Self-ownership

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Self-ownership (or sovereignty of the individual, individual sovereignty or individual autonomy) is the concept of property in one's own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to be the exclusive controller of his own body and life. According to G. Cohen, the concept of self-ownership is that "each person enjoys, over himself and his powers, full and exclusive rights of control and use, and therefore owes no service or product to anyone else that he has not contracted to supply."

The writers William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson described those possessed of a mind conducive to self-ownership as sovereign individuals, which have supreme authority and sovereignty over their own choices, without the interference of governing powers, provided they have not violated the rights of others. This notion is central to classical liberalism, individualistic political philosophies such as abolitionism, ethical egoism, rights-based libertarianism, objectivism, and individualist anarchism. Sovereign-minded individuals would then seem to prefer an atmosphere consisting of decentralized administrative organizations acting as servants to the individual.

Origin of the concept

John Locke wrote in his Two Treatises on Government, "every man has a Property in his own Person."

Locke also said that the individual "has a right to decide what would become of himself and what he would do, and as having a right to reap the benefits of what he did."

Private property

Sovereign-minded individuals usually assert a right of private property external to the body, reasoning that if a person owns themselves, they own their actions, including those that create or improve resources. Therefore, they own their own labour and the fruits thereof.

Nevertheless there can be defense of self-ownership which can be critical of the idea of private property. The anarchist Oscar Wilde said that "For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is...With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." Also Italian individualist anarchist Renzo Novatore said that "Only ethical and spiritual wealth is invulnerable. This is the true property of individuals. The rest no! The rest is vulnerable! And all that is vulnerable will be violated!"

Self-ownership and labour markets

Ian Shapiro says that markets in labour affirm self ownership, because if self-ownership were not recognized then people would not be allowed to sell the use of their productive capacities to others. He says that the individual sells the use of his productive capacity for a limited time and conditions but continues to own what he earns from selling the use of that capacity and the capacity itself, thereby retaining sovereignty over himself while contributing to economic efficiency.

Examples

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is sometimes viewed as an implementation of the concept of self-ownership, as are some portions of the Bill of Rights.^{[citation needed]}

Self-ownership could be viewed as a decentralized bottom-up philosophy, as opposed to totalitarianism being a centralized top-down system. Henry David Thoreau regarded self-ownership as a key component in achieving utopia, while libertarian political philosopher Robert Nozick based his theory of property-ownership on the premise of self-ownership.

Disagreement about distinctions

The trouble of defining the border of the self can be seen in the debate surrounding abortion where the fetus could alternatively be seen as its own or as a part of the property of the mother's body, and the right of the woman to control her own body could therefore be viewed as being in opposition to what may be considered as "the fetus' right to live". This contrast is even more pronounced in situations where women are forced to undergo surgery in order to deliver a healthy baby. Even though self-ownership advocates civil rights, it does not extend these rights over others, an argument used by both sides of this debate.

In addition to the abortion debate, there are also debates surrounding euthanasia and suicide. However, some of these actions can be viewed as self-destructive, which is not removed from the original meaning of self-ownership. The debate is further complicated as many individuals recognize the right of ownership to include the right to destruction: what one has constructed, one may deconstruct. Additionally, some cultures not only respect the act of suicide as an individual right, but also as an honorable action.

Discussion of the boundary of self with respect to ownership and responsibility has been explored by legal scholar Meir Dan-Cohen in his essays on The Value of Ownership and Responsibility and the Boundaries of the Self. The emphasis of this work is in illuminating the phenomenology of ownership and our common usage of personal pronouns to apply to both body and property; this serves as the folk basis for legal conceptions and debates about responsibility and ownership.

Defining the borders of the self can also be difficult if one accepts the notion that the self includes objects that are external to the human body, as is proposed in Andy Clark's essay, Natural Born Cyborgs.

The classically liberal view of self-ownership holds that money is alienable because it can be physically alienated from the body (taken, given, earned, paid), while labor is not because it can only be achieved by use of one's inalienable body. Alternatively, some anti-capitalists believe that, because money is the product of inalienable labor, it should be viewed as similarly inalienable, regardless of any voluntary contractual agreements made by the laborer. This leads to a disagreement about how far self-ownership, if affirmed, extends. From this springs the idea of a "wage slave" or a "debt slave," which are meaningless terms in one view, and violate the principle of self-ownership in the other.

Another third view holds that labor is alienable, because it can be contracted out, thus alienating it from the self. In this view, the freedom of a person to voluntarily sell oneself into slavery is also preserved by the principle of self-ownership.

Arguments for self-ownership

It has been argued by Austrian School economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe that self-ownership is axiomatic (Argumentation Ethics). His reasoning is that self-ownership is a presupposition of argumentation, thus a person contradicts oneself when one argues against self-ownership. The person making this argument is caught in a performative contradiction because, in choosing to use persuasion instead of force to have others agree that they are not sovereign over themselves, that person implicitly grants that those who one is trying to persuade have a right to use their body in order to argue. He then goes on to show that self-ownership is the only ownership norm consistent with this choice.

In The Ethics of Liberty, Murray Rothbard argues that 100 percent self-ownership is the only principle compatible with a moral code that applies to every person - a "universal ethic" - and that it is a natural law by being what is naturally best for man. He says if every person is not entitled to full self-ownership, then there are only two alternatives:

1. The 'communist' one of universal and equal share of each man in the body of every other man.
2. Partial Ownership of One Group by Another - a system of rule by one class over another.
3. Full ownership of each man over his body.

He says that it is not possible for alternative (2) to be a universal ethic but only a partial ethic, which says that one class of people do not have the right of self-ownership but another class does. This, therefore, is incompatible with what is being sought - a moral code applicable to every person - instead of a code applicable to some and not to others, as if some individuals are humans and some are not. In the case of alternative (1), every individual would own equal parts of every other individual so that no one is self-owned. Rothbard acknowledges that this would be a universal ethic, but, he argues, it is "Utopian and impossible for everyone to keep continual tabs on everyone else, and thereby to exercise his equal share of partial ownership over every other man." He says the system would break down, resulting in a ruling class who specializes in keeping tabs over other individuals. Since this would grant a ruling class ownership rights over its subjects, it would again be logically incompatible with a universal ethic. Even if a collectivist Utopia of everyone having equal ownership of everyone else could be sustained, he argues, individuals would not be able to do anything without prior approval by everyone in society. Since this would be impossible in a large society, no one would be able to do anything and the human race would perish. Therefore, the collectivist alternative universal ethic where every individual would own an equal portion of every other individual violates the natural "law of what is best for man and [one's] life on earth." He says that if a person exercises ownership over another person, that is, uses aggression against him rather than leaving him to do as he wills, "this violates [one's] nature."

See also

Individualist anarchism Dualism (philosophy of mind) Redemption movement Law of equal liberty Civil liberties Empowerment Free will

Sumptuary Castle Doctrine Non-aggression principle Self-determination Victimless crime (political philosophy) Public order crime Slavery

External links

• Self-Ownership, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• The Philosophy of Liberty
• The Ego and Its Own (also translated as The Individual and His Property), the main work by German philosopher Max Stirner
• What is a sovereign individual?
• A collection of arguments against self-ownership