Property and Practical Reason

About this book

"Property and Practical Reason makes a moral argument for common law property institutions and norms, and challenges the prevailing dichotomy between individual rights and state interests and its assumption that individual preferences and the good of communities must be in conflict. One can understand competing intuitions about private property rights by considering how private property enables owners and their collaborators to exercise practical reason consistent with the requirements of reason, and thereby to become practically reasonable agents of deliberation and choice who promote various aspects of the common good. The plural and mediated domains of property ownership, though imperfect, have moral benefits for all members of the community. They enable communities and institutions of private ordering to pursue plural and incommensurable good ends while specifying the boundaries of property rights consistent with basic moral requirements"-- "The Moral Case for Private Property This book makes a moral case for private property. Specifically, it argues that institutions of private ownership are justified, and in many communities are required, by a basic moral principle. That principle is equal respect for human beings as agents of practical reason. The principle gives rise to norms which require communities and their members to establish, honor, enforce, specify, and limit rights of exclusive use and disposition. Institutions of mediated dominion (private property ownership in the common law tradition) have significant instrumental value because they enable humans to exercise practical reason in such a way as to bring about desirable states of affairs consistent with the requirements of practical reasonableness, and thus to become practically reasonable people. In summary, the argument runs this way: Human beings make plans for the use and management of those things that are under their dominion and control. And they make those plans not arbitrarily but for reasons. The human capacity to make plans for reasons, and not arbitrarily or merely to satisfy preferences or appetites, is what makes human beings unique and entitled to special moral respect. Respect for the reasoned plans of others gives rise to"--