Note 115 — Chapter III · (continued 2)

In his history of Aesthetic in Germany Lötze disputes this. It seems to some extent a question of definition. In Hegel's view a dead body is not a human body in the full sense, but the corpse of a man. A hand separated from the body, whether we call it a hand or not, is no longer, whatever it may be, a living member, its essential significance as a hand has disappeared. It was only a hand in its coherence as part of a larger whole. It may still for a time preserve the semblance of its life, but it is cut off as the withered leaf. These are facts at least that are undeniable, and the objection appears to me based on a misunderstanding. A hand is only an und für sich human when it is part of a living man. What is the organic reality in the complete sense is the man as a whole. The hand is merely the extremity of one of his arms. You may call a dead hand a hand if you like. The point is what was implied in the fact that you called it a hand at all whether alive or dead.