self-conception of himself or herself as being free; third, he or she must be ar ecognized member of the state (2015,p .2 1). Accordingly, there are three ways in which beingsc an be "innocent".They can, first of all, lack the psychological capacities needed for responsibility. There are three of these capacities,a nd Alznauer illustrates them with Hegel's views about animals, children and "the mentally deranged" (who suffer from local irrationalities due to obsessions and fixed ideas):  Ih aved iscussed Alznauer'sv iews in Laitinen 2016a, this section draws on that text. An individual must be capable of thought(unlikeananimal), she must be capable of having personal insight into right and wrong (unlikeachild), and […]her thoughts and desires must be fullyresponsive to her judgments about the world and about what she has grounds to do (unlikethe mentallyderanged).
[…]Anormal human adultisone that has all threeof these capacities and so fullys atisfies the psychological conditions for responsible agency. (Alznauer 2015,p .7 5) There are also sociological conditions of "innocence" that Alznauer (2015,p.62) highlights with Hegel'sv iews about "savagery,t ribal patriarchy, and slavery". They are related to the second and third ways of being "innocent":t hese sociological conditions prevent the individual from developing the required self-conception and getting the right kind of recognition. Savagery and tribal patriarchy "do not allow individuals to achieveacertain self-conception, one in which they take themselvest ob eb oundo nlyt ot hoses tandards whose justification they have insight into" (Alznauer 2015,p .8 1). They lack exposure to norms that are understood to be valid onlyi fr ationallyj ustified. Slavest ypicallyd o not lack such exposure, but they lack the required relation to self. Alznauer writes: [Hegel] characterizesthe slave as someone whoisnot conscious of his freedomand so has not yetbecome "his own property as distinct from that of others" (PR §57), and he goes on to sayt hat it is preciselyi n" the act whereby Itake possession of my personality and substantial essence" that "Imakem yself [mache mich] abeingcapable of rights and accountability [Rechts-und Zurechnungsfähigkeit], morality and religiosity" (PR §6 6, [Alznauer's] translation)( Alznauer 2015,p .8 1).
Such "taking possession of one'sp ersonality" mayb ep arto ft he reason why non-human animalsare often regarded as not bearing rights, but one mayw onder whether it is plausible concerning children: arguablyc hildren have actual rights -it is wrongt oh arm them in ways which hindert he actualization of their potentials -despite them not yeth aving taken possession of their personality.
Without the requisite self-relation, the agents remain rational and responsible onlyi mplicitly and potentially, or "in themselves",b ut not actually or "for themselves".U nlikef or example Robert Brandom's( 2006) more existentialist Hegel, accordingt ow hom the content of our essence or concept depends on our self-conception as well, Alznauer'sHegel thinks that the essence or Hegelian "concept" is the same for all of us independentlyofour different self-interpretations. The self-interpretations make ad ifferencei nt he degreet ow hich the essence or "concept" is actualized. It is onlyw hen we regard ourselvesasfree, rational beings, and as having objectiver easons and necessary ends,t hat the concept of free will is fullya ctualized. In this limited respect "humans can changew hat they are merelyb ya rriving at ad ifferent self-conception. When a slave,for example, becomes conscious of his ownfreedom and refuses to accept his position of dependency,H egel says he 'makes himself' a 'responsible being' (PR §6 6R)" (Alznauer 2015,p .4 2).
Thus, when non-human animals fight for food or attack each other,they do not violate each others' rights,asthey have not constituted themselvesasrightsbearing agents: atrue right to our bodies is onlygenerated insofar as that possession is posited as rightful by the agent.I no rder for anyp ossession to be rightful ownership, the agent needs to be conscious of her freedom, of her status as ap erson whoc an rightfullye xpress her will in external existence. (Alznauer 2015,p .103) An analogue to Alznauer'sp osition could be ap olitical system whereo ne must register to vote: although voting rights are the samef or everyone, one needst o register to vote to getthe rights "activated" for oneself. There is no voting in the state of nature, and unless one is socialized in the system one would not have anyi dea of what is going on. But in addition, one must register oneself, and this registeringp artlyconsists in being recognized as ar ights-bearer by the registrar.
The relevant kind of self-conception is, accordingt oA lznauer'sH egel, possible onlyw hen one is recognized by others as free. Further, the kind of recognition responsible agencyrequiresinorder to exist fullyand completelyis political recognition: the sort of recognition that statesgivetheir citizens,n ot the sort that individuals could bilaterallygiveeach other outside of the specific political contextofalegitimates tate. (Alznauer 2015,p .6 3) Alznauer (2015,p.84) quotes Hegel, PR §258 A: "it is onlythrough being amember of as tate that the individual himself has objectivity,truth, and ethical life", and thats omeone who rejects citizenship is "devoid of rights, whollylacking in dignity".The necessity of recognition from the state is ahighlyinteresting thesis, but ultimatelyitseems thatrecognition is not directlyconstitutive of responsible agency for Alznauer: it is merelyaprecondition of the required self-conception, and ap recondition of responsibility.
Alznauer sees Hegelasradicalizing the view of Kant,who thought that ownership of external property is indeterminate in astate of nature (while possession of one'sbody, or being subject to duties,isnot). First of all, outside ashared normative structure or ag eneral will, unilaterallytaking something into possession does not obligate others to regard it as property.Secondly, there is no assurance that others willr espect my property.Thirdly, it is indeterminate who owns what in the absenceofashared mechanism of settling disputes.The rights to external property in as tate of nature are provisional or tentative,n ot yetc onclusive or valid (Alznauer 2015,p .8 9). Those who violate these tentative claims, Kant writes, "do one another no wrong at all" (MM 6:307).⁵ Thus, all and all, persons must have certain capacities,c ertain relations to self, and they have to stand in certain relations of recognition to others. In different sections, different capacities,s elf-relations and relations of recognition are relevant.The relations of recognition within Abstract Right are the most formal ones -to be supersededb yr elations of recognition in the sections of Morality and Ethical Life.
3R espect forP ersons in Abstract Right Baynes (2002, p. 6) aptly summarizesthe kind of recognition at playinA bstract Right: "AbstractRight",the first section of the Philosophy of Right,introduces the most formal and minimal mode of recognition. The social status mutuallya ttributed to members is that of legal persons with basic rights,i ncludingt he right to own property and form contracts. It is ar elatively uncomplicated form of recognition in that it abstracts froma ll motives and intentions of persons and considers them solelyi nt erms of their "external" relations to one another.
The crucial thing in (abstractly) respecting ap erson is taking into account only that the person has af reew ill. Respect need not be sensitive to what they  Alznauer'sH egel argues the same is true of all rights and obligations -thereare none in the stateofnature (Alznauer 2015,p.92-93). Alznauer argues then that the state of natureisanormative vacuum. There can be no rights or any "waytowrong [each other] at all" (p.95), good or evil (p.87), no independent reasons(p. 97), nor responsible agency -all thereistobeingright is takingoneself to be right (p.96). Evaluability or responsibility depend on "the establishment of some normative frameworkwithin which we can be evaluatedfor what we do. If that framework has social preconditions,then so will action itself." (p.12).N ow the assumptiono fatotal normative vacuum seems to go toofar,and in anycase Alznauer might not need it.Hecould try to defend the interesting claims concerning personhood (that actualization of the capacities requiresacertain self-conception, which in turn requiresrecognition) without makingsuch an assumption of an ormative vacuum, which is not that plausible (are there not objective reasons, say, to avoid poisonous food outside ap olitical state?A re not the tyrants outside ad eveloped stateatall responsible for their deeds?Are therenoreasonsatall not to torture animals outside ap olitical state?).
will. The particularities will be important in concrete relations,b ut respecting someone as ap erson abstracts from that. Personality [or better: personhood,A L] contains in general the capacity for right and constitutes the concept and the (itself abstract) basis of abstract and hencef ormal right.The commandment of right is therefore:b eap erson and respect others as persons. ( Hegel 1991, §36) The universality of this will which is free for itself is formal universality,i.e.the will's self-conscious (but otherwise contentless) and simple reference of itself in its individuality [Einzelheit]; to this extent,t he subject is ap erson. It is inherent in personality[ or better: personhood]t hat,a st his person, Ia mc ompletely determined in all respect s( in my inner arbitrary will, drive,a nd desire,a sw ell as in relation to my immediatee xternal existence[Dasein]), and that Iamfinite, yettotallypureself-reference, and thus know myself in my finitude as infinite, universal, and free. (Hegel 1991, §35) Personality [or better: personhood, AL]begins onlyatthat point where the subject has not merely aconsciousness of itself in general as concrete and in some waydetermined, but ac onsciousness of itself as ac ompletely abstract "I" in which all concrete limitation and validity aren egated and invalidated. (Hegel 1991, §3 5, Rem.) Schmidt am Busch (2008, p. 578) explains that As aperson, the human individual ("subject")stands in relation to himself, and this type of relationship has twoc rucial aspects.F irst,s uch an individual is, in Hegel'sw ords, "completelydetermined in all respects" and "finite." As abiological and social being, this individual is "determined" in an umber of ways:h eh as specific convictions,n eeds,d esires, and interests,and in most cases, he also knows which convictions,needs,desires, and interests he has.With this knowledge,the individual refers to himself as a "concrete" being; he is, as Hegelputs it,a"finiteself-reference." Second, the individual in question is said to be, at the same time, a "totallyp ures elf-reference," that is, "ac ompletely abstract 'I' in which all concretel imitation and validity are negated and invalidated." This is supposed to mean that the individual whor efers to himself as ac oncreteb einga lso believes that he is ablet odistancehimself fromevery one of his convictions,needs,desires, and objectives. Forh im, there is indeed no belief he could not call into question, no need and no desire he could not decline to act on, and no objective he could not stop willing and pursuing. It is in this sense that such an individualhas "aconsciousness of [him]self as acompletelya bstract 'I.'" Schmidt am Busch argues that an individual "not onlyb elieves that he has the capacity to distance himself from his desires,o bjectives, etc., but that he also takes this capacity to be of value and importance to him. This in turn means that he wants to be somebodyw ho actuallye xercises the capacity in question and decides on his own which goals to pursue. In this sense, such an individual wants to be ap erson." (Schmidt am Busch 2008, p. 578) This has two aspects: first,p articularf eatures,b ut also universal capacities or powers of persons.
If personal respect is to be analyzed as an intersubjective relation, we should ask: what do individuals respect each othera sw hen they respect one another as persons?S chmidta mB usch continues,t hat Hegela nswers this question on the basis of his distinction between the aforementioned moments of the will: personhood and particularity.R espect as ap erson concernso nlyp ersonhood, and abstracts from particularities.
Hegelargues that human beings whorespect each other as persons respect one another as individuals whoc an distancet hemselvesf romt heir particular needs,d esires, and objectives, and whoc an decide on their own which goals they will pursue. As persons, human beings takee ach other to be independent actors in this sense. To be sure, they maya lso appreciatet he particular objectiveso ther people pursue and hold these people in esteem on the basis of the particularity of their goals -it is important to note,however, that this type of esteem is not part of whatHegel calls personal respect.Asfar as personal respect is concerned, thereis, as Hegel(1991, §37) says, "not aquestion of particular interests,ofmyadvantageorwelfare,and just as little of the particular ground by which my will is determined,i .e.o fm yi nsight and intention".( Schmidta mB usch 2008, p. 579)

4P ersonal Respect and PrivateP roperty
Perhaps surprisingly,Hegel ties the notion of personal respect to private property.Tobeaperson is to be an owner,tohaveexternal property rights. It is perhaps quite readilyu nderstandable whyb eing ap erson is to have rights -and in an imagined "Nowheresville" wherei ndividuals would not have rights they would lack something central: not onlyw ould they lack the normative protection, but also the self-understanding as al ocus of claims, which is central to self-respect (see Feinberg&Narveson 1970,H onneth 1992.But it is perhapsl ess clear whya mong these rights, there should be ar ight to privatelyo wned property. In Schmidt am Busch's(2008, p. 579) analysis,Hegel 'derives' the institution of private property from his concept of the person with the help of four theses: (1) "The person must give himself an externals phere of freedom." (Hegel 1991, §4 1) (2)T his sphere of freedom must consist of entities that are "immediatelydifferent and separable" from the person. (4) The person can onlygiveh imself a "sphere of its freedom" in privatep roperty.⁷ The need for such an external sphere can be highlighted developmentally: what would achild lack without anychance to have his or her ownsay and owncontrol over externalt hingss uch as toys? If one could never be in charge of what happens in ap lay? Presumably one'sw ill and sense of responsibilityc ould not develop. Similarly, Virginia Woolf famouslya rgued for the need of ar oom of one'so wn (seea lso Honneth 2014 for arguments for the need for such an external sphere). The external sphere is that of negative liberty -and Hegel'sargument is that although it cannot be the full story,itisanecessary aspect of the full story.
In evaluatingt his thesis one maya sk whether less individualistic forms could not do as well: whyn ot common property governed by ad eliberative democracy in light of general interests?W hy not common property of the family? Indeed, one could arguet hata sl ong as one has an equal saya so thers, why could not all of one'slife, includingthe choice of one'smarriagepartner and career,b eamatter of common choice -and yeto ne would be treated in terms of "respect" as long as one has an equal say. This would however be to reduce personal respect to democratic respect,and thus to lose one dimension of self-relations and relations to others: the very dimension that Hegel'sabstract right tries to articulate.S ince Roman Lawt his idea has been part of Western Civilization, and in modernity it has been graduallyi nstitutionalized with the aim to cover all adults with the relevant capacities.
Here, ac omparativee valuative argument would state thati ndividualistic forms of privatep roperty have theirp ros and cons,a sd oes common property. Hegel'sa pproach is not merelyc omparative (although it makes ac laim about historical progress in this respect) but argues that individualistic property is necessary for personhood: abstract right forms an ecessary aspect of full personhood.
Schmidt am Busch argues that,h owever, Personal respect givesindividuals whowish to cooperate economicallyaprima facie reason to favorm arket-likee xchangeso vers tate-regulated distributionso fg oods.Two points are responsible for this. (a) Market-likeexchangescan be understood as possible institutionalizations of personal respect.(b) The sphereofactivities that realize the structureofpersonal freedom seems to be largeri nm arket economies than in state-regulated economies.

5T he Pathologyo fM istaking Abstract Personhood fort he Concrete Individual
What is wrongwith ao ne-sided view accordingt owhich we all would conceive of each othera nd of ourselvesa sjust persons, characterized by such respect?I t would, according to e. g. Honneth 2014 and Poole1996,beapathological development.⁸ The reason personal respect cannot be the whole story is by now pretty evident: it abstracts from all the concrete features thatp rovide our distinctiveness and provide meaning for our lives; as persons we are all alike, share the same relevant capabilities. As Poole( 1996,p .48) puts it: ForHegel, the concept of aperson is an artefact of those systems of lawwhich recognize the equal rights of all those subject to it.The identity which the lawimposes abstracts from all those characteristics which differentiateo ne subject from another.⁹  One maya lso stress its social-ontological impossibility in as tate of nature (see Alznauer 2015).  Poole continues by describingthe Hegelian understanding of Modernity and modern personhood: "When it is divorced from actual life, as it was in the Roman Empire, the concept of aperson is amere empty formalism. The modernworld provides,onHegel'sview,afar richer form of ethical life than the Roman imperium. The family, life in civil society and the institutions of the stateprovide the social purpose necessary to sustain the legal structureofabstractright (property,contract,and the like). Insofar as an individual enters this sphereofabstractright,that is, he makes contracts,owns property and so on, he counts as aperson, i. e., as abearer of rights. But this abstraction is not aself-sufficient form of existence: it arises on the basis of an individual'ss ubstantive ethical life in the family, civil society,a nd the state." (1996,p .49) In Poole'sw ords: The concept of personhood invites us to abstractour identity from those very narrative resources -birth, growth and development,sexuality,procreation, friendship, decay, deathwhich we requiretomakesense of our lives. It is through these resources that we areable to form conceptions of ourselveswhich do justicetoour existenceasindividuals and which at the same time provide us with al ocation within al argerf ramework. Personhood does not provide as tory at all, let alone as tory which is mine. (Poole 1996,p .5

0)¹⁰
In Honneth's( 2014)v iew,there are real pathologies,which consist in people relating to each other and to themselvesi nt hese formal and abstract terms as "persons" when they should regarde ach other as suffering beingsa nd cooperators in concrete roles.O verlegalization of other social spheres bringsw ith it such pathological relations to others as "mere" persons with claims to privacy, and ar elated empty relation to self. Regarding others as "black boxes" whose intentions and motivesd on ot matter for their rightfulc laims is an appropriate relationship in abstract and contractual relations,but it would be avery pathological relation to take to oneself: that my motivesa nd intentions do not matter to me,b ecause Ic an always set myself different ones.¹¹ It is good to value the capacity to set oneself ends, but it is also good to see that the ends that one has set to oneself indeed matter.
The main point then is that respect for personhood is an ecessary but not a sufficientf orm of recognition of personhood. Thicker notions of recognitiona re at playinthe contexts of family, civil society and the state. They provide concrete roles,which are (in the good cases) not obstacles to self-realization, but something through which self-realization can take place. In thosew ays, they add to the layers of recognition of individuals. But additionally, they seem to break the boundso ft he so far individualistica nalysis:i ns ome sense af amilya nd a state are themselvesc ollective agents, collective persons even.

6F amilya nd State
In his article, David Ciavatta (2006) notes how collective ownership and personhood of the familybreak the boundsofthe individualistic notion of personhood:  Cf. Raz 1986,who argues that morality does not provide meaning; hereabstract personhood, as beingarights-bearer,p rovides no meaning.  Ih aved iscussed Honneth'sv iew in mored etail in Laitinen 2016c.
As Hegelw rites, one is in one'sf amily "not as an independent person but as am ember," and the ethical coreo ft he familyi nvolvest he "identification of personalities [Persönlichkeiten,C iavatta writes "personhoods",A L],w hereby the familyb ecomes one person and its members become its accidents (though substanceisinessencethe relation of accidents to itself)." Rather than beingseparate, self-standingpersons,each with her own individual will, and each thus affirmingh er familial involvements through the mediation of her own independent reasons and motivations,t he individual familym ember finds her own will, and, moreg enerally, her affirmation of her own individual self-identity,tobea lreadyconcretelyi mplicated in an inherentlyintersubjective will -in acollectively affirmed, familial "we"-that serves as af undamental background contextt hat givesethical legitimacyand determinatem eaningt oh er own agency ( Ciavatta 2006,p .156).
And later Ciavatta notes thatt his is in tension with the argument that abstract personhood involvesp rivatep roperty: For, in Hegel'sa ccounto fA bstract Right -and we can infer that this point would apply generallytothe civil sphere -collective ownership is claimed to be counter to the very notion of personhood,f or ownership necessarily involves an individual person'su nilateral controlo verathing, and thus involves the recognized freedom to exclude all others from beinga ble to layclaim to that thing. In the family, in contrast,Iown things onlyi nsofar as my familymembers own them too, for what Iown hereisnot merely the expression of my unconditionedf reedom as an individual, but rather the concrete expression of the unconditionedb onds of mutual recognition that allow us to be the particular selvesw e are ( Ciavatta 2006,p .164).
Thus, one must saythat there are two rival forms of recognition -as an abstract person and as ac oncrete familym ember -which come with rival understandingso fp roperty being either private or shared. Presumablyt hen, while these mayb ei nt ension, they are bothn ecessary aspects of full human personhood.
In family, the ethical nature of the relationship, despite involving owning,is am ore intimate one, and provides what is missing in mere abstract respect: The collective ownership of such priceless familial resources is thus not defined primarily in terms of natural need, or in terms of the sheer assertion of the individual self'si ndependencefromthe world (as is the case in the realm of Abstract Right), but is an essentially ethical matter,defined essentiallyi nt erms of the project of maintainingaconcrete, living field of intersubjective recognition that allows the familym embers to be whot hey arei n relation to one another. ( Ciavatta 2006,p .165) Further,the dialectics of Familyand Civil Society show how Familyisnot an ethicallys elf-sustaining whole, but contains its own seeds of destruction: Although the family'sp roperty has aunique and self-sufficient ethical significancew ithin the contextofits familylife, familymembers must implicitlyrelyonthe fact that their prop-erty attains its full, objective status as property onlythrough the actual recognition of acivil order that preserves formal property relations in general. Each familyasawhole, qua acollective property owner,thus implicitlyclaims to be arecognized legalperson externallyrelated to other recognized families.Int ension with its incomparable, ethical significanceas embodyingf amilial self-identity,t hen, this familyp roperty implicitlyt akeso nf or family members ag eneric -but very real and objective -market value that is determined in the light of its external significancef or anyl egalp erson whom ight seek to possess it. ForHegel, it is preciselyinhavingtodeal with inheritancewhich is essentially "the transfer to privateo wnership of property which is in principle common," in that the family'sc ommon property now appears as somethingthat has to be divided into separable shares. The fact that these shares are, in principle,somethingthat can be giventoanyone, and thus no longer possess the concrete, ethical significanceo fu nitingt hese specific familym embers together intoac ommonp roject,s ignals that the principle of personhood has emerged from within the familyi tself. (Ciavatta2 006,p .167)¹² As Hegel writes,civil society "tears the individual from his family ties, estranges the members of the familyfrom one another,and recognizes them as self-subsistent persons" (PR, §2 38).
No discussion of Hegel'snotion of respect for persons can be completewithout ar eference to how Hegel seems to suggest that states,and not onlyi ndividual humans, can actualize the conceptual structure of personhood.Let me therefore end with aq uotation, which serves to remind us that it is not onlyw ithin familythat there is atension between individualityand membershipinabigger unity: Personality,likesubjectivity in general, as infinitelyself-related, has its truth (to be precise, its most elementary,immediate, truth) onlyinaperson,inasubject existing "for" himself, and what exists "for" itself is just simplyaunit.Itisonlyasaperson,the monarch, that the personalityofthe stateisactual. Personality expresses the concept as such; but the person enshrines the actuality of the concept,and onlyw hen the concept is determined as person is it the Ideaortruth. Aso-called "artificial person",beitasociety,acommunity,orafamily, however inherentlyconcreteitmay be, contains personalityonlyabstractly, as one moment of itself. In an "artificial person",personality has not achieved its true mode of existence. The state,h owever,i sp reciselyt his totality in which the moments of the concept have attained the actuality correspondent to their degree of truth. (Hegel,PR §2 79)  Ciavatta adds: "The familyis, then, an inherentlyunstable institutioninHegel'sview:Itisan institution that must recognize the unconditional legitimacyofthe individual person and of the civil sphere, and yetitcannot do so without at the same time givingupits status as an original and independent source of normativity and self-identity -without,i ns hort,r iskingb ecoming just another civil institution amongm any. This inherent tensioni sn ot simplyd one away with oncew em oveo nt oaconsideration of the civil sphere. Rather,H egel seems to be suggesting that the ethical order is founded on this tension, and can never fullyr id itself of it." (Ciavatta 2006,p .167)