ABSTRACT
This chapter is primarily concerned with the second of the conceptual dichotomies identified by the editors of this volume as posing a problem for Kantian constructivism, namely, the dichotomy between reason and history. The way to bridge this gap is to recognize that the differences in Kant’s, Fichte’s, and Hegel’s constructivism are essentially historical differences. I mean by this not that there is a progression from one to another to another but rather that each philosopher constructs a doctrine of property from a distinctive and identifiable social perspective that is in some tension with the perspectives represented by the others. The philosophical field of tension between Kant, Fichte, and Hegel presents in conceptual form the social field of tension that constituted their historical moment. With respect to the concept of property, that field took the form of a hopeful anticipation of a future political system in which the coherence and mutual significance of personal, economic, and political freedom would be validated. We now know that this hope was in vain, but that doesn’t make this hope either unreasonable at the time nor any less central to reconstructing German Idealist conceptions of property.
