This chapter contains sections titled: Locke, Nozick, and the Ambivalence of Property Kant, Narveson, and the Ambivalence of Property Marx and the Structural Coerciveness of Property.

Jan Narveson presents a lengthy critique of my book, As Free and as Just as Possible: The Theory of Marxian Liberalism. Central to the disagreement between Narveson and myself is the Marxian notion, endorsed by me and rejected by Narveson, that private property is coercive, in particular, that capitalist ownership of productive resources coerces workers to work for capitalists. In As Free and as Just as Possible, I hold that people have a natural right to liberty understood (...) as freedom from unwanted coercion. Thus, I contend that, to be justified, a regime of private property must be agreed to by all who might be affected by it because of the threat it poses to their liberty. Since that amounts to agreement among virtually all people living now and in the future, that agreement cannot be actual. It must be a theoretical agreement, such as takes place in John Rawls’s original position. I present a Marxian-Liberal version of the original position, and argue that, in it, parties wou .. (shrink)

Brettschneider argues that the granting of property rights to all entails a right of exclusion by acquirer/owners against all others, that this exclusionary right entails a loss on their part, and that to make up for this, property owners owe any nonowners welfare rights. Against this, I argue that exclusion is not in fact a cost. Everyone is to have liberty rights, which are negative: what people are excluded from is the liberty to attack (...) and despoil others. Everyone, whether an owner of external property or not, benefits from this and thus rationally exchanges that liberty in exchange for a like abandonment of it by others. The proper social contract trade is thus liberty for liberty—not liberty for owners and positive welfare rights for nonowners (though the latter in fact benefit greatly from the property rights of owners). (shrink)

Every day, millions of people use mobile phones, play video games and surf the Internet. It is thus important to determine how technologies like these change what people think and how they behave. This is a central issue in the study of persuasive technologies. ‘Persuasive technologies’—henceforth ‘PTs’—are digital technologies, such as mobile apps, video games and virtual reality systems, that are deployed for the explicit purpose of changing attitudes and/or behaviours, without using coercion, deception or extreme forms of psychological manipulation (...) (such as hypnosis or indoctrination), and without exerting a direct (not psychologically mediated) physical effect on the brain. Typically PTs employ strategies such as prompting, information provision and encouragement... (shrink)

Brettschneider argues that the granting of property rights to all entails a right of exclusion by acquirer/owners against all others, that this exclusionary right entails a loss on their part, and that to make up for this, property owners owe any nonowners welfare rights. Against this, I argue that exclusion is not in fact a cost. Everyone is to have liberty rights, which are negative: what people are excluded from is the liberty to attack (...) and despoil others. Everyone, whether an owner of external property or not, benefits from this and thus rationally exchanges that liberty in exchange for a like abandonment of it by others. The proper social contract trade is thus liberty for liberty—not liberty for owners and positive welfare rights for nonowners. (shrink)

The distinction drawn by Rawls between the ideas of property-owning democracy and welfare state capitalism parallels his distinction between justice-based ‘liberalisms of freedom’ (including his own conception of justice as fairness) and utilitarian- based ‘liberalisms of happiness’. In this paper I argue that Rawls’s failure to attach the same level of significance to essential socio-economic rights and liberties as he attached to the traditional liberal civil and political rights and liberties gives justice as fairness a quasi-utilitarian character, which is (...) incompatible with the fundamental objective of protecting the highest.-order interests of citizens conceived as free and equal. I argue that in order fully to protect these interests, rights to access to non-human capital and productive resources should be assigned the same level of significance as that assigned to the civil and political rights and liberties, and prioritized over the lower-order rights and benefits regulated by Rawls’s second principle of justice. (shrink)

The formation of the modern state, the rise of capitalism, the Renaissance and Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment have all been attributed to the “early modern” period. Nearly everything about its history remains controversial, but one thing is certain: it left a rich and provocative legacy of political ideas unmatched in Western history. The concepts of liberty, equality, property, human rights and revolution born in those turbulent centuries continue to shape, and to limit, political (...) discourse today. Assessing the work and background of figures such as Machiavelli, Luther, Calvin, Spinoza, the Levellers, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, Ellen Wood vividly explores the ideas of the canonical thinkers, not as philosophical abstractions but as passionately engaged responses to the social conflicts of their day. (shrink)

Scholars have long recognized the importance of liberty in Milton's early prose, but they tend to center their analysis on republicanism. Although he would go on to express republicanism, Milton's early tracts tie liberty to English political and legal traditions rather than classical ones. Milton, in his early tracts, utilizes the language of the ancient constitution and the common law as he centers liberty on the property and bodies of English citizens, thus framing liberty in (...) distinctly English terms. Additionally, Milton's early prose accepts the power of the monarch, revealing Milton's initial commitment to the existing political structure. (shrink)

I argue along the following lines: For Wollstonecraft, liberty is independence in two different spheres, one presupposing the other. On the one hand, liberty is independence in relation to others, in the sense of not being vulnerable to their whim or arbitrary will. Call this social, or political, liberty. For liberty understood in this way, infringements do not require individual instances of interfering. Liberty is lost in unequal relationships, through dependence on the goodwill of a (...) master. In addition, liberty is independence of mind, a state I am in when I trust my own reasoned judgement above any other authority. Call this moral liberty. Moral liberty needs social liberty. In other words, to the extent I am subject to the whim of others, I am not in a position to be guided by my own judgement. Moral liberty is one of two aspects of virtue: a disposition to independent deliberation according to reason. As such, virtue is a habit of mind. The second aspect of virtue is universal benevolence as its action guiding principle. This is how liberty, equality, and virtue fit together. Social liberty, understood as independence in relation to others, necessarily coexist with equality, and is necessary for moral liberty, the habit of mind that makes up one aspect of virtue, as well as for universal benevolence as virtue’s action guiding principle. This triad explains her views on property, on sex equality, and also on legitimate government. My second line of argument is that according to Wollstonecraft, we have a duty to be virtuous. Virtue is the main object of human life. But since virtue, in both its aspects, needs social liberty and since liberty is the birthright of man, the duty is conditioned on the right. The foundation for the triad of liberty, equality, and virtue is a theory of rights. The basis for the discussion of virtue is the right to the conditions necessary for its realization. The duty is conditioned on the right to liberty. (shrink)

The moral justification of intellectual property is often called into question when placed in the context of pharmaceutical patents and global health concerns. The theoretical accounts of both John Rawls and Robert Nozick provide an excellent ethical framework from which such questions can be clarified. While Nozick upholds an individuals right to intellectual property, based upon its conformation with Lockean notions of property and Nozicks ideas of just acquisition and transfer, Rawls emphasizes the importance of basic (...) liberties, such as an individuals right to health, superceding such secondary rights as intellectual property rights. From a policy perspective, patent protection for pharmaceutical products necessarily entails the balancing of corporate intellectual property interests and public interests in healthcare. The moral dilemma that occurs when these two interests clash is not easily resolved. Aside from corporate and public interests, the state maintains an interest in creating and preserving policies that regulate the moral dilemma itself. This paper analyzes the economic and ethical factors surrounding the production and distribution of the anti-HIV medication, AZT. Potential policy implications and recommendations are also discussed. (shrink)

This article reviews Jan Narveson and James Sterba’s co-authored book Are Liberty and Equality Compatible?. Sterba argues that negative liberty requires that the poor have a right not to be interfered with in taking from the rich to fulfill their basic needs. Narveson argues that negative liberty means that people agree not to coerce others and that taking from anyone violates negative liberty. The authors not only differ on this point, but, as contractarians, on what (...) terms reasonable people would likely agree to in a “social contract.”. (shrink)

This essay addresses the on-going controversy between supporters of minimal government, or minarchists, and supporters of no government, or anarchists. Both lay claim to the Libertarian principle, which holds that the only justification for the use of force is to deal with aggressive force initiated by someone else. Both agree that force is justified in dealing with aggressors. The only question is, who wields it, and how? The essay explains, briefly, the role of private property in all this. Private (...) property is really just the operation of the liberty principle in the area of the use of things outside ourselves: those who initiate use of such things will have their activities subject to continual invasion unless property is recognized, and so property is the natural outcome of liberty, taken seriously. But the trouble is, states are monopolies, and maintain themselves at public expense, by taxation. This inevitably means interference with private property rights. And so, if we deal with aggressors via the state, we turn into partial aggressors ourselves, it seems. The essay points out that and why both minarchism and anarchism are virtually impossible in contemporary circumstances, but at the level of basic theory, at any rate, the anarchist appears to have the better of it. (shrink)

Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality is G.A. Cohens attempt to rescue something of the socialist outlook on society from the challenge of libertarianism, which Cohen identifies with the work of Robert Nozick in his famous book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Sympathizing with the leading idea that a person must belong to himself, and thus be unavailable for forced redistribution of his efforts, Cohen is at pains to reconcile the two. This cannot be done – they are flatly contrary. Moreover, equality is (...) a nonsense principle, calling for such things as equal distribution of natural resources. But resources, as goods, are not natural: all require work to utilize. The only thing exchanged on markets is services, and estimates of value received are relevantly made only by those party to the exchanges in question. Imposition from above on voluntary exchange can only be socially counterproductive. (shrink)

The purpose of my paper is to show the derivation of what is sometimes called the ‘new liberalism’ from the basic principles of classical liberalism, through a reading of John Locke’s treatment of the right to property in his Second Treatise of Government. Locke’s work sharply distinguishes between the natural right to property in the ‘state of nature’ and the societal right to property as established in a socio-economic political system. Whereas the former does (...) not depend on the consent of others, it is qualified by strict limits on the amount of property that may be rightly acquired. The societal right to property lifts these limits but is justified only under the principle of universal consent. This principle, I argue, implies the Rawlsian difference principle; i.e., that the regulation and distribution of property must be such as would elicit the freely proffered consent of society’s least advantaged members. (shrink)

Although there has been growing awareness among historians of ideas of a close relationship between eighteenth-century religious and political argument, there is still no clear understanding of this kind of relationship. Despite its historical plausibility, the transition from religious to political thinking encounters serious logical obstacles stemming mainly from the traditional distinction between spiritual and temporal matters. This distinction, as articulated in the initial attempts to establish religious toleration, would make it untenable to extend arguments in defence of religious (...) class='Hi'>liberty directly to the defence of political liberty. Religious and political liberty cannot be governed by the same rationale, which is man's conscientious relationship to God. Any attempt, therefore, to explain how it was possible to pass from religious to political argument has rather to focus on the, as it were, external characteristics of these two kinds of liberty. It is argued in this article that religious and political liberty appear to be similar in that they both refer to rights that concern the expression of opinions, the so-called ‘intellectual rights’ or ‘rights of mind’. Investigating the meaning of ‘right of private judgement’ shows it to have three dimensions, which refer to the mental process of thinking, to its external manifestation through speech, and to other, non-verbal actions prompted by thought. In relation to fundamental rights could easily be dismissed as irrelevant, could be interpreted as a relapse to a Hobbesian state of nature, while was considered suitable for serving as a basis of a defensible theory of natural rights which could easily cover religious liberty, as well as political liberty, the right to free speech, or the liberty of the press. Unlimited and universal exercise of this type of rights was not only believed not to involve mutual harm, but it was also backed further by an appeal to the public good. (shrink)

The right to private property is among the most fundamental in liberal theory. For many liberals the idea of the state is grounded in its role as a protector of private property. If the liberal state is justified by its ability to protect property, the modern welfare state is often justified by its ability to meet needs. According to a view commonly referred to as “welfarism,” the very fact that needs exist implies there is a moral (...) obligation to meet them. In this Article I appeal to Rawlsian contractualist justification, including the “criterion of reciprocity,” in developing a third manner of thinking about the relationship between property and welfare. I argue that welfare rights are necessary conditions for justifying a role for the state in enforcing the “right to exclude,” a fundamental element of private ownership. My Article thus aims to use Rawls’ account of justification, outlined in his later works, to theorize the notion of property-owning democracy from Theory of Justice. (shrink)

"Reductionism," in this context, is the view that the right to privacy necessarily depends on and derives from more fundamental rights, primarily liberty and property, and that this reduction has important normative implications for the law. Judges and scholars have articulated versions of reductionism for about a century, and yet, since the time of the seminal Pavesich opinion, none of these views has influenced the law. ;In this thesis, I offer a new version of reductionism. I start (...) by examining the original debate concerning the existence of a right to privacy, triggered by the seminal law review article by Warren and Brandeis. I argue that this debate was not resolved in favor of such a right until Justice Cobb, in Pavesich, offered a justification for it based on fundamental political principles. I next examine the debate between the contemporary reductionists Prosser, Thomson, and Posner, and their critics. I demonstrate that reductionists have not learned the lesson implicit in the original debate: if one hopes to gain influence in the area of privacy law, he must justify his theory on the basis of fundamental political principles. Finally, I offer a more coherent and defensible reductionist view, one based on Ayn Rand's theory of individual rights. I use my reductionist theory to explain why certain undesirable outcomes are inherent in privacy law as it currently exists, recommend a return to a jurisprudence of property and liberty, and indicate a method of implementing this recommendation. (shrink)

§ . As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state - to relinquish its protection and to refuse paying toward its (...) support. It is self evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others, for his position is a passive one, and while passive he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally self evident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man's property against his will is an infringement of his rights. Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not. If anyone of them determines to ignore this mutual safety confederation, nothing can be said except that he loses all claim to its good offices and exposes himself to the danger of maltreatment - a thing he is quite at liberty to do if he likes. He cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach, and he has therefore a right so to withdraw. (shrink)

The purpose of my paper is to show the derivation of what is sometimes called the ‘new liberalism’ (or ‘progressive liberalism’) from the basic principles of classical liberalism, through a reading of John Locke’s treatment of the right to property in his Second Treatise of Government. Locke’s work sharply distinguishes between the natural right to property in the ‘state of nature’ and the societal right to property as established in a socio-economic political system. Whereas (...) the former does not depend on the consent of others, it is qualified by strict limits on the amount of property that may be rightly acquired. The societal right to property lifts these limits but is justified only under the principle of universal consent. This principle, I argue, implies the Rawlsian difference principle; i.e., that the regulation and distribution of property must be such as would elicit the freely proffered consent of society’s least advantaged members. (shrink)

The ultimate aim of this dissertation is to determine whether libertarian theories of property can be adequately grounded in Locke's theory of natural rights. I defend the thesis that Locke's theory has no room for a fundamental commitment to natural rights, including property rights. ;In the first three chapters, I challenge each component of the dominant interpretation of Locke's theory of property in this century, viz., that of C. B. Macpherson. In Chapter One, I criticize Macpherson's claim (...) that Locke's view allows unlimited appropriation. In Chapter Two, I agree with Macpherson that Locke defended a state in which the franchise was restricted to those who held significant property, viz., land. However, this can be reconciled with an initial contract into civil society that meets certain standards of rationality and fairness. Thus, while political power is not equally distributed in the state Locke describes, that is not necessarily inconsistent with a rational, free, and voluntary social contract. This shows that we need not see Locke as committed to the interests of the wealthiest members of society. In Chapter Three, I agree with Macpherson that Locke's view is that the purpose of contracting out of the state of nature is the protection of one's property. But I briefly argue that Macpherson does not take seriously Locke's concept of property right and the wide range of objects that count as property. If we pay careful attention to Locke's terminology, we can see that although the purpose of the state is the protection of property, that does not guarantee greater protection for the wealthy than it ensures the poor. ;In Chapter Four, I challenge a quite different thesis. James Tully has argued that Locke did not defend private property at all, but attacked it. I criticize this interpretation on the grounds that Locke explicitly allows certain practices that Tully takes to be violations of the law of nature as Locke construes it. I also criticize the claim that certain developments in a commercial economy, such as the consumption of valuable land, necessarily violate the law of nature. In addition, I argue that the idea of conventionally established property rights is inconsistent with Locke's account of how and why government comes to be established. ;In Chapter Five, I provide an account of the principles underlying Locke's account of rights, both within and without civil society. I argue that Locke's view is improperly construed as a view which gives pride of place to rights. Rather, rights are almost always derivative from duties, and in those cases where they are not derivative, they are subordinate to certain primary duties that oblige us in virtue of our status as God's creations. (shrink)

I argue that Robert Nozick, in his well-known book “Anarchy, State, Utopia”, is working with Locke’s notion of the natural right to property merely instrumentally. I use the term “instrumentally” in the sense that the pieces of the source are not used within the context of the original work but are used atomically to support one’s argument or theory. Instrumental use of Locke’s theory causes incoherence in his theory. This paper introduces the incoherence in the question and explains (...) how this incoherency is inherent to Nozick’s interpretation and usage of Lockean Proviso. (shrink)

There is a regulatory option for conscientious objection in health care that has yet to be systematically examined by ethicists and policymakers: granting a liberty to request exemption from prescribed work tasks without a companion guarantee that the request is accommodated. For the right-holder, the liberty’s value lies in the ability to seek exemption without duty-violation and a tangible prospect of reassignment. Arguing that such a liberty is too unreliable to qualify as a right to (...) conscientious objection leads to the problem of consistently distinguishing its effects from those of a right to conscientious objection that is made conditional on an individual assessment of the objector’s motivation. These properties require that we distinguish the liberty to request exemption from more restrictive policy choices, and that we subject it to greater scrutiny in the wider moral discourse as a possible variant of a right to conscientious objection. (shrink)

The purpose of my paper is to show the derivation of what is sometimes called the ‘new liberalism’ (or ‘progressive liberalism’) from the basic principles of classical liberalism, through a reading of John Locke’s treatment of the right to property in his Second Treatise of Government. Locke’s work sharply distinguishes between the natural right to property in the ‘state of nature’ and the societal right to property as established in a socio-economic political system. Whereas (...) the former does not depend on the consent of others, it is qualified by strict limits on the amount of property that may be rightly acquired. The societal right to property lifts these limits but is justified only under the principle of universal consent. This principle, I argue, implies the Rawlsian difference principle; i.e., that the regulation and distribution of property must be such as would elicit the freely proffered consent of society’s least advantaged members. (shrink)

The status of economic liberties remains a serious lacuna in the theory and practice of human rights. Should a minimally just society protect the freedoms to sell, save, profit and invest? Is being prohibited to run a business a human rights violation? While these liberties enjoy virtually no support from the existing philosophical theories of human rights and little protection by the international human rights law, they are of tremendous importance in the lives of individuals, and particularly the poor. (...) Like most individual liberties, economic liberties increase our ability to lead our own life. When we enjoy them, we can choose the occupational paths that best fit us and, in so doing, define who they are in relation to others. Furthermore, in the absence of good jobs, economic liberties allow us to create an alternative path to subsistence. This is critical for the millions of working poor in developing countries who earn their livelihoods by engaging in independent economic activities. Insecure economic liberties leave them vulnerable to harassment, bribery and other forms of abuse from middlemen and public officials. This book opens a debate about the moral and legal status of economic liberties as human rights. It brings together political and legal theorists working in the domain of human rights and global justice, as well as people engaged in the practice of human rights, to engage in both foundational and applied issues concerning these questions. conomic liberties leave them vulnerable to harassment, bribery and other forms of abuse from middlemen and public officials. This book opens a debate about the moral and legal status of economic liberties as human rights. It brings together political and legal theorists working in the domain of human rights and global justice, as well as people engaged in the practice of human rights, to engage in both foundational and applied issues concerning these questions. (shrink)

I present what I take to be the approach to property rights, in which property is basically a unitary concept: owners are the ones with the right to do, and prohibit others from doing, whatever there is to do with the thing owned, within the limits imposed by the rights of others to their things. I expound and defend the idea of in more or less Lockean mode. I also point to the many difficulties of application of (...) the general idea, leading to the need to negotiate at many points. For example, the vagueness of land ownership as we consider what goes on in the earth below or the sky above; to consideration of not just possible physical damages to others by virtue of ownership, but also aesthetic ones; and to the increasingly important area of intellectual property. I argue that the original idea continues to hold, though it underdetermines any number of specific issues. (shrink)

William Perm summarized theMagna Cartathus: “First, It assertsEnglishmento be free; that's Liberty. Secondly, they that have free-holds, that's Property.” Since at least the seventeenth century, liberals have not only understood liberty and property to be fundamental, but to be somehow intimately related or interwoven. Here, however, consensus ends; liberals present an array of competing accounts of the relation between liberty and property. Many, for instance, defend an essentially instrumental view, typically seeing private property (...) as justified because it is necessary to maintain or protect other, more basic, liberty rights. Important to our constitutional tradition has been the idea that “[t]he right to property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive a people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty.” Along similar lines, it has been argued that only an economic system based on private property disperses power and resources, ensuring that private people in civil society have the resources to oppose the state and give effect to basic liberties. Alternatively, it is sometimes claimed that only those with property develop the independent characters that are necessary to preserve a regime of liberty. But not only have liberals insisted that, property is a means of preserving liberty, they have often conceived of it as an embodiment of liberty, or as a type of liberty, or indeed as identical to liberty. This latter view is popular among contemporary libertarians or classical liberals. Jan Narveson, for instance, bluntly asserts that “Liberty is Property,” while John Gray insists that “[t]he connection between property and the basic liberties is constitutive and not just instrumental.”. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Contractualist Justification and Private Property Three Models of Welfare Rights The Proposals as Reasonable Alternatives Objections Conclusion References.

This chapter contains sections titled: A Lockean Argument for the Right to Liberty Our Rational Moral Competence From Liberty to Lockean Contractarianism.

During the last two centuries, property understood as an exclusive and unlimited dominion became common sense. Before, the idea of property as a fiduciary relationship, which is still present in contemporary social constitutionalism, was closely linked to the view that the exercise of freedom entails the capacity to shape those property rights that channel socioeconomic life. Today, new ways to operationalise such an approach must be found. This article explores the scope of ‘direct strategies’ and ‘indirect (...) strategies’ in the recovery of the idea and the practice of collective fiduciary control over the economic realm. (shrink)

Can the right to private property be claimed as one of the ‘rights of mankind’? This is the central question of this examination of the subject of private property. This book contrasts two types of arguments about rights: those based on historical entitlement, and those based on the importance of property to freedom. It provides a detailed discussion of the theories of property found in Locke's Second Treatise and Hegel's Philosophy of Right to illustrate (...) this contrast. The book contains original analyses of the concept of ownership, the ideas of rights, and the relation between property and equality. The book's overriding determination throughout is to follow through the arguments and values used to justify private ownership. It finds that the traditional arguments about property yield some surprisingly radical conclusions. (shrink)

In Property Rights and Poverty, / argued that seventeenth? to mid?nineteenth?century liberal theories of the natural right to property included both the ability to exclude others from resources lawfully acquired and the ability to claim as property the resources necessary for life and livelihood. Virtually every defense of the right to exclude written during this period carried limits which allowed and even required the government to enforce the rights of those without resources to the (...) property of others. But although Locke, among others, was a theorist of welfare rights, it is a mistake to describe him as a radical, as Richard Ashcraft does, which identifies Locke's purposes too closely with the legitimately radical theorists of the early nineteenth century who were deeply influenced by his work. (shrink)

We have been asked to consider how a "Constitution of Civic Virtue" might contribute to a "good society." To answer this question, we need to have some idea of what a good society might be, and we need to be able to articulate that idea. Certainly, we think we know a good movie when we see it, a good book when we read it, a good argument when we hear it, and a good idea when we have one, but we (...) are not sure we have a handle on what a good society is. Even what we think we know about good books, movies, arguments, and ideas gives us pause. For we are not sure we can always explain why we think a particular movie is good or a book is bad. And even when we can explain it, we find that many people disagree with us about such matters. Indeed, we, at times, even disagree with each other. By this we do not mean to suggest any skepticism about there being such a thing as a good book, a good film, a good wine, a good car, or even a good person. If there is one thing we think we know in this world, it is that there are good persons-quite amazingly good actually. Nor do we mean to deny that there may be such a thing as a good society, though we are not so confident about this. A lot depends on what is meant by those words. Having said this, we will set our skepticism aside and now offer a conception of a good society; but we no more expect everyone to agree with this conception then we expect them to agree with one of us that "The Tao of Steve" was a really good movie. (shrink)

The author addresses Robert Nozick's claim that: “The particular rights over things fill the space of rights, leaving no room for general rights to be in a certain material condition.” Hence Nozick insists that rights are violated if citizens are compelled to contribute to others' welfare, however urgent their needs may be. The author argues that it is characteristic of libertarian theories that they invoke the moral sanctity of private property against welfarist or egalitarian conceptions of social justice. Nozick's (...) version of the libertarian critique has three conceptual pillars–“right,”“thing” and “space.” On that basis Nozick claims that talk of welfare “rights” can be condemned on the plane of rights. This is true, Nozick maintains, even of “the right to life.” The author contends that this argument fails. It equivocates over the idea of “rights”; and it misconceives crucial features of property. Nozick deploys exclusive “domain rights,” whilst attacking “important‐interest rights.” His historical‐entitlement theory fails as a justification of private property. The author argues that, so far as material objects are concerned, private property institutions depend upon trespassory rules which do not impose morally binding obligations unless basic needs are catered for. Furthermore, private property institutions also comprise monetary resources to which the spatial metaphor of exclusive rights does not apply. Holdings vested in any particular person at any particular time are stamped, morally, with a mix of contestable and mutable property‐specific justice reasons. Hence it is fallacious to suppose that ownership rights together exhaust all normative space over “things.”The major objection to speaking of everyone's having a right to various things such as equality of opportunity, life, and so on, and enforcing this right, is that these “rights” require a substructure of things and materials and actions; and other people may have rights and entitlements over these. [≡] The particular rights over things fill the space of rights, leaving no room for general rights to be in a certain material condition. (Nozick 1974, 238). (shrink)

In this article, Andrew Collier critiques the method, but not the aim, of Rerum Novarum, the Catholic argument against socialism, as interpreted by G.K. Chesterton. He holds that Rerum Novarum may...

In As Free and as Just as Possible: The Theory of Marxian Liberalism, Jeffrey Reiman proposes to develop a theory of “Marxian Liberalism.” ‘Liberalism’ here is defined by the principle that “sane adult human beings should be free in the sense of free from coercion that would block their ability to act on the choices they make.” While the idea of coercion could use some glossing, it is not obvious that poverty, unemployment, racism, and sexism are as such coercive. In (...) this book, it is, very broadly, economic inequality that is the focus, and the argument is that a previously insufficiently appreciated idea that is broadly Marxian shows us that we need a Rawlsian Difference Principle to counteract inherent coercion in the system of free enterprise capitalism. I argue that the book wrongly places the component of labor in the system of economic exchange. We do not as such exchange labor: we exchange services; and because of this there is no normative pull toward his thesis that there is something fundamentally wrong—some people are being unjustly exploited—when several hours of one person’s labor are required to purchase the output of just one of another person’s. Liberalism, I argue, rejects Marxism. (shrink)

The negotiations of the intergovernmental group known as the ‘IGWG’, undertaken by the Member States of the WHO, were the result of a deadlock in the World Health Assembly held in 2006 where the Member States of the WHO were unable to reach an agreement on what to do with the 60 recommendations in the report on ‘Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights submitted to the Assembly in the same year by a group of experts designated by the (...) Director General of the WHO. The result of these negotiations was the ‘Global strategy and plan of action on public health, innovation and intellectual property’ which was approved by the World Health Assembly in 2008. The intention of the Global Strategy and Plan of Action (GSPOA) which was produced by the IGWG was to substantially reform the pharmaceuticals' research and development system in view of the findings that this system, whose purpose is to produce medicines for diseases which affect the greater part of the world population which lives in developing countries, had failed. The intellectual property rights imposed by the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the recent trade agreements could become one of the main obstacles to access to medicines. The GSPOA makes a critical analysis of this reality, and opens the door to searching for new solutions to this problem. (shrink)

Jan Narveson has rendered a valuable service with his examination of two recent publications on the general topic of the treatment of animals. Not only has he given us the means for securing a better understanding of many of the most important arguments common to these two volumes; what is more, he has advanced a position which fails to receive any attention in either, and a position which, should it happen to be correct, would fatally undermine perhaps the most basic (...) thesis advanced by those who argue for the rights of animals-the thesis, namely, that we have as much reason for believing that many animals have rights as we have for believing that humans do. Narveson's position is that this thesis can be seen to be false, if, as he thinks may be the case, egoism can give us a “coherent and quite theoretically smooth account of our moral intuitions”. (shrink)

Augmented reality blends the virtual and physical worlds such that the virtual content experienced by a user of AR technology depends on the user’s geographical location. Games such as Pokémon GO and technologies such as HoloLens are introducing an increasing number of people to augmented reality. AR technologies raise a number of ethical concerns; I focus on ethical rights surrounding the augmentation of a particular physical space. To address this I distinguish public and private spaces; I also separate the case (...) where we access augmentations via many different applications from the case where there is a more unified sphere of augmentation. Private property under a unified sphere of augmentation is akin to physical property; owners retain the right to augment their property and prevent others from augmenting it. Private property with competing apps is more complex; it is not clear that owners have a general right to prevent augmentations in this case, assuming those augmentations do not interfere with the owner’s use of the property. I raise several difficult cases, such as augmenting a daycare with explicit sexual or violent images. Public property with competing apps is relatively straightforward, and most augmentation is ethical; those apps simply function like different guidebooks. Under a unified sphere of augmentation it is unclear whether augmentations should be treated more like public speech or graffiti or some of each. Further consideration is needed to determine what kinds of augmentations we view as ethical. (shrink)

The subject of this essay is political, and therefore social, philosophy; and therefore, ethics. We want to know whether the right thing for a society to do is to incorporate in its structure requirements that we bring about equality, or liberty, or both if they are compatible, and if incompatible then which if either, or what sort of mix if they can to some degree be mixed. But this fairly succinct statement of the issue before us requires considerable (...) clarification, even as a statment of the issue. For it is widely, and in my view correctly, held thatsomesort of equality is utterly fundamental in these matters. We seek a principle, or principles, that apply to all, are the same for all. In that sense, certainly, equality is fundamental and inescapable. But this is a very thin sort of “equality.”It will almost equally widely be agreed that the principles in question should in some more interesting sense “treat” people equally, e.g., by allotting to all the same set of rights, and moreover, rights that are – again we have to say “in some sense” – nonarbitrary, so that whatever they are, persons of all races, sexes, and so on will have the same fundamental rights assigned to them. Taking this to be, again, essentially uncontroversial, though not without potentially worrisome points of unclarity, it needs, now, to be pointed out that this characterization does not settle the issue that this essay is concerned with. That issue is abouteconomicmatters in particular. (shrink)

Can the right to private property be claimed as one of the `rights of mankind'? This is the central question of this comprehensive and critical examination of the subject of private property. Jeremy Waldron contrasts two types of arguments about rights: those based on historical entitlement, and those based on the importance of property to freedom. He provides a detailed discussion of the theories of property found in Locke's Second Treatise and Hegel's Philosophy of (...) class='Hi'>Right to illustrate this contrast. The book contains original analyses of the concept of ownership, the ideas of rights, and the relation between property and equality. The author's overriding determination throughout is to follow through the arguments and values used to justify private ownership. He finds that the traditional arguments about property yield some surprisingly radical conclusions. (shrink)

Ignorance theorists about privacy hold that it amounts to others’ ignorance of one’s personal information. I argue that ignorance theorists should adopt a distributive reductionist approach to the right to privacy, according to which it is reducible to elements that, despite having something significant in common, are distributed across more fundamental rights to person, liberty, and property. The distributed reductionism that I present carries two important features. First, it is better suited than its competitors to explain a (...) sense of scatter that many have about the right to privacy. Second, it warrants caution about claims to the effect that the right to privacy is sharply to be distinguished from such rights as the right to liberty and the right to property. (shrink)

The subject of this essay is political, and therefore social, philosophy; and therefore, ethics. We want to know whether the right thing for a society to do is to incorporate in its structure requirements that we bring about equality, or liberty, or both if they are compatible, and if incompatible then which if either, or what sort of mix if they can to some degree be mixed. But this fairly succinct statement of the issue before us requires considerable (...) clarification, even as a statment of the issue. For it is widely, and in my view correctly, held that some sort of equality is utterly fundamental in these matters. We seek a principle, or principles, that apply to all, are the same for all. In that sense, certainly, equality is fundamental and inescapable. But this is a very thin sort of “equality.” It will almost equally widely be agreed that the principles in question should in some more interesting sense “treat” people equally, e.g., by allotting to all the same set of rights, and moreover, rights that are – again we have to say “in some sense” – nonarbitrary, so that whatever they are, persons of all races, sexes, and so on will have the same fundamental rights assigned to them. Taking this to be, again, essentially uncontroversial, though not without potentially worrisome points of unclarity, it needs, now, to be pointed out that this characterization does not settle the issue that this essay is concerned with. That issue is about economic matters in particular. (shrink)

In reply to Narveson, I distinguish his no-proviso argument from his liberty argument, and I show that both fail. I also argue that interference lacks the strategic status he assigns to it, because it cannot be appropriately distinguished, conceptually and morally, from prevention; that natural resources do enjoy the importance he denies they have; that laissez-faire economies lack the superiority he attributes to them; that ownership can indeed be a reflexive relation; that anti-paternalism does not entail libertarianism; and that (...) he misrepresents the doctrines of a number of philosophers, including John Locke, Ronald Dworkin, and myself. In reply to Brenkert, I show that he seriously misconstrues my view of the nature of freedom, and of its relationship to self-ownership. I then refute his criticisms of my treatment of the contrasts between self-ownership, on the one hand, and autonomy and non-slavery, on the other. I also show that his attempt to exorcize the demon of self-ownership is multiply flawed. (shrink)

En este trabajo se discute la interpretación de Isaiah Berlin de la filosofía política fichteana en términos de un organicismo. Esta interpretación muestra que las libertades individuales juegan un rol fundamental en la educación de los ciudadanos futuros en tanto que ésta es una tarea realizada por los padres y no por el Estado. Sin embargo, Fichte no defiende una idea de la libertad individual como no-interferencia, aun cuando las similitudes entre su teoría y la de Humboldt sugieran lo contrario. (...) Del mismo modo, Fichte no defendió tampoco la idea de la libertad como no-dominación, como revela la comparación con la teoría de Philip Pettit. Por el contrario, Fichte sostuvo que la educación de los futuros ciudadanos tiene sentido únicamente cuando las libertades individuales son consideradas como inextricablemente unidas con la propiedad. This paper discusses Isaiah Berlin’s interpretation of Fichtean political philosophy in terms of organicism. It shows that individual liberties play a fundamental role in the education of future citizens as a task performed by parents, not the state. However, Fichte did not defend an idea of individual liberty or non-interference, even if similarities between his theory and Humboldt’s suggest the contrary. At the same time, Fichte also did not espouse the idea of freedom as non-domination, as a comparison with Philip Pettit’s theory reveals. By contrast, Fichte posited that the education of future citizens makes sense only if individual liberties are considered inextricably linked to property. (shrink)

Susan Okin read Robert Nozick as taking it to be fundamental to his Libertarianism that people own themselves, and that they can acquire entitlement to other things by making them. But she thinks that, since mothers make people, all people must then be owned by their mothers, a consequence Okin finds absurd. She sees no way for Nozick to make a principled exception to the idea that people own what they make when what they make is people, concluding that Nozick’s (...) theory of entitlement must be false, and that entitlement must instead be rooted in people’s needs. I say Okin misreads Nozick’s Libertarianism. In fact, its fundamental principle is that, simply by being persons, people are entitled to the maximum negative liberty compatible with a like liberty for all persons. Further, Nozick, and Jan Narveson, who has taken on the advocacy of Libertarian ideas, analyze liberty as freedom to interact with things, and analyze being entitled to or having property in something, as freedom to interact with it, to determine what may be done with it. People therefore have such freedom to do what they want with themselves, and such freedom to do what they want with other things, as is compatible with all persons having similar freedom. The former is what self-ownership amounts to, the latter, ownership of other things. Libertarianism’s fundamental principle therefore both grounds and delimits entitlements in ways entailing that mothers don’t own persons by dint of making them. Otherwise, since it would then be the prerogative of mothers to determine what shall be done with the persons they made, the persons made would lack equal liberty, this violating the fundamental principle. (shrink)

Within the small body of philosophical work on strikes, to participate in a strike is commonly seen as to refuse to do the job while retaining one’s claim upon it. What is the relationship, though, between liberalism and the right to strike? This is our main question.

This paper addresses the question of how the right to liberty, qua moral right, is best understood, and then how that right can serve as a basic human right of indispensable value. Section I argues that if the right to liberty is understood as a general right to license, then, as Ronald Dworkin argues, it cannot be a basic right in any morally meaningful sense. Sections II, III, and IV consider and (...) reject the view that the right to liberty, as a basic right, comprises unrelated sets of either unilateral or bilateral liberty rights correlating with prima facie duties of non-interference. A new model of the basic right to liberty is offered in section V, and then defended in section VI. This model understands the basic right to liberty as a mutually held and reciprocally respected Hohfeldian power-right enjoyed by all basic-rights holders. In virtue of occupying the position of basic-rights holder and participation in a system of rights-permitted action and duty-required compliance or forbearance, persons come to enjoy emergent liberties that augment respect within the community and the value of having basic rights. (shrink)

: In a recent essay, “Forcing Nozick Beyond the Minimal State: The Lockean Proviso and Compensatory Welfare,” I argue that Nozick’s own reading of the Lockean Proviso commits him to a welfare state. In a forceful response, Jan Narveson calls my argument into question by arguing for an especially austere reading of the Lockean Proviso as ….

May a hotel owner that objects to same-sex marriage on religious grounds refuse to host a same-sex wedding in its ballroom or deny the couple the right to book the honeymoon suite? Do public accommodation laws oppress religious dissidents by forcing them to act contrary to their religious beliefs or does discriminatory exclusion threaten equal access to the market economy and deny equal citizenship to LGBTQ persons? Answering these questions requires explaining why one property claim should prevail over (...) another and why one liberty should prevail when it clashes with another. And answering those questions requires analysis of the relationship between property and sovereignty. Sovereign power both creates and regulates the types of property rights that can be tolerated in a free and democratic society that values each person equally. Should we view sovereignty as a threat to property or property as a threat to sovereignty? Libertarians choose the first and liberals the second. But this is the wrong way to understand the relation between property and sovereignty. Property and sovereignty are not separate and independent concepts or spheres of social life that can be brought into relationship with each other. Rather, they are imbricated; they overlap like roof tiles. Our aspiration to live in a free and democratic society places certain constraints on both property and sovereignty. Such societies do not recognize absolute power, whether public or private. Free and democratic societies are committed to a substantive vision of both social relations and politics. We have fruitful debates about property and sovereignty and, in the end, must construct a legal system that effects an acceptable compromise between access and exclusion in the property regime. Our historic practices regarding racial and other forms of discrimination and our evolving norms suggest that public accommodation laws enable access to the marketplace without regard to invidious discrimination. Religious freedom cannot operate to deny equal citizenship or opportunity. For that reason, a same-sex couple should not have to call ahead to see if they are welcome to book the honeymoon suite. Public accommodation laws do not infringe on legitimate property rights or religious freedoms; rather, they define the legitimate contours of liberty and property in a society that treats each person with equal concern and respect. (shrink)