Self Ownership vs Individual Rights
This is a short audio where L. Peikoff suggests that self-ownership is a non-concept because it implies a relationship between you and something. However, I find many Rand quotes that contradict this position.
"Without property rights, no other rights are possible." and "If a producer does not own the result of his own effort, he does not own his life." I agree that owning oneself is not axiomatic, but it is derived from Rand based on the fact you are a rational animal. Locke recognized this in formulating natural rights. First, if we say Man, due to his unique nature, has a right to life (as Peikoff says). well, this doesn't get you very far. ok-you have a right to life. so what? But if we say, as Rand says, you own yourself, it includes the right to your life-but it includes much more: the right to the products of your mind, it explains the source of property rights, who has legitimate property rights, why you can contract, why most of our common/criminal law exists. What say you?
p.s. please, for the purposes of this post, let's not discuss religious concepts of God given rights.
"Without property rights, no other rights are possible." and "If a producer does not own the result of his own effort, he does not own his life." I agree that owning oneself is not axiomatic, but it is derived from Rand based on the fact you are a rational animal. Locke recognized this in formulating natural rights. First, if we say Man, due to his unique nature, has a right to life (as Peikoff says). well, this doesn't get you very far. ok-you have a right to life. so what? But if we say, as Rand says, you own yourself, it includes the right to your life-but it includes much more: the right to the products of your mind, it explains the source of property rights, who has legitimate property rights, why you can contract, why most of our common/criminal law exists. What say you?
p.s. please, for the purposes of this post, let's not discuss religious concepts of God given rights.
SOURCE URL: http://www.peikoff.com/?s=self-ownership
It is simply a clear shorthand way of stating that no OTHER person (or collective) can own me.
Which is surprisingly normal amongst humans, as I've noticed for decades.
Enjoy! Carry on!
:)
Like "when does life begin?" discussions... the starting definitions are usually 'understood,' or universally 'assumed,' not defined. And then the usual fun ensues.
I just Googled "essential being".... if it were a simple issue, there might not be about 124 MILLION hits... :)
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=n...
I see no point in drawing a distinction between owning something else, and owning one's self.
I have metal hip implants. I claim that I own them (unless I missed some kind of bailment at the hospital). To put them in, my hip labrum was removed and a small amount of bone was ground off my femur. When these are original parts are removed, who owns them? They are no longer "self". The same can be said of a finger, leg, eye, etc. I see no conceptual issue with owning one's body and mind? I can paint it, abuse it, groom it and even donate or sell parts of it (hair, kidneys...). Why then would ownership of one self be in question at all?
This guy is just wrong.
"A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action — which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)"
....
"The right to life is the source of all rights — and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.
Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.
The concept of individual rights is so new in human history that most men have not grasped it fully to this day. In accordance with the two theories of ethics, the mystical or the social, some men assert that rights are a gift of God — others, that rights are a gift of society. But, in fact, the source of rights is man’s nature."
I think of this as follows: a man's right to life is a function of his nature—qua man...like a birthright. This birthright can only be exercised through self-generated, life sustaining action. Those actions are the source of property rights. Also, those self-sustaining actions, required by man's nature, fundamentally earn him ownership of his life.
Great discussion, KH.
Self ownership is. It is not another form of ownership it is the foundation upon which all other ownership (property) is based upon.
I disagree with the Professor. He says “property is the primary not the derivative.” This seems a contradiction if one does not recognize that the primary property is one’s self. What is he arguing? Is it an answer searching for a problem? A didactic argument that goes nowhere in my mind...
Respectfully,
O.A.
How does one qualify as intellectual heir?, brainwashing?, brain transplant?
Individual intellect is the individual mind you cannot inherit that.
Looks to me like a label for someone trying to trade on the intellect of someone else, rather then their own.
there's rules, you see...:)
To me, everything else follows after that. Right to life is simply the acknowledgement or claim that a violation of the physical boundary occupied by you, the individual, is unacceptable and an attempted abrogation of one's own identity. It is an attempt at theft, really - the control of something not under one's responsibility.
Objects without conscience and will do not recognize the concept of either their own boundaries or those around them, and so can not be "owners" of anything. They also can not be responsible.
What say ye?
I can't agree that the right to life has anything to do with god-given and I certainly don't wish to imply anything of the sort--life in general is a part of reality (there is even a school of thought that describes life's purpose to be that of giving reality form and even directing it at a point). In my way of thinking, there's no I or self without life-my life. Wherever that life derives from, for myself it derives from nature (maybe an ambiguous term or identity) of which I'm a part, a natural development of the more general grouping of 'life'.
But regardless, once I exist or my consciousness or self awareness develops to a certain point, I'm here. (I'm not ready yet to describe thinking about existence and reality-that's another level of mumbling in me at this point)
What can I do as a part of nature, or reality? Nothing unless I live.
How then can I live? The life of me requires certain things in order to continue to exist and my ways and means to obtain and use those things is my perceptions and rational thinking.
I have my mind and it has the ability to rationally perceive, remember, and think. Because I have that mind and self awareness, I'm different from the other animal life of this reality.
Sorry, I have to pause this for awhile. I'll return to it and you later.
You're saying:
You're a rational animal --> you own yourself --> right to life. Saying rational animal --> right to life seems mystical and is skipping a necessary step.
Why does un-owned --> own-able?
Why is rational animal --> right to life more mystical than ration animal --> you own yourself?
As I've remarked many times before, it's a lot like "who owns my country?" If a people can defend it from anyone and everyone who wants the territory, "they own it." If they can't, they forfeit "ownership" when the other side wins.
Ditto 'you and the tiger.'
Bad metaphor!
:)
One human versus one tiger on a desert island may well be at a disadvantage, unless the human figures out some defenses. But that's not a fair scenario; it's like Ayn Rand's critique of lifeboat situations.
Humans and tigers co-exist on the planet in their respective areas, and as long as neither encroaches on the other's territory, both can live happily ever after.
To say because humans are smarter and can arm themselves to be stronger, therefore might makes right and predatory relationships are all that will exist is a sad commentary on allegedly rational relationships. If smarter and stronger have a natural right to conquer and beat down weaker and less evolved fellow humans, we are back to pre-Enlightenment barbarism.
Self-ownership means individual personhood is not to be violated or transgressed against. Each person is a "closed system", a territory of its own who acts to preserve itself and interacts with others by mutual consent. As Rand said, there is no collective stomach. Each individual acts to serve one's own needs.
Of course, history is littered with social systems that conquer and enslave, sacrifice and exploit some people for the sake of others, using the "superiority" of some as a rationalization for tyrannizing others viewed as inferior. "Manifest destiny" and all that crap. Mankind's predatory tendencies are a throwback to earlier evolutionary stages.
Consider that half a million years of cognitive emergence struggled its way upward, one neuron at a time, before a mind like Rand's could happen and articulate mankind's next stage of evolution, namely a rational consciousness, let alone a volitional one.
We're still in the stage where the truth she's spoken will be "twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools"--a world where we debate the meaning of self-ownership and natural rights, splitting hairs and counting dancing angels on the head of a pin, and conflate the continuum between rational selfishness and unbounded exploitative greed.
Rational selfishness is required to obtain property, where the individual has paid for that property through investment of time and energy, i.e., productive work. We are fortunate indeed that the planet supplies much of the material we need for our survival, free for the taking (but not for heedlessly destroying). Greedy exploitation seeks to shortchange others, to get the better of them by hook or crook, a deviant remnant of nature's predatory algorithm.
No one out there seems to understand Rand's golden rule as formulated in Galt's oath.
I am. I am sentient. I am rational (mostly :) ).
Nobody else can own me. Even if I were enslaved, I would be forced to do things against my own will but they wouldn't own "me" and I would hope that I would have enough courage to retaliate against my slavers when the opportunity arose.
I'm struggling to see why self-ownership is a useful concept. It only seems to me to be an attribute of my existence as a rational being. I can only give it up if I give up my rational mind. While that is possible, there have clearly been people in extreme situations in which their agency was limited by the force of others (POWs, Victor Frankl in a concentration camp, etc.) that did not give up their rational mind.