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THE RIGHT TO PRIVATE PROPERTY: A JUSTIFICATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2010

John Kekes
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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

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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.