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International audience ; This article intends to demonstrate that the concept of self-ownership does not necessarily imply a justification of inequalities of condition and a vindication of capitalism, which is traditionally the case. We present the reasons of such an association, and then we specify that the concept of self-ownership as a tool in political philosophy can be used for condemning the capitalist exploitation.

International audience ; This article intends to demonstrate that the concept of self-ownership does not necessarily imply a justification of inequalities of condition and a vindication of capitalism, which is traditionally the case. We present the reasons of such an association, and then we specify that the concept of self-ownership as a tool in political philosophy can be used for condemning the capitalist exploitation.

Abstract:Self-ownership has fallen out of favor as a core moral and political concept. I argue that this is because the most popular conception of self-ownership, what I call the property conception, is typically linked to a libertarian (of the left or right) political program. Seeing self-ownership and libertarianism as being necessarily linked leads those who are not inclined toward libertarianism to reject the idea of self-ownership altogether. This, I argue, is a mistake. Self-ownership is a crucial moral and political concept that can earn its keep if we understand it not as type of property right in the self, but rather as a set of territorial rights one has over one's body. This territorial conception of self-ownership, which I call the sovereignty conception of self-ownership, avoids the traditional arguments raised against the property conception of self-ownership and has other benefits besides. Accepting this conception of self-ownership, I argue, has considerable moral and political benefits without taking on the costs associated with other forms of self-ownership.

This essay considers self-ownership as a rhetorical and political practice. Scholarly attention to the rhetoric of self-ownership, notably in feminist theory, often rejects the term for its capacity to distort and fragment notions of the self, the body, social relations, and labor. The ambiguous character of self-ownership, in this view, carries the risk of subversion of more inclusive and relational uses. Adopting a broader notion of rhetoric as creative and effective speech, I recast self-ownership from this critical depiction through a revised understanding of C. B. Macpherson's possessive individualism and then to the texts of John Locke, the Levellers, and the Putney Debates. These early-modern exemplars offer insights into the political promises and risks of the rhetoric of self-ownership that contemporary critics obscure. The ambiguity and plurality too often rendered as a liability for self-ownership instead offer conditions for its agonistic invocation for novel claims and emerging audiences.

Defenders of the thesis of self-ownership generally focus on the
"ownership" part of the thesis and say little about the
metaphysics of the self that is said to be self-owned. But not all
accounts of the self are consistent with robust self-ownership.
Philosophical accounts of the self are typically enshrined in theories of
personal identity, and the paper examines various such theories with a
view to determining their suitability for grounding a metaphysics of the
self consistent with self-ownership. As it happens, only one such theory
is suitable: the hylemorphic theory of Aristotle and Aquinas. To adopt
such a theory, however, is to see that self-ownership may in some respects
have implications different from those many of its defenders take it to
have.

Abstract:Self-ownership theorists argue that many of our most morally urgent and enforceable rights stem from the fact that we own ourselves. Critics of self-ownership argue that the claim that people own their bodies commits self-ownership theorists to several implausible conclusions because self-ownership theory relies on several vague moral predicates, and any precisification of the required predicates is seemingly too permissive (because it allows people to impose deadly risks on innocent bystanders for no reason) or too restrictive (because it prohibits people from polluting or even interacting with others at all). I argue that this line of criticism does not undermine the case for self-ownership theory because self-ownership theory does not require precisification of each moral concept that it is based on and, even if it did, the theory's alleged extensional inadequacy does not undermine its justification.

"It would be strange to hear people saying 'It's my self.' The self per se isn't normally a contested possession. By contrast, what is normal, and so familiar that most readers can probably remember asserting such a thing themselves once upon a time, is the assertion 'It's my life.' How we live our lives can be, and often is, contested."

Abstract:In this essay I examine restrictions on labor as takings of property: a liberty to work is property, and restrictions of that liberty are takings. I set property in one's labor within a unified framework for all forms of property, understood as a social institution for balancing two freedoms: freedom to act even if it interferes with someone else, and freedom from interference. As such, property includes not only possession but also use and disposition. To restrict use or disposition is to alter those freedoms, which is a taking of property, including property in one's labor. I understand such takings to be justified insofar as they benefit the persons whose freedoms are altered, taking up the question of when restrictions on use and disposition of labor are to the benefit or the harm of excluded workers. Appreciating that labor is property, and that restrictions on labor are takings, reframes the justificatory burden that restrictions on labor must bear. And where that justification is lacking, this approach reframes the nature of the wrongs that unjustified restrictions perpetrate, especially against the most vulnerable workers.