Property in the moral life of human beings

Social Philosophy and Policy 30 (1-2):404-424 (2013)
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Abstract

Liberal egalitarian political philosophers have often argued that private property is a legal convention dependent on the state and that complaints about taxation from entitlement theorists are therefore based on a conceptual mistake. But our capacity to grasp and use property concepts seems too embedded in human nature for this to be correct. This essay argues that many standard arguments that property is constitutively a legal convention fail, but that the opposition between conventionalists and natural rights theorists is outmoded. In doing this, the essay draws on recent literature in evolutionary biology and psychology. Even though modern property in a complex society involves legal conventions, those conventions should be sensitive to our natural dispositions concerning ownership.

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Chris Bertram
University of Bristol

Citations of this work

Legitimate Expectations and Land.Margaret Moore - 2017 - Moral Philosophy and Politics 4 (2):229-255.
Citizens with Benefits.Zofia Stemplowska - 2022 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 96 (1):41-58.
Ownership Rights.Shaylene Nancekivell, J. Charles Millar, Pauline Summers & Ori Friedman - 2016 - In Justin Sytsma Wesley Buckwalter (ed.), A companion to experimental philosophy. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 247-256.

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References found in this work

Anarchy, State, and Utopia.Robert Nozick - 1974 - Philosophy 52 (199):102-105.
Force and freedom: Kant's legal and political philosophy.Arthur Ripstein - 2009 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
The Problem of Global Justice.Thomas Nagel - 2005 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 33 (2):113-147.
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.Immanuel Kant - 1785/2002 - In Practical Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. pp. 37-108.

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