Being Rational: Hegel on the Human Way of Being

In the second paragraph of the last edition of the Encyclopaedia, Hegel writes: “it is through thinking that human beings distinguish themselves from the animals”. Therefore, according to Hegel, all that is human is “a result of thinking”. In the background of this old prejudice and apparent triviality lies a specific conception of the human subject. Thought is indeed a dimension to which human beings belong and is not at the disposal of human arbitrariness. It is human beings that belong to thought, and not thought that belongs to human beings. The aim of my paper is therefore to analyse the specific Hegelian conception of the “nature” of human subjects, following the idea that the specific way of being of humans is realized only in self-transcendence.