Self-Ownership
Jason Kuznicki on Aug 26th 2008
What does the statement “A person owns himself” actually mean?
This is a very good question, because the words inside the quotation marks, though often repeated, are badly phrased. They are almost certain to be misleading.
Simply put, “I own myself” threatens an infinite regress. The attributes of ownership seem to exclude those of being owned; it is hard to see how one can simultaneously be both the owned and the owner. Although I may wash myself, or dress myself, or feed myself, and at the same time unproblematically be the recipient of these services, it is much harder to see how I can both have a control or dominion over myself, and also be controlled or dominated. (By what?)
It would be far better to say “A person has a property in himself.” Indeed, this is the very phrase that Locke used, and Locke never referred to “self-ownership,” in those words, in any of his writings as far as I am aware. This may seem like a distinction without a difference, but the two phrases really do mean something quite different.
To “have a property in” a thing means that others ought to be excluded from it in some sense, perhaps from managing it, or from controlling it, or from disposing of it, except insofar as the individual who has the relevant property in the thing allows them to. I have a property in my shirt, for example, because it would be wrong for someone to take it away from me, or sell it, or damage it without my consent.
In this, the shirt is no different from my physical body, my conscience, my mind, or my soul. I have a property in these things; they form part of that order of things from which I may properly exclude the access of others. As James Madison put it,
This term in its particular application means ‘that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.’ In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage. In the former sense, a man’s land, or merchandise, or money is called his property. In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. He has a property of particular value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
You have a property in your self, as do I in my self. To own oneself, in the newer but more imprecise phrase, means simply that others are presumed to be excluded from control. It might not be too much of an exaggeration to say that all systems of intolerance ultimately presume the opposite at some point in their reasoning.
Filed in The Bookshelf
At least in contemporary English, the phrase “has a property in” is a bit jarring. “Has a property interest in” is better (at least to a lawyer’s ear), but I’m afraid I don’t see what work is being done in either case.
I understand that neither you nor Locke are using the term “property” (as I would prefer it be used exclusively) in its positive sense, i.e., as a claim or right or entitlement defined and controlled entirely by and in the context of a positive (i.e., actual) legal system, itself a creature of a state. Still, I find this sort of conceptual reductionism (or generalizing, take your pick) to be more trouble than it is worth.
Why do we need to treat ourselves or our bodies (are those ontologically distinct “possessions”? See “Strawson’s weight problem” for a bit of fun with this.) as property in order to assert a general right to be left the hell alone? What do we make, then, of Locke’s general labor theory of value and property when it comes to children? I’ve definitely mixed my labor (and my fortune!) into my children. Do I have a property claim on them? (My older son assures me that, if I do, it isn’t a secured interest.)
If having “a property in” oneself simply reduces to having an exclusive right vis a vis others to do what one wishes with oneself (limited primarily by others’ similar and equal autonomy and yadda, yadda), why not simply assert that autonomy? Dragging the concept of property into the picture doesn’t ground or explain the right of autonomy any better and strikes me as a particularly inapt attempt at Occam’s Razor.
Whether it be property interests or autonomy, I’m having a hard time seeing how we can avoid the claims of others on ourselves. It seems to me that our interactions with the world demand that we give up a share of ourselves (as we require the same of others). The very notion that our autonomy is limited by the autonomy of others is the first of many steps in that direction.
I believe that Jon’s original point was that ‘…at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence…’, that only God had the authority to punish for violating His decrees. I wonder if D.A.’s son will be able to get his dad’s buy-in on that one if he comes home drunk at 4am.
I wrote a piece on a related topic you may find of interest, How We Come To Own Ourselves, Mises Daily, Sep. 7, 2006.
Property rights are defined by community and can not exist otherwise.
Arent property rights defined as the bundle of things you can do to a given property.
Eg a hunter-gatherer people may not have a notion of having property right over land on an individual basis.
People 200 years ago didnt have notion of property right over intellectual property.
Thus an indididual has property right in himself–I accept-but what this property right is –the bundle of controls-remains to be defined by the Community-implicity (ie thru custom) or explicitly (ie thru legal system).
I do not understand how one can adopt an axiom of self-ownership and deduce all kinds of fantastic notions from it. Usually the concept of ownership is not made well-defined or ownership is treated as a condition of absolute, unfettered control.
Such an concept of ownership is historically false and does not logically derive from the definition of ownership.
In short, ownership does not imply absolute ownership.
You are not allowed to set fire to your house, even in wilderness and similarly not to set fire to yourself.
If having “a property in” oneself simply reduces to having an exclusive right vis a vis others to do what one wishes with oneself (limited primarily by others’ similar and equal autonomy and yadda, yadda), why not simply assert that autonomy? Dragging the concept of property into the picture doesn’t ground or explain the right of autonomy any better and strikes me as a particularly inapt attempt at Occam’s Razor.
Simply asserting “autonomy” does little to define it or offer an idea of its limits. I think the above (with help from Madison) does this better.
I believe that Jon’s original point was that ‘…at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence…’, that only God had the authority to punish for violating His decrees. I wonder if D.A.’s son will be able to get his dad’s buy-in on that one if he comes home drunk at 4am.
You’d have to ask him that directly, but I’d answer that children don’t get a fully recognized legal autonomy until they become adults, and that, because a conventional line must be drawn, we have done so.
Property rights are defined by community and can not exist otherwise.
What specifically have I done to give you a property in your material goods? Nothing. The same is true of everyone else, individually and as a group. Property rights may be enforced and/or respected by a group, and they may be enforced/respected well or badly, but that’s not where they come from. Rights are the reasons that we bother with laws about property, but the laws do not create the rights.
As to the “fantastic notions” derived from the idea of self-ownership, what are they, in your view? You offer two examples — setting fire to your house, and setting fire to yourself. Given that an uncontrolled fire is a danger to others (and to their equal rights to enjoy life and property), it’s clear that there must be some limits to autonomy.
But what you’ve discovered here is called the law of equal freedom, and it’s already an important part of natural law theory, found in various formulations all throughout the classical liberal and libertarian world, from John Stuart Mill to Robert Nozick and Murray Rothbard. You’ll only get agreement from me on this point: In order to maximally enjoy our autonomy without doing wrong to others, there must be something like this limit.
As to setting fire to oneself, if the danger to others were nil, I would not be able to object on strictly political grounds. On moral ones, I could.
Simply asserting “autonomy” does little to define it or offer an idea of its limits. I think the above (with help from Madison) does this better.
Arguing that one’s autonomy is a form of property, itself dependent on little more than Locke’s attempt to derive moral conclusions from factual predicates (there is no per se or obvious moral significance to first occupancy or mixing one’s labor with objects), is better? *shrug*
Okay, I won’t belabor the point here, but I think the stronger argument is that personal autonomy is fundamental (really, you know, something has to be whether it’s autonomy, property or whatever) and, critically, that it is a defeasable right; that is, that the moral burden of proof and persuasion lies not with the individual who (merely) asserts his autonomy but with anyone who asserts rights that are contrary to or inconsistent with that autonomy.
For the record, I have two sons. The older one of whom I spoke is 21, so he can get as drunk as he wants. From all evidence, however, he is far more responsible than his father was at that age. It’s the younger son I’m keeping an eye on.
What specifically have I done to give you a property in your material goods? Nothing…Property rights may be enforced and/or respected by a group, and they may be enforced/respected well or badly, but that’s not where they come from. Rights are the reasons that we bother with laws about property, but the laws do not create the rights.
Rights are born out of our universal awareness of the norm of justice. For a right can be nothing other than a benefit or immunity that cannot be denied someone without injustice. Without an appeal to this universal norm, we’re left with arguments over who was born with those rights (as the founders did with respect to women and Africans slaves; as we might with D.A.’s sons) because we’re basing rights on the subjective condition of individuals.
Exactly, Matt.
Except then we have to take our Kantianism to questions like what constitutes a person, e.g., do you have to be born, attain or retain a certain level of consciousness, etc., such that we’re still looking at the subjective condition of individuals.
Fair enough, but those are issues of application. The existence of the norm of justice and the rights that follow stand on their own.
No, they don’t. How do we derive these norms? Pure reason? I think not; all you get is whatever you already started with. Intuition? No, people’s moral intuitions genuinely do differ, albeit not as much as some ethicists believe. Revelation? Sorry, a non-starter for the non-theists and, for that matter, most of the theists if your revelation differs from theirs.
Even Kant couldn’t come up with any straightforward, detailed categorical imperatives; he only argued that they must exist and that they and only they constitute ethical standards of conduct. (And, frankly, Kant was wrong about quite a few things, not the least of which was his believe in the existence of a priori synthetic propositions, a biggie when you consider why he bothered with the Critique of Pure Reason in the first place.)
I agree, by the way, and although I have not argued the point in detail on this blog, that humans commonly possess a sense (though not necessarily any norms or principles) of justice which ethically must delimit purely utilitarian or consequentialist ethical reasoning. (And vice versa; that is, deontological concerns must be tempered by weighing consequences, otherwise we give up Ann Frank to the Nazis rather than lie to them.)
But it won’t do to say simply that there are norms, let alone clearly understood and universally accepted norms, with which all we have to do is plug in the facts to apply them like some Aristotelian syllogism or mathematical formula. Figuring out where and how they apply is at the very same time figuring out what they are.
I’ll sidestep most of that (which I enjoyed), and return to the autonomy argument. You assert autonomy and assume that rights follow. Did I miss a step? Where did the rights come from?
Where did the rights come from?
violence. violence and social conditioning (i.e. magic).
I don’t want to threadjack Mr. Kuznicki’s discussion entirely here, but I think you miss my point, Mr. Huisman. I have already asserted (yes, without argument) that autonomy is itself a right, specifically the right to be left alone, and that the moral onus is on whoever would interfere with that right. Now, maybe that is so and maybe it isn’t. But ethical reasoning must start from somewhere and arguing that you presumptively do not have the right to interfere with me unless conditions X, Y or Z obtain is intuitively stronger than arguing that I have that right only if conditions A, B, or C are met. Why the hell should the latter be the case? (Answer: it shouldn’t.)
But whether any of that makes sense to you or Mr. Kuznicki or anyone else, the point I started with is that there is no sense in which having some sort of supposedly conceptually prior claim of “property” bridges the “no ought from an is” rule. Property simply is a sort of right. It doesn’t, as far as I can see (and, admittedly, my ‘vision’ isn’t as sharp as it once was), do any moral work at all but only focuses the basic problem from “what are the ethical implications of being a person among other persons” to “what are the ethical implications of being (by virtue of being a person) ’self-owned’ among other persons.”
Why the hell should the latter be the case? (Answer: it shouldn’t.)
Sounds unjust to me too.
To me it doesnt make sense to say that men are born with certain rights-this is not borne out by experience.
It is better to say that society in which you are born confer certain rights on you.
So I have no inalienable rights in general, not even of life, even in US.
To me it doesnt make sense to say that men are born with certain rights-this is not borne out by experience.
Rights are violated all the time. This doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Rights are obligations, and often people fail to fulfill them. The obligation is still there; the only thing that has changed is that someone hasn’t obeyed it.
This is the difference between violating and alienating a right: It’s possible to violate a right, even while the right’s holder is still owed the thing that he didn’t get, this time around.