Property john locke summary
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And there are analogues in the theory of property. A park may be open to all for picnics, sports or recreation. For Locke, mixing one’s labour with God’s bounty provided to us results in that bounty becoming one’s property.
Imagine for a moment walking through the woods and finding an apple tree. Even altruism, said Aristotle, might be better promoted by focusing ethical attention on the way a person exercises his rights of private property rather than questioning the institution itself (ibid.).
Maybe everyone can gain, in terms of the diminution of conflict, the stabilizing of social relations, and the prospects for market exchange, by an agreement not to fight any more over possessions.
I observe, that it will be for my interest to leave another in the possession of his goods, provided he will act in the same manner with regard to me.What kinds of inter-personal relations does a given system of property foster? We cannot take seriously the good that property rights do in regard to moral recognition without also considering the inherent harm of absence of such recognition in the case of those who own nothing.
Bibliography
- Ackerman, Bruce (1977), Private Property and the Constitution, New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Alexander, Gregory and Peñalver, Eduardo (eds.) (2010), Property and Community, New York: Oxford University Press.
- Alexander, Gregory and Peñalver, Eduardo (2012), An Introduction to Property Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Aquinas, Thomas, [ST] Summa Theologiae [1272], in Paul E.
Sigmund (ed.) St. 32–3).
In exercising this authority, she is not understood to be acting as an agent or official of the society. Unlike some of his predecessors, Locke did not base his resolution of this difficulty on any theory of universal (even tacit) consent. In most private property systems, there are some individuals who own little or nothing, and who are entirely at the mercy of others.
Plato (Republic, 462b-c) argued that collective ownership was necessary to promote common pursuit of the common interest, and to avoid the social divisiveness that would occur ‘when some grieve exceedingly and others rejoice at the same happenings.’ Aristotle responded by arguing that private ownership promotes virtues like prudence and responsibility: ‘[W]hen everyone has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another, and they will make more progress, because every one will be attending to his own business’ (Aristotle, Politics, 1263a).
As we have seen, the Lockean critique of this sort of approach was always that urgency of material need left no time for social consent. Karl Marx’s account of primitive accumulation (1976 [1867]) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s non-normative description of the invention of property in the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (Rousseau 1994 [1755]) are genealogies written more in a Nietzschean spirit of pathology than as part of any quest for justification.
In part this is a result of how he began his account; because he took as his starting point that God gave the world to men in common, he had to acknowledge from the outset that private entitlements pose a moral problem. Much like philosophical reasoning itself, the divide stems from the minds of the ancient Greeks.
Plato, pictured above on the left pointing upward, was a rationalist idealist philosopher: he believed ideas to be the sources of our knowledge.
Otherwise it is not at all clear why she should be expected to observe its rules (except when we have the power and the numbers to compel her to do so).
Maybe the consequentialist argument can be supplemented with an argument about desert in order to show that there is justice in some people’s enjoying the fruits of private property while others languish in poverty.
But like the virtue argument, this version of the libertarian case is also sensitive to distribution: for those who own nothing in a private property economy would seem to be as unfree—by this argument—as anyone would be in a socialist society.
That last point may be too quick, however, for there are other indirect ways in which private property contributes to freedom (Purdy 2005).
This partage of things in an inequality of private possessions, men have made practicable out of the bounds of society, and without compact, only by putting a value on gold and silver, and tacitly agreeing in the use of money: for in governments, the laws regulate the right of property, and the possession of land is determined by positive constitutions.
Locke on inequality Here, Locke is laying the groundwork for liberal democracy and capitalism.