takes place in this reality through relative harmony in which persons
help one another and labour beyond their own needs.^124 Hegel’s
interest is the emergence of property: the event of being recognized
dissolves the accidental character of personal property claims, replacing
it with an ordered structure of recognized property.^125
This means at the individual level that the human being also
renounces his immediate ego and replaces it with an ego that is
recognized by others. As such a new ego, he or she is a person with
a new existence, which is validated by the personal will.^126 In rela-
tionships of exchange, this will establishes contracts in which the
individual appears in a particular manner, having an opinion in
which not only individual will, but the common will is the constitu-
tive reality.^127 The common will‘absorbs’the individual will in such a
relationship. Being recognized in this contractual societal manner
means that the individual is not only his own will or property, but
the totality of‘honour and life’.^128
As inSystem der Sittlichkeit, Hegel engages extensively with the
events of non-recognition and violation of honour. Violation of
another’s property is also a violation of the recognized will of our
societal existence, showing that the other does not regard his will as
equal to mine.^129 The other displays his will to power (Wille zur
Macht) in such situations; in this will he wants to be‘somebody’and
recognized.^130 Violation of honour is also the violation of a person.
The law exercises a task of general mediation between individuals,
making the common will regarding individual matters manifest.^131
Hegel continues by laying out the structures of family, marriage,
and labour in terms of law and recognition. In a family, people
are recognized through love. The contract of marriage makes the
will of the spouses explicit; at the same time, marriage and family
have their existence in a sphere that mixes the legal-personal and the
natural realm.^132 In the activities of labour, the individual is seen as
(^124) Jenaer Realphilosophie, 213–14.GW8, 223–4.
(^125) Jenaer Realphilosophie, 216–17.GW8, 226–7.
(^126) Jenaer Realphilosophie, 217.GW8, 227.
(^127) Jenaer Realphilosophie, 218–19.GW8, 228–9.
(^128) Jenaer Realphilosophie, 220–1.GW8, 230–1.
(^129) Jenaer Realphilosophie, 222.GW8, 232–3.
(^130) Jenaer Realphilosophie, 224.GW8, 235.
(^131) Jenaer Realphilosophie, 225–7.GW8, 236–8.
(^132) Jenaer Realphilosophie, 227.GW8, 238–9.
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