Possession as appropriation

Possession as appropriation describes an ontological bond in which a person seeks to make an independent object part of a unified reality of possessor and possessed. More than a legal right or a capacity for use, possession gives material form to the for-itself’s desire to be complete and its own foundation. Yet the object remains independent, and the ideal unity that possession promises can never be fully achieved.

Beyond Use and Legal Ownership

Possessing an object often makes it possible to use it, but use alone cannot define ownership. A plate and glass can be used in a café without belonging to the user, while a picture on a wall may belong to its owner even when it is not used. Nor does the right to destroy an object settle the matter: ownership can exist without such a right, as in the examples of a factory under a planned economy or an enslaved person in imperial Rome. Such rights belong to the social and legal sphere, where society regulates possession; they do not, by themselves, explain the appropriative relation between a person and a thing.

The distinction between possession and the right to possess also prevents ownership from being reduced to its legal origin or social consequences. Property may have been stolen, and its continued possession may deprive another person of it, but the relation still calls for description in its own terms. Even a thief regards stolen money as his own. The account therefore asks what possession means for the relation between possessor and possessed, whether ownership is lawful or not, rather than treating it as nothing but a legal status or a charge of theft.

The Object as Part of the Possessor

Possession is not presented as an external label attached to an otherwise unrelated object. The quality of being possessed seems to reach into the object’s very being: the thing appears to its owner and to others as belonging to someone. This relation helps explain customs in which the dead are buried with their belongings. A cup, knife, and corpse could be understood as forming one dead person, rather than as a body supplied with useful equipment. The utilitarian explanation, that the objects are buried so the deceased can use them, is treated as an after-the-fact rationale rather than the source of the custom.

The same logic is used to interpret the custom of burning widows in Malabar: if the woman is regarded as possessed by her dead husband, she is considered dead by right, and the burning completes that status in fact. Objects that cannot be buried with their former owners may instead be thought haunted. A haunted house figures the former occupant’s hold as a metaphysical fact that neither money nor effort can erase. Its Lares are described as accumulated layers of possession deposited on walls and furnishings. These examples make possession a bond that appears to persist beyond the possessor’s physical presence.

This persistence also informs the importance of relics and personal belongings. The possessor is encountered through the object, whether in religious relics or in the surviving property of a famous person. The Victor Hugo Museum, and objects that belonged to Balzac or Flaubert, exemplify the attempt to rediscover a person through the things associated with that life; souvenirs of a beloved dead person similarly seem to perpetuate memory. Possession thus becomes a way in which a person’s being is sought in objects that remain.

A Synthetic Relation, Not a Transfer of Substance

The bond is internal and ontological, not a simple contact between two independent substances. A realistic account, which treats subject and object as separately self-sufficient, cannot explain appropriation any better than it can explain knowledge: both would remain merely external relations. The possessed object is still substantial, permanent, and self-existing. The insufficiency instead lies on the side of the possessing subject. A self-sufficient substance could not appropriate another substance; the sense that a thing is possessed arises from the for-itself’s lack of being.

Appropriation does not ordinarily alter the object itself. As with an object known, a possessed object remains intact, although the account notes an exception when the possessed is a human being, such as an enslaved person or a prostitute. The object’s significance is rather to reflect possession back to the for-itself. The possessor and possessed consequently form a synthetic dyad: to possess is to be united with an object in the mode of appropriation, and to desire a particular thing is to desire that relation of being with it. The desire to have is therefore not simply desire for the thing as an isolated item, but a wish to constitute the unity of possessor and possessed.

This unity occupies an unstable middle ground between inner and outer. In the examples of the scientist, artist, and sportsman, appropriation makes an object seem like an emanation of the self while it remains externally distinct. The “mine” is neither pure inwardness nor absolute exteriority: the self becomes not-self, and the not-self becomes self. The relation is haunted by an ideal value—the imagined total being that would result if the self and its property became one, indissoluble identity.

Continuous Creation and Independence

Possession is imagined as a kind of continued creation. An owned object is, in one sense, made for its possessor: the bow and arrows exemplify things made for oneself. Division of labor can obscure this originating relation without abolishing it. Luxury comes close to the primitive form when an owner has an object made by people belonging to the household, including slaves or servants born there. The owner’s claim to be the object’s end and ground remains implicit even when someone else has produced it.

Yet creation cannot be held still. If it is stopped at either extreme, it disappears into pure subjectivity or into bare, indifferent materiality. To persist as possession, the object must be both wholly connected to the possessor and wholly independent of that possessor. It is a continuous creation that nonetheless exists in itself: the pen can remain on the desk or in the room when its owner turns away, representing that owner in the world without ceasing to be an impenetrable thing.

The paradox becomes clearest when use fails to provide possession’s promised completion. Contemplating a pipe or handling it merely to savor ownership can leave only an inert wooden stem between the fingers. Enjoyment comes instead by going beyond the object toward a goal and using it. The object seems most one’s own in practical engagement, even as that engagement confirms that it remains an independent thing and never merges with its possessor.

An Ideal That Use Cannot Complete

The object’s independence makes possession “magical”: the possessor is the objects owned, but outside the self, as things that escape subjectivity and must be continually recreated in thought and action. In possessing, the for-itself transfers itself to the object. Without the object it remains an insufficiency; with the object it imagines the completion and sufficiency it lacks. The possessor experiences the object as founded by the self, absorbed into the self, and yet permanently outside it. This is the project of being-in-itself-for-itself: being that would be self-grounding, an in-itself that was also for-itself. Appropriation symbolizes this ideal rather than realizing it.

Possession also promises a defense against the Other. What belongs to the possessor is experienced as the self in a non-subjective, outward form, freely founded by that self; the being the Other might bring into the world as the self-for-the-Other is thus already claimed and enjoyed as property. But this protection, like the imagined self-grounding it depends on, remains symbolic and ideal. Appropriation cannot satisfy the original desire to be one’s own foundation.

The bicycle makes the distance between ownership and fulfillment concrete. A bank note can be enough to make it belong to someone, but enjoying that possession seems to require a sequence of acts: looking at it, touching it, riding it, using it for errands, and taking longer trips across France. Each act proves insufficient and points toward further acts; even the journeys divide into countless appropriative behaviors. Acquisition may establish ownership in an instant, while a lifetime would be needed to realize the possession it promises. Death inevitably leaves that enterprise unfinished, because the relation represented by appropriation cannot be made fully actual. Its force lies precisely in symbolizing a completion that no particular use can deliver.