"The Turfs My Servant Has Cut": On Some Dilemmas of the Justification of the Right to Private Property in John Locke

BİRDAL S. C.

AMME IDARESI DERGISI, vol.52, no.3, pp.1-21, 2019 (SSCI) identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 52 Issue: 3
  • Publication Date: 2019
  • Journal Name: AMME IDARESI DERGISI
  • Journal Indexes: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, TR DİZİN (ULAKBİM)
  • Page Numbers: pp.1-21
  • Keywords: Locke, the state of nature, the right to private property, labour
  • Ankara Haci Bayram Veli University Affiliated: No

Abstract

In this paper, the conceptualization of the right to private property in John Locke's Second Treatise of Government will be discussed. The process of becoming the private property into a right will be followed in Locke's theory from the beginning on. Pointing out the logical discontinuities and ruptures, it is aimed to deal with the right to private property at the level of its bare situation of an assertion and to show how the tacit assumptions of the society and era in which Locke lived affected his theory of private property. It will be argued that the operation of these tacit assumptions within Locke's theory generated open inconsistencies and prevented Locke to see such inconsistencies.