A question of interpersonal sovereignty dating back to the early modern era has resurfaced in contemporary political philosophy: viz. Should one individual have, prior to any consent, property rights in another person? Libertarians answer that they should not – and that this commitment requires us to reject all positive duties. Liberal-egalitarians largely agree with the libertarian’s answer to the question, but deny the corollary they draw from it, arguing instead that egalitarian regimes do not require other-ownership. Drawing on recent property (...) theory I argue the libertarians are wrong that positive duties necessarily imply other-ownership, and the egalitarians are wrong that egalitarian entitlements largely avoid other-ownership. Instead, a prohibition on other-ownership guides us towards a middling political position, both allowing and constraining our positive duties and liabilities to others. I conclude by suggesting that a prohibition on other-ownership creates an attractive boundary condition for property in general. (shrink)

Philosophers have given sustained attention to the controversial possibility of (legal) markets in transplantable human organs. Most of this discussion has focused on whether such markets would enhance or diminish autonomy, understood in either the personal sense or the Kantian moral sense. What this discussion has lacked is any consideration of the relationship between self-ownership and such markets. This paper examines the implications of the most prominent and defensible conception of self-ownership--control self-ownership (CSO)--for both market and nonmarket organ-allocation mechanisms. The (...) paper contends that CSO rules out a large set of nonmarket mechanisms, including escheatage ("presumed consent"), compensated takings of organs, and restricted gifting. It also argues that CSO, if accompanied by an economistic concern for welfare, can underwrite varying types of markets in human organs, ranging from mutual-insurance pools to inter vivos (i.e., live donor) organ sales. (shrink)

In the longstanding debate between liberals and libertarians over the morality of redistributive labor taxation, liberals such as John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin have consistently taken the position that such taxation is perfectly compatible with individual liberty, whereas libertarians such as Robert Nozick and Murray Rothbard have adopted the (very) contrary position that such taxation is tantamount to slavery. I will demonstrate over the course of this paper that their debate over redistributive labor taxation can be usefully reconstituted as a (...) debate over the incidents (or components) of self-ownership, with liberals making the case for a narrow definition of the concept and libertarians arguing for a broad one. By using what Alan Ryan has called the "language of proprietorship," we will be able to pinpoint the source of their disagreement and to assess the relative strengths of their arguments. We will also discover that the respective definitions of self-ownership used by liberals and libertarians are deeply problematic--though for entirely different reasons. (shrink)

Many scholars, including G. A. Cohen, Daniel Attas, and George Brenkert, have denied that a Kantian defense of self-ownership is possible. Kant's ostensible hostility to self-ownership can be resolved, however, upon reexamination of the Groundwork and the Metaphysics of Morals. Moreover, two novel Kantian defenses of self-ownership (narrowly construed) can be devised. The first shows that maxims of exploitation and paternalism that violate self-ownership cannot be universalized, as this leads to contradictions in conception. The second shows that physical coercion against (...) rational agents involves a profound status wrong--namely, their treatment as children or animals--and that this system of differential status and treatment (including self-ownership rights for rational agents) can be morally justified by our capacity for autonomy. (shrink)