Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T13:51:18.928Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE RIGHT TO PRIVATE PROPERTY: A JUSTIFICATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2010

John Kekes
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The proposed justification avoids problems that invalidate the familiar entitlement, utility, and interest-based justifications; interprets private property as necessary for controlling resources we need for our well-being; recognizes that the possession, uses, and limits of private property must be justified differently; and combines the defensible portions of the familiar but unsuccessful attempts at justification with a more complex account that combines the defensible portions of previous justificatory attempts with a new pluralistic approach that treats the right to private property as a conventional, defeasible, but indispensable right.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For surveys and bibliographies, see Becker, Lawrence C., “Property,” in Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2nd ed., ed. Becker, Lawrence C. and Becker, Charlotte B. (New York: Routledge, 2001)Google Scholar; Munser, Stephen R., “Property,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Craig, E. (London: Routledge, 1998)Google Scholar; Pennock, J. Roland and Chapman, John W., eds., Property: Nomos XXII (New York: New York University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; and Waldron, Jeremy, “Property,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/property/Google Scholar.

2 This is the approach of Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan; John Locke, Second Treatise of Government; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract; and their many contemporary followers.

3 I follow Hart, H. L. A., “Are There Any Natural Rights?” Philosophical Review 64 (1955): 175–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hart, H. L. A., “Utilitarianism and Natural Rights,” in Hart, , Essays in Jurisprudence and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For an excellent discussion of the complexities of how property should be understood, see Waldron, Jeremy, The Right to Private Property (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), part 1Google Scholar.

5 This way of understanding the right to private property is indebted to Honor, A. M.é's now classic “Ownership,” in Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence, ed. Guest, A. G. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961)Google Scholar.

6 Some interest-based attempts at justification are Dworkin, Ronald M., Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; and MacCormick, Neil, Legal Rights and Social Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

7 Locke, John, Second Treatise of Government (1690) (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1980)Google Scholar.

8 See, for instance, Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974)Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., 161–63.

10 There are numerous defenders of this version. Perhaps the best-known representative is Hayek, Friedrich A., The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960)Google Scholar; and Hayek, , The Mirage of Social Justice, volume II of Law, Legislation, and Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976)Google Scholar.