SELF-OWNERSHIP AND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE HUMAN BODY

作     者：Carter, Ian 

作者机构：Univ Pavia Polit Philosophy Pavia Italy 

出 版 物：《SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY & POLICY》 (社会哲学与政策)

年 卷 期：2019年第36卷第2期

页      面：94-115页

核心收录：

学科分类：0303[法学-社会学] 12[管理学] 1204[管理学-公共管理] 03[法学] 0101[哲学-哲学] 030301[法学-社会学] 

基　　金：Churchill College, Cambridge Cambridge Forum for Legal and Political Philosophy 

主　　题：self-ownership personhood self human body autonomy freedom left-libertarianism P F Strawson P M S Hacker respect for persons rights property 

摘      要：In this essay I attempt to vindicate the asymmetry thesis, according to which ownership of one s own body is intrinsically different from ownership of other objects, and the view that self-ownership, as libertarians normally understand the concept, enjoys a special fact-insensitive status as a fundamental right. In particular, I argue in favor of the following claims. First, the right of self-ownership is most plausibly understood as based on the more fundamental notion of respect for persons, where the concept of a person is in turn understood, along the lines set out by P. F. Strawson and P. M. S. Hacker, as referring to an entire biological organism with a certain set of mental and corporeal characteristics. If we restrict our attention to human persons, we can say on this basis that there is a special moral status attaching to the entire human body, and to no more than the human body. Second, self-ownership is not, as critics have sometimes supposed, based on a more fundamental right to equal freedom or autonomy. Criticisms of self-ownership as insufficiently justified on the basis of such rights are therefore off target. Rather, equal freedom and self-ownership are each based directly on the more fundamental notion of respect for persons. For left-libertarians, the asymmetry thesis serves to give priority to self-ownership when delineating a set of original property rights, given that there are many alternative ways of realizing equal freedom not all of which involve fully respecting people s property rights in themselves.