On Three Types of Justifications of Private Property: Their Problems and Blind Spots

Volume: 

17

Number: 

1

Published date: 

June, 2013

Authors: 

Shan-hao Sun

Abstract: 

Other than ontologically or hypothetically, the ownership of private property may be justified deontologically or categorically in roughly three ways: by labor, by freedom and by rights, each of which has some inner unresolvable problems, and each of which confronts the others as its outer anti-theses. By means of the Kantian Antinomies it is recognized that such a contrast arises due to the indifference between capital goods and consumption goods, and therefore results in the very confusion over the individual being the property owner and the individual being the property owned by others. This confusion can be traced backwards to the functions of money, which reduce to equality the relations between (1) man and nature, (2) different kinds of properties, and (3) man and man. Basing the function of money on the last relation results in liberalism.

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