The Lockean Enough-and-as-Good Proviso: An Internal Critique
Journal of Moral Philosophy 9 (3):410-442 (2012)
Abstract
A private property account is central to a liberal theory of justice. Much of the appeal of the Lockean theory stems from its account of the so-called `enough-and-as-good' proviso, a principle which aims to specify each employable person's fair share of the earth's material resources. I argue that to date Lockeans have failed to show how the proviso can be applied without thereby undermining a guiding intuition in Lockean theory. This guiding intuition is that by interacting in accordance with the proviso persons interact as free and equal, or as reciprocally subject to the `laws of nature' rather than as subject to one another's arbitrary will. Because Locke's own and contemporary Lockean conceptions of the proviso subject some persons to some other persons' arbitrary will, the proviso so conceived cannot function as it should, namely as a principle that restricts interacting persons' actions reciprocally and thereby enables Lockean freedom under lawAuthor's Profile
DOI
10.1163/174552412x625772
My notes
Similar books and articles
Self-ownership and the Lockean proviso.Tibor R. Machan - 2009 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 39 (1):93-98.
On Original Appropriation.Peter Vallentyne - 2007 - In Malcolm Murray (ed.), Liberty, Games, and Contracts: Jan Narveson and the Defence of Libertarianism. Aldershot: Ashgate Press.
Clearing the rubbish: Locke, the waste proviso, and the moral justification of intellectual property.Gordon Hull - 2009 - Public Affairs Quarterly 23 (1):67-93.
Ecological Refugees, States Borders, and the Lockean Proviso.Cara Nine - 2010 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 27 (4):359-375.
Floating Provisos and Sinking Islands.Avery Kolers - 2012 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 29 (3):333-343.
Libertarianism Left and Right, the Lockean Proviso, and the Reformed Welfare State.Steve Daskal - 2010 - Social Theory and Practice 36 (1):21-43.
Locke, intellectual property rights, and the information commons.Herman T. Tavani - 2005 - Ethics and Information Technology 7 (2):87-97.
Analytics
Added to PP
2012-07-26
Downloads
2,572 (#1,769)
6 months
377 (#1,016)
2012-07-26
Downloads
2,572 (#1,769)
6 months
377 (#1,016)
Historical graph of downloads
Author's Profile
Citations of this work
Property Claims on Antibiotic Effectiveness.Cristian Timmermann - 2021 - Public Health Ethics 14 (3):256–267.
Is the Expiration of Intellectual Property Rights a Problem for Non-consequentialist Theories of Intellectual Property?Jukka Varelius - 2014 - Res Publica 20 (4):345-357.
Quality Check: A Contextual Analysis of the Lockean Proviso.J. K. Numao - 2018 - Libertarian Papers 10.
Value and growth: Rethinking basic concepts in Lockean liberalism.Jennifer Leigh Bailey & May Thorseth - 2017 - Etikk I Praksis - Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics 1:107-129.