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The Lockean Proviso

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Husain Sarkar
Husain Sarkar*
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
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Extract

Within Robert Nozick's theory of Justice as presented in his Anarchy, State and Utopia, does the Lockean proviso dovetail with the theory of entitlement? The main burden of this paper is to establish that far from dovetailing, there is a serious conflict between the two.

Nozick's theory of Justice consists of at least three principles, namely, the principle of Justice in acquisition, the principle of Justice in transfer, and the principle of rectification of injustice. These principles treat the topics of how unheld things came to be held, how they came to be transferred, and how injustice in respect to them came to be corrected or rectified. Although Nozick does not provide a detailed philosophical picture of these principles of Justice, he says enough about each of them by way of examples and explanations to constitute a powerful, criticizable doctrine.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 47 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1982

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References

1 Nozick, Robert Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, Inc. 1974).Google Scholar

2 Nozick, 154; my emphasis

3 Both Goldman, Alan H. ('The Entitlement Theory of Distributive Justice,’ Journal of Philosophy, 73 [1976], especially 828-32),CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Brody, Baruch ('Critical Study of Anarchy, State, and Utopia,’ Philosophia, 8 [1978], especially pp. 432-34),Google Scholar have argued that it is not at all obvious that Kant's statement of treating persons as inviolable ends rules out the possibility either of redistribution of goods which Nozick would view as violation of rights or a more extensive role of the State than Nozick envisages.

4 For some very interesting criticisms of Clause 2, ‘the inductive clause,’ as well as of Nozick's principle of rectification of injustice, see Davis, Lawrence ‘Comments on Nozick's Entitlement Theory,’ Journal of Philosophy, 73 (1976), 837-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 839- 42 respectively.

5 I am persuaded by Virginia Held's devastating paper, ‘john Locke on Robert Nozick,’ Social Research, (1976), 169-95, that Nozick's philosophical precursor is not John Locke but rather Robert Filmer; that Anarchy, State, and Utopia is not in the tradition of First Treatise of Government but rather in the tradition of Patriarcha. With some Justification, Held claims that while heeding only the Lockean proviso, Nozick ignores several other restrictions that Locke places on the right to acquisition and property (p. 175). My concern here is not with the exegetical problem but rather with what Nozick does with what he takes to be the Lockean proviso. The reader may, if he insists, regard that proviso in Nozick as the Nozickian proviso, the Filmer-Nozickian proviso, etc.

6 Nozick, 176. Judith Thomson has raised an interesting problem: Is the Lockean proviso intended as a necessary condition or a sufficient condition for property acquisition? She argues that it cannot be a necessary condition since, among other things, Locke did not take into account how large the number of possible owners are going to be. She claims that Locke meant it to be a sufficient condition ('Property Acquisition,’ Journal of Philosophy, 73 [1976], especially 665-6). Honore has claimed that Nozick implies that the property right to a thing is acquired for an indefinite period of time, and that this view is not ‘the easiest to Justify from a moral point of view,’ given finite resources ('Property, Title, and Redistribution,’ Held, Virginia ed., in Property, Profits, and Economic Justice [Encino, Cal.: Wadsworth 1980] 85-8Google Scholar). If I understand him correctly, Honoré would argue that the Lockean proviso is not a sufficient condition either. A similar point has been made by Allan Gibbard ('Natural Property Rights,’ Nous, 10 [1976] 84-5). To be sure, I do not attack the problem in the form in which Jarvis envisages it, but much of what I say in this paper is relevant to it and tends to support the claims of Honoré and Gibbard.

7 Nozick, 181

8 Nozick, 181

9 Nozick, 181. Similar considerations are applied when Nozick forbids making out of permanent patents.

10 Nozick, 193-7

11 Nozick, 177. The following was provoked by a remark of John Taurek. Nozick is vague at this crucial point. In the two preceding sentences he says, ‘This question of fixing the baseline needs more detailed investigation than we are able to give it here. It would be desirable to have an estimate of the general economic importance of original appropriation in order to see how much leeway there is for differing theories of appropriation and of the location of the baseline.’ Thus, what I cite in the text as the measurement of the baseline is offered as a measurement of the economic importance of the original appropriation. I think I am right in doing so on the following two grounds: (1) The passage exhibits an essential connection between the economic importance of the original appropriation and the location of the baseline income. Although what this connection is we are not told; nor indeed are we told what relevance, if any, has one to the other. (2) If there is no essential link between the economic importance of the original appropriation and the baseline income, what is the point of the remark? Thus, I have assumed - rightly, I think - that the economic importance of the original appropriation will go toward determining the baseline income. Maybe other things are needed as well. However, that only needlessly complicates my argument and does not affect it.

12 Nozick, 169

13 Nozick, 170

14 Nozick, xiv

15 An earlier version was read to the Department of Philosophy, The Research School for Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia in August, 1978. I am grateful to Virginia Held for her encouragement and to John Taurek for a helpful conversation on the penultimate draft.