Abstract

Property undoubtedly has a central place in arrangements surrounding social life, a place so central that some writers have claimed that it is impossible to imagine anything which could be called a society without some property institution. A moment's thought suggests that property is a key element of an economic system, a major concern of the legal system, and a focus of political dispute. But the long‐standing recognition of the importance of property was often coupled with taking many aspects of it for granted, particularly with respect to the possible justification of private property. The development of a specialized literature has occurred in the last forty years, to the extent that Becker has suggested that aspects of the theory of property cannot be developed any further. (An excellent essay by Dan‐Cohen, 2001 shows that Becker's comment may have been premature. Dan‐Cohen explores the relationship between ownership and the boundaries of the self.) This is not, of course, to say that nothing valuable or important had been said about property in the history of political and social thought: nothing could be further from the truth. But much of the political theory of property has been embedded in works with more comprehensive ambitions in political philosophy: Locke's Two Treatises of Government and Hegel's Philosophy of Right are obvious examples. The coherence of such theories of property is clearly dependent – to an extent which may be disputed – on the wider philosophical framework in which they are embedded. Again, the relevance of such theories to contemporary normative analysis depends – again, to a disputable degree – on the compatibility of the economic and political institutions envisaged by their authors with plausible contemporary applicability.