Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831) was a German philosopher whose ideas were highly influential in the development of Marxism, phenomenology, existentialism, psychoanalysis and analytic philosophy.
On personality:
For Hegel, a property is central to an individual’s assertion of personal identity. In other words, being a person, one possesses the absolute and infinite will, which is personality. Unlike a person, a thing is not free, not personal and without rights. It lacks subjectivity. While a person has for its object itself, a thing is external to itself. For instance, even though an animal can intuit, it is itself a thing, for it is external and has no end in itself. Thus, a person has as his substantive end the right of putting his will into any thing and giving it a predicate "mine".
