Hegel grounds human action’s success in the concept of the acted-upon thing itself

Evidence

If the individual human being does something, achieves something, attains a goal, this fact must be grounded in the way the thing itself, in its concept, acts and behaves. If I eat an apple, I destroy its organic self-identity and assimilate it to myself. That I can do this entails that the apple in itself, already, in advance, before I take hold of it, has in its nature the character (Bestimmung) of being subject to destruction, having in itself a homogeneity with my digestive organs such that I can make it homogeneous with myself. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 719

Categorization

• XREF: The apple being ‘in itself, already, in advance’ suited to its assimilation is a striking figure for what Malabou elsewhere calls the ontological forestructuring of plasticity — a concept plastic before its actualization.