Complex Individualism and the legitimacy of Property Right

François Facchini

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: In this article my purpose is to go thoroughly into the ideas expressed by economists regarding the legitimacy of absolute property rights. I visit the Lockian argument taken up by Murray Rothbard (1.1) and the principle of the finder keeper clarified by Israel Kizner (1.2). I argue that it is impossible to legitimate either the property of the finder keeper or the property of oneself if man does not think of himself as an individual. Indeed individualism becomes the cultural prerequisite required to acknowledge the rights of the finder keeper and the goods obtained through labour. Here, Hayek's complex individualism is akin to the hypothesis of the social animal of Benjamin Constant and the work of Gabriel Tarde on the transformation of law. The individual is both an effect and a cause of property rights.

Keywords: property; rights; complex; individualism; finder; keeper; cultural; evolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in European Journal of Law and Economics, 2002, 13 (1), pp.35-46. ⟨10.1023/A:1013161808255⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Working Paper: Complex Individualism and the legitimacy of Property Right (2002)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01286798

DOI: 10.1023/A:1013161808255

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().