Некоторые критические замечания к понятию «RES» в римском и современном праве

The article offers a critical re‑examination of the Roman‑law concept of res as a basic construct of private law and argues against its widespread reduction to a “thing” understood merely as a material object. Based on ancient philosophical and juristic sources (Cicero, Seneca, Gaius), the author reconstructs the original distinction between res corporales and res incorporales as a way of capturing all assets (patrimonium), including incorporeal legal situations such as claims, usufructs and inheritance, and shows that this division concerned modes of acquisition rather than modes of protection. The paper then traces how modern German pandectist doctrine transformed res corporales into the object of ownership in a narrowly material sense and absolutized the link between “things” and real rights, and argues instead that any subjective right has both internal (relative) and external (absolute) dimensions, so that the spread of “absolute” or “relative” regimes to corporeal or incorporeal objects depends on legal constructions and tradition rather than on the physical nature of the object.