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Self-Ownership As Personal Sovereignty, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Self-ownership has fallen out of favor as a core moral and political concept. I argue that this is because the most popular conception of self-ownership, what I call the property conception, is typically linked to a libertarian (of the left or right) political program. Seeing self-ownership and libertarianism as being necessarily linked leads those who are not inclined toward libertarianism to reject the idea of self-ownership altogether. This, I argue, is mistaken. Self-ownership is a crucial moral and political concept that can earn its keep if we understand it not as type of property right in the self, but rather …