It is a core belief of most Americans that, as long as you are not hurting anyone else, you have the right to do whatever you want with your own property. If you buy a car, drive it home and destroy it with a baseball bat, you are acting completely within your rights, since you legally own that car and therefore have the right to do whatever you want with it, such as you perceive will make you happy. This sort of thinking leads to more serious errors like radical feminism and transgenderism, because it is based on the idea that things do not have natures and therefore do not have purposes, and that there are not ways in which men should act to become happy. Obviously, these are issues of a much grander scale, but the premise about property on which they are based is also fundamentally wrong, because it misunderstands the nature, and therefore the purpose, of property.
One influential philosophical articulation of this misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of property can be found in the work of Robert Nozick, a highly influential figure in modern libertarian thought. In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Nozick argues that individuals possess inviolable rights grounded in self-ownership, such that each person is morally free to dispose of his actions, labour and property as he sees fit, provided he does not violate the rights of others.
On this view, political and moral constraints are understood primarily as side constraints on interference rather than as principles ordered towards the cultivation of virtue or the realisation of a common good. Although Nozick affirms that these rights impose strict moral limits, they have a negative purpose, to prevent the violation of these rights, rather than a positive purpose, to bring about the common good of man. Consequently, no person or institution may legitimately impose an objective vision of virtue, and property may be used in whatever manner an individual judges conducive to his own happiness, so long as he does not impose on anyone else’s rights to do the same.
This conception stands in sharp contrast to classical accounts such as that of St Thomas Aquinas, who understands property not as an extension of absolute self-ownership, but as a means ordered towards the common good and governed by objective moral purposes rooted in human nature.
St Thomas Aquinas has a very different view as to the purpose and proper use of property. He gives the argument as to why men can own property when he says: “Man has a natural dominion over external things, because, by his reason and will, he is able to use them for his own profit, as they were made on his account: for the imperfect is always for the sake of the perfect.” So man has a natural dominion over God’s creation, using his reason to determine how to use created things for his own profit. Man is a more perfect creature than other natural things, so they exist for his benefit, and thus he has a right to own and use them.
He goes on to say: “Man ought to possess external things, not as his own, but as common, so that, to wit, he is ready to communicate them to others in their need.” This clarifies that, with regard to the use of created things, man is obligated to use them first and foremost to serve the common good, and that this use takes precedence over the private good of the individual. This follows from the same idea mentioned in the first quote: that lower goods (ie private goods, like the private use of property) are for the sake of higher goods (ie common goods, like the well-being of society). An example of this would be that if you have an extra loaf of bread that you would eventually use to feed yourself or your family, but there is someone else with a more immediate need than you, you are morally obligated to give that bread to the hungry person, and they have more of a claim to ownership of that bread than you do. This principle also applies to any other property over which man might have ownership, which means we do not actually have the right to do whatever we want with our property, but are bound by an obligation to use God’s creation in the way that will make ourselves and other men happy.
God’s creation exists to make men happy, but this happiness is first and foremost a common good rather than a private one. Because property is part of creation, it is ordered towards that same end. Ownership, therefore, is not an unlimited right, but a form of stewardship that binds man to use what he possesses in accordance with its purpose and for the good of the broader society. When property is treated as being for the sake of the good of the individual rather than the common good, the hierarchy of goods is inverted, and we are acting contrary to nature.
To bring about an American society truly ordered to the happiness of her citizens, we must reject the belief that men may do whatever they wish with what they own. True freedom consists in using one’s possessions rightly, in a way that serves both personal perfection and the common good. This requires a serious re-examination of how we understand and use property, and a willingness to subordinate private desire to the higher ends for which all created things exist.
