SELF-OWNERSHIP AND DESPOTISM: LOCKE ON PROPERTY IN THE PERSON, DIVINE DOMINIUM OF HUMAN LIFE, AND RIGHTS-FORFEITURE

Abstract

Abstract:This essay explores the meaning and normative significance of Locke’s depiction of individuals as proprietors of their own person. I begin by reconsidering the long-standing puzzle concerning Locke’s simultaneous endorsement of divine proprietorship and self-ownership. Befuddlement vanishes, I contend, once we reject concurrent ownership in the same object: while God fully owns our lives, humans are initially sole proprietors of their own person. (Our property rights in our life and body are restricted to possession, use, and usufruct.) Locke employs two conceptions of “personhood”: as expressing legal independence vis-à-vis humans and moral accountability vis-à-vis God. Humans own their person in the first sense. As original proprietors of their own person, individuals are entitled to subject themselves to self-chosen authorities, thereby incurring obligations of obedience. But they may not choose just any authority. Divine ownership of human life delimits personal self-ownership by restricting the ways in which humans can dispose of their persons: we cannot possibly consensually subject ourselves to absolute and arbitrary power. Locke’s rights-forfeiture theory for crime makes slavery and despotism nonetheless potentially rightful conditions. I argue that, paradoxically, divine dominium of human life underpins both the impermissibility of voluntary enslavement and the justifiability of penal slavery. My analysis helps explain why modern Lockean theories of self-ownership that reject Locke’s theological premises have adopted an ambiguous stance toward despotic rule.

“Democratizing” artificial intelligence in medicine and healthcare: Mapping the uses of an elusive term

“…Building on the dominant patient-as-consumer approach regarding the demos, it is not hard to make the connection to the corresponding type of democracy that underpins the first vision of democratization. By taking the ideas of self-ownership and individual responsibilities as a given, the first vision of democratization of healthcare through AI, channels Lockean individualism typical for libertarian thinking ( Olsthoorn, 2019 ). It reduces democracy to the libertarian idea of being free from external interference by authorities, in our case- medical paternalism.…”

The intelligence concept and racial classification as sociological products of Western education

“…From Locke's perspective, Africans had neither natural rights nor personal freedoms that he so eloquently articulated in his Two Treatises of Government. Locke believed that people of African descent needed to assimilate into European culture to improve themselves socially, culturally, and psychologically, especially by accepting and practicing the Protestant form of Christianity (Bernal, 1987;Friedman, 2015;Olsthoorn, 2019). With these erratic beliefs about human activity, Locke incorporated the views of European theologians who had rationalized that Africans were condemned and put on earth to be servants for Europeans (Olsthoorn, 2019).…”

“…Locke believed that people of African descent needed to assimilate into European culture to improve themselves socially, culturally, and psychologically, especially by accepting and practicing the Protestant form of Christianity (Bernal, 1987;Friedman, 2015;Olsthoorn, 2019). With these erratic beliefs about human activity, Locke incorporated the views of European theologians who had rationalized that Africans were condemned and put on earth to be servants for Europeans (Olsthoorn, 2019). Although Locke was anti-African or anti-Black, many Western educators would argue that learners of African descent must study racist Enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu and Locke to understand sociological, sociopolitical principles and conditions of the modern world (Meszaros, 2017;Rahe, 2012;Samuel, 2009).…”

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“…However, our property rights in our life are limited to use and usufruct. We have no license to destroy ourselves or to dispose of our persons in defiance of the law of nature (ST §7; Olsthoorn, 2019).…”