Given the Right—of Giving (in Hegel’s Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts)

Abstract

This essay approaches the Hegelian problem of giving and givenness through the marginal fi gures of the animal, the child, and "superstitious humanity," representing, in one way or another, the unperturbed relationship with immediacy. I argue that, for Hegel, the process of subjectivization supersedes these fi gures by learning to reject the immediately given and to accept only what is self-given. Yet, in- terspersed throughout this process are various imbalances and asymmetries, whereby the subject gives itself more than it takes, undialectically suppressing the particular and displacing the marginal.