Filozoficzne koncepcje własności : od Platona do Marksa

All theories of property arose in a specific place and time and were an expression of political, social, economic and religious views of the time. They were also based on a specific vision of the world and man. Plato and Aristotle considered man first and foremost as a citizen who could become virtuous only in polis. St. Thomas, Hugo Grotius and John Locke claimed, that man was a divine creature. Immanuel Kant, in turn, considered man as an entity whose greatness and dignity lie in the rationality and autonomy of the will. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx held that man is an individual that realizes himself through labor. Property was considered as an element that unites community (Aquinas) or as a source of inequalities (Rousseau). Sometimes property was associated with justice (Hume) or law (Rousseau, Bentham) and sometimes with liberty (Kant). For some philosophers private property was a source of prosperity and self-realization (Locke, Hegel, Bastiat) and for others a source of oppression and alienation (Proudhon, Marx). Some philosophers considered property as a natural right (Locke, Spooner) and others as a state institution (Hobbes). Property was considered as an instrument through which man can meet God’s will or as a tool which state applies to fighting inequalities (Mill).