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Justice, Self-Ownership, and Natural Assets*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2009

Michael Gorr
Michael Gorr
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Illinois State University
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Extract

A question that has recently attracted considerable attention is this:

What is the nature and significance of the normative relationship a person bears to herself (where the self is understood to include the whole embodied person)?

On one view, it is held that persons are self-owners: as Locke put it in one of the more famous passages in the Second Treatise:

[E]very man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , Summer 1995 , pp. 267 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1995

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References

1 Locke, John, Second Treatise of Government [1690], ed. Macpherson, C. B. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), ch. 5, section 27.Google Scholar

2 The literature on this issue is quite large. Three representative attempts to carry out at least part of the Lockean project are Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 167–82Google Scholar; Fressola, Anthony, “Liberty and Appropriation: Reflections on the Right of Appropriation in the State of Nature,” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 18, no. 4 (10 1981), pp. 315–22Google Scholar; and Mack, Eric, “Self-Ownership and the Right of Property,” The Monist, vol. 73, no. 4 (10 1990), pp. 519–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 See, for example, Rothbard, Murray, The Ethics of liberty (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1982), chs. 6–8.Google Scholar

4 See Cohen, G. A., “Self-Ownership, World-Ownership, and Equality: Part I,” in Lucash, Frank ed., Justice and Equality Here and Now (Ithace, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Cohen, , “Self-Ownership, World-Ownership, and Equality: part II,” Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 3, no. 2 (Spring 1986), pp. 77–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Arneson, Richard, “Lockean Self-ownership; Towards a Demolition,” Political Studies, vol. 39, no. 1 (03 1991), pp. 36–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Further Criticism along these lines may be found in Levine, Andrew, “Capitalist persons,” Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 6. no. 1 (Autumn 1988), pp. 39–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kernohan, Andrew, “Capitalism and self-Ownership.” Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 6, no. 1 (Autumn 1988), pp. 60–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Christman, John, “Self-Ownership, Equality, and the Structure of Property Rights,” Political Theory, vol. 19, no. 1 (02 1991), pp. 28–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), esp. section 17.Google Scholar Similar sentiments are expressed in Dworkin, Ronald, “What is Equality? Part I: Equality of Welfare,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 10, no. 3 (Summer 1981), pp. 185–246Google Scholar; and Dworkin, , “What is Equality? Part II: Equality of Resources,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 10, no. 4 (Fall 1981), pp. 283–345.Google Scholar The suggestion that this view seems to deny self-ownership is most vigorously pressed in Nozick, , Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 213–31Google Scholar; and in Sandel, Michael, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), chs. 1–2.Google Scholar

6 Cohen, , “Self-Ownership, World-Ownership, and Equality: Part I,” p. 109.Google Scholar

7 See, for example, Rothbard, , The Ethics of Liberty, p. 51.Google Scholar

8 For opposing views on the question of whether coercion must be defined moralistically, contrast my Coercion, Freedom, and Exploitation (New York: Peter Lang, 1989)Google Scholar, with Werteimer, Alan. Coercion (Princeton. NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

9 Arneson, , “Lockean Self-Ownership,” pp. 36 and 37.Google Scholar

10 What is controversial, of course, is only the possibility of there being natural positive recipient rights, i.e., rights that people possess simply in virtue of being persons. Obviously no plausible view would deny the legitimacy of acquired positive recipient rights (e.g., those created by valid contracts).

11 As I have just indicated, such a right will actually be quite complex, consisting in a bundle of appropriately related agent and recipient rights.

12 See Arneson, , “Lockean Self-Ownership,” pp. 50–53.Google Scholar Steiner's proposal is explained and defended in his “The Natural Right to the Means of Production,” Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 106 (01 1977), pp. 41–49.Google Scholar

13 Kernohan, , “Capitalism and Self-Ownership,” p. 76.Google Scholar

14 It is worth noting, of course, that nothing in the MSOP requires that such access be equal.

15 Arneson, , “Lockean Self-Ownership,” p. 54.Google Scholar

16 Ibid.

17 Cohen, , “Self-Ownership, World-Ownership, and Equality: Part II,” p. 83.Google Scholar

18 I shall ignore here questions about exactly how “natural” assets are to be defined and whether there may be morally significant differences between different kinds of natural assets; for a very insightful treatment of these and related issues, see Rosenberg, Alexander. “The Political Philosophy of Biological Endowments: Some Considerations,” Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 5, no. 1 (Autumn 1987), pp. 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Nozick, , Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 213–31.Google Scholar

20 Sandel, , Liberalism and the limits of Justice, chs. 1–2.Google Scholar

21 Pogge, Thomas W., Realizing Rowls (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

22 Gorr, Michael, “Rawls on Natural Inequality,” Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 33 (1983), PP. 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar All page references are to the reprint of this essay in Corlett, J. Angelo, ed., Equality and Liberty (London: Macmillan, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 For the new, more “political” understanding of Rawls's theory, see his Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

24 Pogge has suggested (in conversation) that Rawls may endorse not the principle of redress in its entirety, but only some weaker principle, as a basis for the design of the original position. However, I do not see how to reconcile this interpretation with what Rawls says in section 17 of A Theory of Justice, especially the following passage:

Now the principle of redress has not to my knowledge been proposed as the sole criterion of justice.… It is plausible as most such principles are only as a prima facie principle, one that is to be weighed in the balance with others.… But whatever other principles we hold, the claims of redress are to be taken into account, (p. 101, emphasis added)Google Scholar

25 Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, pp. 100–101 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

26 Ibid., p. 580.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid., p. 27. For an elaboration of these criticisms, see Gorr, , “Rawls on Natural Inequality,” pp. 30–35.Google Scholar

29 See Nozick, , Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 213–31Google Scholar; Goldman, Alan, “Real People (Natural Differences and the Scope of Justice),” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 17, no. 2 (06 1987), pp. 377–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosenberg, , “The Political Philosophy of Biological Endowments”Google Scholar (supra note 18), passim; and Zaitchik, Alan, “On Deserving to Deserve,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 6, no. 4 (Fall 1977), pp. 370–88.Google Scholar

30 Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, pp. 100–101.Google Scholar

31 Goldman, Alan H., “The Justification of Equal Opportunity,” Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 5, no. 1 (Autumn 1987), p. 102 (emphasis added).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, p. 255.Google Scholar

33 For further criticism along these lines, see my “Rawls on Natural Inequality,” pp. 29–30.Google Scholar

34 Sandel explicitly notes this but makes use of it only in considering a version of the desert argument; see his Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, ch. 2.

35 Rosenberg, , “The Political Philosophy of Biological Endowments,” pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

36 , Nozick, , Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 215.Google Scholar

37 For a careful critique of a whole range of redress principles, see Buchanan, Allen, “Equal Opportunity and Genetic Intervention,”Google Scholar elsewhere in this volume.

38 Rawls, John, “The Basic Structure as Subject,” in Goldman, A. I. and Kim, J., eds., Values and Morals (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978), p. 65.Google Scholar

39 Pogge, , Realizing Rawls, p. 75.Google Scholar

40 Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, p. 100.Google Scholar It should be noted that Pogge's quote of Rawls's claim that “[w]e have a right to our natural abilities” (supra note 38) is incomplete. The sentence in question continues: “and a right to whatever we become entitled to by taking part in a fair social process”

41 Pogge, , Realizing Rawls, p. 69.Google Scholar

42 Ibid., p. 74

43 Pogge has attempted (in a private communication) to further explain this distinction in the following way. If people's talents were themselves a collective asset, then it would be legitimate for society to determine how they are to be utilized (e.g., by assigning persons to particular jobs in order to produce the optimal social output). Rawls, however, dearly does not hold a view of this sort. Rather, he claims that what society is entitled to determine is only what rewards are to be associated with various contributions to overall social output. A system of differential rewards, however, would make sense only if people differed in their talents and preferences—hence, what Rawls regards as a collective asset is only the distribution of talents. But, Pogge goes on to claim, virtually everyone (even libertarians) would regard the distribution of talents as a collective asset in this sense. Where real disagreement arises is only at the farther step in Rawls's argument: his contention that sodal reward schedules must be constructed so as to satisfy the requirements of the difference principle.

Pogge's suggestion (if I have understood him correctly) that what is controversial is not the claim that the distribution of talents is a collective asset but only Rawls's account of how that distribution is to be utilized by society does not seem to square very well with what Rawls himself says. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls states: “[T]he difference principle represants, in effect, an agreement to regard the distribution of natural talents as a common asset …” (p. 101, emphasis added). This strongly suggests that, contra Pogge, it is the difference principle which is the basis for claiming that the distribution of natural talents is to be regarded as a collective asset, and that, consequently, Rawls would not make a similar claim about alternative social arrangements (such as the libertarian ones favored by Nozick) in which the difference principle plays no role. Furthermore, even if Rawls believes that sodety should assign only rewards rather than specific persons to social positions, this would obviously cede to sodety enormous power that seems capable of being utilized in ways that would seriously undermine any substantive form of self-ownership. The alleged difference between treating talents per se as collective assets and treating only their distribution in this way remains, I am afraid, a very elusive one.

44 Pogge, , Realizing Rawls, p. 69.Google Scholar

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid., p. 70.

47 Ibid., p. 72.

48 Ibid., p. 73.

50 Gauthier, David, Morals by-Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).Google Scholar

51 Pogge, , Realizing Rawls, p. 86.Google Scholar

52 Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, p. 255.Google Scholar

53 I develop this line of argument in more detail in “Rawls on Natural Inequality,” pp. 32–34.Google Scholar

54 See, for example, Rawls, John, “Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion,” American Economic Review, vol. 64, no. 2 (05 1974), pp. 144–45.Google Scholar Only toward the end of his discussion does Rawls go on to mention that “another difficulty is the interference with liberty” (p. 145).

55 Levine, , “Capitalist Persons” (supra note 4), p. 49.Google Scholar

56 s may be something of an overstatement, since Levine is not always careful to distinguish a view like the MSOP from more debatable interpretations of self-ownership that serve to support inegalitarian economic arrangements.

57 This quote is from Rawls's most recent formulation of his first principle of justice in Political Liberalism, p. 5.Google Scholar

58 Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, p. 206 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

59 See Rawls, John, “Justice as Fairness: Political, Not Metaphysical,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 14, no. 3 (Summer 1985), pp. 223–51Google Scholar, and Political Liberalism, passim.

60 See especially “Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical,” section VI. It should be noted that the most extreme statements of the Kantian interpretation—including the only explicit discussion of the principle of redress—occur in A Theory of Justice, on the other hand, Rawls has never explicitly disavowed any of these views. For an interesting defense of the “political” Rawls against the “Kantian” Rawls, see Larmore, Charles, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 118–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 Rawls, , Political liberalism, p. 99f.Google Scholar

62 The charge that there are rival, incompatible ideals of the person entrenched in the culture of democratic liberalism is powerfully defended in Doppelt, Gerald, “Is Rawls's Kantian Liberalism Coherent and Defensible?” Ethics, vol. 99, no. 4 (07 1989), pp. 815–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and in Neal, Patrick, “Justice as Fairness: Political or Metaphysical?” Political Theory, vol. 18, no. 1 (02 1990), pp. 24–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar (I should note here that, while I am conceding otherwise for the sake of argument, I very much doubt that there is any substantial commitment in our culture to all of the features of the Kantian conception of the person. In particular, as I have already noted, I think very few people even implicitly endorse the extreme sort of egalitarianism exemplified by the principle of redress.)

63 Rawls, , Political liberalism, pp. 73–77.Google Scholar

64 Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, ch. 7.Google Scholar This view is reiterated in Political Liberalism, pp. 176–78.Google Scholar

65 Rawls, John, “A Kantian Conception of Equality,” in Held, Virginia, ed., Property, Profits, and Economic Justice (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1980), p. 205.Google Scholar

66 R. M. Hare has argued that many of the common objections to utilitarianism can be satisfactorily answered if we distinguish between the critical and the intuitive levels of moral linking; see his Moral Thinking (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981).Google Scholar Analogously, it has been suggested that the apparent dispute between moral impartialists and moral partialists can be largely dissolved if we distinguish between the level at which basic principles are chosen (which is the level at which impartiality is required) and the level at which such principles are applied in the actual making of decisions (which is the level at which partiality is permitted). For an excellent discussion of this approach, see Baron, Marcia, “Impartiality and Friendship,” Ethics, vol. 101, no. 4 (07 1991), pp. 836–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 Levine, , “Capitalist Persons,” p. 51.Google Scholar

68 See the essays collected in The Inner Citadel, ed. Christman, John (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

69 This remains true even if Parfit's reductionist account of personal identity is correct; see Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 Nagel, Thomas, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), Passim.Google Scholar

71 Sadurski, Wojciech, “Natural and Social Lottery, and Concepts of the Self,” law and Philosophy, vol. 9, no. 2 (05 1990), p. 163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72 Williams, Andrew, “Cohen on Locke, Land, and Labour,” Political Studies, vol. 40, no. 1 (03 1992), p. 64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar No doubt there are others who might be tempted to take this line because they regard all talk of owning persons as morally inappropriate. But this would be a muddle since, on the standard legal analysts, to own something is just to have a certain bundle of rights with respect to that thing (primarily rights to control what is to be done with it). To endorse self-ownership, then, is to do nothing more than ascribe to persons certain control rights over themselves. For a summary of the standard analysis of ownership, see Becker, Lawrence C., Property Rights (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), ch. 2.Google Scholar

73 Williams, , “Cohen on Locke, Land, and Labour,” p. 65Google Scholar (emphasis in original).

74 This would explain why a recent film dramatizing a struggle over a person's right to die was titled Whose life Is It Anyway?