The Deceptive Appeal of Self-Ownership

A Case against Self-Ownership Abstract I argue that an adoption of self-ownership completely distorts the landscape of political values, as it tends either to explain away or to overpower any and all diverging normative considerations, putting everything under the heading of property rights. Adopting self-ownership directly leads to an important dilemma: non-property-based normative considerations are either interpreted into the framework of property rights, or pushed aside. I analyse the arguments of Locke, Nozick and contemporary left-libertarians to find the same reductionist tendency. The reason for the tendency of self-ownership to dominate other values is the stringency of property entitlements once they are viewed as the normative reason behind our rejection of torture and slavery. As a result of such ‘normative power’, it is practically impossible to mitigate the force of property rights and distinguish serious and non-serious instances of property-rights breach. Consequently, the friends of self-ownership find it difficult to live up to its initial appeal, as freedom or autonomy are only imperfectly translatable into the strict property-rights framework. Key words self-ownership, libertarianism, Locke, Nozick, Vallentyne, property rights The appeal of self-ownership Self-ownership is generally thought to gather under one conceptual roof several fundamental political and moral insights. Historically, liberal political thinking established itself in opposition to absolute monarchies, serfdom, slavery and other forms of unfreedom and political oppression. Therefore, the idea of being one’s own master, without anyone having authority over one’s actions and life, carries a lot of intuitive weight in this tradition. Secondly, there is an almost universal consensus amongst contemporary philosophers when it comes to a belief in some sort of private personal sphere where a person can do what she wants unless it impedes others. Respecting freedom of this kind is generally considered to be an unproblematic cornerstone of political legitimacy of any state. Thirdly, prohibition of unjustified harms caused by others is one of the fundamental moral decrees. Others are not allowed to injure me or cause me any harm unless special circumstances arise. These considerations are of course very vague – they represent broad intuitions shared almost universally across the Western world and beyond. What they have in common, however, is that they are seemingly very well accommodated by the notion of self-ownership. Why should a person be free to organize her life without anyone having authority to overturn her decisions and without anyone injuring her in the process? Why slavery and other forms of subjection and oppression are wrong? It is because every individual is a self-owner with all the corresponding rights. Moreover, self-ownership does not get far from regular ownership, so it not only captures our intuitions – it is prima facie very clear. If I own a car, I have a right to decide how and when it is to be used, where it goes, etc. The same goes for my life. Also, as no one has a right to use my car without my permission, no one has a similar right towards me as a human being. Self-ownership is simple and does not require any elaborate theoretical structures for explanation – which is a clear and distinct advantage in a complicated philosophical world. So defined, self-ownership can be viewed as a conceptual basis for individual freedom and autonomy. It provides, politically and morally, a border that ought not to be crossed by state power, or anything else. My self-ownership is to be respected regardless of the benefits that interference into my life might bring. With these credentials, it can be clear why “the thesis of self-ownership has plenty of appeal” G. A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 70.., why “it is central part of morality in liberal democratic societies” Carole Pateman, “Self-Ownership and Property in the Person: Democratization and a Tale of Two Concepts,” Journal of Political Philosophy 10, no. 1 (2002): 22... Indeed, “the specific motivation behind self-ownership involves the strong interest that I have in running my own life. If the state or other entity tells me when and where I must utilize my abilities—forcing me to produce this or preventing me from producing that—something deep and fundamental is sacrificed." John Christman, “Self-Ownership, Equality, and the Structure of Property Rights,” Political Theory 19, no. 1 (1991): 39.. Self-ownership seems to capture the significance of my relationship to myself, my body, my life, my work. Spelled out like this, its importance can hardly be overstated. Nevertheless, admitting that self-ownership may capture some of our strongest political intuitions does not amount to its endorsement. Conceptually, its position is not so strong as to be irreplaceable – it is far from the only way of theoretically expressing the fundamental insights presented above. Other alternatives may include autonomy, integrity, or freedom, all of which can be – and have been – substantively elaborated without any reference to self-ownership. In fact, most of the ‘mainstream’ liberals from Mill onwards do not use self-ownership as the basis of their theory, relying on other concepts instead. Even though there are multiple concepts and values that can cover a set of intuitions broadly similar to self-ownership, a conceptual decision to use one and not others is very far from being just an innocuous play with words. Although all of them supposedly capture the strong interest I have in leading my own life, they are far from interchangeable. Once presented with contestable issues like redistribution, state perfectionism or the scope of justifiable coercion, self-ownership, unlike the others, tends to give answers in terms of property rights. When making a choice to adopt self-ownership as the starting point of a theoretical analysis, it is thus not enough just to point towards its broad intuitive appeal – it is necessary to justify the general moral and political prominence it gives to property and also to analyse its possible negative or unwanted effects. The power of self-ownership The intuitive appeal of self-ownership may also have a darker side. Generally speaking, it is always possible for a concept which persuasively captures certain insights to make us blind to some other, maybe even more important insights. After all, the intuitively very attractive three-dimensional Euclidean conception of space does hide from us the ultimate interconnection of space and time – something that is now generally accepted as true. I hold that self-ownership suffers from a similar defect. Once we accept it into our conceptual apparatus, it becomes very hard, if not impossible, to operate with other independent values. To use another illustration taken from physics, self-ownership simply possesses too much gravitational force for other concepts to remain independent and self-standing. It tends to pull them into its orbit and, as a result, it transforms them so that they conform to its own limitations and priorities. This way, self-ownership becomes the sole dominant normative framework, which entails constraints and disadvantages that may prove to be quite radical. My argument for this conclusion runs in two larger steps. In the first one, I look at some well-known instances of theories that use self-ownership. I analyze their tendency to put self-ownership on pedestal, allowing it to either completely dominate or dismiss other values. I then propose three reasons why this domination occurs and why it is so difficult to get rid of it. In the second step, I show how the stringency of self-ownership undermines its intuitive appeal presented above, ultimately revealing that it is a very dubious concept to adopt. The Lockean tradition In Locke’s Second Treatise, John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)., ohn Locke, Two Treatises of Government, Reprint edition (Clark, New Jersey: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 2010). (Locke, 2010). which popularised the whole idea in the Western thought, self-ownership constitutes the starting premise of the argument which aims to justify the acquisition of external objects. The argument itself is extremely simple: (1) I own myself, therefore (2) I own my labour, and therefore (3) I own products of my labour (§27). What is interesting for my purposes here is what happens afterwards, as self-ownership quickly gains crucial importance for the main argument of the book. The natural rights to life and liberty become property rights with self-ownership being the “natural” reason why they ought to be protected. In §87 Locke writes: “man being born with a title to perfect freedom…hath by nature a power…to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty, and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men.” The natural drive to protect property in my person and in external possessions then motivates the whole argument aiming to establish the state and justify its coercive powers. It all culminates in §138, where Locke claims: “The supreme power cannot take from any man a part of his property without his own consent. For the preservation of property being the end of government, and that for which men enter into society, it necessarily supposes and requires, that the people should have property, without which they must be supposed to lose that, by entering into society, which was the end for which they entered into it.” The quote above, although true to Locke’s tendency to write absurdly long and complicated sentences, nicely captures the all-round pre-eminence of property rights in his theory. Self-ownership starts as an innocuous first premise of one argument, but it swiftly becomes much more than that, as it drives the aspiration to protect people’s property (their bodies, possessions, and freedom) against unwanted intrusions. Failing to secure a protection of property in the state of nature, people create the government which is then charged with a single big task, a “chief end” – to protect property. §124. Cf. §94 and passim. What happens here is that the different things we want from state (personal security, freedom to travel, protection of possessions) are all transformed into a unified set of claims (under a heading of preservation of property), undistinguished from one another. It is important to stress that the central conceptual tool that enables the unification of state’s objectives is self-ownership. Without it, it would not be possible for my freedom, the unhindered use of my property, and my security to fall into the same category, as enforceable rights (with corresponding duties of others) which follow from my ownership. If freedom and personal security are not property rights, if they hold an independent standing, then the goals that the state aims to achieve necessarily multiply. In sharp contrast, Locke can analyse the role of the state using property rights as basically his only concern. However, Locke wasn’t the only philosopher to maintain such an absolute dominance of property rights. This tendency is very much present in contemporary thinking as well, especially in libertarianism. Robert Nozick’s introductory claim, “individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights),” Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Basic Books, 1974), ix.. is a prominent example of that. In Nozick, the main drive behind his arguments is generated by his theory of “entitlements” which consist in a set of rights to dispose with my person and my (legitimately obtained) property. As “side constraints”, these entitlements provide a line that ought not to be crossed Ibid., 28–33.. When it is crossed, as when the government adopts an end-state distributive scheme to take away parts of my income and property, the government in fact assumes a partial ownership of my person – which is clearly unacceptable Ibid., 172.. For Nozick, rival non-property-based rights would be possible only if they operated outside the limits imposed by historically established ownership entitlements. However, there is nothing beyond those limits. In a sharp statement, he claims that “the particular rights over things fill the space of rights, leaving no room for general rights to be in a certain condition” Ibid., 238.. Thus, property rights saturate the normative space, so to say. They provide the proper scope of justice and their protection is the one and only role that the minimal state ought to assume. In other words, all legitimate political demands take the form of entitlements based in ownership rights. The ban on theft and property seizure, freedom to travel, or a protection against assault are all an expression of what I can do with the stuff that is mine – and what limits does it place on actions of others. Moving away from Nozick, the one perceived insufficiency of self-ownership was its difficulty to deal with the demands of equality. In words of G.A. Cohen, “there is a tendency in self-ownership to produce inequality, and the only way to nullify that tendency (without expressly abridging self-ownership) is through a regime over external resources which is so rigid that it excludes exercise of independent rights over oneself.” Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, 105.. However, there is a considerable ‘left-libertarian’ literature now espousing exactly the settlement that Cohen thought was impossible. See for example Michael Otsuka, Peter Vallentyne, and Hillel Steiner, “Why Left-Libertarianism Is Not Incoherent, Indeterminate, or Irrelevant: A Reply to Fried,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 33, no. 2 (2005): 201–15; Michael Otsuka, Libertarianism Without Inequality (Oxford University Press, 2005); Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner, Left Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate (Palgrave Publishers Ltd., 2000); Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner, The Origins of Left Libertarianism: An Anthology of Historical Writings (Palgrave Publishing Ltd., 2000).. Left libertarians argue that the distributive inadequacy of self-ownership taken in isolation is mitigated by the shared or common ownership of the world at large. For them, respecting the ownership status of the external resources has radical egalitarian consequences, forcing the redistribution from the better-off to the worse-off in form of compensations, improved opportunities, etc. It is important to note that self-ownership and world-ownership are here presented as two separate and unconnected principles Otsuka, Vallentyne, and Steiner, “Why Left-Libertarianism Is Not Incoherent, Indeterminate, or Irrelevant,” 209.. Indeed, the chief difference amongst left-libertarians seems to be provided by radically different conceptions of world-ownership they propose Ibid., 202., as opposed to them mostly agreeing on the basic contours of self-ownership consisting in the "fullest right a person (logically) can have over herself provided that each other person also has just such a right.” Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, 213.. However, the adoption of two separate principles of self-ownership and world-ownership does not entail the plurality of normative concerns. Indeed, the opposite is the case. Equality is not viewed as some independent value to be pursued – it is a feature and consequence of the entitlements to external resources, firmly rooted in the larger scheme of property rights. In the end, left-libertarians do an interesting work in modifying Locke’s theory of acquisition so that the results are more egalitarian. However, the absolute focus on property rights as the only relevant normative political consideration remains. This is a feature their theories share with both Nozick and Locke, in spite of ideological opposition and radically different outward consequences. Looking at the theories of its proponents in general, self-ownership seems to be a very greedy concept indeed. It does not stop until it dominates the landscape of values and rights altogether – until every right is a property right and every value is based on an ownership entitlement of some sort. Even when self-ownership is clearly not pulling all the strings, the principle(s) brought to complement it are of the same kind. For the friends of self-ownership, politics and justice seem to be reduced to the question of who owns what and what that entails. The gravitational pull The case of the thinkers presented above is curious. Some of them are manifestly moved by several quite distinct normative considerations (freedom, equality, autonomy), yet they end up stipulating a single monolithic conception of property rights and entitlements. But why is this so? Why the friends of self-ownership tend to promote property rights to the role of master-value nothing can oppose, even if they draw dramatically different implications from it? It seems to me that this is no mere coincidence, for three main reasons. First, at the heart of the dominance of self-ownership in the theories of its proponents lies a simple fact that self-ownership simply can fill the role of the master-value. A surprising amount of our considered judgments about politics and morality can be in some way explained by it. A limited power of government, a broad range of freedoms, a large set of rights, and also equality (as the historically latest addition to the list) can be justified by the reference to self-ownership or to the associated property rights. Self-ownership, once adopted, becomes a Swiss Army knife of political theory, with no other tools required. And even if some additional considerations are required (as with left-libertarian world-ownership), they can be of the same kind as self-ownership, creating the same sort of rights and obligations, answering the same questions (e.g. “What should state do to respect everyone’s entitlements?”). At this point, Ockham’s razor kicks in. Once a theory can do with only one fundamental normative consideration (and a seemingly simple one at that), it would be unreasonable to unnecessarily supplement it with other considerations, only complicating the outcome and exposing oneself to different sets of objections. Therefore, the only sensible option is to stick with the dominance of property rights ultimately motivated by self-ownership. The second reason for the gravitational pull of self-ownership is the sheer strength of the principle that cannot be easily mitigated. It rests on my relation to myself. And when it comes to my self-relation, I obviously have a great interest and intense feelings towards the thing that is me. My murder, rape, or torture are events I have every reason to avoid and strongly object to. But if the moral background behind my resistance to these unpleasant events is in fact self-ownership, then the ‘moral force’ of self-ownership and property in general needs to be very stringent and extensive, so that it cannot be easily overridden. Self-ownership is defined as stringent and extensive in Steven Wall, “Self-Ownership and Paternalism,” Journal of Political Philosophy 17, no. 4 (2009): 400.. A principle that is set to explain my resolute moral rejection of being a subject of torture cannot be a weak one. However, the problem arises when this strong principle is applied more widely, to the questions of distributive justice, scope of legitimate institutions, etc. Since we presumably apply the same principle here as in the cases of torture or rape, it is difficult to tone it down and relax its application – exactly because of the strength of the initial intuitions driving it. At the end of the day, Robert Nozick’s often-rejected argument equating taxation with forced labour Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, 169.. is exactly a manifestation of this tendency. Taxation equals slavery because they are fundamentally only different instances of the same thing: the injury to self-ownership. What happens in the forced labour-type arguments can be described roughly as follows: self-ownership, a principle that is driven by very powerful intuitions, is applied to cases where these intuitions are no longer present. However, the structure of its application seemingly does not change – so it retains the initial strength over all types of cases, from brutal assault to the mildest instances of property redistribution. With this framework in place, we can understand why the friends of self-ownership seem so reluctant to introduce non-property-related considerations. It is difficult to imagine any principle that would overpower property rights understood as guaranteeing the very integrity and continuation of human life. As a result, the only forces restraining my property rights are the property rights of other people. That is why left-libertarians needed to define equality as a matter of ownership of common resources in order for it to get a proper hearing in the wider theory. Equality as an independent value would not stand a chance. In Nozick’s words, there is simply no room for it. The last reason for the domination of property rights in the works of the friends of self-ownership is their very adoption of the language of rights in the first place. The long-acknowledged difficulty with rights-based accounts of justice is the fact that every conception of rights bears problematic absolutist undertones, with limited space to manoeuvre Jeremy Waldron, “Nozick and Locke: Filling the Space of Rights,” Social Philosophy and Policy 22, no. 1 (2005): 109.. After all, people either have certain rights and corresponding enforceable duties, or they do not. The questions posed thus demand binary yes/no answers. Rights cannot be conflicting and once a right is acknowledged, it is very difficult to compromise on it. Perhaps the clearest example here is the abortion debate. When the controversy is presented as the right of the mother to choose versus the right of the child to live, the two positions enter the trenches and no mutual accommodation is possible, as every party acknowledges one right and denies the other. Similarly, self-ownership proposes a wide-ranging scheme of rights penetrating every aspect of life. Introducing a different and potentially conflicting source of rights would be a theoretically dangerous move, inviting incoherence. It would be equivalent to acknowledging a stringent and extensive right to live, while trying to smuggle in a right to choose as well. Furthermore, introducing a category of softer, non-right-based claims presupposes that there is some sphere unregulated by property rights (which would assume automatic preference in case both property rights and these non-right claims were present). But given the pervasive account of property adopted, such sphere may not exist. Therefore, the friends of self-ownership are left with property rights as their only tool. Overall, the stringency of self-ownership is the product of multiple factors. (1) Its universal applicability to almost all issues in moral and political philosophy (a breach of every right becomes an instance of trespassing); (2) Its ability to provide answers to these issues almost single-handedly; (3) Its sheer strength when it is conceived as a moral reason of our rejection of torture and slavery; (4) Its adoption of the unyielding language of rights. When all these combine, there just may not be much space left for other unrelated normative considerations. In this step of the argument, I have not shown a logical impossibility of combining self-ownership with other values. I have only explained why the friends of self-ownership are often unwilling to do it. And even if they try, the combination of self-ownership with other values is always awkward and unsettled – because there is no convincing way to mitigate the strength of self-ownership. A few good articles appeared recently that exploit this structural weakness, applying it to particular issues: Stephen Wall on soft paternalism Wall, “Self-Ownership and Paternalism.” and David Sobel on overall practicability David Sobel, “Backing Away From Libertarian Self-Ownership,” Ethics 123, no. 1 (2012): 32–60.. However, none of these authors attempts to explain how come self-ownership tends to be so strong and uncompromising in the first place. The appeal of self ownership reconsidered In the two sections above I analysed the tendency of self-ownership to pull other values in and transform them in its own image. Now, I aim to show the consequences of this domination. I argue that under a closer inspection the frequently assumed appeal of self-ownership quickly disappears. The reason for this disappearance is the very fact that the originally attractive values that self-ownership was thought to capture must in the second step transform so that they can be expressed in terms of property rights. If they do not or cannot do that, so that the priority of property rights conflicts with the values that gave self-ownership its original appeal, one of those two will have to yield. One of the principal sources of the appeal of self-ownership was autonomy, a ‘strong interest I have in running my own life’, connected with having options to exercise my control of it. However, many options for meaningful living depend on some sort of collective action that may just prove to be impossible in a society that gives too much weight to inviolability of ownership rights and is otherwise blind to divergent normative considerations. A good example of these activities is building of sport or recreational facilities in residential areas. Even if the process does not require any financial contribution on the part of uninterested citizens, it still modifies the environment that is common, and the building process may be loud, dusty, or otherwise discomforting for a time. In these situations, strong property and self-ownership rights would give everyone a veto, which would often hamper any possible collective action, as it gives disproportionate power to grumpy individuals. Cf. Nozick’s famous public address system argument Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, 93.. Therefore, self-ownership not only does not entail autonomy, it may also restrain it by blocking some valuable options just because they may in some way include everyone, not only willing participants. Hence, to echo G. A. Cohen, who in Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality develops a broadly similar point, “autonomy no more implies self-ownership than is implied by it” Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, 238.. – and my strong interest in leading a fulfilling life may be frustrated by giving an unrestricted priority to self-ownership. Given that full ownership rights may prevent us from building facilities that are necessary for modern society and provide valuable options for us (it is not just public swimming pools but airports, factories, highways, or dams), many libertarians feel what we might call a ‘practical pressure’ and they do seek for ways to soften their stance. A common strategy consists in allowing the others some unilateral non-consensual influence over my person and my property, while still trying to uphold the core ownership rights. See for example Otsuka, Libertarianism Without Inequality, 30.. However, all this is immensely problematic. As I argued above, self-ownership, with its built-in tendency to dominate, cannot just yield to some other, unrelated considerations – it is too strong for this manoeuvre. Therefore, it should not be surprising that the softening strategies so far have an “an air of ad hocness.” Wall, “Self-Ownership and Paternalism,” 415–416. Cf. Sobel, “Backing Away From Libertarian Self-Ownership.” . Self-ownership simply does not work in this way and cannot be easily restricted. Still, since it was established above that the only clear and transparent way to limit property rights stemming from self-ownership is by introducing other property rights, I hold that there is one softening strategy readily available. Turning Nozick upside down, it is possible to claim that the community and state indeed are partial owners of individuals – and that is why they can limit and influence their property. After all, if individuals are not full self-owners, it seems to follow that someone else must own the remaining bit. I take it that few if any libertarians would be willing to accept this conclusion, as it goes against the most fundamental rationale of their position. As a result, they have to live with the fact that self-ownership may importantly limit collective action and valuable life choices. But that means that self-ownership limits autonomy – a value that was supposed to motivate it in the first place. The same point holds with regard to freedom. Self-ownership, as presented in the first section, was supposed to provide high-enough barriers against institutions and individuals dominating and controlling my life. However, the pre-eminence of self-ownership ensures that the only type of freedom in the spotlight is the freedom to enjoy property. All other types of freedom are checked against this core one, and if they conflict with it, they are abolished. The main philosophical question here concerns a possibility of translation. Libertarianism faces a challenge – it needs to translate freedom-related concerns as property-related concerns. And in many core cases, this does indeed work. Assault or rape can be redefined as an especially serious form of property violation and it might even be argued that this redefinition perfectly captures the nature of the act in question. However, there are still certain aspects of freedom that are lost in translation. When confronted with straight-forward property rights, the aspects that are a bit more immaterial, like dignity, are especially vulnerable. Typically, much of the unfreedom of black population in the American South before the civil rights movement was carried out by free exercise of property rights. The owners of restaurants and transportation companies, the boards of private schools, and the large employers all set up rules (written and unwritten) for their property that in aggregate made the African-Americans radically unfree. In a profoundly racist society, this would be a problem for freedom even if the minority got their left-libertarian share of worldly resources and were not materially disadvantaged. The exercise of property rights therefore severely limited what we ordinarily understand as the core aspects of individual freedom. The same point can be made when analyzing the archetypal example of this debate – slavery. Many libertarians famously believe that a voluntary enslavement is acceptable, since people own themselves and a right to transfer is one of the most fundamental property rights. Here, translating freedom as a property right seems to entail a possibility of enslavement, while this move ignores the more subtle questions of moral status of human being, which fall in between the cracks of property framework. Indeed, something is lost in translation, again. Freedom is upheld in a very questionable way, allowing the domination and control of others, opposition to which motivated self-ownership in the first place . For a far more elaborated account of an opposition of the commonplace idea of freedom and freedom understood as a property right, see Samuel Freeman, “Illiberal Libertarians: Why Libertarianism Is Not a Liberal View,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 30, no. 2 (2001): 105–51.. In a sense, my analysis of self-ownership just made a full circle. Strong and persuasive moral and political insights about controlling my own life, my freedom and autonomy, gave birth to a very strong principle of self-ownership. But it turns out that this principle is too strong, so that it cannot make room for values that stand as its core motivation. It has practically subverted its own roots. Yet this is not a conclusive argument against self-ownership. It is only a simple dilemma. Since it turns out that adopting a strong conception of self-ownership not only does not entail protection of freedom and autonomy but may also go against it, there are two simple options. One can either (1) abandon self-ownership and find conceptual grounds that would better represent the initially attractive values; or (2) play hard ball and claim that if self-ownership can clash with freedom, so much worse for freedom. Put succinctly by Jan Narveson while stating an argument against Cohen: “since you are yourself, and self-ownership consists in having the right to do whatever you want with any part of yourself, up to and including your entire self, liberty of the person … (is) nothing more or less than self-ownership.” Jan Narveson, “Libertarianism Vs. Marxism: Reflections on G. A. Cohen’s Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality,” Journal of Ethics 2, no. 1 (1998): 9.. Emphasis added. And the same claim can be made for autonomy. Surely, with this manoeuvre self-ownership lost a big part of its attractiveness. ‘Strong interest in running my own life’ becomes ‘strong interest in exercising property rights in my person’ – and those two are very far from each other, as the last paragraphs showed. All the different varieties of normative considerations have just been swallowed up by property rights and denied proper hearing – even the ones that self-ownership was supposed to cover in the first place. The conclusion of my argument can thus be expressed in form of a conditional: If we believe in any sort of plurality of normative considerations in politics not covered by property rights, then self-ownership, with its built-in tendency to dominate, is not a good concept to adopt and use. Property in Lockean tradition: the complex picture The argument I presented above proposes an uncommon approach to interpret the role of self-ownership and property rights in the Lockean tradition. My understanding may thus conflict with the established views of Lockean scholars like Waldron and Simmons who argue for an understanding of Locke that covers broader (especially theological) aspects of his work Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke’s Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2002); A. John Simmons, The Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton University Press, 1994).. Here, I do not dispute the relevance and accuracy of their views. However, I want to show that my argument works despite the fact that Locke and his followers do indeed offer us a more complex picture than a brute domination of property rights. The problem is that once the arguments of the friends of self-ownership get going, the complex background tends to curiously disappear, leaving self-ownership to do all the heavy lifting. All this only adds to my original worry that one indeed cannot both use self-ownership and propose a genuinely refined normative picture of our political relations. When it comes to Lockean scholarship, one popular view during the 20th century saw Locke as a property-obsessed proto-laissez-faire capitalist who is out to defend the sanctity of our worldly possessions against the greedy powerful state bureaucracy Crawford Brough Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford University Press, 2011).. And for a modern reader, this may prima facie be quite a natural way to understand the Second Treatise. After all, Locke does use the term “property” a lot. Nonetheless, there are two problems with this reading. The first one is terminological: Locke uses the term “property” in two senses: in an extremely broad sense, covering “life, liberty, and estate”, but also more narrowly, identifying it only with the “estate”. Because the broad use of property is prevalent Jacob Viner, “‘Possessive Individualism’ as Original Sin,” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 29, no. 4 (1963): 548–59., it is simply wrong to treat Locke as a materialist solely interested in our worldly assets. He is very much concerned with liberty and other non-material rights – it is this broad “property” whose protection is the “chief end” of any state. Thus, even though property rights are for Locke extremely important, he is not interested only in external possessions. As for the second problem, philosophers like Waldron and Simmons urge us also to pay attention to broader aspects of Locke’s treatment of property. As it turns out, the protection of property may not be Locke’s fundamental aim after all. As he claims in the First Treatise: God, I say, having made Man and the World thus, spoke to him, (that is) directed him by his Senses and Reason . . . to the use of those things, which were serviceable for his Subsistence, and given him as a means of his Preservation. And thus Man’s Property in the Creatures, was founded upon the right he had, to make use of those things, that were necessary or useful to his Being. §86 First Treatise, quoted in Waldron, “Nozick and Locke,” 97.. Cf. Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, 159.. Locke believes that property founded in human labour is not a primordial fundamental right. It is a consequence of God’s command to live long and prosper in the world he gave us. Therefore, Locke can argue against Filmer that Adam (and his potential successors) have no right to assume the role of a sovereign and prevent others from taking what they need and find useful. If human life and prosperity are the chief ends behind the very existence of property and labour, it means that if property and prosperity clash, prosperity has an upper hand. Property exists only insofar as it helps prosperity. As a result, Locke devises a strong principle of charity: „Charity gives every Man a Title to so much out of another’s Plenty, as will keep him from extream want, where he has no means to subsist otherwise.” §42 First Treatise, cf. Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, 168–169.. Here, charity seems to undermine the strength of property rights I used in my argument. The rights to external resources seem to be restricted by the needs of others as they are generally understood to be only a means to fulfil broader Gods plans. See Jeremy Waldron, The Right to Private Property (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 139.. Therefore, it seems that ownership is not the only fundamental normative concern in the Lockean tradition – and my argument fails. However, there is one puzzling aspect of Locke’s analysis of charity that merits our attention. He develops the so-called principle of charity and is happy to use it in his critical examination of Filmer’s absolutist views in First Treatise. It comes handy when Locke reveals the implausibility of the view that the whole earth may be a personal property of one man with all the radical consequences it could have on the lives of others. Yet, charity is curiously absent from the Second Treatise, where Locke actually gets to systematically spell out his conception of property and its role in politics. Even Waldron notices “Locke’s silence on the issue in the Second Treatise chapter on property: there are several places where one would expect him to mention such a proviso (if he believed in it), and he does not, at least not in so many words.” Waldron, “Nozick and Locke,” 93. Cf. Waldron, The Right to Private Property, 139–140.. To be fair, Waldron claims that this might not be too significant – after all, there might be no straight-forward inconsistency between Locke’s treatment of property in the Second Treatise and his doctrine of charity in the First. Still, the case is peculiar even on Waldron’s reading. The argument I propose in this paper explains this peculiarity by showing the difficulty of acknowledging non-property related considerations for the friends of self-ownership. Locke might as well believe in the importance of basic welfare considerations, yet the nature of his position on self-ownership makes property so strong that it “excludes the common right of other men” (§27, Second Treatise). As a result, the broader context that Waldron so methodically analyses simply disappears when self-ownership-derived property enters the stage. If it did not, Locke would face difficult questions. For example: if others can use my property in case of extreme need, does that mean that under these circumstances they can enslave me or otherwise use my person? Of course, I do not claim that such challenges are unanswerable. However, the answers will necessarily be very awkward. After all, the direct link between “property” and “self” is given, and when property is this strong, setting a principled, non-ad hoc line between its justifiable and unjustifiable breaches is tricky at best. Therefore, I hold that Locke has a very good reason to draw the line strictly with property rights, excluding all the claims of others and thus muting his principle of charity. A similar situation obtains with regards to the so-called “Lockean proviso”. Waldron makes it clear that in Locke (and in Nozick) the proviso is supposed to bring into play non-property related considerations that are to limit and manage the subsequent entitlements Waldron, “Nozick and Locke,” 97–104.. He even goes as far as to claim that egalitarianism “pervades Locke’s theory of property” Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, 152.. Waldron’s argumentation is quite persuasive. It seems natural to read “enough and as good left for others” as a guarantee of elementary fairness in acquisition. Therefore, it looks as if property rights are subordinated to the concerns that motivate the introduction of proviso, be it equality or fairness Waldron, “Nozick and Locke,” 99.. Still, we need to be careful. After all, background intuitions rarely if ever specify the content of a philosophical theory directly. They need to be somehow interpreted, translated within the conceptual apparatus that the theory provides. And here, crucially, the context is that of injury. §33 Second Treatise, Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, 174–182. Since my appropriation imposes obligations on everyone else, the others can be harmed by my excessive property-hoarding. And for the friends of self-ownership, harm is always defined as a property-rights breach in the broad sense. Harming my person means harming my self – and if I own myself, the given harm is a property-right violation. After all, no one has a right to harm my property. Therefore, it is not equality or fairness that directly motivate the Lockean proviso – it is a possibility of property harm on my person. Waldron, exposing the egalitarian concerns that Nozick supposedly adopts together with the Lockean proviso, claims that “(Nozick’s) theory begins with the assumption that the formation and justification of property entitlements must be responsive to concerns about well-being that are not embodied in property rights. In this sense, it is not true that on Nozick’s account only property rights define the ‘substructure’ of rights.” Waldron, “Nozick and Locke,” 100. Waldron is clearly wrong here, his argument does not work. He confuses the “narrow” and “broad” concepts of property in Locke. While my external possessions may be limited by proviso, this does not mean that they are not limited by property rights. “The concerns about well-being” are embodied in property rights – in the property I have in my person. When someone violates the proviso, he or she violates my right not to be injured, not to have my property harmed. Thus, the background concerns of equality or fairness do not play any direct role in the argument. They play a role only as far as they are translated into a property framework (often imperfectly, as I argued above). My well-being becomes a normative concern for the friends of self-ownership only insofar as someone harms my person. This is even clearer in the case of left-libertarianism. For it, the concerns behind the proviso are straight-forwardly interpreted in terms of property rights expressed as “world-ownership”. I hold that Waldron is correct in claiming that there is a noticeable egalitarian strand in Locke’s thinking that reappears in Nozick (and, more directly and consciously, also in the works of left libertarians). However, the values of equality and fairness struggle to get a direct grip on the respective theories of these thinkers. These values ultimately face the two options I described above: they are either translated into a property framework, or their status becomes quite precarious. The precariousness then results in an added strain on coherence and, in Locke, in a curious case of nonappearance of the doctrine of charity in the Second Treatise. Conclusion Self-ownership can surely serve as a poetic analogy. It can have an educational role to enlighten the members of capitalist money-driven societies in why coercive interventions into someone’s life are unjustifiable. Yet, when it is conceived seriously as a principal source of normative constraints, it fails miserably. Firstly, it is hostile to any kind of reasonable pluralism of values, as it has a strong tendency embedded deeply in its nature to either dominate them or explain them away. Moreover, its plausibility is seriously undermined when put under scrutiny, as its domination of other values contradicts many of our considered convictions regarding freedom or autonomy. The theoretical argument I made for the tendency of self-ownership to dominate is demonstrable on multiple examples of philosophical theories that adopt this concept. Even as complex and as multifaceted theory as Locke’s seems to fall victim of the predatory instincts of self-ownership. The rich and broad normative background of equality, fairness and God’s commands either disappears or is flattened by the introduction of self-ownership. Property becomes sacrosanct and there seems to be no reasonable way to mitigate its power. As a result, I suggest that we should not work with the concept of self-ownership at all. In the history of Western philosophy, this is one of the dead ends. 21