Abstract
Abstract:This essay explores the meaning and normative significance of Locke’s depiction of individuals as proprietors of their own person. I begin by reconsidering the long-standing puzzle concerning Locke’s simultaneous endorsement of divine proprietorship and self-ownership. Befuddlement vanishes, I contend, once we reject concurrent ownership in the same object: while God fully owns our lives, humans are initially sole proprietors of their own person. (Our property rights in our life and body are restricted to possession, use, and usufruct.) Locke employs two conceptions of “personhood”: as expressing legal independence vis-à-vis humans and moral accountability vis-à-vis God. Humans own their person in the first sense. As original proprietors of their own person, individuals are entitled to subject themselves to self-chosen authorities, thereby incurring obligations of obedience. But they may not choose just any authority. Divine ownership of human life delimits personal self-ownership by restricting the ways in which humans can dispose of their persons: we cannot possibly consensually subject ourselves to absolute and arbitrary power. Locke’s rights-forfeiture theory for crime makes slavery and despotism nonetheless potentially rightful conditions. I argue that, paradoxically, divine dominium of human life underpins both the impermissibility of voluntary enslavement and the justifiability of penal slavery. My analysis helps explain why modern Lockean theories of self-ownership that reject Locke’s theological premises have adopted an ambiguous stance toward despotic rule.
Highlights
John Locke (1632-1704) is commonly regarded as the token proponent, if not the originator, of “self-ownership”—the idea that humans have pre-institutional property rights in their person and the products of SELF-OWNERSHIP AND DESPOTISM their labor.[1]
I have argued that Locke does not endorse full self-ownership: “the fullest right a person can have over herself provided that each other person has just such a right.”[59]. This holds true regardless of whether we conceive of self-ownership as rights in our person or in our life
More surprising perhaps is my contention that Locke does not endorse full self-ownership of one’s person either
Summary
John Locke (1632-1704) is commonly regarded as the token proponent, if not the originator, of “self-ownership”—the idea that humans have pre-institutional property rights in their person and the products of. For Locke, initial full self-ownership expresses absolute original independence from human authority as well as rights of civil and political self-determination It is not expressive of unlimited rights in our life or body—the ultimate owner of which is God.[4]. Duties of self-preservation underpin Locke’s argument for the impossibility of both self-enslavement and the consensual establishment of absolute and arbitrary government Both kinds of rule presuppose forms of personal subjection incompatible with God’s dominium. As the owner of our lives, God has the moral power to authorize humans to be killed and enslaved for crime Divine dominium both explains the impossibility of self-enslavement and the justifiability of penal slavery. I conclude with some reflections on the logical connections between self-ownership and voluntary slavery
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