W9 C7 – PROPERTY AND HOSTILITY
Essential readings (on moodle):
Rowland Atkinson and Aidan While, Defensive architecture: designing the homeless
out of cities, The Conversation (2015).
Alex Andreou, Defensive architecture keeps poverty unseen The Guardian (2015).
Supporting readings:
Margaret Jane Radin, “Property and Personhood” (1982) 34 Stanford Law Review
957-1015.
Further reading:
Margaret Jane Radin, The Liberal Conception of Property: Cross Currents in the
Jurisprudence of Takings (1988) 88 Columbia Law Review 1667-1696
Joseph W. Singer, “Property and Social Relations: From Title to Entitlement, in
Property on the Threshold of the 21st Century” 69 (G.E. van Maanen & A.J. Van der
Walt eds., 1995)
Notes on “The Liberal Conception”
Richard A. Epstein: “Property includes the right to use your property in any way you
like, so long as it doesn’t cause harm others… any legislative curtailment beyond this
is a potentially unconstitutional “taking” – an illicit redistribution from A to B”.
Radin: “In this [(a Hobbesian)] model of human nature, limitless self- interest and the
consequent urgent need for self-defence require... the classical liberal conception of
property. Nothing will get produced unless people are guaranteed the permanent
internalization of the benefits of their labor; nobody will restrain herself from
predation against others unless all are restrained from predation against her”.
Notes on ‘Property as Personhood’
Radin: “The relationship between personhood and context requires
the pursuit of human flourishing to include commitments to create
and maintain particular contexts of individual relationships both with
things and with other people. Recognition of the need for such
commitments turns away from traditional negative liberty towards a
more positive view of freedom, in which the self-development of the
individual is linked to proper social development”.
, o Things can be “bound up with personhood because they are
part of the way we constitutive ourselves as continuing
personal entities in the world”.
o “Once we admit that a person can be bound up with an
external “thing” in some constitutive sense, we can argue that
by virtue of this connection the person should be accorded
broad liberty with respect to control over that thing. But here
liberty follows from property for personhood; personhood is
the basic concept, not liberty”.
o We are a “continuing character structure encompassing future
projects or plans, as well as past events and feelings”
o “If an object you now control is bound up in your future plans
or in your anticipation of your future self, and it is partly these
plans for our own continuity that make you a person, then
personhood depends on the realization of these expectations”.
Personal property versus “an object that is perfectly replaceable
with other goods of equal market value”.
Hierarchy of entitlements: personal property versus fungible
property
“Think of a continuum that ranges from a thing indispensable to
someone’s being to a thing wholly interchangeable with money
May be a justification for curtailing fungible property rights that
impinge on others’ opportunities for self-constitution, like taxation.
“One reason the government should not prescribe what one may do
in one’s home is liberty... But if liberty is the reason for limiting the
government in such a case, then the rationale has nothing to do
with where the actor is when she tries to exercise her will”.
“There is more to the rationale based on sanctity of the home; it
contains a strand of property for personhood. It is not just that
liberty needs some sanctuary and the home is a logical one to
choose because of social consensus. There is also the feeling that it
would be an insult for the state to invade one’s home because it is
the scene of one’s history and future, one’s life and growth”
Joseph William Singer:
o Social relations model: “reconceptualizes property as a social
system composed of entitlements which shape the contours of
social relationships”
o Nuisance as a new model for property rights
o “Extent of privilege to use property is limited to protect the
legitimate interests of other property owners and the public at
large”.
o “The scope and extent of property rights is dependent on the
effects the exercise of those rights have on other people”.
Think about the role that property plays in a constitutive idea of
personhood in society. How we relate to one another.
Essential readings (on moodle):
Rowland Atkinson and Aidan While, Defensive architecture: designing the homeless
out of cities, The Conversation (2015).
Alex Andreou, Defensive architecture keeps poverty unseen The Guardian (2015).
Supporting readings:
Margaret Jane Radin, “Property and Personhood” (1982) 34 Stanford Law Review
957-1015.
Further reading:
Margaret Jane Radin, The Liberal Conception of Property: Cross Currents in the
Jurisprudence of Takings (1988) 88 Columbia Law Review 1667-1696
Joseph W. Singer, “Property and Social Relations: From Title to Entitlement, in
Property on the Threshold of the 21st Century” 69 (G.E. van Maanen & A.J. Van der
Walt eds., 1995)
Notes on “The Liberal Conception”
Richard A. Epstein: “Property includes the right to use your property in any way you
like, so long as it doesn’t cause harm others… any legislative curtailment beyond this
is a potentially unconstitutional “taking” – an illicit redistribution from A to B”.
Radin: “In this [(a Hobbesian)] model of human nature, limitless self- interest and the
consequent urgent need for self-defence require... the classical liberal conception of
property. Nothing will get produced unless people are guaranteed the permanent
internalization of the benefits of their labor; nobody will restrain herself from
predation against others unless all are restrained from predation against her”.
Notes on ‘Property as Personhood’
Radin: “The relationship between personhood and context requires
the pursuit of human flourishing to include commitments to create
and maintain particular contexts of individual relationships both with
things and with other people. Recognition of the need for such
commitments turns away from traditional negative liberty towards a
more positive view of freedom, in which the self-development of the
individual is linked to proper social development”.
, o Things can be “bound up with personhood because they are
part of the way we constitutive ourselves as continuing
personal entities in the world”.
o “Once we admit that a person can be bound up with an
external “thing” in some constitutive sense, we can argue that
by virtue of this connection the person should be accorded
broad liberty with respect to control over that thing. But here
liberty follows from property for personhood; personhood is
the basic concept, not liberty”.
o We are a “continuing character structure encompassing future
projects or plans, as well as past events and feelings”
o “If an object you now control is bound up in your future plans
or in your anticipation of your future self, and it is partly these
plans for our own continuity that make you a person, then
personhood depends on the realization of these expectations”.
Personal property versus “an object that is perfectly replaceable
with other goods of equal market value”.
Hierarchy of entitlements: personal property versus fungible
property
“Think of a continuum that ranges from a thing indispensable to
someone’s being to a thing wholly interchangeable with money
May be a justification for curtailing fungible property rights that
impinge on others’ opportunities for self-constitution, like taxation.
“One reason the government should not prescribe what one may do
in one’s home is liberty... But if liberty is the reason for limiting the
government in such a case, then the rationale has nothing to do
with where the actor is when she tries to exercise her will”.
“There is more to the rationale based on sanctity of the home; it
contains a strand of property for personhood. It is not just that
liberty needs some sanctuary and the home is a logical one to
choose because of social consensus. There is also the feeling that it
would be an insult for the state to invade one’s home because it is
the scene of one’s history and future, one’s life and growth”
Joseph William Singer:
o Social relations model: “reconceptualizes property as a social
system composed of entitlements which shape the contours of
social relationships”
o Nuisance as a new model for property rights
o “Extent of privilege to use property is limited to protect the
legitimate interests of other property owners and the public at
large”.
o “The scope and extent of property rights is dependent on the
effects the exercise of those rights have on other people”.
Think about the role that property plays in a constitutive idea of
personhood in society. How we relate to one another.
