Property and Freedom

A Beauvoirian Critique of Hume's Theory of Justice and a Humean Answer

Bibliographic Data

ID4873005
AuthorsDylan Meidell Rohr (University of California, Riverside, corresponding author), J C Laursen (0000-0003-0028-4149, University of California, Riverside)
Year2018
Issue40
Pages421-445
Publication date2018-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAraucaria (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1575-6823 • E-ISSN: 2340-2199
PublisherEditorial Universidad de Sevilla (PUBLISHER • ES)
DOI10.12795/araucaria.2018.i40.19
OpenAlexW2905758067
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited4

David Hume and Simone de Beauvoir agree that human beings have a great deal of control over their moral and political lives, which is well captured in Hume's assertion that "mankind is an inventive species". But Hume argues that the most important thing needed to settle our social lives and determine justice is the agreement on rules of property, while Beauvoir thinks that the rules of property will never be enough to establish the best life, but rather that we should be focusing on freedom. In this article we reconstruct Hume's argument for property, then develop a Beauvoirian critique of Hume that brings out the weakness of any theory of property that does not prevent inequalities of property from interfering with freedom. And then we give the last word to a Humean response to Beauvoir that would insist that there can be no freedom but only violence without rules of property, which she ignores. Both thinkers appeal to humanity as an overriding goal, and perhaps that is the way to reconcile the two: we need both property and freedom to achieve our humanity

Appeal · Assertion · Economic Justice · Epistemology · Humanity · Law and economics · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · Computer Science · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre

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